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

Here we go again ...

Sorry about this, dear friends, but can I point my friends back to my "It's time to go" thread, as Researcher 183904 has posed a question which may be of interest ...

And while were on the subject, where does 'hijack' come from ??

`People making jokes at my expense.

But seriously, I would put my money on wherever other "ack" words like bivouac came from. North American Indians? Perhaps their word for ambush, as I doubt if hijacking was usual in their heyday.

A contraction of highway and jacking.
Jacking as in catching out, catching off guard, eg: deer in headlights. (See:Jack O'Latern)
Highway as in Highwayman came riding, riding, right up to The Olde Inn door.
Hence, hijacking is highway robbery in which the transport is the primary object of the theft, or if pickings from the passengers are slim, a secondary compensation.

jwf (hey! get them circles into a wagon!)

Just remembered.
Someone once said of Glenda Jackson:
"She has a face to launch a thousand dredgers."

A little unkind, I thought.

French, from German dialectal beiwacht, supplementary night watch : bei-, beside (from Middle High German bi-, from Old High German} + Wacht, watch, vigil (from Middle High German wahte, from Old High German wahta).

Excellent, Plaguesville, underlining the absolute truth in Kaeori's definition and a vindication of her logic !

I agree, a bit hard on Glenda though.

I've never come across the word 'jacking' (consults Concise OED - no help at all). Can we assume this is an american word ?

Rather taken by the visual imagery of getting the cirles into a wagon !!

To jack up the car ... whoops, sorry, that's "to jack up" and not "to jack". Anyway there's not a lot of point in doing that to an airborne aeroplane, I suppose.

Jacking (American) is to hunt or fish with a jacklight: e.g. The hunters were illegally jacking deer.

The mental images I'm getting from these posts are getting worse and worse. I've just had a flash of a hunter bursting into the Numskull control centre of a deer and trying to hijack it from all these little deer.

(The Numskulls are/were a comic strip about little people who live inside your head and work all the machienery inside you that keeps you alive)

In reference to JWF's "A face that would stop a clock!" - The Eyre Affair by Jasper FForde is well worth a read - about the daughter of such a man.... Very funny and full of Literary allusions too..

"Colourful" English to describe a Hangover:

"head like a Telephone Exchange, and Mouth like a Hedgehog's Crutch" Although I suspect the "sayer" meant "crotch"....

crotch means an "angle formed by the parting of two legs, branches, or members", according to my dictionary.

One of the meanings of crutch is "the crotch of a human being or an animal".

So "Hedgehog's Crutch" is right.

*cringes at the thought of a hedgehog - or anything else - with two members*

TC,

That's no way to speak of the Conservative Party.

Hedgehogs don't, but some snakes do! They can carry on with one while they rest the other.

I thought there weren't supposed to be any snakes in Ireland

There aren't any snakes in Ireland. But that doesn't stop me knowing about their curious reproductive systems. Not much to do with British English, though!

NAH, I won't ask....

So any other Equally colourful suggestions for , I have a feeling I'm going to need some tomorrow... Make that later on today!!! .,..

In Germany they call it a "leather allergy". "I came home last night after I'd had a few and fell on the bed and when I woke up my feet were all swollen - I still had my shoes on. I must be allergic to the leather in them". I think the joke goes something like that.

Hmm... you're not really helping to dispel the stereotypical view of German humour, are you?