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

There's a story about speeding MP Harriet Harman on the BBC news website today - for those who can link...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2748411.stm

For those that can't I will just highlight what I am referring to


Solicitor Tim Dixon, who was representing the solicitor general in her absence, said: "Ms Harman is of course extremely sorry that she exceeded the speed limit and she does not seek to make any excuse for the offence.

"She was travelling in the outside lane when she approached and overtook a gaggle of HGV vehicles, she thought she was adhering to the speed limit."


Since when has the collective noun for a number of HGVs been a gaggle? Surely it's a *rumble* or a *load* or even a *convoy* but *not* a gaggle!

Also - what else are you supposed to do when you need to overtake a *gaggle* of trucks that are on travelling on the centre lane? You need to speed up to pass them surely?

I'd plead not guilty - and find a solicitor that can come up with a better collective noun!

Hmm maybe they got confused with geese?

I find it *interesting* that she was doing 99 miles an hour. Isn't it 100 miles an hour where you get an automatic ban?

I've heard of a fleet of trucks, but that implies that they are actually related to each other. A clump is the only really accurate noun I can think of off the top of my head.

What about an enunciation of articulateds?

B

Gaggle of lawyers sounds right somehow.

What's an HGV?

Heavy Goods Vehicle

Truck, to you.

B

Heavy Goods Vehicle? Isn't it fewer syllables to call it a truck?

Although what we call truck you probably call lorries. Heavy Goods Vehicle sounds like what we call big rig. Is it the sort of vehicle with 14-18 wheels, a cargo area larger than most apartments, and a removable driver cab section?

Well, that's what we'd call an artic(ulated lorry), but yes.

Complicated, all this transportation nomeclature, isn't it?

B

Although you have to admit that 'Big Rig' has a certain eloquence about it that HGV is missing.

It's probably one of the few things that the American name is more eloquent sounding than the British name.

Yes, that's why we call them HGVs: fewer letters!

The collective noun (gaggle of HGVs) may not be technically correct but I doubt if there is a technically correct one that expresses what the solicitor wanted to get across. Surely a little poetic licence is permissible even among the legal fraternity!

Yesss....but *gaggle*??? I cannot equate HGVs/trucks/bigRigs/artics with that. A gaggle is only ever associated with geese in my mind. This seems to be a statement that the solicitor prepared - not made up on the spur of the moment. There is no excuse.

I often think of students as congregating in gaggles.

I would have thought a 'row of HGVs' would have sufficed.

David B

Well, we all respond differently to things! Gaggle seems to me to express quite nicely the sort of random (lateral) distribution and obstruction that you get fron lorries on motorways; wandering about; all over the place.

Just a thought but....does it really matter? Does it actually alter the price of fish?

Nope. Not at all. Just voicing an opinion. Thought that's what this place was all about.

"I also have controversial opinions on just about everything!"


...ring any bells