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

I can't think of a British use for candy - even candy-striped probably comes from US
[Tack is a dialectal for toffee. Is that how you're using it?]

None of them seem that heroic, tragic maybe.

Well spotted, !

There's a flower called candytuft (or similar), and I don't think that's from the US.

The only thing I can think of is Candied Fruit.

Those sickly sweet things preserved in sugar but even that is probably a US import.

I prefer sweets and toffees to candy.
Tack - as in the stuff used with horses (saddle, bit and bridle, reins etc) why?

There is also tack as in hardtack biscuits or to zig zag a sailing boat to travel upwind.

The Dutch "kandij" are lumps of crystalized sugar, and the ancestor of "bonbons" (translated from French that would be "good-goods"), "toffees", and other kinds of "candy".
You can still buy "kandij-suiker" (candy sugar): it is a kind of lumpy brown sugar (seriously) that is put on Belgian waffles or on pancakes (the French "crêpes").
(My father even used to put "kandij-suiker" in breadrolls for his breakfast...)

Maybe the word came from "cane-sugar", or (as one of my dictionaries says) from the Arabic "qandl" or "qand".

Tack, in an equine context is simply short for "tackle".

The root of many usages of the word tack seems to stem from an olde English word meaning to fasten, hence "tacky" for sticky, blu-tack(tm) and thumb tacks, to tack down a carpet, to tack something to the end of a bill (which would be an interesting origin of "tax" except that it isn't) and the two different ropes known as "tacks" which tie the boom of a sialing boat in place.
From this we get the use to go from tack to tack (to tie the boom at one side then t'other) which is shortened to be just "to tack" meaning to sail in a zig-zag manner and thence "change of tack" being a change of direction which this entails.
None of this seems to explain why "tack" should also mean inferior food....
*goes for a lie down *

Tack as inferior food:
maybe from "ticky-tacky", meaning sleazy or shoddy material?

I've always used tacky for poor quality anything with the mental image of sweets that got too hot and started to ouse out of their wrappings - the implication being that you wouldn't buy them in that condition.

Just thought of candyfloss (head's full of the stuff !!)

Candy has long been used to mean sweeties. Here is a Glaswegian song, sung to little babies as they bounce on their grannies knees, and often at Pantomimes for as long as anyone can remember;

"Ally, bally, ally bally bee.
Sittin' oan yer mammies knee.
Greetin' for a wee baw bee.
Tae buy some Coulter's candy."

Now that the search for the perfect male has ceased I thought it safe to pop by and say "Hello Gang".

There's tick tack - a curious signalling system used by bookmakers runners, and tic-tac-toe, a childrens game, which I have long forgotten (How old is Munchkin, exactly???).

I had assumed that in British English, 'Candy' referred only to boiled sugar sweets (Bah, humbug!) whereas in US English, it referred to all confectionery.

Candy is the stuff that kids eat, or the gentleman buys for the lady.

The word 'sweets' is very hard to get used to.

I don't think the ladies would be very happy if the gentlemen bought them candy. I'm sure they'd prefer chocolates!

and and , which brings us back (sorry, pheroneous, I HAVE to know) to the perfect (gentle)man...

sweet = afters = pudding

If the good Doctor is still trying to identify the male equivalent of Helen, perhaps he could help out by supplying a suitable definition (along the lines of Helen and a thousand ships).
Once we know what critearia we're looking for, perhaps we will be able to find this mythical man !

Depends where you are approaching the problem from; as a bloke, I would have said the greatest man would be the one who could sink a thousand pints

Shocking though this may be, women don't judge the desirability of men by the amount of beer they can consume.

Undesirability, maybe! But then we're moving into 'measuring ugly' territory.

Not many men who would be described as "Beautiful" have any other qualities making them anywhere near perfect, I would say.

Beauty is only skin deep. We need to define a through-and-through good man.

Another question.

I have been pondering on words that are spelt the same and have (probably) the same history, roots, etymology, but due to pronunciation are different: August/august, minute/minute and invalid/invalid have occurred to me so far. Are there any more of these odd things - and what is the word for this phenomenon? My husband suggests: heterophone.