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Joined: Mar 2001
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Pelted sheep. Now I know that you're trying to pull the wool over our eyes ...
Perhaps he is just a mutton for punishment?
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 163
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Joined: Mar 2001
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Then I am failing to understand sumpin'!
Perhaps it is that "legal" English bears little relation to "normal" English in many cases. If it did, perhaps it wouldn't take five pages for my mortgage documents to say, "If you don't pay us each month, we take your house."
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Joined: Nov 2000
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 819 |
Somewhere between kitty turns and battering rams, could this thread proffer secrets of purr-pet-ual motion and elektricity?Oh, WW, you're most illuminating! We shall indeed sing the body electric along with Whitman if we strap amber rods as well as chicken tacky messy to the spinning cat, and make the carpet from wool, thereby providing both perpetual levitation and illuminating power! What a truly elegant machine!  BTW, my local PBS station is broadcasting program on Tesla tonight. Catch it if you really want to learn some electrigying things!
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 819
old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 819 |
Pelted sheep. Now I know that you're trying to pull the wool over our eyes ...
Only if you're an innocent demoiselle wearing a sweater.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
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my local PBS station is broadcasting program on Tesla tonight. Catch itCommercial-solicitation alert!  Will the station be explicitly soliciting donations during the program?  Will it mention Tesla's association with (if I recall correctly) General Electric? This is simply shocking!  ( )
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Joined: Nov 2000
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 819 |
Tesla's association with (if I recall correctly) General Electric? This is simply shocking!
It was Westinghouse - the place where wabbits welax. The show's on now - gotta go!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
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In old textbooks from when I was a kid there were pictures of castles being beseiged and the pole being used to batter the door had a carved ramshead, including horns, on it. Rams frequently battle one another for herd dominance by butting heads together until the opponent gives up (or dies.) Ewes don't exhibit this macho behaviour. So that's why they are called battering rams.
TEd
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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the pole being used to batter the door had a carved ramshead, including horns, on it...that's why they are called battering rams
Or either the other way around, one.
The AHD is unclear.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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fwiw, from OED2:
[f. battering vbl. n. + ram. Cf. L. aries ram, battering-ram.]
1. An ancient military engine employed for battering down walls, consisting of a beam of wood, with a mass of iron at one end, sometimes in the form of a ram's head; (also fig.).
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