For QuizMonster

[Ward-Minter]

quizzy (or anybody else) Do you know where Brama comes from???

It was on Only Fools and Horses where Rodney refers to a good looking girl as a right brama.

Can't find it on the web (Only Bramha) which is a hindu idol or something and i don't think it's that.

Any ideas?

[B00]

Sure he wasn't referring to booze? Brahms and List (sp?) ?

[Ward-Minter]

I think not booey.

[Machecoul]

Brahma Bull ?? Cow ?? Or is that out of context?

[Clanad]

A term heard quite often in and around Boston, Massachusetts is Brahmin. If this happens to be your reference, it means upper, upper crust society in New England... usually Boston.

"A Boston Toast," the famous poem by John Collins Bossidy, neatly sums up the Brahmin culture:

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots
And the Cabots talk only to God.

 

[shaneystar]

�A right brahma� is commonly used to refer to someone who is a bit of a nuisance or hindrance to others; also used in the Cockney dialect for an attractive woman.

[THECORBYLOON]

Brahma is one of the three supreme gods in Hinduism so if something is a bramha it's the best.

[Quizmonster]

Thanks for asking, Ward! The answers from Shaney and TCL seem to cover the ground. I have no idea for sure what the source of it was, though. Given the Cockney setting, one would expect it to be rhyming slang and - given that Brahma is listed in TOED as an abbreviated form of the river Brahmaputra - perhaps we're looking for something that comes close to rhyming with 'putra'. If it meant an ugly girl, I might suspect it meant 'putrid', but quite the opposite is true! Sorry I can't be more specific

[BillLeeds]

In 'What the Victorians Did for Us' the claim was that this description came from the high quality engineer Joseph Brammer - who's products were so excellent that anything of similar quality was said to be a 'brammer'

[Narolines]

Not Brammer, but Joseph Bramah, whose extremely high quality cabinet locks were used on very expensive furniture from the mid-18th century onwards. I believe the expression for an attractive girl (or any other object of desire) is spelt the same way, so there might be a connection.  I suspect the Indian derivation is a bit of a red herring.

[Quizmonster]

Great! I'm sure that Bill and Naro between them have got it sorted. Still on my rhyming slang kick, I'd drifted off last night into considering the Brahmin bull - a type of ox - and coming up with 'cool' meaning 'excellent' for the pretty girl. Well done, folks.

[Ward-Minter]

Thankyou everyone for your participation. Sadly my misses ain't no Bramah (Or Brama, or Brahma) so I will make do.

Ta

Ward

[chiefsub68]

Norolines must be on the right lines with Joseph Bramah. Ian Dury uses the word in the first two lines of There Ain't Half Been Some Clever B*****s with
"Noel Coward was a charmer,
As a writer he was Brammah..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPvRsLWlDXw

[factor-fiction]

Wow. How on earth did you stumble upon this thread from 8 years ago, chiefsub?