Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
About croaker for $100 -- When I was in High School (mid-70s, DC suburbs), we sometimes called all paper money "frogs" when we were trying to be cool -- I'm pretty sure the idea was that, 1) they are green 2) there usually aren't as many in one's pocket as one remembered, leading us to believe they could hop out by themselves.
It seems like an easy jump from "U.S. Dollar" = "greenback" and a "croaker" has a green back.
I haven't found any first words between Tarzan and Jane, but considering his time with Belgian missionaries, I would suppose it was, "Bon jour, Mademoiselle Porter." If not in English. It definitely wasn't "Me Tarzan, you Jane" and her name was not Parker. Movies rarely get anything right!
Aptronyms: In my parents' time (early 1930s) there was a biology professor at SMU named Longnecker, and for a time, he lived on Lover's Lane. Rumor was that snickers over the name and address was partly responsible for the move. I had a course there in abnormal psychology under John Strange. His text book on the subject (published while I was taking the course) appeared on I Love Lucy and most viewers thought it was just a sight gag.
I know I posted this in some other thread awhile ago, but the topic of aptronyms seems to keep popping up, so here's my best "find" to date.
There was a dentist in north Phoenix named Pullem, as his sign proclaimed. I never checked on what his first name was, but wouldn't it be funny if it was something like Ignacius or Isaac or Ivan?
I was about to post the same. If the question had been about "toweling" rather than "paper toweling", I think Martha would have readily accepted the us.Gemma said:
I was surprised by your discussion of paper towelling. Don't you call the fabric that bath towels and bath robes are made out of "towelling?" That's normal to me (in the UK). It's also the first definition of towelling/toweling in the OED (four quotations: 1582-1880).
A little bit of searching online reminded me that I also know this fabric by the name terry-towelling, which I discover can also be called terrycloth or terry. I'm assuming that you use a non-towelling name like this, or else the use of "paper towelling" wouldn't have seemed so alien to Martha.
All that said…. I've never heard someone refer to "paper towelling" before, and I wouldn't be inclined to ask for a roll of paper towels with "pass me the paper towelling, would you?" I mostly use it in the kitchen anyway, where we dodge this question because it's called "kitchen roll."
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)