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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Oh DRAT. I thought it said carousAl 
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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).
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Right on, Bob! Never did have a mechanical mind -- just enjoyed the music, however it was produced.
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Carpal Tunnel
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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  )
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enthusiast
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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?
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Carpal Tunnel
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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 ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
TEd
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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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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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"!
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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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