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

Yay! The 6s & 7s issue returns!
It is one of those mysteries that no one has ever satisfactorily settled. The dice theory doesn't convince me anymore this time than last.
I have contented myself with the notion that it refers to the state of muddlement encountered when learning the multiplication tables, or 'times tables' as we call them in Canadian schools.
The 2s and 3s are easy enough; you can actually visualise 2 x 2 and see 4. Even 4 x 4 is possible to envision.
The going gets rougher with the bigger numbers. Still, some combos like 5 x 5 are fairly clear; in fact all the 5 times table can be imagined fairly clearly. A fist full of fingers (5) makes it easy to count by fives. 10,15,20,25,30,35,etc.
But sixes and sevens really starts to get fuzzy. It's more than the mind can grasp visually, and when you get to 6 x 7, or conversely 7 x 6, it becomes a matter of Faith that the answer (42) is the correct one.

~jwf~

Bossel has just announced elsewhere that he has 3000 of the 4000 postings in the original British English thread saved on his hard disk! Should we organise a deputation?

He sent them to me many moons ago. I squashed them into 37 pages of minute print with the intention of getting the index uploaded before the thread came back. The thread hasn't come back yet but I haven't got much farther with the index, either.

so I've got it all on my hard disk, and also managed to impress some people last May. (You know who you are!)

And don't ask Bossel to send you his version - he downloaded it wholesale. I was looking for simple txt and got the lot - in goo!

It took ages to download! Am happy to send anyone the txt if they are intersted, but don't forget it's 3000 postings - all most erudite - that we're looking at here.

Still no news of Nikki-D.

I was there, I've seen it!

'Sixes and sevens' does fit in to the common English pattern of 'A (and) B' where A is more stressed in pronunciation, and contains an 'ih' sound, and B commonly doesn't (as in spic/span, big/small, little/large, tick/tock, richer/poorer, sickness/health, flim/flam, hip/hop).
Paired words like that seem to sound 'right', and could explein a migration form a different original to the current usage.

TC,

"It took ages to download! Am happy to send anyone the txt if they are intersted, but don't forget it's 3000 postings - all most erudite - "

Isn't it more usually spelt with just one "l" - "almost"?

Extract from the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

To be at sixes and sevens. Spoken of things, it means in confusion; spoken of persons, it means in disagreement or hostility “Six, yea seven,” was a Hebrew phrase meaning an indefinite number, hence we read in Job (v. 19), “He [God] shall deliver thee in six troubles, yea in seven,” etc. What is indefinite is confused. Our modern phrase would be five or six things here, and five or six things there, but nothing in proper order.

Alji

Some of us have been around too long - I too remember all the 6s and 7s last time . I think not giving us back the original thread is a devious plot to see if we agree with ourselves the second time round. Those of you who do have it need to put it in a safe place and refer to it when and if, as above.
Marry, New year

Alji

Check out the Job reference - it doesn't quite work. It says Job v.19 but omits the chapter! I did a quick check - it is Job Chapter5 verse19. I'm still not convinced that this is the origin.

Beth

Hey, I too remember it from the original thread. And I'm the stupid person who asked again! Did I leave me brain cells lying around here somewhere?

Personally I'm beginning to think that the original thread is a figment of my imagination, even if I did see it printed out.
What is a figment anyway? I've never heard anyone talk about a figment of anything else, so does it exist as its own word, or only as an addition to imagination?

Maybe it's a segment of a fig

'Government' and 'establishment' seem to imply some kind of conglomeration, though 'parchment' does seem puzzling as far as analysis is concerned.

So does that mean that I consider the original thread a conglomeration of figs in my imagination or something?

Hey jw,

Just wanted to say that I really liked your little digression on the difficulties (and easy bits) of multiplication. What you said really rang a bell with me!

Seeya
Spiff

*can't add or multiply for toffee and suffering with 6.5 F Francs = 1 Euro*

A figment is a creation (from the Latin fingere - to make) and only recently has come to be used almost exclusively in the sense of a delusion, whereas in the past a statue could be said to be a figment. If this seems a little odd, bear in mind that fiction has the same root and still retains both connotations.

The -ment suffix originally denoted a word formed from a Latin participle (e.g. segment = segmentum from secare = 'that which is cut') and was so common that non-Latin verbs got the same treatment to form nouns e.g. acknowledgement. Parchment looks like it could be one of the latter (i.e. 'that which is parched'), but in fact it comes from the Turkish town of Pergamum and evolved from the French parchemin with a bit of folk etymology.

Like Marzipan. There's a "marchpan" somewhere along the line. Can someone jog my memory?

And is "jog" just onomatopaeic?

Do you mean jog as in dogleg or man legs?

jwf

Marzipan was called marchpane until Victoria's time, but it was also called a lot of other things too . The change to the modern spelling (i.e. its theft from German) occurred due to a mistaken belief that the word came from the phrase 'marci panis' (St Mark's bread) because the earlier Italian form was marzapane. In fact, no one really knows where it came from before it got into Italian, although at the turn of the century Kluyver did come up with a theory which I feel is improbable enough to be right at home in one of my posts. His contention was that the original form of the word was the Arabic mawthaban which meant 'the king who sits still', and was the name Saracens gave to a Venetian coin which depicted a seated Christ. The Venetian dialect consequently adopted the word matapan as slang for this coin. While evolving phonetically from matapan to marzapane, the word underwent a variety of semantic changes too. From the coin, came the concept of the weight or volume of goods you could could buy with said coin. From the weight or volume came the idea of a box that could hold said amount, which then became the box that sweets were held in and ultimately, the name of the candy inside the box. If this seems an all to improbable chain, try considering it over a slice of pound cake

Jog (OE. joggen; cf. W. gogi to shake, and also E. shog, shock, v.) 1. To push or shake with the elbow or hand; to jostle; esp., to push or touch, in order to give notice, to excite one's attention, or to warn.
2. To suggest to; to notify; to remind; to call the attention of; as, to jog the memory.
3. To cause to jog; to drive at a jog, as a horse. 'Jog on, jog on, the footpath way'. --Shak.

4. To proceed in a leisurely manner: 'while his life was thus jogging easily along' (Duff Cooper).

Alji