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

Well, I'm flabbergasted K, blame the dictionary, not us! Mind you, its a spoken word, not written so the spelling might be negotiable. Try Gubbings. and Palava.

Besides, its probably against the law to fib on h2g2.

Having done a general websearch for gubbins. The word is out there, indeed there are several people who are called Gubbins.

Palaver is in. Gubbins (or even Gubbings) definitely is not.

Perhaps those of you who think the word exists are experienced a shared delusion.

Oops... that should be 'experiencing'.

We are all experiencing a shared delusion. It is called 'life'.
I will vouch for 'palaver' (predominantly NW areas of the UK.

No they aren't - I agree with those definitions of gubbins, although I would plump more for the contents of green box than what was behind the fridge. And I hadn't been North of Norwich until I was something like 18, so it's not geographically limited.

What about fibs, palaver, flabbergasted - who was trying to smuggle them in to confuse us? Etymologists unite. This is fun!

It was Pheroneous who was making a palaver because he was flabergasted when Kaeori said that I was telling fibs over the word gubbins.

Does that make sense?

Don't get stroppy K, trust your friends.

goodmorning...what the hell does btw mean?is there a entry on much used abbriviations.is desire an emotion that can be controlled?if it is its something less than desire i would think.gotta run.........

By the way, James. Another popular one here (H2G2) is imho (In my humble opinion) with or without the h. Good idea for entry..why dont you do it?

by the way james, btw

Kaeori. Dictionary.com defines gubbins as "something whose name is forgotten or not known" As to the Britishness or otherwise, who knows where it comes from?

Stroppy? No, no, no - I'm innocent.

Can I plead guilty to the lesser charge of being mischievous?

Name forgotten? But that's not what you guys said!

Is it?

I thought it was, nearly. I mean we all know whats in those boxes (wires) its just that when confronted by the apparent anarchy therein we are flummoxed, and thus forget.

Recently I have often heard the phrase "so and so's got a bit of a strop on" which comes from stroppy, presumably a derivative of obstreperous. There a slight chinese whispers effect here, as obstreperous, to my mind, means a wilful or stubborn crossness, whereas 'got a strop on' just implies a tantrum.

The only 'strop' I can think of, hangs in a Barbers shop and is that piece of leather that is used to hone an open razor. And I cannot connect that to stroppy.

The other thing with strops was they were also used as corpral punishment tools (like belts and canes).

but I cannot see any connection from the strap type strop to a temper tantrum, so it must be obstreperous. But I don't see K leaping at this, so I suppose we shall have to accept her plea to the lesser offence, in the hope she will return to the fray and absorb some of these words into the vocabulary.

I imagine that British English has two roots, the Germanic Anglo Saxon invasion and the Latin French that came with 1066 and all that. Thus there are two almost equivalent words for most things, (beer/ale, odd/peculiar, old/ancient) only one of which has gone forward to International English, leaving the other to languish in this backwater of h2g2 (Perhaps this has been said before, but if you think I am going back through 700 (700!!!) odd entries...)

So what is a flabber and how precisely is it gasted?

I'm with you - "palaver" (pronounced perlarva) is actually in the Oxford English dictionary:

1. n. fuss and bother, profuse or idle talk, cajolery; sl. affair, business; (esp. hist.) parley between African or other natives and traders etc.
2. v. talk profusely, flatter, wheedle.


- cajolery - there's a few Scrabble points there......