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

Can't I just wear the deerstalker hat?

Good grief no! You have to wear something with the hat. At least cover your modesty

Oh - should I be wearing a smoking jacket? Ah well, it's only taken me two major thread and 7000 posts to find out!

How about a Reefer Jacket, then?

Cheers for that, Gnomon!

Spiff *without an 'l')

Now where were we? Oh yes, under the circumstances, aspects and stances may be involved. The phrase is connected to astrology e.g. The circumstances of your nativity show many good aspects.

The 5 main aspects which two planets can assume are; sextile, when they are 60[deg] apart; quartile, or quadrate, when their distance is 90[deg] or the quarter of a circle; trine, when the distance is 120[deg]; opposition, when the distance is 180[deg], or half a circle; and conjunction, when they are in the same degree. Astrology taught that the aspects of the planets exerted an influence on human affairs, in some situations for good and in others for evil. Each planet has its own radius of influence (orbs). The sun's orb is 15[deg] and the moon's 12[deg], at adistance of 13 1/2[deg}((15+12)/2) the sun and moon are said to be in platic conjunction.

Circumspect; Heedful of circumstances and potential consequences. There are many such words in our language but you wont find the connections in the dictionary.



Alji

Alji,

"Circumspect; Heedful of circumstances and potential consequences. There are many such words in our language but you wont find the connections in the dictionary."
If I'd paid more attention during latin lessons, I'd be able to say with greater confidence:
"circum = around, spico - spicere = look".
(TC's husband or W. or Mycroft to comment?)

As for the astroturf stuff which preceded, well, erm ...

Yes I can work out the Latin roots but we have many words which have been made from Greek and Latin roots e.g. astronaut; star+sailor. Catastrophe (wouldn't be the same translated to downturn).
circum + stance; circum usually means around but can mean citcle and stance can mean stand but also mean position so we have positions in the circle or things that stand around.

Astrology has a very long history and most of the stuff in the papers, mags etc. is junk but Newton wrote more about astrology and alchemy an he did about maths and physics.

Alji

citcle should be circle (it's 3.45am here).

Alji

Backtracking a bit :-
Why am I not hiding my immodesty rather than my modesty?

I give up.
Why?

Or ... An immodest person would not wish to hide anything, whereas a modest person wouldn't reveal anything which "should" be hidden.

No, that doesn't really work. Back to plan A:
"I give up. Why?"

Digression. Does anybody know the origin of the possessive case in English. I know that the man's book was originally the mannes book and the apostrophe represents the ommision of the e. But I've heard that ultimately, very far back, mannes came from man + a small word such as "his". So man his book was the originally. I've also heard that this theory is a load of baloney. Does anybody know what current thinking among linguists is on this?

Hi again! It's me the parka guy. I thought I'd just let you know that the "man his book" idea was the explanation recently given to me for the possesive apostrophe s in an unexpected grammar lesson (I suppose that's what I get for turning up 20 minutes early for a lecture).

That's the explanation I was given fifty years ago. It went out of fashion in the interim, but seems to be back in favour (vide supra)

My dictionary gives the es ending as older.

This his is probably a corruption of the old possessive ending -is or -es, which, being written as a separate word, was at length confounded with the pronoun his.

Alji

I'm not sure the theory is that it was actually "the man his", but "the man" and another short word meaning "his". This is certainly the theory I was taught when I was taught Latin and it would appear they can trace the derivation of several of these case endings to specific words in older Indo-European languages.

As I was taught it, there are basically two different types of language: those where the different root words merge and mutate (e.g. Indo-European) and those where they remain separate (e.g. Chinese), but I'm sure it will be more complex than that and I don't know any Chinese to confirm!

Hi there,

No expert on this, but I just thought the '-s' genitive singular ending of German masculine and neuter nouns must be relevant to this question.

I would have *imagined* that it was more likely to have 'broken off' in the course of English losing most of its inflection.

Of course, the apostrophe is every spelling tester's favourite; so many little tricks to torture the class with.

*Spiff! Get that preposition back in the sentence where it belongs this instant! And see me after class!*

seeya
Spiff

Sorry for another Corrie St invasion, but I have to ask..

'mushy peas'?

I realise this is low-end 'caf' fair and not the high cuisine most of you are more familiar with, but are these real green peas that have gotten soggy as in 'pea-soup with ham' and 'chicken-a-la-king' or are they some other pod 'bean' like 'baked beans' or mushed 'lentils'?
Are they cooked separately and thoroughly 'mushed' into a pastey sauce which is then poured, like gravy, over stuff like chips?


~jwf~

AFAIK the mushy peas are a different variety - marrowfat?- to the Birds Eye frozen peas.
But what do I know?