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

Never mind, at least it gives me the chance to make another (20n+1)th posting, and get to the top of a new page of entries.

The notion of meandering thru underground caverns puts me in an accoustic space which in turn reminds me to mention 'ventriloquist'.

It is from 'loqus' meaning talk as in 'loquacious' and 'vent' meaning hole.

Yes it does mean what you are thinking; to be talking outa yer a***e.

But the origins are in some (temp forgotten) classic writer reporting on the Oracle at Delphi. This mysterious lady apparrently 'spoke' out of yet another orifice when she had something reallly important to say.

Hence, ventriloquism, meant the speaking of another voice, an other worldy voice. It became in the Dark Ages the voice of the demons and of the 'possessed'. 'Ventriloquism' is cited as grounds for proof of 'witchcraft' in the middle ages.

The current meaning, of a puppet or dummy animated to coordinate with the words spoken liplessly by a theatrical performer, is actually quite modern; concurrent with the advent of electricity and science fiction.


~j~

How's this for ventriloquism - I'm typing this without moving my lips?

As the 4000 post 'milestone' fades behind us, I wonder which other words embodying imperial measure will remain in English even if we do become fully metric (in Britain, if not back in the States)?

Things like height and weight, while officially metric still tend to be given in imperial measurements when applied to people and I don't see that going for a while, have you ever heard someone describe their height in metres?
Oh, and what is the difference between a cave and a pothole then? Assuming of course that potholers don't sit in divots in the middle of roads.

Kaeori wonders "which other words embodying imperial measure will remain in English even if we do become fully metric..."

Well, 'cubit', 'groat' and 'bushel' are still regularly heard, if not widely understood. I think the old terms will continue for at least a century or two.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Given that horse racing is still measured in furlongs and has things like to 1000 Guinneas race the old measurements will be around for a while.

Though the difference is not strictly defined, in the first instance, a pothole is a cave that starts with a surface shaft, and by extension from that, a cave that has a near-surface drop, or one with a significant proportion of subsurface drops. A very shallow system is not likely to be named 'XXX Pot'.

Following this logic, there are some cave systems in Yorkshire where the upstream part is a roughly horizontal stream section, and which are accessible from the surface at or before they begin to descend down a series of shafts. The upper section ends up being called 'XXXX Cave', and the lower section 'XXXX Pot'.

However, things can get more complicated. A cave may be found that looks like a shallow cave system, and after the cave is named, exploration shows that it might have been better to be called a pothole, and there can be caves that it seems were obviously potholes, but still got named as if they weren't, hence 'Long Drop Cave', which starts with a short horizontal section, leading quickly onto an alternating series of drops and crawls.

'morning all

Would you wear Wellingtons or gumboots in caves/potholes ?

.... and what is the difference between them ? .... I've been invited to a pub on Thursday "to see if they still wear gumboots there" .... and I'm not sure if the answer would be "yes" if they were all wearing Wellingtons or Hunters (TM) ....

Confused of somewhere damp & windy

Wellies are the preferred caving wear, probably the most commonly used in the UK being the 'Suretread' variety (dark grey uppers, light or dark grey sole).

If well-fitting, wellies can be surprisingly good for climbing, and have a significant advantage over ankle boots in that they provide very good protection for the shinbone against knocks from sharp rock. Aditionally, there are very many places underground where pools or canals of water above ankle-depth, but below wellie-depth are present.

I'm not sure there is a huge difference between wellies and gumboots. If I *had* to guess, I suppose I have the impression that 'gumboots' might apply slightly more to short wellies of flexible rubbery material, but I think the overlap between the words is very large, and I'm possibly biased due to my particular exposure to a specific kind of wellie (near knee-length, fairly stiff PVC-like plastic), and the fact I don't really use the word gumboot.

A bit of Googling does seem to hint that 'gumboot' is particularly used in Australian circles.

Is it the case that both 'welly' and 'wellie' are acceptable singluar terms - neither seems to look particularly wrong when written down.?

Singular welly, plural wellies "If it wasna for your wellies where wad you be?" Gumboot dancing as practised in South Africa. Welly whanging(throwing) as practised in middle England. So I think Wellingtons (named after the Iron Duke) are what the British call them

Gumboots - being rubber from the GUM of the rubber tree is what Nova Scotia fishermen wore. The point was to get them wet and full of water, that way they held in body heat. This odd truth led to the invention of the rubber wetsuit for divers. Same principle. In really deep sub-zero temps the outsides' surface might freeze, become brittle and crack but inside your feet are snug as 'in the womb'.

There were also long boots (like pirate/buccaneer type) that rolled up or down the leg like modern 'waders'. These cumbersome things had loads of space for carrying weapons or smuggling large bottles of grog - hence the expression 'fill your boots!'.
But these were heavy oilskins and in their last days were more for working at the bait table or filetting. For warmth, the shorter rubber gumboots replaced them by being air and water tight and much grippier on a wet deck. And they'd still hold a small flask and a short knife.

Today, these old pull on 'rubbers' are hard to find. It's all green space-age 'yachting' stuff with laces and other nonsense. Or just 'plastic' imitation pull-ons with no insulating qualities. In red, blue, yellow, white or purple and mostly kid sizes. (See: Christopher Robin illustration or even Paddington Bear.)

Little kids here tend to call all their boots 'duckies'.
And up north, aboriginals call swim flippers 'black-duck-ducks' or just 'duck-ducks'. Strangely I've heard that this same name is given to swim fins by natives throughout Polynesia and the Pacific islands.


~j~

I like the description of ventriloquism as "talking through your hole", but it doesn't agree with the dictionaries. They claim ventriloquism comes from "venter" (Latin for stomach) + "loqui" (talking), because it was believed that ventriloquists used their stomachs in some way to produce the sound.

There was a French man in the 19th century whose circus act consisted of talking through his a**e. I remember seeing a review of a film about him.

Gnomon, you refer of course to Joseph Pujol, aka 'Le petomane'. They did indeed make a film about him: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0271609 - that's one to put on your video wish list!

The words 'rumbling, grumbling and gurgling', usually applied to stomach sounds, are very strange sounding words, reflecting the deep mystery of these demonic noises. Similar sounds are made by boiling lava when the 'firey underworld' explodes.

"Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble..." 3 witches in the Scottish play.

Since the normal human voice also sources from deep inside but exits through the mouth, it was natural to believe that these other deeper sounds, which eventually exit the other end, were demonic or supernatural in origin.
Remember, the Oracle of Delphi is from the days when people thought babies were gifts and blessings from angels who visited in the night.
Her big trick was to ventilate news and prophecy from the organs of regeneration.

As I recall 'Le petomane' had a blue flame special in his act. He didn't so much talk as ignite gas and project a flame across the stage. Demonic implications are obvious.


~j~

The Oracle used to speak through a hole. Recent excavations under the chamber in which the Oracle was secreted have found vents connected with the chamber that channeled a particular gas (I'll look it up) through - the properties of this natural gas include the inducement of halucinations. Hang on, I'm off to find the article...

http://www.nature.com/nsu/010719/010719-10.html
There you go. In Nature, no less...

I'm typing this using only my lips! ( Hendrix lives).

For my birthday (yesterday) a friend gave me a copy of "Wordplay - a curious dictionary of language oddities" by Chris Cole. So I am about to launch into the results of my reading on my unsuspecting co-threaders. You may wish to purchase a copy in self-defence.
For example, what do you think is the English word most commonly misspelled/misspelt?

I'd bet that it's 'your' for 'you're'?

And while we're on the subject of common mis-spellings
...I'd like to get off my chest a continuing dismay that so many Brits (on this site) seem to have trouble with a choice between 'a' and 'e' coming before an 'n' in the final syllables of words like:
'independant'
'superintendant'
'relevent/relevence'
'occurance'
'occupent'
'ambivalance'
'ambulence'
'disturbence'
'resistent/resistance'
'silantly'
'resiliant'
'varient'
'residance'
'Presidant'
These are the most frequent (and to my mind the most amazing) variations of spelling I see at h2g2. It seems to have reached epidemic proportions. Unwilling to blame the entire Brit educational system, I have been assuming it is an 'accent' or 'dialect' situation in which the spelling is 'as heard'. I even began to assume these variants must be listed as 'optional' somewhere.

to frogbit for setting us all straight on the Oracle. You can understand how in the absence of evidence of any open geological fissure over the past centuries, many scholars have been trying to intrepret the ancient text in a symbolic way, suggesting we should attribute these strange powers to the Oracle's other orifice.
But now recent evidence seems conclusive that there was in fact a 'vent' of toxic and hallucinogenic gases. And as tempting as their interpretations might have been, scholastic fantasies should now stop pussyfooting around the meaning. I am often too willing to support theories which are based on a refutation of prudery so let me again express my thanks to frogbit for taking the trouble to clarify this ancient mystery with his link to the recent Nature article above !

peace
~jwf~

~jwf~
You are *definately* right about standards of speeling, but it's not just us Brits.
I think a lot of mistakes result from an enthusiasm to communicate ideas quickly, particularly in this thread where one's thunder is often stolen. I can't agree that there are taught many "ant" "ent" words as options.

"Le Petomane": if you mean the film with Leonard Rossiter in the lead role, is (I think) a great film; social comment, humour, pathos ... Ooh, back to check that link.