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

Halcyon days are different as they're alleged to occur in winter, and in any case are a Sicilian concoction. The halcyon (aka the kingfisher) was reputed to nest at sea and would calm the waves for the two weeks during which it incubated its eggs (which started just before the winter solstice). I don't know if there is a genuine calming of the seas phenomenon around Christmas in Sicily, but the seas there tend to be pretty placid all year round anyway as it's in the Mediterranean, and it certainly doesn't apply to anywhere bordering a more substantial body of water.

So that's what halcyon means...
Thanks Myc, I'd never been able to get my head round that one before.
Halcyon always triggered Homeric resonances.
The 'dog days' of summer (August, when it's been hot so long dogs can only lie about and pant) was another one that left me scratching and confused for years because I was looking for celestial references like dog stars and stuff in the summer night sky.
Once again the simplest answer is the righteous one.

I allus used to wonder about the "White Knights" at midsummer.
Turned out to be the nights when it hardly gets dark at all up here.

Well Halcyon days may well have started in the med, but us ignorami in Essex in days of yore used the phrase for those nice days you get unexpectedly in September/October. So not too badly out. Mind you, the Jones boy and I have been known to go picnicking in Lincolnshire in January. So perhaps I've never really taken the new calendar on board. (I never realised before that Indian summers were US; always associated them with wearing light Indian cottons on the sub-continent)

I'm sure my question has been asked before but I am really not up to the task of reading the whole backlog.

Program or programme. Which is correct? Do they have subtly different meanings or is it a British vs US thing? I have been working on some documents that appear to have both variants scattered liberally throughout and I would like to change them so that they are all one or all the other, but I don't know which!

In the US 'program' will suffice, and life remains less complicated.

In British English, 'program' is reserved for your new-fangled computer code, and 'programme' for everything else. Oh, and make sure your upper lip is stiff when emphasising that 'mme'!

Thanks Kaeori, I have been typing the extra 'me' automatically and was worried that I was using an archaic spelling but it seems it will do. Annoyingly there are both meanings in my documents but that doesn't seem to match up with how the word is being spelled. I think the original author of the docs was from NZ so that may be why things got so complicated.

Can't be doing with the stiff upper lip though - it makes my face feel funny after a while

[Eat more ice cream - that'll keep the lip stiff.]
Pull what sort of plug? Down the tube(s). What sort of tubes?

Metaphorical

How did we get the word "plug" for electrical plug. Is it just its resemblance to a bath plug or did early electrical appliances leak electricity all over the carpet if you left the plug out?

Would it be because you plug it in? And you are certainly plugging the hole out of which flows that pesky electricity.
Pull the plug always seemed fairly obvious to me, certainly in terms of machines stopping doing their job when you pull out the plug. Could the tubes in question be the ones they use to throw rubbish out of a building and into a skip?

It's not an electrician you want, it's a plumber. The plug in question is the plug used in the cisterns of old flush toilets. When the plug gets pulled everything goes down the pan, or drain, or even tubes, if you're feeling particularly couth.

Many uses of flush:
(1) To cause a toilet to empty
(2) At the same level
(3) Well cashed up
(4) Set of cards
Are they all related somehow?

They are all related: flush comes from the Latin flux, and almost all of its meanings pertain in some way to the concept of making something flow or fluidity.

I wish the "Well cashed up" was related to hot flushes - easy way to get rich during the menopause!

Is it a coincidence that 'flush' rhymes with 'blush'?

Well, something tells me that blush does not come from a Latin word "blux"

"Blux"

Is that how one swears with a stiff upper lip?

As usual, TC, your intuition serves you well: blux is a Japanese word utterly unrelated to blushing. As you have no doubt already guessed, it's an acronym of 'Brave Lads with Ultimate X' which is incorporated into the names of Japanese football teams in much the same way that English teams like to use united or rangers, the best known adoptee of said moniker being Fukuoka Blux.

The other one's got bells on.
Thanx for the plug. I thought pulling the plug must be older than turning off the life-support machine, but was unaware whether I was talking ballcocks or not

It would appear that 'blux' is a shortened version of the 's. In a sense, then, Mycroft's definition of 'blux' is itself 'blux'.