Subject header Army talk for finis. What three things were done to cloth, to finish them? I've no idea.
Barbed, Rowed, and Shorn: Three finishing processes in the manufacture of cloth.
Rumor has it: sailors on shore leave got "laid", drunk and then tatooed. (not always in that order)
Just a rumor.
No lipstick around the shaft?
Enough about shore leave. What were the three things done to finish the cloth? Lots of eponyms to cloth manufacture. Weaver. Walker, Fuller. Dyer, Sherman, Who knows what "tease" meant?
Who knows what "tease" meant? One meaning in the fabric-making trade is "to disentangle and dress the fibers of (wool, for example)."
Leading to a lovely image for ending a war, as taken from Lysistrata by Aristophanes (Rogers translation; male voice in green for envy, female in purple for royalty)
You, I presume, could adroitly and gingerly
.....settle this intricate, tangled concern:
You in a trice could relieve our perplexities.
.....Certainly.
....................How? permit me to learn.
Just as a woman, with nimble dexterity
.....thus with her hands disentangles a skein,
Hither and thither her spindles unravel it,
.....drawing it out, and pulling it plain.
So would this weary Hellenic entanglement
.....soon be resolved by our womanly care,
So would our embassies neatly unravel it,
.....drawing it here and pulling it there.
Wonderful, marvellous feats, not a doubt of it,
.....you with your skeins and your spindles can show;
Fools! do you really expect to unravel a
.....terrible war like a bundle of tow?
Ah, if you only could manage your politics
.....just in the way that we deal with a fleece!
Tell us the recipe.
.......................First, in the washing-tub
.....plunge it, and scour it, and cleanse it from grease,
Purging away all the filth and the nastiness;
.....then on the table expand it and lay,
Beating out all that is worthless and mischievous,
.....picking the burrs and the thistles away.
Next, for the clubs, the cabals, and the coteries,
.....banding unrighteously, office to win,
Treat them as clots in the wool, and dissever them,
.....lopping the heads that are forming therein.
Then you should card it, and comb it, and mingle it,
.....all in one basket of love and unity,
Citizens, visitors, strangers, and sojourners,
.....all the entire, undivided community. ...
Scattered about to a distance surrounding us,
.....these are our shreds and our fragments of wool;
These to one mighty political aggregate
.....tenderly, carefully, gather and pull,
twining them all in one thread of good fellowship;
.....thence a magnificent bobbin to spin,
Weaving a garment of comfort and dignity,
.....worthily wrapping the People therein.
No lipstick around the shaft?
You mean collar, right?
Dear doc_comfort: "blue" is past tense of a decidedly irregular verb. And sailor's collar of navy blue didn't show lipstick. In Philippines our Serology lab techs had to remove lots of lipstick to look for little curlicues.
Dear Keiva: My recollection of Lysistrata is that she advocated total abstinence from entanglements as the way to stop fighting.
Trying desperately to keep this thread word oriented
As an old sailor, I remember it as Stewed, screwed and tattooed; the stewed part definitely came first and the tattooed part very probably last.
bill, you mis-recollect
Lysistrata. Per her plot the women abstained from
sexual entanglements but took a
very active role otherwise. For example, they seized, and held by force, the treasury by which the war was financed.
But it's hardly surprising that the sexual aspect is the most remembered!
(more to follow when I return home tonight and can pull my copy off the shelf.)
Edit: So as not to hijack this thread -- and because it's an interesting subject in itself -- I'm putting this into a new thread: Misc/Battle of the Sexes