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Why was curried favour made with chestnuts originally?
Why is Doctor Who fighting the encyclopaedia?
And why is Batman a bastard?
Answers on a post, card. Furst prize: a teddy bare Second prize: 2
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AUGHHHHHHHH, not again! I still haven't gotten over those horses! So, speaking of completely irrelevant: REGIONAL NOTE When a Southerner favors a relative, he or she is not giving that person special privileges; rather, the Southerner looks like that relative. Favor can be either transitive—She favors her father—or intransitive with a compound subject: She and her father favor. This sense of favor goes back to early modern English: “This young lord Chamont/Favors my mother” (Ben Jonson). The verb derives from the noun favor, which was used from the 15th to the 19th century to mean “appearance, aspect; the countenance, face”: “What makes thy favor like the bloodless head/Fall'n on the block?” (Tennyson). This sense of the noun is now archaic, but the verb thrives in the English of the Southern United States.
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the irish alo use favor that way, jackie, (or did).
i grew up hearing it, but almost never use favor in that sense. (just as i don't ever use the word dear to mean expensive or pricey). but then the irish (as well as americans) have a long history of using word the english think to be archaic (just because they have stopped using them)
my ex husband hated when i used the verb to be, and meant 'leave me alone (to my self)'-- (Leave me be!)- even the beatles use of 'let it be' didn't molify him. he insisted it was an improper use.
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... are the same verb in many languages (ger. lassen, port. deixar, e.g.) Maybe one of our resident scholars can affirm whether there used to be a single word in English which then split into the two nuanced forms.
~~~ Edit: Mav's quiz went straight over my head. [whooosh]
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And it's a wise child who knows whom he favors.
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Why was curried favour made with chestnuts originally?
A currycomb is used to groom a chestnut roan, if you'll pardon the redundance.
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Brilliant. One down, two to go...
~ and go on, nuncle, give 'em the etymology, don't just tease :)
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>And why is Batman a bastard?
because Ubu said so. -ron o.
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Ta.
Curry fr. ME curreien, AN curreier 'to arrange, curry' fr. VL conredare 'to make ready'. Supposedly, curry favor is from ME currayen favel with favel, fauvel being a fallow colored horse, which was a symbol of deceit, so, to be hypocritical. [Cribbed from the AH dictionary.]
Curry, as in the yummy Indian food, from the kari leaf, Murraya koenigii, (kari is a Tamil or Dravidian word I assume), later transfered to the powder of many spices which is the curry powder of today.
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and anyone who has groomed a horse will know of a curry comb.
so... Dr Who, created by Terry Nation....
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