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There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

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It's surfer slang, elements of which have made their way into a lot of the English spoken in NZ, Oz and SA.

He is quoting the movie "Back to the Future"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/quotes?item=qt0416301

It doesn't matter, it's not appropriate when people are trapped under collapsed buildings and are dead.

You seem to know something that others don't. What's your source on that?

I was part of the first response for the Christchurch earthquake providing technical support and co-workers in my old job are trained USAR engineers that were deployed overnight. But most of this information is from the NZ media. We aren't talking high fatalities, but USAR are looking for a couple of missing people and there are buildings that have collapsed, people were also stuck under a vat in a winery and had to be cut out. There are two people dead but not much information is coming out of the most effected area because most communications are down.

English is not my first language, so what exactly is the problem here? Please explain.

The poster used slang to reference the event and someone else was making fun of the slang by taking it literally, completely trivialising the fact that a huge natural disaster occurred which resulted in death, injury, and hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in damage.

I _am_ that poster. English is my second language and I wasn't aware that the word heavy is perceived as slang. I should've used "serious".

No, you're fine. It was just the reply seemed a little inappropriate.

I don't think it comes from surfing.

It's British (probably Commonwealth) English for serious or important. See usage 6: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/heavy (unfortunately, no dates given on the quotes).

This lists the usage meaning "severe" as from 1849: http://historicalthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/category/?id=15861...

Surfer here from Australia, "heavy" is very common surfer slang used to describe something "serious" or "unpleasant".

It comes from the idea of a "heavy wipe-out", which can quite easily occur while surfing "waves of consequence". Generally good, hollow, barrelling waves contain more water volume and energy, when they break they look and feel "heavier" and while being better rides, have more potential to injure a surfer. The slang has indeed made it's way into everyday usages in NZ and Oz and Hawaii, I guess California also.

I believe the original poster is describing a serious or unpleasant situation, which seems to be the case.

According to their profile, the author of the post is a native German speaker. In German, the same word ("schwer") means both "heavy" and "difficult" or "serious" (in the sense that somebody in such a situation is carrying a heavy burden). The literal translation would be "heavy".

English is a Germanic language, so perhaps in a sense this meaning has always been part of it. As you point out, even if it's not considered completely idiomatic most people would have no trouble interpreting the meaning.

People are dead and trapped under collapsed buildings in Kaikora and this is what upsets you?

I'd love to know the justification for down voting this comment.

I too...

If each of us bore all the suffering in the world at once, we'd never get anywhere.

You've inserted yourself in a conversation occurring a tremendous distance from the events, and it's not like the comment was even making light of the situation.

The internet is global you realise that right? People who are on here are experiencing and have experienced these events, don't assume that everyone is based in the US. They may even have had loved ones missing at the point that this conversation was happening.

And it was a conversation about a disaster as it was happening in complete real time, one which resulted in a loss of life, displaced families, and hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars worth of damage. It wasn't a past event which can be trivialised, it was being trivialised as people were being pulled from the rubble of their homes and workplaces.

This particular conversation was occurring between people, some of whom were far away from the events and some of whom were being shaken as they typed.

I probably over-reacted but it's obvious that people living through an event like this are going to be emotional, we had no sleep and people we knew were missing.

I also have prior experience with disasters, I provided technical support to the engineers in the NZ Urban Search and Rescue teams in Christchurch, and saw the devastation first hand as I was setting up remote offices within the red-zone and rescuing computer equipment from buildings that were missing walls. I also saw people working frantically to extract survivors from collapsed buildings as we went by. I lived in the same house and often shared rooms with those engineers that were doing the rescuing work, and I saw the harried expressions on their faces every day.

So I reserve the right to ask people to respect the situation at hand.

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