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

Nobody reads the backlog. I joined this thread's progenitor about 11,000 postings ago when there were only 360 postings in the British English thread. I still haven't read those postings.

You're not missing much Gnomon, they are all to do with the canine's wedding tackle

Not all of them - only the more imaginative ones.

I still say it comes from spoonerising "box, deluxe" as opposed to "box, standard" pronounced as bog standard. But I'll now keep quiet on the subject.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !

Thank you

not a word...

By the way in zoology or whatever why is it OK to use the singular version of an animal when referring to the plural.

"Her in the Serengheti we can see a herd of zebra."
"Thank you for bringing me to the zoo mummy. Ooh, look at that herd of zebras!"

Easy: one zebra, two zebra's... But when using 'herd', you must specify what that herd is composed of. The animals are all the same species, and that species is zebra...
At least, that's the way I remember it, as is necessary if English is not your native tongue. You just memorize the odd things...

We don't say "herd of cow," though.

"Dad, I just spotted a cheetah!"
"Don't be silly son, they're born that way"

Or is it that, like deer or sheep, the plural is the same as the singual?

We say zebras.

Isn't it the genus / species thing.

The Zebra is Equus Zebra, but the cow isn't a something cow (unless it stands on yout foot). It's Bos Taurus.

jwf is forgiven by definition, but he DID say he was going to attempt the backlog before contributing and he's been contributing to the gaiety of nations for years now, for which we are deeply in his debt.
Anyone for whom English is a foreign language(welcome G) is forgiven the misplaced apostrophe.(the rest of you shape up at the back there).
People mentioning the unmentionable subject of this thread's progenitor are also forgiven - BUT ONLY ONCE.
Query: why is it "the" national debt whatever nation is being cited?
Why isn't jwf referring to "a" national debt? The doolally contributors are definitely not all from the same debt-ridden nation Goodnight children, everywhere.

The plural of most game animals is the same as the singular. There are two zebra, 15 wildebeest and a brace of pheasant. But this sounds peculiar enough that people use the more normal plural of zebras, wildebeests and pheasants.

The plural of cow is actually kine, but most people don't know that.

Vestboy may not know that there is one topic and only one that is banned in this thread. That is, the origin of the phrase which you provided a derivation for, concerning canines and their reproductive organs.

He circumnavigated the actual words themselves quite cleverly though.

Surely if he had circumnavigated the words he'd have gone right round them and arrived back where he started without actually using anything else instead, so the words would just be blank spaces?

There's a time and a place for pedantry, Ictoan, and a thread about the proper use of language isn't it.

Noggin

Isn't a pedant a game bird?

Game for what?

A pedant is a spelling mistake that you wear round your neck as a Penzance.

A literary albatross.