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

plumsol (actually I think you means Plumsul) is a type of damson wine/liqueur made only around Toller Porcorum in Dorset, and you probably remember it from Hardy's 'Far From The Madding Crowd' when, at the harvest supper just before the storm one of the farm workers (I forget which) shouts to Bathsheba from the bottom of the table "Ere Baths babe, chuck us the plumsul!'

Or am I wrong about that, too?

Tackies in southern Africa (30 years ago anyway).
Please welcome Mr and Mrs Forum and their daughter Penny

Thanks for the "pumps" - that will be a valuable contribution to my future entry - about German misuse of English.

Any connection with pumpernickel?

For those of you who have not met this really interesting person, may I recommend http://www.h2g2.comA338825 Eeyore's oddities of English.

Nice link, though it looks strangely familiar. And WS, you missed an important '/', so clicking the link doesn't get you very far! But I have forgiven that!

As usual, the penalty for a few days away is a lot of postings to catch up on (1.5 hours, occasionally interupted by work).
It probably went quite a few days ago because I was in sunny/cloudy/dry/wet/windy Blackpool with some friends, drinking too many vodka & cokes, staying up 'til 4am talking etc.
I missed the Surrey bit - as I live there, I could have put you all straight in a trice!
I'm truelly amazed there was a canine word that had been missed at the begining!
And I've forgotten everything else I wanted to remark on. Rats.
There are lots of trams in Blackpool, clanking along the front - origins for tram ?

The terminus (terminii? surely not)

Sorry, fuzzey fingers through lack of sleep ...
I meant it went quiet , not quite.

Thank you Duncan.
You know I meant the origin of the word, not the trams (silly boy).
I think the terminus is the end of the line (in each direction), but they actually come out of the tram shed every morning

Possibly 'trammelled', meaning restrained, because the Tramcar is restrained, strictly it is constrained, by the tracks?
Note that Darwin, in 'On The Origin Of Species', paid more heed to Galapagos finches than to storks. Was he missing something fundamental?

The word "tram" meaning streetcar came from the word "tram" meaning horse pulled waggon from when such things were used in mining.
This is supposed to have come from the Middle Scots word for axle, but I hae ma douts
(Source: http://www.dictionary.com)

Are there storks in the Galapagos? There are certainly none in the UK although we are well endowed with goosegog bushes. Here we have herons, who don't nest on chimneys, but only in heronries.

Traam was a beam in Low German. This became tram, the shaft on a wheelbarrow or (presumably) a horse-drawn vehicle. Later the word was applied to a variety of horse-drawn vehicles. Eventually the name became restricted to just the type of people carrier that bears the name today.

I remember horse-drawn trams in the Isle of Man in the 70's. Are they still there?

The land of Alsace in Eastern France boasts the Westernmost storks in Europe. Like many such boasts, this may be untrue.

Why do gooseberries get called goosegogs? Do any other berries get the same nomenclature? And what happens in those countries where neither storks nor goosberries are freely available?

Don't forget we have heroines too.

Another possible source of babies is the humble cabbage plant, of the Brassica family. Due to the agricultural revolution, this is probably far more widespread than either Storks or Gooseberry bushes.

I don't know why goosegogs are gogs and not berries, but I suspect the phenomenon is restricted to this species. Somehow strawgogs, raspgogs and whortlegogs do not sound right!

I think the storks have caused more than enough trouble already, K, without sexing the herons.

That still leaves vast swathes of the Tropical World, G, with no means of delivering babies.

Perhaps it's the purpose of the porpoise.