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

Thank you, jwf and Silverfish. I feel much better for being enlightened. I knew Nigel Rees had to be good for something. You could fill this thread up with stuff from a Nigel Rees book.

I've been looking in the Nigel Rees book, and I've found a another possible candidate. Blonde Bombshell apparently came from a film in 1933. It was called Bombshell in the US, but was called Blonde Bombshell, so people didn't thing it was a war film. however, we do not know where Bombshell came from, and it probably is not fictional.

It's a very useful book is 'Why do we say?'. it's not exhaustive, but gives more detail than other sources.It's my first source if i don't know where a word comes from. I also got mole, and freelance from there.

Hey Silverfish what does Nigel have to say about 'six' and 'sixes'?
I've been trying to find out what 'knocked for six' means. And also 'sixes and sevens'.
peace
~jwf~

I've got a feeling knocked for six, its from Cricket, but Nigel Rees does not seem to have a answer. In cricket, you can hit it for six, if you hit the ball over the boundary without landing that gives you six points. However, that is just a guess.

Another possibility is a connection with 'six of the best' referring to corporral punishment. Again that is a conjecture.

However, sixes and sevens might be to be to do with some scale, of one to 10, where 6 and 7, are average, but that is pure conjecture on my part, however. One source on the interenet gives this as 'to set on cinque and sice', or five and six, and refers to a dice game called 'hazard', where these whee the riskier numbers. We do not know how that become 6 and 7 though.

Another place, in a forum talks about a dice game, where 6 and 7 were riskier gambles, and the phrase then was 'on six and seven'.

These seems to fit with the meanings better than my initial guess, that of being unsure about something, although its worth doing a search on the internet. I might ask on Answerpoint(see my personal space), they have a section on language, so they might be able to help.

Unfortunately, neither phrase is in Nigel Rees's book, so he cannot help here.

Knock for six. Hit for six. Definately Cricket.

djs Keeper of Wicket

For german-speakers: Half of all important phrases in german language are from Goethe's Faust, Part I ("Es irrt der Mensch, solang' er strebt" etc.)

djsdude - you said naff came from Snafu - I beleived it and included it in the small guide to small words, you saw it in there and beleived it...



So are ledgends born

Oh Well

B

Good one Ben.

djs

Since the word Babel Fish is now the name of a computer programme, maybe that belongs here too.

Also Scrooge, from Dicken´s books.

I also just thought of an interesting one. In the Danish Donald Duck magazines sometimes there was mentioned a country in the mid-east called Langtbortistan. This is a made up country, and the name basically means "far away-istan". But the word is now commonly used in Denmark to describe some country far away, and is also in the Danish Dictionary.

According to an interview that Doug Naylor and Rob Grant gave, they made up 'Smeg' as an entirely new word because they were looking for a futuristic swear word. No link to the Swedish white goods manufacturer (odd expression as everything they make is in stainless steel) or 'smegma'. That, of course, is if you believe them. Always difficult with those two.

I don't buy the 'naff' from 'SNAFU' derivation. One is mostly British and the other mostly American. A brute force search of the web revealed not very much interesting, but this:

NAFF n. Acronym used in 'polari' the pre-outing 'gay language' to signify someone ''N'ot 'A'vailable 'F'or 'F*****g', also used to mean 'drab' or 'bad'. Entered 'mainstream' language scene after Princess Anne once famously told a reporter to "Naff off!" UK (Wa)

But I would have thought that was a backronym.

Just to let y'all know that I have just begun to knock this thread up into a Guide Entry. And a long one it is turning out to be, too.

You can find the entry at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A591626 and I have posted it in the Writers' Workshop at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F57153?thread

I will of course credit the suggesters for their suggestions. This is very much a work in progress.

All the best

***B

Machiavellian (In the style of Machiavelli)

Various words from TV shows have made their way through to popular vocabulary.

"Smeg Head" - Red Dwarf
"Pants" - Can't remember which one
"This is an Ex-Parrott" - Monty Python, now more generally used for anything that is no more "This is an Ex-Sandwich" - my lunch today

Rama

Smeg-head and pants are both not used outside of England I think.

I was kind of waiting for others to come up with more, but I´ll put this one up while waiting then. There was a novel made about a photographer who would do anything to get a scandalous photo. He was named Paparazzi in the book. Hence the term paparazzi´s.

Smeg-head and pants are both not used outside of England I think.

I was kind of waiting for others to come up with more, but I´ll put this one up while waiting then. There was a novel made about a photographer who would do anything to get a scandalous photo. He was named Paparazzo in the book. Hence the term paparazzi´s.

Paparazzo comes from the film 'La Dolce Vita'. Fellini based the character on a photographer called Tazio Secchiaroli who made his name by following celebrities around and taking pictures of them unawares instead of waiting for arranged photo-opportunities. I'm not sure where he got the idea for the name from - the name's fairly common in the South, so he might have named the character after a friend/enemy .

Seems to me that I heard somewhere that 'paparazzo' was Italian for 'mosquito' - hence the name was used to imply something annoying that wouldn't go away and leave you alone.

176645

Isacc asimov brought the word robot into common usage but he didn`t invent it, as he was the first to point out
it came from a play from czechoslovakia written in the 1920`s.

Right you are. See post 31 and others around ther in the backlog.

***B