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

The old money is explained at http://www.h2g2.com/A404939, although I'm much too young to know about such things.

I'm off for a non-vegetable veggie dinner...with beef tomatoes, baby carrots and birds eye peas. Yum

Kaeori, I was always told (by my mother no less) that when a word ends in S and you're appending 's to the end of the word you should just use the apostrophe. eg not Pheroneous's but Pheroneous'
No doubt I'll now be told that my grammer is appalling - just leave my gra'ma out of it

You can't go away and have lunch but the language has been taken apart in a furthe 30 postings.

In case no one has said it yet, wurzel is the German word for root. Just plain root.

So it could mean any root vegetable: carrot, turnip, parsnip, celeriac (very common in Germany), beets, horseradishes, Swedes (practically unheard of in Germany - a sin, my favourite veggie), salsify, (also very common in Germany) etc., etc.,

Mangold is the German word for a leaf vegetable - have forgotten the English, might be kale - it consists of green leaves and white stalks, the leaves nice, similar to spinach, but a bit gritty, the stalks are slightly bitter, taste like a mild celery stick when cooked.

Fag in the sense of cigarette was not mentioned.


And what is "To discretize"

and maybe fob watches have something to do with free on board


And what vegetable would you make of what meat - veal carrots, pork brussels sprouts, ham cabbage, ...... and I hate to think how you would simulate peas.

..is to transpose a continuous variance (such as a sound wave) onto a finite variance (such as the numbers 0 to 32676).
It is sometimes (incorrectly) refered to digitizing even though it is rarely done by hand .

"Bumming a fag" meaning borrowing a cigarette was mentioned right near the start of this thread but I've given up since then and no longer have the patience to go searching though all those posts to find it.

Don't you people ever work? Thanks TC re clarification re: Wurzels/Mangold. Whatever the British usage, they are only used for animal feed anyway.

Phil the big number had same punctuation/grammar teacher as I.

Swede is OK, but bears with for ever that image of orange gruel at school meals. (I suppose you could use swede for shoes, instead of pigskin, or was that quiet baby dogs?)

I'd gathered that 'bollocks' is not a slang/obscene term across the pond. I heard that there was one particular episode in an American TV series, possibly sci-fi, in which an Irishman was heard to roar 'Bollocks!' before the watershed, on the assumption that it was an innocent remark meaning 'Oh fiddle-sticks, I've bashed my gubbins.' Or is this an urban legend?
Also The Simpsons, it seems, can get away with saying 'not bloody likely' on Sky, but are censored by the BBC.

Someone asked why spiffing wasn't in the dictionary despite the fact it was in old British films.I reckon that is because it was never a word that was in common usage which how most words find their way into dictionaries.I've never heard anyone use the word apart from in films.I think it may have been a public school word that sounded good to a script writer.

Forgot this one earlier:

"To kip" also means "to sleep". As does "doss". Leading to "dosser" - for whatever they are officially called these days.

( The German slang word for "to sleep" "pennen" is also used for a slang word for these citizens of the street, coincidentially - "Penner". )

Index coming soon!

and a pint was three shillings and twopence!

Morning happy posters.
Ahh TC - haven't heard the "free on board" usage for many a long year, since working for the NAAFI actually (all to do with importing & exporting goods etc.).
One curiosity I came across while at the NAAFI (I only mention this to illustrate the depth of my useless knowledge - I don't want to be left out here). The excise duty tarrif book for (I think it was) Malta had a curious entry which said there was 30% duty on the import of salt water !!
Talking (as we have been periodically) of TLAs, did we ever get a definition of "FAB" as used by Scott Tracy etc. (and don't strat telling me they can't talk again - I'm NOT listening)

Fab groovy gear. Gear as in clothes, or ones personal stash of illicit materials. On hippie trail once, met American. He says 'Hey man, whats your number?' Nonplussed, I reply 'I have no number, I am a free man, man' Total incomprehension all round.

And there's CIF (Carriage Insurance Freight) FAS (Free alongside)

Mandragora, do you scream when you are pulled out of the ground?

And is Scrymidden a case of going through the motions?

Yuk!

Sorry - but I _do_ have to go away and get work done sometimes.
Were your gentiles genteel?

So promotion means being in favour of....? And locomotion is a crazy midden. Whenever I visit a castle with my children they head with glee towards the garderobe and locate the probable position of the midden within minutes of arrival. Is this Freudian?

... but this IS work ... for the enduring benefit of man (and women) -kind.
Many centuries in the future, when the archiologists are digging through layers of old shoes (!), one of them will happen on a PC still logged into H2G2. After spending many days (or years even) going through all our postings on this thread, they will have a rich and balanced understanding of 21st century life.

Scatological is the word you are looking for. All children love talking about poo and bottoms.

Evidently. My daughter's favourite insult, often directed at her brother, is 'poo-head'. I am pleased that she does not use the more vulgar equivalents - but I don't know why I should be.

Sorry to interrupt. Very entertaining, but Nikki-D, please put something on your user page - I'd love to swap NAAFI stories with you (if you want)
Ah, yes, that leads to a very peculiar British (Forces) English slang expression: "chuffed to NAAFI breaks" - anyone else ever heard that one?

By popular demand (well ... actually one person out of 8 billion - and that's just on THIS planet), I've edited My Space. Enjoy.

I must say, things have been quiet today. Surely you're not all working ? Take a break - it's lunch time.

Where does flat (aas in block of .) come from ? In the US it's appartment. In recent years, appartment has come to be used for up-market & coastal properties. Some flats aren't - they're on two levels. Do the US have flats, other than in tYres ?