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

Hadn't thought of that. Apparently the chemical used to conk one's hair was called congolene. So conk is possibly a derivative of that.

And before anyone does any 'Was kink conk a middle european gorilla of immense proportions?' gags, I already did.

Conk in British English is also slang for the nose.

According to an online American dictionary, as a noun, it also means either the head, or a blow to the head. As a transitive verb, to hit, particularly the head, and as an intransitive verb (in the conk out form), it's used to indicate machine failure, falling asleep (suddenly or heavily), fainting, or dying.
All those usages seem pretty connected, but the origin of the word was stated as unknown.

Conk is also slang for your nose, at least it was where I grew up.

Which does make you wonder exactly which facial /head feature was so prominent for Williams the Conkeror....

Sorry Potholer, think I must have slipped through a hole in time. Sure your 14 hours old post wasn't there when I posted mine.

Ho Hum, more speed, less haste...

and now to (hopefully) contribute something.

This has puzzled me for a while and is actually concerning American English, but we don't have a thread for that.

Why does American English use the word 'faucet' instead of 'tap'?

Surely tap was current usage during the colonisation of the america's so how come the word didn't get used? Especially as, having just looked up faucet, it appears to come from middle english. In fact I guess the question could equally as well be why does British English used the word tap and not faucet?

The other one is the pants vs trousers (and I din't know trousers came from the Scots Gaelic till now!). Why? Especially as, in this case, pants is already used for something in British English.

Most confused (especially as Miriam Webster doesn't have an entry for pants as in underpants!)

It's a mistake to think that there were originally two words for tap and that the people who used "faucet" all went off to America. Hundreds of years ago, there would have been many different words for something like a tap, in use around different parts of the country. There might have been ten or maybe twenty different words. The people who went to America happened to use the word "faucet", which was a venerable word at the time dating from Middle English. The ones who stayed behind continued to use lots of different words, including faucet, tap, cock and others. Eventually due to the introduction of printing, schools and other things, English became more standardised and one word became more popular than the others, so the others died out. It just happens that that word is tap. Since American developed independently of British English, a different word became the standard there.

The change in the word pants to mean underpants is very recent. In Ireland, twenty years ago it was perfectly acceptable to refer to trousers as pants. Short trousers were always called short pants. Now my children would be laughed at (so they tell me) if they talked about short pants, although they know what the term means. This is a case of the language here becoming less American, rather than more! This change may have happened longer ago in Britain, but I feel it is still recent.

"And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced"

Xanadu - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Gnomon,

Thanks for the detailed explanation, hadn't thought of it like that!
Well, that's one long time question answered!

Probably just as well we went our separate ways, Farah Tap doesn't sound the same somehow

How about Farrah Stopcock?

Or Farrah Bung.

~j~

Sorry for delay in replying to question ....

It was I who asked why 'abbreviation' is such a long word ....

It has also occured to me that 'short' is a longer word than 'long' !

Please shut me up if I'm making even less sense than usual.

I don't know if I should ask this here, as it's about English lore rather than language, but here goes. Apologies if I'm going too far beyond the theme of the thread.

What does anyone know about the Green Man? All I know of is a plaque of a mysterious man who peeps out of the leaves at you. Some kind of ancient English demigod, or the like. Can you offer more? TIA.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

There's actually quite a lot to say about the Green Man and his relationship to the Green Knight and Greensleeves and other green things, but suffice for now to say that it is a Celtic symbol which some say represents fertility in nature and others say is the devil. Often to be seen as a Pub or Inn sign.

These days the Green Man is known to British children as the 'safe to cross' symbol when crossing the road at a pedestrian-controlled crossing. There is even a Green Cross Code to teach kids how to cross the road safely. I don't think it has yet been renamed The Green Person.

The Green Man was linked to the Devil because he was also known as The Horned One (Cernunnos) but unlike the Devil he had antlers not rams horns.
The GM is also linked to Robin Hood (Robin of the Green Wood).
The GM can be found on many churches as a grotesque head with foliage (usually vine leaves) issuing from the mouth. In the chapter house of Southwell Minster (Nottingham) there are several Green Men, one of which has vine leaves comming from the top of his head as well as his mouth. A bird sits either side of the head forming a triangle above the arch of a door (or window).

Alji

Yes, Robin Hood. This is a link with the May Day celebrations in Olde Englande. Robin and Maid Marian came to preside as Lord and Lady of the May, and Robin Hood plays became a part of the May Day festivities. May Day was also the day of the London chimney-sweepers' festivities, when a boy would go about hidden inside a wooden frame covered with leaves and branches. The boy would be known as Jack-in-the-Green. Some say this is the origin of the Green Man as a pub sign, others that the sign represents a forester or perhaps Robin himself.

Church decorations can be quite an interesting area.
There's the gargoyles of the sheilagh-na-gig or however it is spelled, which the C-of-E says (or used to anyway, don't know if they've come clean yet) show a caricature with an abdominal wound, but is actually a female figure, legs akimbo (and where does that word come from?) hold herself wide open, as it were, I believe this is some form of earth mother.

The other one I know of is the various so called 'masons marks' on the stone. some of these are actually part of pagan re-dedications of the churches. This was done by the locals who would go back to the building after the Christian service sanctifying and consecrating the church to christ. They would then re-consecrate the church to whichever particular deity had previously been worshiped at that site. Makes one wonder how many of the old churches are actually consecrated as their owners think. Case of the local peasants getting one over on their lords and masters I feel!

akimbo (adverb)
with hands on the hips and elbows turned outwards: she stood with arms akimbo, frowning at the small boy.

n (of other limbs) flung out widely or haphazardly.
—ORIGIN late Middle English: from in kenebowe in Middle English, probably from Old Norse.

Akimbo comes from Middle English "in kenebow" which means "in a curve like a bow".

I've seen Sheila-na-gigs. There is a male equivalent, the name of which I can't quite remember. It's something like "Mici Magairle" which would be best translated as "Balls Barry".

And among the ruins of Pompeii are several carvings of the Greek fertility god Priapus, always depicted with a grotesquely massive phallus.

You know, having Gods like that must have really taken the fun out of being a young lad. I mean, what's the point of being rebellious and drawing rude symbols everywhere when you know that the temple down the road has loads of them, all in much greater detail than your scribblings?