Mind your language
DO DUCKS have butts? That question sounds like the one Alice asked herself as she was falling down the deep shaft to Wonderland: 'Do cats eat bats? Do bats eat cats?'
I only pose it because the first sen- tence of a recent article in the Observ- er's Room of My Own series caught my eye: 'Look out of actress Imogen Stubbs's window and likely as not you will see a duck sticking its butt in the air.' Butt is an American word for bot- tom, just as ass is American for arse. The odd thing is that Mr Billen is not American.
There is a suggestion that buddy (as in 'can you spare me a dime?') derives from the practice of Durham miners working `butt to butt' in the narrow coal seams. Certainly a dialect word, butty does refer to mine workers, though the link is not proven.
This takes us a long way from Ken- neth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and its 'Ducks' Ditty': All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all!
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