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#12623 12/12/00 05:57 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Oh DRAT. I thought it said carousAl



TEd
#12624 12/12/00 11:03 PM
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No help on this end Wow. I have always known them by the French term of cheval de bois (wooden horse). We do use the term carousel in French to discribe a merry-go-round.

Isn't that round thing you find in kiddy parks also a merry-go-round. You know, that large round piece of wood with horizontal push-handles that the kids grab then proceed to run like the dickens. When a good momentum is reached everybody jumps on (except the little kids of course who nearly all get ground up underneath the thing).


#12625 12/13/00 12:19 PM
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Right on, Bob! Never did have a mechanical mind -- just enjoyed the music, however it was produced.


#12626 12/13/00 01:13 PM
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Never did have a mechanical mind

"Don't do that, Paul..."
"Don't do that, Paul..."
(repeat until the New Year )


#12627 12/13/00 08:38 PM
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>run like the dickens

I know the expression, but I never met Charlie himself. Was he an athlete? Anyone know where the Dickens the saying came from?


#12628 12/13/00 09:09 PM
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Marty asked: I know the expression, but I never met Charlie himself. Was he an athlete? Anyone know where the Dickens the saying came from?

Nope, but given the nature of the 19th Century and the known poverty in which scribblers such as ooour Charlie tended to live (picture here a threadbare garret, spilled inkhorns, screwed up balls of paper littering the floor, a mouse nibbling on his last crust, bent steel nibs impaled in the door), he probably learned to run from his creditors extremely efficiently.

The consequence of getting lumbered as a debtor in the 19th century was the debtors prison, as stupid an institution as British law has ever come up with ...

Of course, if you have seen "Shakespeare in Love" you will know from the opening scene that the consequences in earlier centuries could have been somewhat more, um, fiery.

This is all unqualified rubbish, of course ...



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#12629 12/13/00 10:51 PM
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>>run like the dickens

Means run like the devil (was after you) I believe. From the era when you didn't say things like damn and devil in polite company, if I remember rightly.



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#12630 12/13/00 11:03 PM
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In reply to:

Means run like the devil (was after you) I believe. From the era when you didn't say things like damn and devil in polite company, if I remember rightly.


Thanks for the parenthetical explanation, TEd of the strange pronunciation. Makes some sense out of it.

Speaking of euphemisms for swear words, my very prim and proper (<insert link to redundant pairs thread here>) mother-in-law says "belly" when she means "bloody".

Makes me belly laugh.


#12631 12/14/00 10:24 AM
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belly laugh

Ironic, isn't it, given that "bloody" was itself spawned as a euphemism to avoid the sacrilegious "by our lady"!


#12632 12/14/00 11:01 AM
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Mav -- reminds me of the joke about the harassed mother who says to an older child, "Go out and see what Billy's doing, and tell him he mustn't!"


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