Entertainment For Lively Minds
Common Misconceptions Exposed!
Posted by Spartacus Mills on 15 February 2012 - 4:53pm.
This is your chance to be a smart-arse! And mine, so I'll go first:
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is widely considered to mean "Where are you Romeo?" but it doesn't.
Any more?
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Hitler
Two testicles, Göring however lost one in 1923.
You say that..
A dental journal a few years back carried a report on how Hitler's charred body was identified by his dental records. The original pathologist's report described the body as being that of a "monorchidic male" i.e. that of a chap deficient in the testicular department to the number of one.
It didn't mention anything about Göering having two but rather small. Or that the missing testicle being located in the Albert Hall.
Now they
know how many balls it takes to fill the Albert Hall
Not a Veggie either
I believe that another AH myth is that he was a vegetarian. He apparently had many gastrointestinal problems, and at one point was put on a vegetarian diet by his doctor. But he never stuck to it as he loved a good sausage. Ahem.
I defer to your skill at talking bollocks
It was something I was told a long time ago yet further research (which is now much easier using a thing called the internet) shows I am wrong and you are right.
I could be all pedantic and pretend I meant he had two balls until he lost one at the Somme.
Dropping the C bomb
does not make a non funny joke funny.
Am I the only one confused here?
Dropping the C bomb?
What C bomb has been dropped?
C bomb
A polite term for c***.
A polite term
Sorry, but I havent seen the word cunt mentioned so far.
I am still confused.
I think...
..he means that it's a common misconception that dropping the C bomb makes an unfunny joke funny, re the title of the thread Common Misconceptions Exposed.
That is
what I meant.
It's good to create misconception in a thread about misconceptions. Unless I'm wrong about that...
This is
like a crash course in Stewart Lee comedy deconstruction.
Stewart Lee
“Everyone got very excited about the scene in the film Kick Ass where a 13-year old says c***, which is the c-word isn’t it? If I want to hear that I just get on a bus in the part of London where I live. I heard a teenage girl use the c-word just the other day but, to be fair, there were mitigating circumstances – her daughter was being very annoying.”
Vegetable Stew
His pop at comedian Russell Howard's charity bike rides
Osborne is in reality
Borrowing far more than the Labour Party were proposing to do
Government borrowing
Labour, of course, in outlining their borrowing requirements, failed to include the interest on what they had already borrowed - roughly £40bn a year. That's compound interest, which just keeps growing. Even as a lifelong Labour supporter, I cannot pretend - and neither should you - that the Tories are causing this massive debt, nor adding to it unnecessarily. Gordon Brown will go down in history as the most profligate Chancellor ever. Our grandchildren will still be paying off the debts he incurred. The common misconception here is that Gordon Brown is an intelligent bloke. In fact, he's an economic moron.
The alternative being
to let the banking system collapse.
I think Brown was correct in preventing that from happening, though the price of the bankers' incompetence and greed is high.
I'm afraid I don't buy the 'Blame Brown' line, given the worldwide nature of the debt crisis. If it was a UK-only, and the Tories had a history of calling for tighter regulation of the City, then you'd have a point.
And I speak, of course, as a lifelong Conservative supporter.
The alternative being
to let the banking system collapse.
I think Brown was correct in preventing that from happening, though the price of the bankers' incompetence and greed is high.
I'm afraid I don't buy the 'Blame Brown' line, given the worldwide nature of the debt crisis. If it was a UK-only, and the Tories had a history of calling for tighter regulation of the City, then you'd have a point.
And I speak, of course, as a lifelong Conservative supporter.
Hi 67
I'm not actually trying to make a pro-Labour point - just that reality and rhetoric have now ceased to even resemble each other now. We've got all the austerity and massive cuts but are still borrowing more - because the Tarquins and Ruperts have wrecked the finances so much. A plague on both parties, they really are as bad as each other - and as for the LDs.... grrrr....
So we agree....
.... a plague on all of them. I must admit, I had high hopes for Mr Cameron, but he is blowing with the wind, like the rest of them. Useless.
Yes we agree -
I love a story with a happy ending (if you see what I mean)
I'm not sticking up for either.
Currently, it's a crisis which we can't fathom the answer. just because no-one's actually bombing us, and it's only talk of debts - much of which seems to be around many of us but not affecting a lot of us personally - it'll only hit home if/when things turn out like Greece: we're on the edge but not there yet.
Tony had nothing really to do but declare unnecessary class war (save-the-foxes, bash-the-hunters) as a sop to back-bench old Labour types, and to start a few wars.
Gordon had to become an effective PM only because the mess had been created on his watch and he was responsible: what else did he do in govt?
This problem is too big for Tories to sort out on their own, and before the next election.
If I see Ed Balls anywhere near the controls again, we're all doomed.
Right, what next?
I think its a wave of debt
That MIGHT carry everything before it, or we might fudge it and stagger on under an outrageous and increasing burden until a long series of nasty deals are done...
Either way I think the country has been sold out from under us and we've been left with the bill for our own takeover. The City has run totally out of control using us as the stake in its deranged bets, and will now happily act as bailiff to the whole bloody country.
To think - we used to OWN and MAKE all that stuff... all gone, every bit of it...
stuck record
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it has not all gone. Relative decline (to world's 6th largest manufacturer) is not absolute decline. It may not feel like that in the north east, but that does not stop it being true.
I agree with the rest of what you write.
OK
Fair enough. But - pretty much all passed from beneficial British ownership. My employers are among the few really big British companies left - and we are run by imbecile accountants on massive and accelerating salaries.
I'm confused
Is the misconception that despite their intention to borrow less and reduce the deficit, the current government is borrowing more than than its political opponents had intended to?
Or that despite claims from opposition politicians and sections of the media, the current government are not in fact borrowing more than their opponents had intended to?
The former
And apologies for my heavy handed lack of precision
Ryan Giggs
Could never have qualified to play for England. He was born in Wales, as were his parents and grandparents.
He qualified for England schoolboys due to attending an English school.
Duncan Jones...
...was actually named Duncan Jones, not Zowie Bowie.
Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones
to be precise, the Haywood bit being his grandparent's first name, though coincidentally his step-sister shares the name as a surname from Iman's first marriage.
Though he now prefers to be known as Joe, I believe.
Well, no...
he prefers to be called Duncan, hence the credit 'Directed by...' etc.
Fair enough BT
but we don't know what his nearest and dearest call him.
I go by three names, one's a work name and the other's a given name. But my nearest and dearest don't use either unless they're
a) Cross with me
b) Think I'm being rude, in which case it's used as an interjection.
Out of curiosity
which of the three is 'donttellhimpike'? My money's on 'work name'.
If that's my workname
you are Mr Sumner and I claim my £5.
I am, in fact, Mrs Lennon.
Chameleons
do not change colour to match their surroundings.
Do they
just do it then for shits and giggles?
They do it for
courtship and as a response to stress. Not for camouflage.
So I was right!
Courtship = The Giggles
Response to Stress = The Shits
'No Woman, No Cry'
means don't cry my luv rather than no woman no bother.
Glad I started this blog
I am learning things.
May I ask,
if "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" doesn't mean "Where are you Romeo?" what does it mean?
(Not contesting your exposé, genuinely interested)
"Why are you Romeo?"
Or in the context of the play, "Why must you be a Montague?" Juliet is bemoaning the fact that her love is from the rival family.
As a Swede...
...I actually find it easier to read Shakespeare in English than in old Swedish translations.
The old English words makes a lot of sense to a Swede (wherefore = varför) but older Swedish can give you a headache from all its solemnity.
Wherefore
means Why, so Juliet is asking "why are you Romeo?" since he is from the opposing family and so any romance is doomed from the start
Second time that's happened to me this week - someone else posts exactly the same reply at the same time!
Great minds
Ageing Hipster Synchronicity
SpaceBoy informs me.
To which he inevitably added TMFTL.
I like to be a bit
Predictable .... To which i was tempted to add an emoticon ..
☺
Which is why I get pissed off with The Bard.
Impossible to understand without extensive analysis.
And the bloody jokes aren't funny either.
Disagree, Mr Law...
...out of context that quote is misrepresented for sure, but if read/watched, it is clear what it means without extensive analysis.
The next line is "Deny thy father and refuse thy name" which rather clarifies the line.
Does it?
Or does it when someone explains it to you.
In theatre going
There is very little worse than the 'Shakespeare laugh' which people do not because they find it funny, but because they wish others around them to know that they know it's a joke.
I don't...
...find most funny, but I went to a marvellous performance of As You Like It at the Globe a couple of years ago and laughed all the way through.
I was a bit afraid I'd turned into one of "those" people who laughed for showing off purposes. But, actually, I *think* it was because it was very funny.
I find the RSC make even the most
Unpromising looking ones gripping, and the best productions, eg Toby Stephens in Coriolanus back in the day, are just great. Humour harder to do than drama in a way, but they manage it.
Disclaimer, I also saw young Frankenstein on DVD the other day, funniest couple of hrs I have had in ages, wouldn't call myself excessively highbrow ...
The laugh
When I was studying Twelfth Night for O level our teacher told us that the following exchange was funny, because English teachers had been saying for centuries that it was funny. Get ready to stitch your splitting sides back together.
When the line came round on the obligatory school trip to Stratford a group of us roared with sarcastic laughter. We earned a dirty look from the teacher, but to be honest there were so many professional Shakespeare watchers around us doing their own imitation of genuine laughter that I don't think anyone else noticed.
I adore Shakespeare, but he was pretty rubbish at two-hander jokes.
Skinner on Shakespeare
Superb:
yeah but
imagine Baldrick and Blackadder doing that gag
Funny I was just thinking
"What's up with Frank's hair on that clip? He looks like he's in the first series of Blackadder..."
Which, of course, contained regurgitated chunks of Shake's history plays. Aaaaand we've come full circle.
A-ha ha, yes...very good
I know what you mean. Also, the friend(s) who laugh rather too loudly at the beginning, because they know the cast.
NWNC was written by Bob Marley although...
... it was credited to "Vincent Ford." Ford was a friend of Marley's and by giving him the credit ensured that the royalties would allow Ford's soup kitchen to keep going.
I do remember seeing a reissued single of NWNC credited to Bob Marley, though.
Always wondered, maybe you know....?
Several songs on Bob's albums are credited to Rita Marley. Famously on their live album "Hanx!" Stiff Little Fingers introduce the song Johnny Was as "a song written by Bob Marley" although it is credited to Rita. So is this another example of Bob's largesse or was Rita a writa?
(And hence, is one of the most famous recorded mistakes no mistake?)
I don't, unfortunately.
No Woman No Cry
Doesn't it mean Man up and stop your sobbing? i.e. it's not addressed to a woman
Acronyms
Many so-called 'acronyms' (BBC, ITV, RSPCA, HJH) are no such thing. They're just abbreviations.
An acronym is an abbreviation that forms a pronouncable word: NATO, RoSPA, FIFA, radar, etc.
The Great Wall of China...
... is not visible from the Moon - nothing man-made is.
Are you Dave Amitri in disguise?
Surely the stuff we left on the moon is visible from the moon?
Or were we never really there?.
A Japanese satellite
took some pictures of remnants of the moon landing.
Of course, they're up to their necks in this conspiracy as well. Them and the Russians …
btw Some people think weightlessness occurs
because astronauts are outside the Earth's atmosphere. But weightlessness is a result of escaping the effects of Earth's gravitational pull.
NASA has a plane it uses to train astronauts which creates zero gravity (when you call it that it's obvious) without leaving the Earth's atmosphere.
In 2007 Stephen Hawking became the first disabled person to experience zero g:
Zero gravity…
...is not the correct term for what astronauts experience in orbit. That is zero G.
The difference is that they no longer have weight, but they still have mass.
No no no!
Weightlessness is not a consequence of escaping the Earth's gravity.
The space station & "vomit comet" flights are in free fall; that is they're all falling together at the same rate, all equally affected by gravity, and so there appears to be no gravity. (The station is in orbit, and the flights are at the top of a wide trajectory.) In fact, they are all very much still within the Earth's gravity.
Another effective way of learning things
is to say something wrong and be corrected. Thanks chaps. That is Stephen Hawking though, right?
Yes
but "I was Stephen Hwaking's Stunt Double" has a ring to it, n'est-ce pas ?
The origin of 'posh'
is not 'Port out, starboard home', nor is 'Neds' an acronym short for 'Non-Educated Delinquents' - they're 'backronyms', and apparently (i.e. I read it on Wikipedia) 'most etymologies of common words or phrases that suggest origin from an acronym are false'.
And in what universe is/was Victoria Beckham, or whatever
she was called in the Spice Girls, posh? She's never worn tweed in her life.
Common as muck. I mean, twin toilets - ghastly.
With all due credit to Nigel Blackwell
The last book of the bible is the book of Revelation, not Revelations
But <3%
of gargoyles look like Bob Todd
Are you sure?
Many of those I have seen in Oxford have a passing resemblence to him:
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=bob+todd&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1278&bih=62...
Green German football shirts
The story goes that no one wanted to play football with Germany after World War II and Ireland was the first country to do so. And in honour of Ireland, Germany's second-choice kit is green.
Except that Germany's first game after the war was against Switzerland and the shirts are green because it's the colour of the German football association.
However, British Racing Green
the bestest colour in the whole wide world, is in honour of Ireland, where they hosted the first ever motor racing series in the 1900s because motor racing was banned in the UK.
Germany's current second kit
is black.
They've gone back to green
Rather nice actually.
That top
is a bit tight.
While I remember
you don't lose 40 per cent of your body heat through your head and sugary drinks don't make kids hyperactive.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/17/medicalresearch-humanbehav...
Tourette's Syndrome
Most sufferers do not have outbursts of inappropriate language.
Fucking bollocks do they.
I f**king
knew that one, tw*t.
And another one..
It isn't Tourette's syndrome.
It is Tourette syndrome.
F***ing
pedant
You've no idea
of how tiring these remarks are if you've lived with someone with Tourette Syndrome or tourettism.
Least of all when you have to explain their behaviour to onlookers, or explain the obsessive compulsive behaviour that often accompanies it.
Sorry to sound so humourless, I'm not trying to be PC or have a pop at anyone by saying that, just so you don't get the wrong idea.
I'm afraid I have some bad news for you all
concerning Gerry Rafferty.. No? Okay then. The "homo" prefix in the word "homosexual" does not refer to man as in "homo erectus", but means "the same" as in the word homogenous. Homosexual - likes the same sex, heterosexual prefers the other lot.
The Glitter Band
Do not appear on a single one of Gary Glitter's singles.
what's the emoticon
for staring slack jawed at the screen? Insert it here! Was it all sessioneers then? I am gutted.
Mike Leander & Gary Glitter himself...
... are the only players on the "canonical" GG recordings, I believe. The first track that GG and the Glitter Band ever played on together was "Suspicious Minds" on the B.E.F. "Music Of Quality & Distinction" album in 1982...
Come to think of it..
..do they even appear on THEIR OWN records?
Sorry Spartacus
It is a myth that Newcastle United thought Dalglish was winding them up when he offered £35m for Andy Carroll - he genuinely believed he was worth that amount.
Worth every penny
And if we'd paid 35million pennies for him I would be satisfied. In fact £3.5m would have been a bargain. £35m? Only because the Torres money was burning a hole in his pockets.
The story that I heard is that...
...Liverpool went to Newcastle before selling Torres telling them that Torres wanted out and they wanted to replace him with Carroll. Liverpool said 'name your price' and Newcastle said 'OK, knock 20 million off whatever you get for Torres and that's what we want'. Presumably thinking, with Torres already just a shell of his former self, that they would only get 30-35 million.
I imagine a lot of people fell off their chairs in St James' Park when the actual figure came through...
The red juice in red meat
is not blood. It is mainly water with myoglobin.
Some of these "non-facts"...
...are blowing my tiny little mind.
The Sun isn't yellow,
it's white.
*and at sunset, it's a redtop. boom tish*
I thought
it was chicken
And it's black as well
As well as emitting light across the whole EM spectrum to make the sun white, it is also a perfect absorber of light, making it a black body (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body)
Someone should turn this blog into a TV panel show.
Lemmings do not commit mass suicide.
This was a myth that was invented by the Disney studios for a Scrooge Mc Duck cartoon strip and perpetuated in a nature documentary showing mock up footage of lemmings leaping off a cliff in Norway.
Al fresco
is Italian for "in the fresh air". But whereas a Brit will interpret that to mean "in the open air/outside" an Italian will interpret it to mean "away from the direct sunlight/where the air is cool". Almost the opposite. Ish.
Btw, this is a great thread. STD, I particularly like the one about "homosexual" having (I presume) a Greek rather than Latin etymology (ooh, get me!). It means that I've always pronounced it wrongly, and that people who pronounced it oddly -similarly to homogenous- were, in fact, correct! As opposed to wrong, as I had always assumed. Well I never!
I thought it meant "in
I thought it meant "in prison" - any Italian speakers out there?
re "homosexual" - yes it's "hommer" rather than "hoe mow"
In prison?
I've lived in Italy most of my life and have never heard that. But it might well be a slang term I've never come across (regional perhaps?). Mostly it's used to mean "in the shade". Sometimes even "inside", when inside is cooler than outside under the sun.
Yep, S'true
I asked an Italian former student of mine about this meaning of al fresco and he confirmed it
I asked an Italian friend
who confirms that yes, it is a slang term for prison. So just like we say "in the cooler"? Interesting.
Thumbs up/Thumbs down
Thumbs up did not definitely mean "spare him" during gladiatorial combat, and neither did thumbs down mean finish the threatened man off.
It's possible that thumbs up represented the act of thrusting the sword up into the loser's chest, while a thumbs down symbol was interpreted as the act of resheathing ones sword and sparing the vanquished.
However if you consider the blood lust of the Romans, the translation into good thing and bad thing isn't totally lost.
This is turning into QI
Tedious factoids - my speciality!
Water isn't clear, it's (very very light) blue.
To "shoot yourself in the foot" shouldn't really mean an accidental error, as it was originally a soldier's deliberate act of self-mutilation to avoid being sent to the front.
A scapegoat doesn't just mean someone who takes the blame for a load of others, it has to be an innocent someone.
In Christianity, Hell is not an Old Testament concept which Jesus pushed aside in favour of principles-based decency: hell is mentioned only once (if at all, depending what version of the Bible you're reading) in the whole of OT, whereas it's mentioned about a dozen times by Jesus. [NB I'm not trying to start a religious debate here - this is genuinely a widely-held misconception in my experience]
In the famous fight between Cassius Clay and Henry Cooper, immediately after CC was downed at the end of the 4th round, he did *not* gain an unfair advantage by his trainer deliberately tearing his glove (the theory goes that the added time need to find a replacement glove gave him crucial extra minutes to recover, so that he went on to win). At best the added time gained was a princely 6 seconds, which wasn't going to change the result (this factoid (c) the excellent More Or Less R4 statistics programme).
Factoids
Factoids are not, as popularly thought, facts. They're actually the opposite of facts. A factoid is a piece of misinformation that's repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
This leads us to the exciting conclusion that the definition of factoid is itself a factoid.
I thought
That he would have been counted out? Not so?
If you laid the same number of all the biscuits I've ever eaten
in a line, by the time you'd finished it would be about 5 inches long.
Due to the fact that I'd right behind you scoffing them all over again.
Sorry, the usual flippancy from me. I don't know anything properly interesting.
But
This is still my favourite one so far
But
This is still my favourite one so far
In fact so much so that I got overexcited and doubled up
If I had all the money I spent on drink...
... I'd spend it on drink.
Sydney
isn't the capital of Australia.
Great thread, by the way.
and Istanbul
is not the capital of Turkey.
Nor Johannesburg,
South Africa.
And Rangoon no longer appears to be the capital of Burma (or Myanmar if your prefer). It is now apparently Naypyidaw: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17035192
Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople.
Incredibly, it would seem that Colombo is no longer
the capital of Sri Lanka. According to Wikipedia, the capital is now... (brace yourselves) Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte.
Crikey, that's going to be a difficult one to remember.
Useful aide memoire..
'Jedward in a Puree.'
If only...
Sounds like
a middle order batsman-wicketkeeper to me.
Parachutes
I've known many people who believed that skydivers shoot upwards upon opening their parachutes.
This is merely an impression caused by TV.
The skydiver with the camera continues plummeting whilst the skydiver onscreen has his progress slowed by the 'chute.
You think
they'd give the guy with the camera a parachute as well.
That's scandalous.
Sheesh.
Do you know why blind people don't skydive?
It scares the shit out of their guide dogs.
Crab sticks do not actually
Crab sticks do not actually contain any crab, and, since 1993, manufacturers have been legally obliged to label them "crab flavoured sticks."
Dr Hook
is not actually a medical doctor
But judging from their TOTP appearances
Some, if not all, of the band fancied themselves as gynaecologists.
Dr Phil
is not a doctor either.
and Joe The Plumber was not a plumber, nor was his name Joe. He was just an asshole.
Gregory Isaacs
Is not 12" tall.*
*The Cool Ruler. (*cough* where is that coat check girl?)
The seasons
Are not caused by our slightly varying distance from the Sun over the year. They are caused by the Earth's axial tilt (23 degrees).
??
doesn't this tilt mean we are further away though? And if it does, how much further? And if it doesn't, why is it colder (or warmer?)
Tis to do with the amount of atmosphere
the sun's rays have to pass through before they get to you.
In the summer, your hemisphere is leaning toward the sun. The sun's rays hit the atmosphere at close to 90 degrees, so the rays pass through a small amount of matter before they get to you. Therefore less atmosphere for the rays to get through = less heat absorbed by atmosphere by the time it gets to you = more heat for you.
In Winter, your hemisphere is leaning away, so you get fewer hours of sunshine/daylight each day, and there is more atmosphere for the rays to get through = less heat for you. The angle the sun's rays hit the Earth also means that more rays get deflected away, so even less energy gets to you. The tilt is also why the sun is lower in the sky in the Winter months, and you get blinded by it when you go to/from work in the morning/evenings...
See http://www.khanacademy.org/video/how-earth-s-tilt-causes-seasons?topic=n... for a longer explanation...
Christmas in Australia.
Just as the direction of the Earth's rotation is made manifest by annual reports of Australians celebrating Christmas before we do, you can be assured that the seasons are a result of axial tilt by the fact Christmas comes in the middle of the Australian summer. At that time they are getting all the benefit which we we enjoy six months later.
You need three points!
Cripes! It occurs to me that the earlier sunrise in Australia tells us nothing about the direction of the Earth's rotation. What's important is when sunrise happens at the points in between (which I had taken for granted).
If the Earth rotated in the opposite direction we might still say the sun rose in Australia first and then here. The difference would be that morning would come to New York before London rather than vice versa.
Now I can go back to work.
Very well explained
and another good resource link!
I'm teaching this to Yr 7 next week, so I hope you don't mind my plagiarising you shamelessly.
Aw shucks...
Glad to hear it was useful!
The Khan Academy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
is one of those things that makes me feel even more like an underachiever than I usually do.
See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0668fc92-002e-11e1-8441-00144feabdc0.html#axzz... for an interesting profile.
Crocodile does not
taste like chicken.
A shooting star is not a star
A shooting star is not a star
It's not a star at all
A shooting star's a meteor
That's heading for a fall
A shooting star is not a star
Why does it shine so bright?
The friction as it falls through air
Produces heat and light
A shooting star, or meteor
Whichever name you like
The minute it comes down to Earth
It's called a meteorite
Brilliant!
Saved to my 'teaching resources' list.Thanks.
Their
"Here Comes Science" LP comes with short films for every song
and is absolutely brilliant - unless you are teaching creationism
Chapeau...
...Dogface. My 2.5 year old was able to name all the planets thanks to this album. It mage me so happy I decided to keep him...
The plural of octopus and similar words
the plural of octopus is octopuses. Octopus is a Greek word. The "i" plural is for latin words. If you want to be a smart arse you should pluralize as octopodes.
Referendums/Referenda is another one where the fancy latinate plural is incorrect - this from the OED:
Referendums is logically preferable as a plural form meaning ballots on one issue (as a Latin gerund, referendum has no plural). The Latin plural gerundive referenda, meaning things to be referred, necessarily connotes a plurality of issues.
Actually, apart from a few exceptions due to common usage (e.g. Fungus/Fungi), imports into English from other languages are usually treated as if the ARE English, for example we say forum/forums and NOT fora. This means plurals such as stadiums are more acceptable than stadia
... and in the case of "children," "oxen"...
... and "brethren" to name but three, we use the Old English plural.
Isn't it the case that the ones that stick do so because they
are easier to say
It's just easier to say fungi than (what?) funguses
and children rather than (what?) childs
And hasn't brethren as a plural only survived because of religious orders. For most of us, brothers -being easy to say - is just the job.
See also
Stigma, Schema, Trauma. All Greek borrowings.
All should pluralise as -ata not with -s, i.e. stigmata, schemata, traumata
And trauma should be pronounced as 'trorma', not 'trowma'.
Similarly
Criteria is a plural. You can have "a criteria"; the singular is criterion.
See also:
phenomenon and phenomena
automaton and automata
polyhedron and polyhedra
Not to mention the singular
datum, of which the plural is data. Though,in computing, data is often used in this plural sense (almost like a collective noun), even though most people think it singular.
Road tax
technically does not exist. However, even now, some authorities still refer to vehicle excise duty, to give it its proper name, incorrectly as road tax. The money goes into central funding rather than road maintenance and repair, and has done since Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He began the process of breaking the link between vehicle taxation and road maintenance in 1926, saying:
“Entertainments may be taxed; public houses may be taxed; racehorses may be taxed…and the yield devoted to the general revenue. But motorists are to be privileged for all time to have the whole yield of the tax on motors devoted to roads. Obviously this is all nonsense…Such contentions are absurd, and constitute…an outrage upon the sovereignty of Parliament and upon common sense.”
Finally, to quote the DVLA:
“There has been no direct relationship between vehicle tax and road expenditure since 1937.”
Policy and External Communications Directorate, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA)
You might enjoy this
That's amazing
Maybe I should start recording my cycle rides into town and submit them as evidence. Honestly, the number of times people have driven at me on a roundabout (from the left) whilst I was already going round it is just unbelievable. People drive at me from sideroads as I'm going down the main road as well.
Now admittedly I'm not a car, however, I did pass my driving test and am aware of two things: on entering a roundabout, you are to give way to vehicles approaching from the right, and on entering a main road from a side road, you must first give way to oncoming vehicles, as they have right of way.
Note that, people, vehicles, not just cars. I may not have an engine, but I have wheels and as such am a vehicle, just not a motorised one.
Thank you for your time in reading this special service announcement.
It may simply be
she got pissed off because you passed her.
Years ago I got chased by some guys in a car at Wandsworth Bridge. I was passing between the lanes of traffic on the bridge when these three guys in a stationary car started screaming abuse at me. I know for sure I hadn't touched their car, so I assumed they didn't like my two wheels passing their four. I got down to the lights and moved off when they changed. 100 or so yards down the road they passed me and pulled in, but I was past them before they could get out. I took the first right, heading towards Chelsea. In my mirror I could see their car turn into the road behind me. Fortunately it was a narrow road and while I could squeeze past the oncoming cars they couldn't and I got away safely.
It isn't my video
But you could be right. At rush hour I can get into town (5 miles away) quicker than a car. I always end up passing the same people over and over again and it must be frustrating for them.
The black socks worn by priests
Can only be bought at a specialist Catholic shop called Habit-Hat. Black socks bought from anywhere else are usually just very, very, very, very, very, very, very dark blue or very, very, very, very, very, very, very dark brown.
You can cadge a lift, but you can't Kajagoogoo.
Not even that
I can't even cadge a lift, I've always been Too Shy.
Mirrors don't show you what you look like.
You're the wrong way round. You think someone could have sorted this out by now.
So
when backwards7 looks in the mirror he sees 7?
Or does he call himself backwards7 because that's what he sees - and in reality he is just "7"?
Ed Miliband
It's just occurred to be that he probably thinks he looks quite normal.
Saxa from The Beat was/is not a salt magnate.
Women
don't really like you doing that.
They're just being polite.
Denis Law relegated Man Utd
Law's famous back-heeled goal gave City a 1–0 win but, thinking his goal had relegated United, he did not celebrate it (it turned out they would have been relegated even if the match had stayed a draw but Law did not know this at the time) Birmingham City's win on that same afternoon would have sent United down even if they had beaten City.So really Law's goal didn't relegate United.
Captain Pugwash
There were no characters called Seaman Staines or Master Bates, or anything like that.
Bobby McFerrin is alive and well - as is Steve from Blues Clues.
So
No Roger the Cabinboy either then?
God is not male.
That's why testicles are just the right height for kicking.
And she is black
John F. Kennedy…
...was not the youngest President of the United States.
He was the youngest elected to the office, but Theodore Roosevelt was younger when he succeeded the assassinated President McKinley in 1901.
When performing a difficult extraction..
No dentist has ever braced his knee on a patient's chest.
No matter what it feels like.
A tooth is pushed out, not pulled. Both feet stay firmly on the floor. The violence involved can, however, be significant.
But
has a patient ever woken up with their pants\knickers on back to front?
Prostate examinations
require just the one hand on the shoulder.
Prostrate examinations
involve kneeling down. Apparently.
There is no dark side in the moon
as a matter of fact, it's all dark.
Erm
No it's not. The sun shines on it, just as it shines on Earth.
The confusion is that the same side of the moon always faces Earth, so we can never see the other side; but both the near side and far side get approximately equal amounts of sunshine and are equally light and dark.
You mean that Irish bloke on the end of that famous album
has been lying to us for forty years?
[Yes it is a quote from what Danny Kelly called "that Pink Floyd album that sounded like they wore rubber gloves when they were recording it"]
As well as a concise
Statement of Roger Waters' cheerful view of the world ; -)
Curate's Egg
The expression "a curate's egg" refers to something (originally an egg I believe) that is partly good and partly bad, but as a result is entirely spoiled. There is a tendency to change this to mean something having a mix of good and bad qualities. This is wrong and must stop immediately.
True. And much as I hate to contradict the Osmonds
one bad apple *does* spoil the whole bunch.
"I don't care what they say......"
nice one,The Moose.
I read about this not so long ago.
It derives from a cartoon in Punch (I think) in the late 1800s or maybe very early 1900s in which a Bishop and his curate are having breakfast. The bishop says something like "you've got a bad egg, old man" to which the curate, trying to be diplomatic, replies "some of it is quite actually good, my lord."
Atchally
(Wikipedia)
Pretty Peggy O
Sometimes erroneously called The Maid of Fife.
However the song does not mention Fife. The placenames are Auchterless, Garioch, Aberdeen and ... Fyvie. All in much the same area and nowhere near Fife.
Presumably the relative unfamiliarity of the village of Fyvie, compared to the Kingdom of Fife, explains why even the Clancy Brothers got this one wrong.
And Garioch...
...is pronounced 'Geerie' (while Aberchirder is pronounced 'Foggieloan')
Also, Dublin is Gaelic for 'Blackpool'
"Apartheid" is pronounce "Apart Ate"
and not "Apart Hide". It's an Afrikaans word and thus of Dutch origin, not German. The "ei" pronunciation is "ay" in Dutch "eye" in German.
(And for further accuracy, strictly speaking the R should rrrrolled.)
When I left South Africa to return to the UK, for political reasons, back in the dreadful days of apartheid, my uncle believed that lefties (like me) falsely pronounced it "Apart Hate" to push their political agenda. I won him over (re the pronunciation, not re anything important).
There is no correlation...
...between Bono clicking his fingers and children dying in Africa.
You mean there's
no causation. The two events are correlated; that was the point of the exercise.
Another misconception exposed
That I know the meaning of the word 'correlation'.
You are of course absolutely right Brookster.
Placing a frog in water
and gradually raising the temperature to boiling.
The story goes that the frog will make no attempt to escape and will sit there being boiled to death. Which is completely untrue.
There's a trick to this though
You need to keep the lid on.
And...
Now isn't the winter of our discontent.
The winter of our discontent has been made glorious summer by this sun/son of York.
Shaky v. humour
There's an example right there - we're two lines into the play and he's offering that weak sun/son pun as an opening gambit, when 'discount tents' would be much funnier.
You pays your money...
You see a weak pun, I see brilliant word-play, moulded within the confines of a rigid iambic pentameter.
I heard that in an anecdote
By Robert Lindsay. Apparently a camping shop in Stratford on Avon had a sign in the window that said "Now is the discount of our winter tents". But you lot have probably all heard it already.
Off topic I know
But it does remind me of the Jewellers close to where I live which for years had a hand written sign in it's window 'Ears pierced while you wait'. I'm imagining most people who require that particular service choose to wait, given the Resevoir Dogs-esque alternative.
Yes but round the corner in Millets
Now is the winter of our discount tents
You only use 10% of your brain
Now, you're using all of your brain (although not necessarily at the same time).
This one's beloved of motivational speakers, many of whom — I suspect — do operate on ten per cent of average brain function.
Contary to popular belief
and recent evidence, Fernando Torres is in fact a striker.
Frankly, Mr Shankly
'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'
While it is true that Bill Shankly uttered the above words, it is a common misconception that he was being serious.
Churchill and gas
You'll frequently hear that Winston Churchill advocated he use of poison gas against the Kurds in Iraq. In fact he was advocating the use of non-lethal gases ("lachrymosal" or in other words, tear gas) as an alternative to dropping bombs and machine gunning them. So actually he was appealing for a more humane alternative.
Tremolo arm
Using the tremolo arm on a guitar does not produce tremolo. Tremolo is steady variations in volume. It actually produces vibrato - steady variations in pitch.
Beethoven was a terrible dancer.
There is no proper name for the back of the knees.
The elephant shrew never closes its eyes.
....all untrue
The elephant shrew never closes its eyes
Well, this one's got them sort of half-closed, anyway.
Though rats can't be sick
ie vomit
Oh bless
Nedder mind.
Shoot the f**kers. Twice.
1966 election affected by World Cup
It was often said that Labour increased its majority in 1966 from 4 to 98, as a result of the euphoric mood caused by England both hosting and winning the World Cup. Things did seem to be getting better under Labour, and so people voted for them.
It falls down because the election was held in March and the World Cup in July. It may not be so widely believed now, but I think the idea of sports tournaments affecting election results still lingers on in the back of the mind of politicians - hence the support for the London Olympics.
The Guinness in Ireland is better!
I drank the damn stuff in bars from Dublin to Cork, and it tasted exactly the same as it does in my local. Was it ever different? Why would it be? I'd be genuinely interested to know.
Can a swan actually "break your arm"? I've heard that so many times, but I can find no recorded evidence of it.
Oh, and they don't use gavels in English Courts - it's on TV just for effect.
The story I heard
was that Guinness in Ireland is not pasteurised (while UK Guinness is). No idea if that's true.
Could I tell the difference in a blind test? Probably not.
Edit: Although according to Wikipedia, all Guinness is pasteurised.
The manager of the London brewery
(while it was still open) was fed up with this one, so she arranged a blind tasting in Dublin, with some of Ireland's foremost tasters. They couldn't distinguish London Guinness from Dublin Guinness.
A practical reason
is that Guinness served in a bar in Ireland, where it is the main drink served, is constantly flowing from the tap whereas in a bar in England there might be long gaps between pints so the drink might be sat in the pipes for a while before the next service which could affect the taste of the pint you receive.
It's also psychological. I've drunk wine in France and thought it wonderful, bought some bottles, brought them home, opened one and discovered it tastes nothing like as interesting as it did on holiday.
But draught Guinness...
...isn't proper Guinness.
Bottled Guinness introduced 1759.
Draught Guinness introduced 1959.
You should try Guinness Extra Stout, 7.5% 330ml bottle
It's widely available (about £1.90 at Sainsbury's) and the odd bottle now and again just restores your faith in proper beer.
AB's point about beer "stood in the line" (as we Experts say...) is a good one. A bad pint of anything should be returned and replaced. What can happen is a following pint from the same pump reveals that there may be an out-of-condition keg or cask on (just bad, or out of date).
AB's point about wine tasting differently
is an interesting and useful one to remember.
It's what we Experts refer to when you've paid €3 for a bottle of some local plonk and you're sat on the quayside on a sunny afternoon, all relaxed & blissfully divorced from the daily grind - and then you take a bottle back to Blighty and drink it with a carry out M&S meal watching the telly in your living room with heat turned up on a dark November evening, and it doesn't taste the same.
See also: Restaurant Jazz Syndrome (RJS)
You're out having a lovely meal with friends, or maybe just the GLW. Nice music is tinkling away in the background. As the evening wears on and the drink goes down, you decide you really like this music they're playing, and before you leave you ask the waitress what it is. She goes "backstage", roots around, and jots down the name of the CD for you. You go home, order it from Amazon, and a few short days later it arrives. You uncork the wine, put on the CD... and it's shit. Really shit.
Ouzo or other local tipple
My wife and I had an apartment in Lindos on Rhodes. Early evening we'd sit on the balcony, have a glass of ouzo with water, watch the sun go down and head out later.
We took a bottle back home and decided the damned stuff tastes vile.
Swans
According to a man from the Rspb who was on 5live once, no swans have ever broken anyone's arms. They could however do so if they wished to.
You're a big man, but you're in bad shape.
With me it's a full time job. I'm a swan. Now behave yourself.
You were only supposed to break
His bladdy ARMS off!
No, a swan can't break a man's arm...
But a lady swan can break a male swan's heart – with just a glance...
(c) Harry Hill
It depends whether you are
drinking bottled or draught.
Bottled Guinness does taste different. Years ago I used to regularly drink bottled Guinness, which comes in three varieties: brewed and bottled in Ireland; brewed in Ireland, bottled in England; brewed and bottled in England.
Each had a distinctive taste. I did prefer the Irish brewed and bottled. Not everyone did.
Guinness Export
is bottle-conditioned and much stronger. A totally different drink. Popular in Jamaica, I'm told.
The Guinness served in UK pubs "Went Irish" about 5 years ago and I don't think it tastes different.
But like the Murphy's, I'm not bitter.
I'm told that swimming with the fishes
is actually quite a pleasant experience (unlike sleeping with the fishes or swimming with sharks).
The exception doesn't prove the rule
The word prove used to mean test or try (think of how we still talk of proofs being drafts), which was faithful to its Latin root (the Italian and Spanish verbs for to test/try are provare and probar, respectively). As such, the expression originally meant that an exception tested a rule, which makes sense. The current usage, meaning that the exception confirms a rule is nonsense.
But
if used in a rhetorical sense it does make sense in the sense that you say it doesn't make sense so in that sense the rhetorical sense is the exception that proves the rule.
You beat me to it, Hawkfall
That's my pet misconception. But people usually just stare at me blankly when I bring it up. Sigh.
The Edge
is not actually an edge. He is a balding Irish man with an electric guitar.
Muddy Waters
was neither muddy nor wet.
Irish?
I thought he was Welsh. My God, he is a Welshman born in Essex!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge
According to his accountant, he's Swiss
And Adam Clayton was born in Chinnor
Oxfordshire
Suzi Quatro is not so called
because she made a conscious decision to stop growing at the age of four. She is just short. And you are confusing the plot of The Tin Drum with the gossip pages of Celebs magazine. Again.
Always thought
that was a stage name; imagine my surprise when I found out her real name was Susan Quatro.
I once got into a daft argument with a work colleague, who refused to believe Madonna's real name was Madonna.
daft, you say ? Surely that sort
Of argument is what tea breaks were invented *for* ...
Jim Morrison
Not only was Jim not the Lizard King, he wasn't even at all related to reptilian royalty.
Unlike
Lady Gaga, Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie. Shapeshifting reptile illuminati the lot of them!
Not forgetting the Chameleon of Pop
Dame Bowie and his friend Sir Iguana of Pop. Clearly both members of the Illuminati.
Sugar in the petrol tank
Does not render your car useless.
Won't do it much good, but it will still probably start; sugar isn't soluble in petrol.
Mano a Mano
doesn't actually mean 'Man to Man', or 'one against one' as many a sports commentator - especially Phil Liggett when whipped into a frenzy by a climbers' duel in the Tour de France - seems to think.
It means 'hand to hand', originally 'your turn then my turn', or 'in person'.
Only love can break your heart?
Wrong. If you freeze your heart then drop it from a great height it will smash into many pieces.
The misconception that Radiohead are tedious and depressing
They are in fact the world's greatest alternative, forward-thinking rock band.
Glad we settled that up!
Moz and the Smiths
The late Mr Ravenscroft was right about many things, and one of them was to get annoyed at how people would lazily dismiss the Moz as being a miserabilist. His lyrics are full of jokes. There are more jokes on Smiths records than those of Madness, for example. Now *there* was a morose band.
But also a brilliant one.
Water going down the plughole/toilet
It doesn't spiral in one direction in the northern hemisphere and the other in the southern (the coriolis effect only affects enormous volumes of air/water) - despite what you might have seen on The Simpsons.
True
The man on the Equator in Africa that demonstrates water swirling opposite ways on either side is playing a really simple trick. I think Michael Palin and various Blue Peter presenters over the years have been taken in.
Hmm
"The man on the Equator in Africa that demonstrates water swirling opposite ways on either side..." - too distressing a visual image sorry...
Schizophrenia
is not Multiple Personality Disorder.
so many bad jokes make this mistake, really annoys me this one.
Annoys me too.
Yeah, and me.
Biddly Boom.
And, indeed, Tish.
GRRRRRRR!
: )
Both of us
are also annoyed