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

Hi, Ben,

I find it hard to believe that you have only just landed here 'cos I've seen you in lots of other places; but if that is the case, here is a precis:
this is volume 2
volume 1 (of greater size) is "in moderation" and "the boys" are preparing to make the PTB an offer that can't be refused if it's not returned soon, and in good condition
there are continual threats to provide an index for that (phew!)
our threadmother - Kaeori - is currently reorganising America but will return to restore order / provide inspiration.

In her absence, park yer carcase, share and enjoy.

Hello everybody. I'm keeping out of this one, because in my linguistic diaspora the expression "box clever" has never raised its head.

So I will sit back with a and wait for the next topic. Welcome, beth.

Hi plaguesville, hi ~jwf~, hi everyone

Consider my carcase parked.

I have subcribed and unsubcribed to this thread a couple of times in the past. I just thought I'd be polite and knock on the door this time. It combines being fast-moving with a relavent backlog - it doesn't really matter if you don't take a forensic look at the stuff you miss in most of the other fastmoving threads. Here it matters rather more.

For what it is worth I had always assumed that box-clever came from boxing. And since boxing was followed by the working class and the unemployed sporting male aristocracy (probably the most illiterate two groups in 19th Century England) I assumed that the -ly ending was either dropped, or never used. But this is rampant assumption, and bears no relationship to reality.

Ben

subsribed to and unsubsribed from...

why is it so much easer to spot typos in Ariel than Courier?



B

hi Ben,

I wouldn't call that a typo so much as a thorny problem with multiple prepositions. It crops up quite often, I think, and in spoken language I suspect many native-speakers allow themselves to use only one or the other of the prepositions concerned.

Spiff *trying to think of a good example*

>why is it so much easer to spot typos in Ariel than Courier?<

Uhm ..because Couriers (supposedly) are on the move and everything's just a blur, while Ariels are merely hovering overhead where you can look straight up their ...

~jwf~

Uranus?

Well Uranus has about 20 satellites so you are sure to be mooned no matter how you look at it.

A classic moment in my life was a trip to Armagh Observatory and Planetarium with my (then) five-year old daughter. Outside the observatory was a scale model of the solar system (for the pedants here, the planets were made to one scale and their orbits around the sun were at a different scale). My daughter selected one of the outer planets, a gas giant, perched on it and demanded in a loud voice "Guess what I'm sitting on!".

This made me yelp out loud with joyous laughter. Your daughter is a star, and I forsee great things for her.

B

G.

Don't talk to me about daughters.
Mine, when about seven, went on an "exciting" fairground ride with her mother because I declined to engage my digestive system in an unfair competition. Afterwards, she regarded me seriously and asked:
"Daddy, why are you a boring old fart?"

Was "boring old fart" as a phrase around pre Will Carling's characterisation of the rugby establishment?

While he didn't coin the phrase, the presiding Judge Argyll was celebratedly referred to as "a boring old fart" by Marty Feldman whilst appearing for the defence in the Oz Trial.

Furst I want the address of whoever called us 19th sentry wurking klas ill litterhate!
Secondly, as that classifies me as old, How old do farts get?

A working definition of "old" is five years older than the speaker - at least a third of the population, I reckon

No star, I was musing on a bit of physics in the area of noncontained gaseous substances.
And in my own mind, sometimes I think bits of me are old. ( Probably the bits that don't see how you can pick anyone up in a nightclub with all that noise....).

OIC Bean. I would've thought it impossible for a fart to be older than your last meal, but I'm sure one of the resident experts will be along directly.
The current chat on the front page about tackiness prompted me to look it up. I thought it would be connected with that song about "Little boxes made of ticky tacky" but it's much older: seemingly in the 19th century US it was "a weak or inferior quality horse" Anyone else have difficulty believing that one?

I know the song's Tom Paxtons but to my mind tack is what you put on a horse, and what you look after it with ( curry combs etc.)

Well, if a hack is a riding horse, then a tack could be a poor quality one, I guess.

Ben

Tacky - a low-class person (1862). That's what my dictionary says. Makes more sense than the horse business which sounds confused with tack.