What does needle mean? Drug reference?

[Bug_Girl]

I was reading the list of new wodehouse vocabulary in this group, and
I was wondering if anyone can explain this term "needle" in the book
Love Among the Chickens.

"My second mistake--and this was brought home to me almost immediately
--was in bringing Ukridge along. Not that I really brought him along;
it was rather a case of being unable to shake him off. When he met me
on the gravel outside the house at a quarter to eight on the following
morning, clad in a dingy mackintosh which, swinging open, revealed a
purple bathing-suit, I confess that my heart sank. Unfortunately, all
my efforts to dissuade him from accompanying me were attributed by him
to a pardonable nervousness--or, as he put it, to the needle."

[kkt]

Post by Bug_Girl
I was reading the list of new wodehouse vocabulary in this group, and
I was wondering if anyone can explain this term "needle" in the book
Love Among the Chickens.
"My second mistake--and this was brought home to me almost immediately
--was in bringing Ukridge along. Not that I really brought him along;
it was rather a case of being unable to shake him off. When he met me
on the gravel outside the house at a quarter to eight on the following
morning, clad in a dingy mackintosh which, swinging open, revealed a
purple bathing-suit, I confess that my heart sank. Unfortunately, all
my efforts to dissuade him from accompanying me were attributed by him
to a pardonable nervousness--or, as he put it, to the needle."

The OED sheds some light on this, as it so often does:

needle, noun. definition 18.a. the needle n. anger, bad temper,
pique, irritation; (also occas. as a count noun) a fit or display of
irritation, temper, etc. Chiefly in "to get the needle": to become
angry or upset, to lose one's temper. "to give (put in, etc.) the
needle": to provoke or annoy, esp. by criticism, teasing, or sarcasm.

Quotations:

1874 Hotten's Slang Dict. (rev. ed.) 235 To 'cop the needle' is to
become vexed or annoyed. 1884 in J. R. Ware Passing Eng. (1909) (at
cited word), Professor Grant, Q.C., had both 'the bird' and 'the
needle' at the Royal on Monday. 1887 Punch 30 July 45 It give 'im the
needle..being left in the lurch this way. 1890 A. BARRHRE &
C. G. LELAND Dict. Slang II. 84/2 To get the needle is to feel very
nervous and funky. 1922 J. JOYCE Ulysses II. 73 Softsoaping. Give you
the needle that would. Can't he hear the difference? 1962 Listener 20
Sept. 450/2 Spokesmen for the builders and the mortgage societies, who
were given..what I can only describe as a dose of the old needle. 1970
G. F. NEWMAN Sir, You Bastard v. 130 He's got the needle with
you. You've got to go very careful. 1980 T. WOLFE Right Stuff (1981)
vii. 147 Al..was not the type to let Glenn get away with it... Al kept
putting the needle in. 1992 Harper's Mag. Dec. 76/2 Lady likes him for
believing that, but she gives him the needle because she knows it
isn't true.

-- Patrick

[Clyde Penquin]

Post by Bug_Girl
to a pardonable nervousness--or, as he put it, to the needle."

Three cheers for the jolly old OED!

[Bug_Girl]

Post by Clyde Penquin

Post by Bug_Girl
to a pardonable nervousness--or, as he put it, to the needle."

Three cheers for the jolly old OED!

Thanks, I would not have thought of the Oxford as a source for help in
these matters. I thought it was one of those things unique to
Wodehouse.

[Ian Michaud, TWS]

By the way, the word 'needle' is still used in exactly the same way - at
least it was by Norman Murphy in 2006 when he wrote and published his "A
Wodehouse Handbook".

In the entry on Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, who decided to become an
actor because he wanted to get in some cricket while getting three
square meals a day, Murphy recalled the actor-manager Sir Frank Benson,
who toured England for twenty years with a travelling Shakespeare
company. He had a policy of making sure his male actors all played
cricket because he liked to arrange games against local teams in all the
towns the company visited.

Murphy writes, "he once extended a stay in a town for an extra week to
complete a series of needle games with a local landowner who reckoned
his team were better than Benson's actors."

According to Murphy, on another occasion Benson sent an emergency
telegram to his agent which read, "I need another Polonius. A slow
left-handed bowler preferred."

The Mixer

Post by Bug_Girl
I was reading the list of new wodehouse vocabulary in this group, and
I was wondering if anyone can explain this term "needle" in the book
Love Among the Chickens.
"My second mistake--and this was brought home to me almost immediately
--was in bringing Ukridge along. Not that I really brought him along;
it was rather a case of being unable to shake him off. When he met me
on the gravel outside the house at a quarter to eight on the following
morning, clad in a dingy mackintosh which, swinging open, revealed a
purple bathing-suit, I confess that my heart sank. Unfortunately, all
my efforts to dissuade him from accompanying me were attributed by him
to a pardonable nervousness--or, as he put it, to the needle."