Time was that "the lion's share" was ALL, not just most. I suppose the misunderstanding is now so common as to have been accepted, except for us old pedants, but it is a loss.

Hello, please Uncle Ben, could you be a little more specific about this "ALL"? I've learned since childhood (which wasn't just yesterday either) that "the lion's share" meant the largest part.
I still hear my mother say to my eldest brother: " No, not you the lion's share again!"

Æsop's fable does seem to be the origin of the phrase. Whether it is ignorance, misunderstanding or language shift that has effected the change in meaning is up for debate. Perhaps part of the lion's share has drifted over to decimation, explaining why decimation has increased in value at the expense of the lion's share. If one were to use the phrase "lion's share" in the original meaning one would risk being misunerstood. Whether this is worse than being excoriated by the Etymological Fallacists is also up for debate.

So, tel me, Uncle Ben, outside of the fable itself have you ever heard the phrase used to mean "all" by anyone other than yourself?

It makes sense, though: lions don't share. The most powerful one eats what he wants, then leaves. If there's nothing left, that's too bad for the others; if there is, they have to try and sneak a share while he's there, or wait until he leaves.

That's civilization for you:
decimation went up with inflation and the lion's share got taxed!

PS Hi and welcome Uncle Ben

The lion needs a better lawyer.

It would seem most of you have not watched enough Animal Planet. Perhaps you can start with Wikipedia article about how lions hunt (note the photo caption "Sharing a zebra").

Just like humans:
sharing a zebra

Ah but Myridon, if you read further in the anybody-can-edit-whether-true-or-not site, you'll find "Male lions will never share food they have killed by themselves." ; which is also what I learned by watching documentaries done by National Geographic and Animal Planet.

Onliest thing, they don't do that much of the killing. They usually leave it to the ladies.

Aye, but only the ones that are attached to a pride. The loners, or groups of males follow a different feeding etiquette.

Regardless of who makes a kill, the dominant male will have first choice of a meal.
Eco Travel Africa

Regardless of who makes a kill, the dominant male will have first choice of a meal.


And for this the world is a much better place for all of us.

_______________________________________________Peace. ()

Peace.

Ben, Bran: We also say "the beter part of"

First choice implies there is a second choice, etc.

Attacking a source and then using it yourself makes for a rather weak argument. (^_^)

As you were, I was merely using Wikipedia as a convenient "one-stop-shop" which went along with what I know about lions as a non-expert on lions. I haven't read the discussion or history pages of this particular topic but I doubt that the subject is very controversial or subject to much vandalism or bias. We would probably find that most of that article was directly copied from sources possibly even more trustworthy than the Eco Travel site which was quoted from yet remains unattacked (oops, I think I just attacked it ;-) sorry).

I seem to recall watching a nature program on tv that said that other predators of the veldt will leave a portion of their kills for the lion. (This was not held up as the source of the phrase lion's share, however.) Better to pay your taxes than deal with a hungry lion, I suppose.

Yes, I know, I try not to site Wikipedia articles because I could be spreading misinformation.*

I simply wanted to bring to your attention that in the article that you were citing, there was more information lower down which said something different that what you’d implied when you said >>>It would seem most of you have not watched enough Animal Planet. Perhaps you can start with Wikipedia article about how lions hunt (note the photo caption "Sharing a zebra").

I added the National Geograpic and Animal Planet part because this is where I remember seeing info on the males being very persnickety about keeping the food to themselves, but I’m not an expert either and am not glued to the television, so I could be wrong.


What is that thingy with the parentheses and the accents circonflexes bits at the end of the first sentence ?


* I don’t want to start arguments here. I know Wikipedia is a starting off place for info and all, and all. I just prefer not using it as a proof for anything.

> What is that thingy with the parentheses and the accents circonflexes bits at the end of the first sentence ?

(^_^)

a cute little face.

(^_^)

a cute little face.

or, too cute by half.

Ohhhhh. Shoosh, now that I see it, it's so evident. For some reason, my initial thought was that it was some sort of sign between parentheses, like the two squiggly lines that mean "approximately".

I'm not on the net enough.

No, you're not, Missy! I think you should just ignore work and real life (well, not so much maybe) and be here! ;-)

Prior to my posting, there was an IMPLIED fact that ALL lions NEVER share. That further down in the article I referenced it says that SOME lions OCCASSIONALLY don't share is not salient to my point that lions DO share.

Old folksong:
All lions NEVER share, NEVER share, NEVER share,
All lions NEVER share, (or sometimes, or often)
THEY JUST fade away.

[I know it's silly but that old melody jumped up)(>_<)]

But that's just it, Myridon.

We can't say lions DO share any more than they DON'T share. We can definitely say they SOMETIMES share, but saying that they DO implies that it is the way the will always act, which isn't the case.

Do you see what I mean?

I disagree. DON'T is always. DO isn't. If my lovely wife says I don't buy butter when I go to the store I say that I did last week. And, to compare a lion in a pride situation where he has a bunch of women-folk doing most of his hunting for him with a lone lion or one in a band of prideless males leads to conflicting results. The head of pride male isn't going to have a pride for very long if he doesn't share. If nothing else, everyone else in the pride will starve. A male in a band of males can let them go off and form their own band or kill their own zebra and do their own hogging.

Can you explain what you mean by DON'T being always and DO not? If DON'T is definitive, why would DO not be? I don't understand that part.

=====================

Back to the lions...

If you are going to make a statement about lions, you can't eliminate the part of their living situation that doesn't fit your equation.

There may be less male lions overall since they have to fend for themselves, and consequently, unless they form a bond with another male lion, do not have the extra safety and food afforded by a male with a pride BUT pride-free lions are part and parcel of the overall lion existance, and pride-free lions don't share, so you can't say lions do share. You can say lions sometimes share, or lions most often share, but not that they DO and make it sound like it is an all-the-time thing.

If you insist on using the word do, then you have to add a modifier.

Well, then say DO and don't make it sound like an all-the-time thing. I mean when you DO something you don't have to do it all the time. If you don't do something and then suddenly do it anyway, then you don't don't do it all the time so you can't say that you don't do it.

I DO go to work, but I don't spend 100% of my time going to work and I rarely do it at all on weekends, but it's still something that I do. I even don't do it sometimes on regular work days. I DON'T jump out of tenth story windows. I never have jumped out of a tenth story window. I spend 100% of my time not jumping out of tenth story windows. If I were ever to jump out of a tenth story window it would no longer be the case that I DON'T jump out of tenth story windows. Capisce?

My, my, my, faldage, you do go on, don't you.

Do I care? No, I don't care, but that doesn't mean that I doesn't care all the time, it's just that I don't care this time.

While I leave you the perogative to change your mind at some point (and I would hope that there was reason behind the change), I won't accept that "I don't care" is equivalent to "I may start caring at any moment."

belM has suggested that we cannot make positive statements without qualifications, i.e. that what most people mean by "I eat peanuts" must be "I sometimes eat peanuts on occassion when I feel like it if they are available", and now theM says all negative statement must be also, i.e. that what most people mean by "I don't care" must now be "I don't care and I don't plan to anytime soon."

This is going to make for some very long conversations (sometimes, when we feel like discussing something, and if the opportunity arises).

>>Capisce?

Yup. Merci.

I also discussed it with Hubby yesterday at lunch since my mind was only seeing it in one way, and he used the same type of analogy as your window jumping, though not as ultimately splatty (his was an analogy using going to the movies v. eating cockroaches (do, and don't, in case anybody is wondering) )

In the movie Vampire's Kiss Nicolas Cage actually did eat the cockroach. I heard that he washed his mouth out with vodka before and after the deed.

Right after the war in real life my laconic great aunt Nel praised the piece of meat she found in the red cabbage stew while eating it. My mother was sure she had not put any in.
My aunt laughed and said "well, it's meat anyway."
We children never forgot this impressive act and remark.

And aren't we all of us lucky that we have the luxury of sitting around discussing words, on computers.

Speaking of eating cockroaches...in my gadabout youth I would occasionally eat a live bug to show my disdain for knee-jerk convention. Once while dining and drinking with friends at a sleazy restaurant in Panama City Florida a cockroach crawled across the table so I ate it. Cockroaches are not easy to eat (their wings are almost indigestible) so thereafter I avoided eating them whenever possible; but too late -- no matter that I was the King of the Bop on the beach -- my reputation as "Milo the Cockroach Eater" became itself a local social convention and so throughout that summer I ate cockroaches to impress the girls.

It was a strange summer, but safely home in Birmingham that fall I swore off eating cockroaches and instead ate other sundry insects to show my disdain of knee-jerks conventions and such.

Then one day at Ed Salem's Ice Cream Bar I ate a green moth. Don't ever eat a green moth. Green moths have a green toxin within their pasty bodies that keeps them for being eaten by all creatures in the know. I didn't know this and I turned green and threw up.

Call me a sissy or offer me one thousand dollars if you will, but I will never, ever, eat a green moth again.

Here is some back up for bug eaters. May be you should pick it up again. See the recommendations.

insect Eaters

Honeyed locusts doesn't sound bad.

locusts

While most insects are not kosher, there are four species of locusts which are: the red, yellow, spotted gray, and white locusts.

Milum, mon dieu, seems like a lot to do just to impress a girl. I'm not sure I'd wish to kiss you after you'd eaten a cockroach.

Did you not think of learning to juggle or some such; a man that's good with his hands, now that's something that'll turn a girl's head.

I tried, belmarduk. God knows I tried to think of some other way to impress the girls. I taught myself to give the "finger" (as an insult) by using only my middle right toe but with precious little impressment.

Bad move. The chicks at that time were practicing the art of "demurement" and consequencely they thought me odd.

And, as I hesitate to add, back then I wasn't as articulate with my hands as I was with my feet.

Back then.

...practicing the art of "demurement" ???

Well, that explains it. I never knew you had to practice, and nobody's ever accused me of being artistic. Phewf...good thing my Hubby likes me just the way I am, eh.

I had no time to go searching for it, but I can't think up anything that is
" winged and swarming and has four feet ".
Any four-footed bird?

"winged and swarming and has four feet "

Maybe the first pair of an insect's legs were considered arms instead.

Ooo, see, I could see how that would be with a praying mantis.

Belle, I think the mantis belongs to the allowed group:

I can only think of dragons or...bats for the 'unclean' ones.

a praying mantis

Oc. Mantis means 'priest' in Greek, so the praying always seemed redundant.

Chocolate covered grasshoppers taste like chocolate covered honey crunch. Rather nice if you don't think about it.

Who you calling "unclean", BranShea?

Vampire bats swarm and leap and go on all fours and have jointed legs above their feet.

It's them mud-wallowing but tasty pigs that are "unclean"; not to mention, "uncouth".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o89CLjQQvsA

I was in my late adolescence before I learned that it was a "praying" mantis. As a pre-schooler and later, I always assumed it was a "preying" mantis, and spelled it that way. Of course, a strong argument could be made that the aforementioned redundancy exists in either case.

"Cute" video, but:

I think, Mr. Milo that (maybe) you, who once upon a time called tsuwm mean for a single word correction, are cheating (hmm.. misleading?) us here.
Bats have like us joints, but they have no jointed legs in the meaning of "segmented". And I 'm almost sure that this is what's meant here.
Bats have forelimbs that are developped as wings.
No joints different from other mammals.
"as the structure of the open wing is very similar to an outspread human hand with a membrane between the fingers that also stretches between hand and body."

"Arthropods are characterised by having a segmented body with appendages on at least one segment.
All arthropods are covered by a hard exoskeleton made of chitin."

Mantis leg

Vampire bat

Well, tsuwm is mean sometimes, BranShea, but sometimes he ain't.
You know, like sometimes you are right, and sometimes you are wrong.
(What? You think I shouldn't correct you and tsuwm when you two step out of line?) Of course I should, and now I would like to correct the ancient Jews for designating our friends the bats as unclean and not fit for human consumption.

Question: Bats can hop; so how can they hop if they don't have "joints"?

From the net:

For birds, the criteria is less clear. The Torah provides a list of forbidden birds (Lev. 11:13-19; Deut. 14:11-18), but does not specify why these particular birds are forbidden. All of the birds on the list are birds of prey or scavengers, thus the rabbis inferred that this was the basis for the distinction. Other birds are permitted, such as chicken, geese, ducks and turkeys. However, some people avoid turkey, because it is not mentioned in the Torah, leaving room for doubt.

From the Bible:

"And these you shall have in abomination among the birds, they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, the kite, the falcon according to its kind, every raven according to its kind, the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk according to its kind, the owl, the cormorant, the ibis, the water hen, the pelican, the carrion vulture, The Stork, the heron according to its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat." (Leviticus 11:13-19 RSV)

It is good that the Jews don't eat bats but as a fellow mammal I think that the ancient Jews should apologize for classing our friends the bats as dim-witted reptilian birds and calling them "unclean abominations" that are not to be touched.

Personally I've never touched a "hoopoe" but I've touched bats. Lots of 'em. Am I then an abomination? Or do I get a pass because I'm a kind and gentle gentile of the finest sort?

You get a pass because you're a gentile, gentle or not. The dietary laws of which you speak are required only of Jews. The rest of us are bound only by the Noachian laws which aren't as strict.

"Bats have like us joints,"(my own words). You get a pass because you are a gentile and throughout not ungentle. I do not believe in 'abominations' or 'uclean' of bats nor birds either. My post was just about biological differences between bats and mantisses. Nothing more.

BTW. when I see the list of by Torah forbidden birds I've heard that sea gulls must be positively uneatable for tasting terrifyingly bad. So bad even a starving sailor has difficulty to swallow it. Might be the other forbidden ones are no feast either.

Yes, a bat can hop and you can bop and I can do the quickstep (sometime, not all the time..)
That's a lot of levitating Leviticus we got this weekend.

Zed, what is Honey Crunch? I've looked on the net and found popcorn and cereal and a whole pile of unrelated sites.

oops, I shouldn't have capitalized it, it was a description not a brand.


Imagine the ad campaign though: "Try Honey Crunch for that real grasshopper flavour! "

And I thought you were talking about the cereal.

You'd better give your Honey Crunch cereal a good second look..

Honey Crunch® cereal has grasshoppers in it?

Doubtful, but I'll bet you'd find Honey Crunch in the hoppers if they could get it.,

You hadn't capitalized it, Zed. I saw it capitalized on a pile of web sites so it wrote it that way automatically.

I see by the subsequent posts that it is cereal though. I guess it is an English brand since I've never seen it here in Québec. I must be like the Cinnamon Toast Crunch* cereals that I see everywhere except here.

(*It's very odd that. French Quebeckers, as a whole, dislike cinnamon. You never see Cinnamon Eggos, Apple Cinnamon bars from Kellogg or apple pie with cinnamon, on supermarket shelves. I wonder if there are other types of food that are appreciated by one group and disliked by another group living in close proximity.)

There are not really many authentic French recipes with cinnamon either. I've Googled and weekied in French and all the recipes I saw are somehow connected to American or North African (Algéria) origins. Maybe the Québequers have a missing gene for cinnamon.

Up until recently, I never used cannelle either, but then I discovered mulled wine. After shoveling two feet of snow, for an hour and a half, mulled wine is a phenomenal warm-me-up.

Mind you, that isn't a French recipe either, but the cinnamon suppliers can rejoice...they're converting Quebekers. O.k., so it's one at at time and we're 7 million, but ya gotta start somewhere. The mulled wine was brilliant...which Frenchy can resist wine?! HA!

EDIT: Typo

That is so good! My neigbour made it on 31 dec.

What is canelle, please?

Sorry, cannelle is cinnamon.

Ah--merci. :-) You mean y'all don't have cinnamon rolls?? Ooh, not much beats a warm cinnamon roll and a big glass of milk. (Oh, ok, coffee for you grownups.)

Oh, in some shopping centres where there is a greater concentration of English folk, we can find shops called Saint Cinnamon that sell these big round buns with white frosting, but get out of Montreal and they're non-existant.

Then there's the Cathy classic, Abs of Steel, Buns of Cinnamon.

Meanwhile, while I doubt Uncle Ben will ever come back, I am at a loss to understand what the loss is in the change of meaning of the phrase "the lion's share." For one thing it's a cliché and some would prefer it not be used at all, with whatever meaning, but that aside, it's not like we've lost any way of saying all. Even if we wish to keep the cliché we still have the whole nine yards.

I like Earl Grey best with cinnamon buns.
but no icing on them

Ooo, LOVE a piping cup of Earl Grey. I like the loose leaves that you get in a tin. That way, you can adjust the strength to exactly how you prefer.

The buns are mostly eaten for the icing, it is quite lovely. If you eat the icing, and that first outside-layer of bun, you can chuck that middle part with all the cinnamon.

EDIT: typo

Not being French I scrape off the icing, possibly eat the outside and savour the inside with all the lovely cinnamon.
We need to go for tea together; we'll share one pot, two buns and each get the part we like best.

Looks like you'll get the lion's share and belMarduk only the icing. Icing is not a very French tradition. (except for >éclairs , covered with a very thin film of icing ) , it's the United Kingdom and Ireland that are Icing Champions. This appealing pastry you're talking about must be a new world blend.

Enjoy!

oh, give that part to me, please! it's the best!

-joe (yum!) friday

YUM!

thanks, t!

Ah!!! Great !Words fail! No, still have some;
the whole page is running half way out of screen.
But stuwm, it's worth it!
Sorry,sorry, just look a the words:"this too shall pass" on the side.I mean, HOW?

SOLD! If I'm ever in B.C., you know I'll have to pop in to see you for tea and icing.

On seing that large cinnamon bun can you imagine how some bugs are fascinated by carnivorous plants?
Cephalotus
Some plants are non vegetarians too.They really look like fun.

I'll stick to the cinnamon buns.
Hey Belle, give me 4 hours notice and I'll do home made cinnamon buns, I'll even make icing for yours.

I think the flight from Montréal takes 7 hours.

Good thing you like the buns and I like the icing, who can resist warm, out-of-the-oven buns. You can eat the buns before I arrive, and I'll have the icing while we share some tea.

Then we can go bamboshing out on the town what with our sugar buzz. HA!