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what's the difference between a legless lizard and a snake...?
You'd have to ask a herpetologist that. Perhaps your legless lizard has some internal remnants of legs invisible from the outside. I am sure that there are differences between monkeys and apes that go beyond the simple matter of tails or lack thereof; the tail issue is sufficient for a quick identification. Moths and butterflies, on the other hand, are not as easily identified; there are differences in the way the wings are held at rest and what the antennae look like but there is some overlap in the antenna thang that I know about. Not sure about the wing thing.
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I can't recall hearing the term outside of sport - a whitewash being a very one-sided gameI believe the sports usage means not merely any one-sided result, but specifically one in which the losing team is held completely scoreless. http://www.bartleby.com/61/68/W0136800.html: whitewash: 3. A defeat in a game in which the loser scores no points. It is evident how the basic definition (quoted below) gives rise to the defintion as "thin concealment", but unclear how it gives rise to the sports usage. NOUN: 1. A mixture of lime and water, often that is used to whiten walls, fences, or other structures. TRANSITIVE VERB: 1. To paint or coat with or as if with whitewash.
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Anu informs us that A Potemkin village is, in other words, whitewash taken to the Nth degree.
In this I would, with all due trepidation and respect, disagree with Anu. IMHO, a Potemkin village feigns the existence of a non-existent thing; a whitewash conceals the defects in an existent thing.
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Dear Keiva: That's why Anu took whitewashing to the Nth degree. It was a bit of whitewaffling.
Best regards,
WordWaffle
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In non-American circles...Sorry, I couldn't resist
...and in other *mixed circles, we still know and use it most often as Tom and Huck did when they painted a fence... of course now a days we're just gettin' rid of all the tagging on our garages.
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Hi, doc, nice to see you posting.  I'm looking over my shoulder to see if Helen may be approaching, because I have no doubt that she knows all about whitewash. One characteristic of the actual substance is that it is very thin when dry, and thus wears away very quickly, exposing the not-so-nice-looking surface beneath. A legless lizard has a noticeably different head and mouth than snakes do--though I wouldn't want to get close enough to one in the wild, to discern that.
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...and a cat is a snake with legs, ears, and fur.
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old hand
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> In non-American circles, I think this use of whitewash would certainly be more common than the sports-related use...
I agree - if I had to bet on it, I'd say whitewash in the sporting sense is a more recent usage form in Oz.
It's probably just as common to hear that one team gave another a "shellacing" (sp?) as it is to hear about a whitewash.
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