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

I'd love to know what "frounce" means. Would the Sweet Lady have enjoyed it?

Frounce: First results in search engines produce a fungal infection

The Sweet Lady may have preferred a 'wide ruffle'

(not sure what, if anything, should be capitalised there) This was a sort of conflated goddess, who may have been a precursor of the virgin Mary, connected with Lady Godiva, but I can't find anything on-line to back me up.

She may or may not have enjoyed it; the two main meanings of frounce (transitive) are

1 To gather in folds or wrinkles, to wrinkle; to knit, purse (the brows or lips); occas. to knit the brows of. (Also with up.)

2 To frizz, curl (the hair, a wig, etc.); also, to curl the hair of.

Of course it may be used here for "rumple your skirts" . . .

you learn something everyday. If I'd just seen the word 'frounce' I'd have thought it would be used to describe a frumpy flounce

Frounce - unit of weight in gallic countries
Frounce - creases in headwear caused by frowning
Frounce - to walk away, hand on hip, but very angrily

Them frounces sound more like foo-foos.


~jwf~

To answer the question no one has asked: "What's a foo-foo?"

I have no idea, but whatever they are I bet they have something to do with frounces. Maybe there are 16 frounces in one foo-foo. Or maybe, to coin a phrase, a foo-foo is one tenth of a frounce. Anyway, it just sounded like foo-foos were somehow associated with frounces. Sometimes sound just makes more sense.

~jwf~

>> ...another breach of spelling, ~jwf~? <<

An excellent question!
My re-search follows:

First, my original posting on the subject of 'brooch' at Post 13524:
>> ...they don't mention 'breach' or 'britches'..."

About which Mr Dreadful said in Post 13532:
"I'm now going to make things even more confusing by mentioning that while it's pronounced 'britches' the proper spelling is 'breeches'."

This may or may not have been the inspiration for Ictoan's apparent typo in Post 13530:
"...accidental misspellings on the web becoming purposeful misspellings are an interesting area, albeit it not one with overlky much depth."

But, over-leaky or not, my spelling of breaches was clearly in question and since it is always my intention to show how open-minded I am and ever willing (yay, eager) to be corrected I had taken Mr Dreadful at his word and wrote:

~jwf~ Post 13540:
>> ...we usually draw a line at a breech of protocol. <<

Which raised, yay begat, your question above.
It seems we just can't please everybody, but I hope this explains why sometimes boats are found drifting with no one on board.
Ah well,

~jwf~

Mrs Jones of Hong Kong writes:

"Knowing full well that much should be explained to anyone who joined post Rupert, I still feel very very slightly irritated when I have to."

Yeah, it's like me trying to explain to everyone on a case by case basis that just because I was born the night of the Dresden firebombing doesn't mean that Kurt Vonnegut had more than one good novel in him. Kilgore Trout was a much better writer on the hole.

~jwf~

Kilgore Trout wrote on the air with his finger, when it wasn't with ball pen on yellow legal paper, right?

Ting-ling!

Welcome back, Aina. Long time no etc. etc. I think you should search for Lang and Ling and post something interesting to kick start it again.

As for squigglejwfsquiggle...I can only say BreakfastofChampionsMotherNightTimequakeGodBlessYouMrRosewater.


Back to deliberate pismonunciations...I was trying to remember ones that I do, Here's a couple:
Pictureskew
Facil-Ites ('Ites' pronounced as 'ights', as in The Natural-Ites: In my house, there is a picture ob the wall, Ra Tafar-I sit up on his throne)

And I recently heard Paul McCartney pronounce 'antigue' as 'ant-twakky'.

antique. Not the Caribbean island.

Turqoise. Is it pronounced 'turrkoise' or 'toorkwaz'. The former is what I grew up and the latter, heard only occasionally, sounds incredibly pretentious. Am I a pleb?

Turquoise is one of those pesky French words. Like mayonnaise, but who says my-o-nez?

Surprised Recumbentman hasn't done this. Perhaps he will be inspired to improve on my poor attempt:

Far be it from me to denounce
The joys of a jolly good frounce
An illness "down there"?
A ruffling of the hair?
That's a difference which certainly counts.

Nice one TC

The colour Turquoise is supposedly the colour of the sea in the Côte Turquoise (the coast of Turkey). If I was saying Turquoise Coast, I'd pronounce it Turk-woyze, but if I was giving the name in French, I'd say Toor-kwaz.

I still insist on pronouncing the t at the end of sorbet and valet, by the way.