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

That's so , Ictoan. (My brain looks pretty weird.)

I was waiting for a pciture of Charley Horse.

thanks for the info, ictoan i never mind hearing from you, but then this is paul's thread, so... - well, it used to be anyway

It's a fun place, where cucumbers can happen to the darndest peope.

Life is a like a cucumber...

A cucumber is like life, too.

do horses like cucumbers, i wonder

I hope not. More methane.

But wouldn't mean more methane regardless of what sort of creature ate the cucumbers?

Horses and cows make more, I think.

Is that because they eat more? If we limited their cucumber rations, maybe it would all work out okay.

feed them pickled gerkins instead. they probably won't eat many of those

they used to be called cowcumbers about 300yrs ago although the original old english was essentially earth-apples.
Which no doubt would have confused any anglo-gallic recipe discussions at the time.

I can just see the gallic confusion at trying to make mash with cucumbers

I can see how the French conquerors might have been confused, as apples (pommes) of the earth (terre) referred to potatoes in their language. But wouldn't the French have had cucumbers alreayd rgowing in their own country? What was the French name for that?

Le quecombeaire?

I saw that etymology. I thought originally that cu-cumbers just 'cumbered the coos'' = gave them a bellyache.

Google suggests "Concombre" as the French word for cucumber.

this is so confusing

yeah, it is. The old french is more like cocombre I think - came from the latin cucmis.

By the way do NOT google for "cucumber old french"

Right you are. As a philologist, I suspect the following:

'cucumber' comes from cucmis, which is Latin. It's a gourd.

Now, Anglo-Saxons just had the word 'gherkin', because the German is 'Gurke', pronounced 'GOOR-keh'.

I'll bet a folk etymology is at work here. 'cu' is Northern English for 'cow', and it's Old English, too. 'Cumber' we already had, there are lots of places called 'Cumberland', in England and in America (Cumberland Gap).

This happens all the time. We make up our own reasons for a word.

Shakespeare notes that hoity-toity scholars of his day were insisting that the word 'abominable' had an 'h' in it, because it came from 'ab + homines'. which it didn't.

The 'earth apple' business is funny, because of course they didn't have potatoes back in the day (remember Falstaff saying, 'Let the Sky rain potatoes'? Which he couldn't in the 15th Century). So I'm thinking they just had to call *something* an earth-apple, even if it was green.

The Dutch call potatoes 'earth-apples', but what they did before, I dunno.

And shame on you, Ictoan.