james duffy wrote:

'Taking the piss' means ironic teasing. It is something done the world over, understood the world over. If Stan is incapable of understanding the difference between ironic teasing and being deliberately rude, that is a reflection on him and his humour bypass. But no, Stan, I did not mean to offend you. And if you misunderstood what I was saying as being offensive then I apologise, but that was not what I was doing. I was being sarcastic and ironic, using a standard form of humour in Europe that people do not usually take offence at, they 'getting' the joke.

I was making a standard joke which is made all the time about how movie is used to imply Hollywood blockbuster, film is often used to refer to arthouse film or film with intellectual content or a film is in itself a quality piece of work. So 'Dumb and Dumber' is often described as a movie in Europe, Casablanca, The Dead, Schindler's List, American Beauty, The Big Chill, etc are described as films. It is subjective opinion by definition. In any case 'movie' is generally seen as an American term (though it is used occasionally outide the US), film as a worldwide one. There is no one 'right' term unlike formal names or definitions. I think it unacceptable that wiki wants to use an American term that most non-americans don't use, or if they do, they use it as a code for bland, Hollywoodized, heavily merchantised produce.

JT

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Taking the piss means you were being rude to him, and now think you're allowed to be rude because he didn't think it was funny. No. Taking the piss, like many forms of humor, only works if all involved agree. The phrase you're looking for is "I'm sorry, Stan, I didn't mean to offend you."

If JT was taking the piss out, I'm afraid he was doing it up wind.

I just reviewed the phrase where it appears in Eric Partridge's "Dictionary of Slang" as ambiguous. On the one hand it is indeed used as JT declares, but Partridge also notes that it is more commonly applied to jeer at someone's bladder of conceit.

The action of "taking the piss" is surely a world-wide phenomenon, but that specific term is not universally used. Do we have here the antecedent Hibernian imperialism that once infected the gangs of New York, and which would one day be the model for a whole nation? Presidents John IV and Ronald I really did have reason to be thankful for their Irish roots. We have it proposed that a "fillum" should be distinguished from a movie on the basis of intellectual content, and that "Dumb and Dumber" is no longer a quality piece of work to reflect the true nature of the American psyche. Perhaps it is our very pisser who should be "passed the catheter."

Ec