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#11327 12/09/2000 7:21 PM
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I've stayed out of this one - my dear old late mum used to make Welsh rarebit with cheese and something else, definitely not beer, and it doesn't seem to be the same thing at all. It was made separately to the toast and was spooned on to the toast. I guess she had the recipe from my grandmother, who was English but from the Welsh marches ...



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#11328 12/10/2000 8:25 PM
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>jumbo shrimp, which is now so common that nobody recognizes it as an oxymoron any more.

I'm gonna stick my neck out here. Conventional wisdom is that jumbo shrimp is an oxymoron, but I'm not convinced CW is correct in this case. Shrimp's an animal, and the word comes from (apparently) an OE word for to shrink up. So there's definitely a relationship to smallness, but I maintain that so long as there are different sizes of the animal you have to be able to make the distinction.








TEd
#11329 12/11/2000 5:42 AM
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Thanks wow, but cheese is something of a luxury item here, so I rarely buy it.

Bingley


Bingley
#11330 12/11/2000 12:41 PM
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cheese is something of a luxury item here...

... poor soul - so you are forced to live on jumbo shrimp, then, Mr B?


#11331 12/11/2000 2:40 PM
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"Right" said TEd. "but I maintain that so long as there are different sizes of the animal you have to be able to make the distinction

For many of us, a size up from shrimp is a prawn. Certainly, they're scientifically the same thing.


#11332 12/11/2000 3:02 PM
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are prawn a size up? or just an alternate word? mum alway called shrimp prawn, but "dublin prawn" are not jumbo shrimp!

local stores don't even use the words Jumbo shrimp anymore, but sell them by # per pound--(8 to pound, 6 to a pound) shrimp




#11333 12/11/2000 4:16 PM
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shanks:

>For many of us, a size up from shrimp is a prawn. Certainly, they're scientifically the same thing.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

My dictionary says a shrimp is a. any of various . . . crustaceans of the suborder Natantia, many species of which are edible. b. Any of various crustaceans similar to the shrimp.

My dictionary further defines prawn as an edible crustacean of the genus Palaemonetes and related genera, closely related to and resembling the shrimps.

But my point was that jumbo shrimp should not be categorized as an oxymoron because it does not mean big little. But I'm not prawn to carrying on this thread :). Shall we (s)cuttle it, or do we have to ask Jazz and Shona?




TEd
#11334 12/11/2000 4:31 PM
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#11335 12/11/2000 6:29 PM
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Hydromorons - certainly none of the shrimp I've eaten seemed very bright, but I guess it's hard to shine intellectually when you've been cooked.

The denizens of the Land of Oz (known in Zild as the West Island) used to have an expression, "raw prawn", to describe, I believe, idiots. Can anyone from Oz confirm or deny this? Or have you all just taken off to thrown another prawn on the barbie?



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#11336 12/11/2000 8:26 PM
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In reply to:

The denizens of the Land of Oz (known in Zild as the West Island) used to have an expression, "raw prawn", to describe, I believe, idiots. Can anyone from Oz confirm or deny this? Or have you all just taken off to thrown another prawn on the barbie?


Yep, CapK, it relates to idiots, or more precisely to being naive or gullible. I've only ever heard it used as part of the expression "Don't come the raw prawn with me", meaning don't try to fool me.

And as you have hinted at in your post, and in a recent Fosters ad, we throw prawns on the barbie, not shrimps. In truth, I've never done either, but I've enjoyed the results.


#11337 12/11/2000 9:34 PM
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Shall we (s)cuttle it, or do we have to ask Jazz and Shona?

I don't associate with the shrimp. They stay near the surface and I prefer lounging around the ocean floor. I play the sax with the lantern fish.


#11338 12/11/2000 9:42 PM
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but sell them by # per pound

Which reminds me to ask: What do you United Statesians call #? Is that what you refer to as a pound sign? I ask, because it gets confusing when told to press the pound sign on the telephone keypad - I could spend hours looking and still never find £. To my NZ ears, this is yet another case of some making a complete hash of the language.


#11339 12/11/2000 9:58 PM
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What do you United Statesians call #? Is that what you refer to as a pound sign? I ask, because it gets confusing when told to press the pound sign on the telephone keypad - I could spend hours looking and still never find £.
MaxQ,
Yes it is called a pound sign.... arrrggghhh ..... to me it is, because I have had music training, a sharp on the G scale.
I never thought how it would sound to those who have money called pounds! How provincial of me.
At least they call the dot in dot-com a dot and not a period! And a star is a star is a star is a star.
WOW


#11340 12/11/2000 10:02 PM
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#

In the US, it's usually referred to as the pound sign. We don't have to worry about the British pound. This matter has been discussed in some detail before: http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=99.

By the way, I assume the English measuring system was still in use at the same time as the current British currency system. You say it's confusing to call # the pound sign, but wouldn't it be much more confusing to have weight and money have the same name, especially when a pound doesn't weigh a pound?


#11341 12/11/2000 10:02 PM
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Max Q asks: What do you United Statesians call #?

Yup when one of US'ns says press the pound key, that's the one we're talking about. We also call it number sign, hatch (if we're archeogeeks from the 70s), or little tic-tac-toe boards (if we're trying to be terminally cute).


#11342 12/11/2000 10:07 PM
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The Wise old Woman said: a star is a star is a star is a star.

Us old archeogeeks sometimes call it splat.


#11343 12/11/2000 10:52 PM
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In the US, it's usually referred to as the pound sign. We don't have to worry about the British pound.

Thanks for the links, JazzO - I did a search, but did not go back far enough to find those references. Since Britain is still the largest single source of foreign investment in the US, I'm not sure whether the last sentence I quoted is entirely accurate.

As to the currency/weight dilemma - I was born 4 months after NZ switched from pounds to dollars, and we have always used lb. as the abbreviation for pounds (avoirdupois or troy, it matters not) as opposed to £sd, so we never "tripped" over that one. I would be interested to hear from anyone who knows the history of "pound" and "hash" for # - I wouldn't know where to begin to LIU.


#11344 12/12/2000 12:18 AM
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the worthless word for the day is: octothorp(e)
the symbol # on your telephone or keyboard (hash mark, pound sign, number sign) -- coined by the folks at Bell Labs?

http://features.learningkingdom.com/word/archive/1999/08/04.html


#11345 12/12/2000 12:19 AM
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In reply to:

The Wise old Woman said: a star is a star is a star is a star.

Us old archeogeeks sometimes call it splat.


Interesting. To me, * has always been an asterisk (unless it's on top of a Christmas tree).

This guy seems to have the right idea:
http://www.taosnet.com/ebear/punc.html

Loved his quote: "I'm having my semicolon removed, and I'll have to punctuate into a bag."


#11346 12/12/2000 12:29 AM
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Max et al,

Check out this link:
http://www.hut.fi/~jkorpela/latin1/master.html
then click on the # sign in the table.

(Found by searching in GoEureka/AltaVista for "pound sign" AND octothorpe AND origin, if you're interested).


#11347 12/12/2000 1:21 AM
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>Interesting. To me, * has always been an asterisk (unless it's on top of a Christmas tree).

Many years ago there was a limerick about punctuation that ended something like this:

And what a little fool he was
his silly little *



TEd
#11348 12/12/2000 1:47 AM
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I stumbled upon this whilst searching for something esle -- somehow it reminded me of several of our threads:

The World's Easiest Quiz

QUESTIONS (click here for answers: http://puffin.creighton.edu/hist/quizans.htm)
1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get catgut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) How long did the Thirty Years War last?




#11349 12/12/2000 1:52 AM
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In reply to:

6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?


The Canary (dog) Islands are in the Pacific? Damn, that must have been a hell of a moving van!



#11350 12/12/2000 1:56 AM
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>The Canary (dog) Islands are in the Pacific?

Dalmnation! Well spotted!


#11351 12/12/2000 1:59 AM
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6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
Hmmmmm. Could there be two?
The Canary Islands in my encyclopedia are a group of islands in the North Atlantic ocean aprox 70 miles (113km) off coast of North Africa.
And, if memory serves, the islands were named because of the huge number of dogs on the islands. Canis. Also Canis the dog star.
Wasn't thatsome kind of a question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
wow



#11352 12/12/2000 3:46 AM
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7) What was King George VI's first name?

Albert.




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#11353 12/12/2000 3:03 PM
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>7) What was King George VI's first name?

and CK abbreviatedly replied: Albert.

you know this and you don't know where Chinese gooseberries come from? go figure...


#11354 12/12/2000 6:26 PM
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you know this and you don't know where Chinese gooseberries come from? go figure...

Everything I have been taught, and the fruits of a quick Google search, suggest that this question may be the odd one out - that actinidia chinensis did originate in China -
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/kiwifruit.html being but one of many to say the same thing.




#11355 12/13/2000 1:49 AM
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Max said: Everything I have been taught, and the fruits of a quick Google search, suggest that this question may be the odd one out - that actinidia chinensis did originate in China -

Indeed they did. I once sat through a long and extremely boring investment seminar calculated to make me reach into my back pocket and invest heavily in a kiwifruit orchard near Te Puke.

The one piece of information I did come away with (and with the contents of my wallet intact, of course), was that, as Max says, we stole Chinese gooseberries from the Chinese. Is there no end to the perfidy of New Zealanders onto a good thing? (rhetorical question, Oztralians need not reply).



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#11356 12/13/2000 11:08 AM
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a kiwifruit orchard near Te Puke...

Should think it was more the contents of your stomach that woud be concerned?


#11357 12/13/2000 9:23 PM
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Mav murmured: Should think it was more the contents of your stomach that woud be concerned?

Sorry Mav, close, but no cigar. The macronless Maori word for stomach is puku, not puke.

And speaking of which, has anyone heard from MaxQ lately? Maybe he's gone on a retreat with Father Steve.



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#11358 12/13/2000 10:50 PM
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And speaking of which, has anyone heard from MaxQ lately? Maybe he's gone on a retreat with Father Steve.

Max doesn't post for 24 hours and you're missing him? There's been no word from Shona for a week now. I guess logins will be a bit more sporadic for many over the Christmas/New Year period. I've got three weeks away from my internet connection (a.k.a. my place of employment) before the end of Jan. I'm investigating WRT (word replacement therapy).


#11359 12/13/2000 11:06 PM
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There's been no word from Shona for a week now.

He's on a post fast, making up for the marathon of posting he ran the first couple weeks of his membership.


#11360 12/13/2000 11:33 PM
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He's on a post fast...

Something like Express Post, is it?

Fine time he chooses, just two posts short of addict status. Doesn't he know he already has a habit?

Can a fish go cold turkey?


#11361 12/14/2000 12:18 AM
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In reply to:

Sorry Mav, The macronless Maori word for stomach is puku, not puke.

And speaking of which, has anyone heard from MaxQ lately? Maybe he's gone on a retreat with Father Steve.



There is, however, a Cook Island Maori food called puke, the mere thought of which makes me puke!

My absence is due to a death in my immediate family - my CPU's fan died, and so my poor PC is in limbo, awaiting a transplant. Until then I will be seldom seen. Good point made about Shona, I hope he's back soon. Yours intermittently,

Max


#11362 12/14/2000 1:15 AM
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Max, speaking from beyond the grave by ouija board, quavered: My absence is due to a death in my immediate family - my CPU's fan died, and so my poor PC is in limbo, awaiting a transplant.

And you do live in such a remote part of the country. Bound to be next to no fan clubs around in Hastings, hm?

What about growing PCs in embryo to provide timely transplants which match your PC's blood type exactly? Has anybody deciphered the PC genome?



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#11363 12/14/2000 1:56 AM
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In reply to:

Bound to be next to no fan clubs around in Hastings, hm?


The part in question must be shipped from that unpseakable hellhole north of the Bombays - it's a freebie as the PC is still under warranty. My "ouija board" is the PC of a close friend of mine, the Rarotongan who first introduced me to puke His system runs Windows ME with 128MB of RAM, and it is as slow as my Win98 with only 64. Fortunately, as he's only had it a month, the "gee whizz" factor hasn't worn off yet. I, on th other hand, am salivating at the prospect of jumping from 64MB to 192 in the near future.



#11364 12/14/2000 4:15 AM
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Max planchetted: His system runs Windows ME with 128MB of RAM, and it is as slow as my Win98 with only 64

Well, you do realise that although ME is supposed to mean "Millenium Edition", it was first coined by MS staff when they realised how slow it ran. What it really stands for is "mialgic encephalytis". Taihape 'flu, in other words. Same thing that most couriers from Jafaland have ...



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