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

I don't think wreck's been on the thread before, though its cousin wreak has. Wreck ultimately stems from the concept of driving or forcing, wrec being it's earliest English synonym, and meaning a ship that has been driven onto rocks.

Hulk is a bit more vague, and the noun probably originates in the Greek holkas, meaning a cargo vessel. The verb's a bit more helpful, as it's a variant of holk, meaning to make hollow, the -k suffix denoting making, in the same way that talk literally means 'to make tale'.

And obviously walk, caulk, balk, dock, chalk and sock might follow..? Or as Manuel used to say "K?"


~jwf~

They might, but they don't . I can't be bothered to list exactly why they don't, as most of them aren't particularly interesting words, so you'll just have to take my word for it or wait for someone else to do it. 'Kay?

Yes of course, you are right, about 'most' of them. It was a facetious list of silly rimes.

But what about balk?

The Pictionary of my brain always shows me an off-BALance baseball pitcher who has interupted his throw. Is balK to do with making BALance? Or throwing BALls?

The dictionary under my desk says balk is to stop shor

In the obstructive sense, balk ultimately stems from the Latin porca, meaning the ridge between ploughed furrows.

Just to get the rest out of the way...

Walk's earliest European root is the Germanic walkan, and it's probably based on the Sanskrit valgati.

Caulk and chalk stem from the Latin calyx and and calx, meaning heel and limestone respectively.

Dock has at least four meanings:- the plant name is just a modernization of the Old English name docce; the cut horse's tail stems from the Germanic for bundle of straw - dokke, the place to park your ship comes to English from the Dutch docke, and is probably ultimately related to a variant on the Latin ducere (e.g. duct); the place to park your prisoners in a court was originally Cant, based on the Dutch for a cage - dok.

Sock comes from the Greek sukkhos or sukkhas, meaning a slipper.

To go back to Bristols, this has nothing to do with the city of Bristol But a certain Dr. Bristol who designed a bit for horses so we have to rhyming slang Bristol bits

Do you know any more about this Dr Bristol or his bits? I've just started an entry on eponyms, and he seems like a good candidate for inclusion

Balk also means beam from Old Norse balkr.

So which one would cause one to stop short? A beam or a furrow? Or both?

176645

Both meanings came to English from the Old Norse balkr, but in the sense of beam it arrived about 500 years later. Both senses probably have the same Proto-Indo-European root - bhalg - meaning a bar, but it's only happy co-incidence that the two were re-united in Norse, as they initially evolved into radically different sounds.

I'd vote for furrow, because I've actually seen horses balk at them. Come to think I've also seen horses walk straight into overhead beams!

And thanks Mycroft for indulging my foolishness (again).

peace
~jwf~

Why aren't _you_ on K's list?
I'd be very interested in the caulk/heel connection (having even less Greek than Shakes) Boston as in strangler/rhymes with wrangler!

I said Latin, not Greek. The link between the Latin calyx for heel and caulking is the verb calcare, meaning to press or tread - presumably with the heel. You may know more about caulking than I do - I tend to associate it merely with pouring pitch all over the inside of a boat to stop it leaking - but it used to be the case (and may still be the case for all I know) that chunks of oakum would get forced into the gaps between boards first, hence the connection with heels. There is a Greek word which is presumably linked to the Greek-sounding calyx, that being kalika meaning boot, however there's no related verb so the Romans get the credit.

Firstly, apologies for omitting jwf from my silly list. It was doing my head in, anyway!

Secondly, Dr Bristol's bits? Come on, that's got to be a wind-up!

And before we leave that subject, why 'boobs'?

Could someone explain the rhyming slang/place names bit. I never was very good at word association games.

A confused Penrith, apparently

Well, I was struggling, and I'm not a Cockney, so I took a few liberties, but it's something like: Penrith, kith & kin, Munchkin.

Cor blimey, 'oo wants to recommend me to be a Pearly Queen, then?

Ahh! I'd sussed Wimbledon, but its a simple one. I can't do crosswords either.

I can't do the cryptic crosswords - I think I'm too logical!

Boobs? I heard you ask.
Short for boobies. Both are plural (there usually being more than one; they generally come in pairs). And the name is an application from the name given to a bird, the booby.
Whether real, mythical or a cartoon character I can't remember, but the booby was credited with being dumber than a dodo. It was inclined by its nature to bob quite a bit as I recall. Much as many parrots and other tropical birds do, falling forward and then catching themselves.
This action is actually a survival instinct built into the sleep paterns of birds that can catch forty winks on a perch. It is the silliness and bounciness there-of, from a gentler pre-WW2 America, (when t*ts was a bad word and breasts was a medical term) which ascribed the charmingly odd funniness of the booby to boobies.
A legitimate word in polite company by the 1950s it was one of those words that made young boys giggle and survives pretty much in that context only.

jwf (tittering merrily to his ownself)

Queen Kaeori Blimey of Purley wrote:
"Secondly, Dr Bristol's bits? Come on, that's got to be a wind-up!"

I remember the wooden horse very clearly, but not a clockwork one.

I know nothing of the good Dr. Bristol, but his bits are still on sale in tack shops (which I no longer frequent since a pony threw my daughter, damaging her jaw and rendering her completely speechless for a full two minutes) and on line. Prices start around £10 and some places will let you try before you buy.
Fancy that.

Thank you for my soubriquet. I'm relieved that you mention only that I fought William without revealing the result.