[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning "ability to,"
and bics, meaning "withstand tremendous boredom.

Dave Barry

 

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently, I'm
not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.

George Carlin

 

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

Mark Twain

 

There is a great need for a sarcasm font.

Darynda Jones

 

McDonald's being the official restaurant of the Olympics is like smoking
being the official medicine of cancer.

Robert Downey, Jr.

 

Your services might be as useful as a barbershop on the steps of a
guillotine.

Rowan Atkinson

 

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Furthest and farthest

 

It's likely that a speaker of American English would prefer farthest,
because that spelling has survived in the US longer than in British English,
in which furthest is now almost universal in its various usages.

 

The same is true of the comparatives, farther and further.

 

Farther is historically a variant of further and it's possible to argue that
there's no need for both. Further is the comparative of an ancestor of
English forth, meaning outwards or onwards. Farther came into being in
Middle English under the influence of an old comparative of far, which was
replaced in time by further and farther.

 

This connection with far strongly influenced the view of scholars about the
way that the words "ought" to be used: farther when a literal distance was
meant and further for quantity or degree. The conventional view was summed
up by Henry Bradley, who compiled the letter F in the Oxford English
Dictionary. In the etymological note for farther he wrote:

 

In standard English the form farther is usually preferred where the word is
intended to be the comparative of far, while further is used where the
notion of far is altogether absent; there is a large intermediate class of
instances in which the choice between the two forms is arbitrary. - Oxford
English Dictionary, First edition, 1897.

 

The position was even less clear than he supposed. Both versions had
coexisted in the language happily for centuries with little or no
distinction of sense between them. In 1926, Fowler disagreed with Bradley:

 

The fact is surely that hardly anyone uses the two words for different
occasions; most people prefer one or the other for all purposes, & the
preference of the majority is for further; the most that should be said is
perhaps that farther is not common except where distance is in question. - A
Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H W Fowler, 1926.

 

The British position has polarised even more since. A search of a British
newspaper database of the past twenty years found that of the total uses of
the two words, less than 2% are spelled farther.

 

Caveats are required: in American English farther has remained more common
than in British English; in both countries, when it appears, farther almost
always refers to physical distances.

 

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What does the word "pizza" mean in Italian?

A: Pie, which makes the phrase "pizza pie" redundant.

 

Who said: "Never eat more than you can lift"?

A: Miss Piggy.

 

Where does the name "Sanka" come from?

A: Sans caffeine, French for without caffeine.

 

What does VVSOP mean on a cognac bottle?

A : Very Very Superior Old Pale.

 

What was the drink we know as the Bloody Mary originally called?

A: The Red Snapper, which was its name when it crossed the Atlantic from
Harry's New York Bar in Paris.

 

What product did Mother Nature personified endorse in a television
commercial, and who played the role?

A: Chiffon Margarine; Dena Dietrich played Mother Nature.

 

What is the traditional food served a Wimbledon each year?

A: Strawberries and cream.