www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall LOL?

Dear Friends,

I give up!

What does LOL mean?

Paul

Dear Paromer,

I remember when my children were young teens, a few years ago, and I would see 'LOL' written all the time in their messages to friends. I asked "what in the world does 'LOL' mean?". They answered, 'Laughing Out Loud'.

Alice

Thank you Alice.

May you have many LOL's

Best regards,

Paul

I always thought LOL meant Loyal Orange Lodge. Incognitus

Gracious - do they have them in the US ??

Dear Anhelyna,

Yes indeed!

Especially down Florida way . . .

Alex

Yes, there are still Orange Lodges in the US, but there numbers have declined greatly since the latter half of the 19th century when they were quite numerous. In fact,in 1871, New York City saw one the worst riots in it's history when over 60 people were killed after police and army units opened fire on crowds along the route of an Orange parade in South Manhattan. The year before, 13 people had been killed in a riot at an Orange picnic in Upper Manhattan. The massive loss of life in the second riot was mainly caused by trigger happy policemen and soldiers worried by false rumors that the AOH were planning an armed attack on the parade.

Most of the Orange types in the USA fitted in quite nicely with the local Masonic lodges, Know-Nothing politics, and various Nativist organizations, since the Orangemen were the kind of "Nordic" peoples that the Nativists wanted anyway. As a result, Protestant Irish in the USA are almost invisible, though there are some memorials to them in Ulster. Even in parts of Pennsylvania where the Protestant Irish settlement was quite significant, the descendants of these particular immigrants prefer to forget Ireland and claim a Scottish descent, complete with Highland games and so forth. Incognitus

Yes, the Ulster Protestants are about the most assimilated ethnic group in the USA. And it is true that they generally today- when they have any ethnic awareness- identify with their Scots ancestors. Yet their forebearers when they settled named their places for places back home in Ireland, not Scotland. And the earliest St Patrick's Day celebrations were instituted by Ulster Protestants. Until the famine, most Irish immigrants were Protestant [with Scots roots]. One theory is that with the impovershed immigrant flood those folks distanced themselves from the new riff raff and coined the term "Scotch- Irish" for themselves.
But back to the subject: I thought LOL meant "lots of laughs", which didn't always make much sense...

...but it could mean that all those kids in the chatrooms want to join the junior chapter of the lodge!

No, I guess you're right. It's about laughing. Do you really think they laugh that much?

What are they laughing about, us?

Oh well, feeling old....

gtJC! fyi btw this has me ROFLOL! toodles & God bless, sUSAn

BTW

IMHO and FYI, if I ROFLOL I might not be able to get up!

The Orange Order and ethnic bigotry. I presume we are all aware that the Orange Order promotes religious bigotry with a vengeance. But the "Scots-Irish" business is a remarkable example of ethnic bigotry which is capable of causing much confusion. It is true that the inhabitants of Scotland and the people of Ulster (including Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan) all thought of themselves as part of a continuum, and that there was plenty of traffic back and forth to justify this idea. Scots Gaelic and Irish were one and the same language until three hundred years or so ago. It is also true that the English "planted" Protestants from Scotland in Ulster in an attempt to turn the Irish into "happy English children". But as any objective ethnographer would confirm, this "plantation" was not sufficient to alter the ethnicity of the population of Ulster. Protestants as well as Catholics in Ulster identified themselves as Irish, spoke Irish, cultivated Irish music (it is no accident that the last major gathering of traditional Irish harpists took place in Belfast at the very end of the eighteenth century) and so forth. It was an Ulster Protestant bishop who produced the first translation of the Bible into Irish. And so forth, and so forth. The term "Scots-Irish" does not occur until the eighteen-thirties at the very earliest, but soon became a part of the Orange propaganda to convince the Ulster Protestants that they were not Irish at all. The result is further antipathy and the deracination of Irish Protestants. There are any number of mildly amusing results of all this, such as the present-day attempt to create an "Ulster Scots" language - it doesn't exist and never did, but since it was possible to create Esperanto and Loglan, I suppose it's possible to fabricate some lingo and call it "Ulster Scots".
Despite all of this, I remain passionately fond of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and plan to go and drink some. Incognitus

I like mine with a little Vodka!

Many of my ancestors were also Scots-Irish. We have identified some of the clans and places of origin in Scotland, apparently they did not reside in Ireland long enough to identify with it or with the native Irish people.

Even as a young Catholic I was fond of wearing orange with the green. It had a tendency to confuse some people, not the least me!

In spite of a long history of active Presbyterian, Anglican and Baptist religion and Masonic lodge membership in my family, recently about half of our relatives at the reunion in Mississippi were Catholic. Times change.

Make that Stoli in mine...

My dearly beloved's maternal line is Scots Irish (and Protestant). They came to America not too long after the Revolutionary War to continue & expand the family business - they were pirates and horse thieves. I don't believe any of them settled in Florida.


Cheers,

Sharon
(whose Eastern European Jewish ancestors were oippressed by my beloved's Prussian ancestors, so we had to get married. That's our story & we're stickin' to it.)