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

The Bible is not only the world's best-selling book - it's also the world's most shoplifted book.

>> if you eat three whole tubes of toothe paste youll die. <<

I wonder how this was discovered?

>> The Bible has been the number one best-seller every year <<

Why isn't it shown in "the Culture" every Sunday with the Sunday Times, then?

RF

I once came across a pompous word for fear of (going to) school, but its not listed on your phobialist website. Any idea what it is?

Adolescence??

Nope!

Scolionophobia

Hmm. Who uses these words? I suspect that some of the more common ones *might* be used by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists - although the treatments for all phobias are pretty much the same. However - I'm sure that whenever one of the more arcane ones are used, it is immediately interpreted into English as she is spoke. Eg 'Gobbledygookaphobia (Fear of whatever the Ancient Greek word gobbledygook means)'

Danaologophobia?

Ah yes. I think that 'rings a bell'.

biggrin>

There is a phobia (can't remember the exact name) of being approached by people from the right.

Probably has the prefix 'dexter' in it.

Dextrophobia- Fear of objects at the right side of the body.

Oh, no doubt all those words for phobias are akin to all those words for groups of animals. As has been pointed out in this thread before, things like "murders" of crows and whatnot are words that are only used to show that there's such a word. No matter what kind of animals are in a group, if you say it's a "bunch" of whatevers you'll be correct. If someones afraid of something... if you say they have a "fear of" whatever you'll be just as correct and much more clear than saying something like (picks another random phobia)... "So-and-so is nostophobic" (fear of returning home).

My favourite phobia: arachibutyrophobia - fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth.

I can understand that... I once gave a poodle a caramel... it was pretty frightening!

When I lived in Canada, where packaging is bilingual, I was amused by 'Beurre d'arachides' (peanut butter) which I mentally translated as 'spider butter'.

Do you know how many spiders you have to milk to get even a small churn of butter? + -

Spider butter would presumably be 'Beurre d'arachnides' - but I thought the same to start with.

<< I once gave a poodle a caramel...>>

What a mental picture...

<< I once gave a poodle a caramel...>>

Nowwww....Noam Chomsky illustrated his concept of innate, generative grammars with the sentence 'Colourless green ideas dream furiously'. This is an example of something that we can understand gramatically but which doesn't make any real-world sense. It shows that we don't learn language just by copying things we've heard before.

Anyhoo...I've always been interested in combinations of words that are very unlikely to have been uttered by anyone at any time in history...such as (from my own experience):

'I am not a conference delegate, but can I have a penguin anyway?'
and
'...and then the chapatti became lodged behind the skirting board.'

By the way....take The Chomsky Challenge here: http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/chom1120.html