Citations:yarbles

English citations of yarbles

Etymology

• Aggeler, Geoffrey (1979) Anthony Burgess: The Artist as Novelist, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, →ISBN, page 172:

  The American edition of the novel [A Clockwork Orange] has a glossary, prepared without any consultation with Burgess, which is not entirely accurate either in its translation of nadsat words or in the information it gives concerning their origins. The word yarbles, for instance, is glossed as a non-Russian word meaning "testicles." Indeed, it is used by Alex and his friends to designate the street fighters favorite target of opportunity, but it is derived from the Russian word for apples (sing. yabloko). The Russian word itself occurs virtually unchanged in Alex's irreverent greeting to a high-ranking government official: "'Yarbles,' I said, like snarling like a doggie, 'Bolshy great yarblockos to thee and thine'" (ACO, 175).

• “yarbles n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present, retrieved 3 May 2022

? link to [dialect word] yarb, 'an opprobrious epithet' ([The English Dialect Dictionary by Joseph Wright]) + balls n.; popularized by the film A Clockwork Orange (1971)

• Webster, Patrick (2011) Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita through Eyes Wide Shut, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 281: “["Yarbles"] appears to have been a subtle conflation of the Russian yaytsa, meaning egg[s], while also offering a "testicular resonance" within the rhyming slang of the English "marbles."”

Usage

• Burchill, Julie, Parsons, Tony (1978) The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll, 1st US reprint edition, Winchester, Massachusetts: Faber and Faber, published 1987, →ISBN, pages 21–22:

  Rock had always flirted with violence as mere metaphor; Rotten destroyed the pose, and replaced it with the reality—constantly harranguing the audience with streams of abuse, spitting and snarling lyrics as though they tasted of his own piles, dancing like a rotting corpse still shaking from snaring its yarbles on the lid of a closing coffin, glassy eyes burning, pallid flesh decorated with self-inflicted cigarette-burns, amphetamine-parched lips turned back in savage contempt as he went for the jugular—sometimes literally.

• Dorner, Marjorie (1999) Seasons of Sun & Rain: A Novel, 1st edition, Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, →ISBN, pages 96–97:

  "Oh, yarbles," Micky whispered. "This really is a bitch, isn't it?" [...] Micky had adopted much of the eccentric vocabulary Burgess had invented for his futuristic street toughs. And years after she had abandoned, perhaps even forgetten, most of it, she retained yarbles as an expression of general disgust or dismissal. Sometimes when she was feeling especially exercised, she would say, 'Great leaping yarblockos!' People in her acquaintance who had never even heard of A Clockwork Orange understood from usage exactly what the expression was intended to convey.

• Naha, Ed (1988 March) “1987: The Movies”, in Science Fiction Chronicle, volume 9, number 6, New York: Algol Press, →ISSN, page 40: “I mean, who could ever forget the touching moment in Monster Squad when a pre-teenager kicks the Wolfman in the nuts and utters the classic line "The Wolfman has yarbles!"”
• Smith, Mark E. (lyrics), Smith, Brix (music) (1985), “To Nk Roachment: Yarbles”, in This Nation's Saving Grace, performed by The Fall, track 11