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

I merely inserted a non-breaking hyphen, which only appears if the word is at the end of a line and needs to be broken to put part of it on a new line. This only works in Internet Explorer on my PC (Alt + 0173).

It came out as a black diamond with a white question mark
on my machine. The other solution used by Cheerful Dragon
- using a capital letter in middle - seems like it might
prove to be a good general filther-beater.

I'd try a few tests of known offensive words but if they
went through you'd all be offended and I'd be embarrassed.

~jwf~

Not a capital letter but a zero. Tedious, the need for such work-arounds.

Oho! Naught an O but a big zer0.
Well that's pretty creative.

It's not gonna work with a lotta other banned words th0.
Po0p! P0op! P00p!
Then again some other numbers look like 7etters.

~jwf~

~jwf~, I know you don't like personal questions, but are you using Internet Explorer on a Windows machine?

Hey, nobody likes personal questions as much as I do!

Just don't ask for my opinions on controversial subjects
like politics, racism, sexual liberation, religion or science
- cus I'll probably talk your ear off and get myself
moderated to boot. (Hetero-male chauvinist agnostic
with a fondness for the good old days -ie: 17th century-
pre-industrial revolution values and small cigars.)

I'm using Firefox on a Vista powered e-Machine laptop PC.
The language/keyboard setting defaults to US-English and
the spellcheck drives me nuts with its ignorance of how
English is spelled/spelt. Pound signs and many other marks
simply turn into black diamonds with white question marks.

But nothing as bad as the #@39s we all get in Barlesque!
(Sometimes, I post from a library where I can use Firefox
on a later Windows platform but seem to get stuck in
Barlesque so I apologise for those messes.)


~jwf~

Worth noting that the Guttenberg Galaxy is losing its grip
and slipping into an purely electronic 'virtual' reality:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/worlds-last-typewriter-plant-stops-production-124746444.html

Curiously I have just had a coincidental windfall of three
antique typewriters from a friend clearing out their 'junk'.
Happily the ribbons are brand new since I doubt these will
be available anywhere much longer.


~jwf~

Like most of the whirled news agencies I reported
on the demise of the typewriter, perhaps prematurely.

Tonite, on NBC Nightly News they reported getting calls
from a variety of sources claiming that typewriters are
still being manufactured. No specifics on where and NBC
offered only a half-hearted apology for their own lack
of due diligence in repeating the story they'd found in
The Atlantic magazine.

I happily recant the histrionic claim and applaud the
continued Life of the manual typewriter - a wondrous
marriage of man and machine that produced probably the
best writing ever done in the English language. (Ernest
Hemingway, who typed standing up, notwithstanding.)


~jwf~

New subject.

I was extremely relieved to hear from my youngest at the weekend after his first stint in Chiapas. He stayed in a sort of rural shanty-town village, which is inhabited both by local zapatistas and pro-government types. The "Internationals" (of which he is one) are supposed to act as a stabilising factor in this volatile mix. They were 5 Germans and one Italian.

The Italian and my son are apparently, both similar in appearance in that they have very hairy faces (and both being young, their beards will be pretty dark). And my son has dreadlocks. They are known as 'the hairy ones', and there seems to be an adequate supply of nicknames for this sort of person in the local languages. In Spanish, they are known as the "bigotes" - as this, apparently, means moustache.

So - is there really a connection between the Spanish word for moustache and the English word "bigot"??

Oh dear - I hope I haven't implied that my son is a bigot! Far from it. His volunteering to do this time in Mexico should be sufficient evidence of his opinions.

TC, there might be a connection,but mentioning it I might be the macho I am. A daughter with a beard, ie rather ugly. They ended up as nuns.

And your son, and being in Mexico...un beso sin bigote es como una tortilla sin sel.

Dictdotcom quotes the Online Etymological Dictionary:

>>
Word Origin & History
bigot
1590s, from Fr. bigot (12c.), in O.Fr. "sanctimonious;" supposedly a derogatory name for Normans, the old theory (not universally accepted) being that it springs from their frequent use of O.E. oath bi God. Plausible, since the Eng. were known as goddamns in Joan of Arc's France, and during World War I Americans serving in France were said to be known as les sommobiches (see also son of a bitch). But the earliest French use of the word (12c.) is as the name of a people apparently in southern Gaul (which led to the now-doubtful, on phonetic grounds, theory that the word comes from Visigoth ). Sp. bigote "mustache" also has been proposed as a source, though the sense is not adequately explained.
<<

"Not adequately explained"?

TC's mustache theory sounds good to me.
The linking to 'goddamns' sounds to easy, too convenient, too modern.
The usage is much older, from a time when the Normans were still
bearded Viking types.


~jwf~

godon - goddamn is quite reasonable. "Bistro" for a place where Russian soldiers could illegally buy a bistroy=quick drink (no idea about the spelling) is another one.

I rather go for the Bigod (by God) theory, as people with unmovable and stubborn viewoints would no doubt have peppered their conversation with such expletives for emphasis.

Which presents the question - perhaps the Spanish word comes from that, and not vice versa. BUT - If so, why? - surely the Mexicans and Spanish would have been great sporters of moustaches, so why should they choose a nickname for English people which pointed out their moustaches? Hmmm

I don't really mean "English", do I? I think the word, as described by my son, generally refers to unshaven gringos.

"perhaps the Spanish word comes from that, and not vice versa"

According to Spanish etymological dictionaries, the Spanish word for moustache, bigote, *is* thought to come from 'bi Got!' http://www.elcastellano.org/palabra.php?q=bigote

"En un trabajo de 1968, el académico Rafael Lapesa afirmaba que bigote debía su origen al bi Got [proferido por unos guardias suizos que participaron en la Reconquista de Granada] y que habían llegado a España en 1483, una fecha perfectamente compatible con el registro de Nebrija arriba mencionado."

[uttered insultingly by the Swiss troops who took part in the reconquest of Granada...]


Perhaps the English word for a gentleman's hairdresser comes from the Spanish word for beard, barba'.

It does indeed, or rather from the French word for beard, barbe.

However, the pronunciation is similar to the Spanish word, not the french.

Well, in French up to recently, barbe would be pronounced bar-buh.