h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Down at dictionary.com we have kilter (good condition, origin unknown) and kilter = kelter (same meaning, probably from a Gaelic word related to kilt).

Kilter is one of many similar words dealing with 'angles' (not Saxons ).
The most obvious perhaps is 'tilt' but there doesn't seem to be any current version of 'tilter', rather things today 'teeter' or 'totter' when they are out of kilter.

Consider 'wilt', referring to a drooping
..or 'lilt', a swooping melodious rhythm
..or 'silt', a dropping out of suspension
..or 'filter' as a thing that 'filts' silts.

Kilt of course was also used as the passed tense of kill.
"Oh my love thou hast kilt me!"
Perhaps all these 'ilt' forms are like 'spilt' and indicate past action. That which is 'out of kilter' is dead but just hasn't fallen over yet.


~jwf~

Hmmm. Kilter ... Kelter ... Kelpie?
Perhaps being out of kilter indicated a recent encounter (luckily non fatal) with a kelpie or other fairy type which left you confused and out of alignment with the world.

Why is it that the only squibs one comes across are damp? Have they been confused with those tasty tentacled creatures from the sea?

This morning's sports news on Radio Four's Today programme briefly caught my attention when it mentioned someone has a hip injury. I wondered if that meant something very cool.

I had to struggle hard to keep a straight face when I heard someone being described as "a bit of a damp squid".

According to the dictionary, squibs are either short satirical news articles or small firecrackers. I've never heard of the news item definition, but the other makes sense. A damp squib would be very unspectacular. But the dictionary also gives a meaning for "squib" as "a broken firecracker in which the powder burns with a fizz" so this implies that the squib is already a disappointment. Making it damp as well makes it doubly so.

If I remember correctly, 'squib' specifically referred to a kind of long and very thin rocket made from gunpowder wrapped in paper. Once a hole in rock was drilled and partially filled with explosive, a small rod was inserted in the hole, and the charge tamped down firmly to the brim of the hole with some kind of filling material to help contain the blast.
When the thin rod was withdrawn, a channel was left into which the squib was inserted, and the paper at the end lit. Once the flame reached the powder, the squib shot down the hole and ignited the main charge.

I *think* squibs may have predated the introduction of safety fuse, which was generally sturdy enough to be placed in the hole, and then tamped around, but carried they on being used by some people for quite a while.

I assume usage in the mining context is where the 'damp squib' expression comes from.

I believe the little explosions that accompany bullet effects in film and TV are carried out by squibs. Hence I assume Arnie keeps his squibs very dry.

From the Forgotten English desk calendar for Tuesday 30 April, 2002:

Barguest

An apparition said to take the form of a white cow, a horse, or a big black dog which, on dark nights leaps upon the shoulders of the scared wayfarer.... A mother frightens her naughty child by telling it "Bargus is comin' and he'll take thee." - Francis Taylor's 'Folk-speech of South Lancashire', 1901

Apparently, Tuesday night was Walpurgisnacht, the feast of Saint Walburga, which the calendar describes as a medieval German version of Halloween. I must admit I first heard of Walpurgisnacht from 'Illuminatus!', the conspiracy- and drug-crazed 70s trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, which was in turn based on the modern religion of Discordianism, founded by some American Korean war veterans for a joke, or to avoid some law or other...

Enough rambling; I hope this has brightened your day a little!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Mussorgsky's "Night on the Bare Mountain" (known to our American friends as "Night on Bald Mountain") describes musically a gathering of demons and ghouls on Walpurgis night.

... and is a superb piece of music which I need to buy again.

The Rimsky-Korsakoff arrangement is more popular than the one which Mussorgsky arranged himself. It is the one that is normally played. The M version is much more barbaric.

Laughed rather a lot at Kaeori's report of the cool hip injury, and recalled a line DNA wrote "... they're so hip it's a wonder their bums don't fall off ..."

Is hip an AngloSaxon word ? and why do most other bones have silly names ?

Which bones have silly names?

Hip, the part of the anatomy, does indeed come from Anglo-Saxon (Old English). It was "hype", pronounced "hew-peh".

Hip meaning cool seems to have started in 1904 as meaing "keenly aware of and involved in the latest developments and styles". It went from there to "hippy" a person who rejects authority and recognised social order, and back to hip meaning cool.

Silly presumably meaning Latin. Names for bones and other body parts have to be in Latin, else doctors wouldn't sound so important.

Anyone know where 'make no bones about' comes from?

I found this from a Google search: <>

HTH

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Ha! would you just look at that title! I've just come back from a concert where we sang "Dem Bones" (dem dry bones..) Our conductor is really fond of that song. This is the difference in the cultures. This choir's favourite is "Down by the Riverside" which of course I can't stand after having done the silly version, the dirty version, the Girl Guides' version and goodness knows what else with that damn song. To them it's new and fun. Yuk.

However, "Dem Bones" does have some appeal - it's the chromatic bits and the raw enthusiasm of our conductor when we sing it, I expect.

Hmmm. I digress. I was just going to throw in my bit about Walpurgis. In our part of the world it is a big event - on the night of 30 April (which is usually mild and full of the scent of lilac) people have their first barbecues and street parties - mainly to keep the kids off, as they traditionally go round the streets on the night of 30 April, stringing loopaper along fences and round parked cars, and performing nastier tricks like setting fire to rubbish bins, throwing firecrackers (squibs?) in peoples letter boxes (these are closed boxes usually down by the gate in Germany, not part of the front door) and removing gates and depositing them a few streets down. The worst trick is taking away the manhole covers.

We have just had visitors from Poland. On their way here on Tuesday night they passed through the Czech republic which is really a great centre of Wiccan ritual (at least, they have this mountain famous for it, called the "Blocksberg") and, apparently, there were fires and ceremonies going on all over.

My problem was understanding my Polish guest. She spoke no German, understood only a little, and this caused lots of misunderstandings, and laughs!

Where can I learn Polish - please?

To tie the points in this irrelevant posting up: the visitors from Poland were a choir and we just gave this concert tonight with them. Now they're in the coach on their way back home.

Back to the bones:

Now, if I had to explain a phrase I couldn't find an origin for, despite exhaustive research, I, too would be tempted to say that it dates back to 1548 (who's going to check?) and throw in a few hypotheses to make it look like someone had thought about it at least!

And if someone went and published this I might find I had a bone to pick with her!

Am I getting sceptical or what?

One of Martin's 'persona' is 'MyReDice', based on the book "The Dice Man" in which (apparently) the central character always makes decisions based on a throw of dice. A neurotic behavior, it is not new, dating from before 1548 and referenced several times in Shakespeare.

Medieval superstions such as 'casting lots', 'stones', 'bones', runes or 'dice' to make determinations, or to foresee events, are based on imagined intersessions by otherwordly forces, spirits, gods, sprites etc who would influence the roll of the dies or the coin toss. If you assign values or answers to various outcomes, your guardian angel will 'guide you' by determining the outcome.

To 'make no bones' means to abandon all reliance on luck, ghosts, charms, lucky-rabbits-feet; to leave out gobbley-gook and hocus pocus and 'get on with it' in a practical realistic manner.

By extension of that logic, 'make no bones' can also mean to 'take no chances'.



OEM is a term meaning Original Equipment Manufacture when referring to auto parts. If you find yourself needing replacement car parts you can choose, 'used', 'after-market'(new but built by someone other than the original manufaturer), or O.E.M.
Of course it is generally considered wise to always buy the OEM for assured quality and correct fit. These usually cost more but it is a matter of good economic sense and pride of ownership.
Yesterday, I saw a sign outside an Automotive Parts Shop proclaiming that they proudly stocked OEM parts for many makes and models. But they had used up all the letter 'O's in their sign-making-kit and had to use a "d".
The sign read:
WE STOCK
- DEM -
.PARTS.



-j-

Who had the hit record in the days of brittle 78 rpm?
Not the Inkspots, nor Mr & Mrs Sniths Five Little Boys, surely?
TC Does your version have the great line:
"They interknitterlocker dem - dry bones" at least that's the way I remember it.

(Answers own question)
It seems it was the Delta Rhythm Boys.
They also sang "Ezekiel saw da wheel" (a'turnin', way in the middle of the air) which also has the great lines:

"The little wheel turned by faith
And the big wheel turned by the grace of God "

And from previous:
"They interknitterlocker dem - dry bones"
is perhaps better represented by:
"They interknit -a- lock -a- dem -- dry bones"

The bleaching of bones in sunlight was more than preparing them for processes such as tool making and medicinal powders. It was also a sacrament to the baser soul of the slaughtered animal as insects and bacteria reduced it to 'essential' nutrients for the soil. "He who disturbs these bones..."

The 'dry bones' are the ancient bones. The ancestral bones. There are only about 208 of them in a human. The permutations are not staggering. It would only take a couple of millenia to figure out every possible dance. After that y'just call up the right dance-partners to achieve any given outcome.

Then along came civilisation...
which keeps forgetting
where it came from
and has to remind itself
with war.

~jwf~