Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I learned recently that the lyrics to Buffalo by Stump are not just a random selection of phrases but a character sketch of a couple of American tourists in London.

that the word Benelux comes from the names Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg.
I mean, of course it does. obviously. so why didn't I notice before?

is anyone talking about benelux these days?

...also means "good light" in Latin.

the number of times I've lost a physical boarding pass between check-in and the gate is absurdly high

Happened to me once, I went to the gate, explained, dude instantly printed out a new boarding pass! So I think as long as it's before boarding there's nowt to fear.

is anyone talking about benelux these days?

Yesterday, because we were playing Twilight Struggle.

hate trying to open an app which will invariably want to update and hope internet service works in a boarding line. taking a screen shot of the code beforehand = the way imo.

1.print your boarding pass
2.take a photo of that on your phone
3.print that out
4.scan that in and save it to your phone
5.send it in a message to the internet
6.get it printed onto a tshirt on redbubble
7. simply board plane with ease

I only learnt today that Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of 1964 movie Bedtime Story with David Niven and Marlon Brando. I also did not realise that 'The Hustle' was a remake.

Seersucker:

The word originates from the Persian words شیر shîr and شکر shakar, literally meaning "milk and sugar", from the gritty texture ("sugar") on the otherwise smooth ("milk") cloth.

thank you. and now i learn where the word came from.

From Sanskrit (śarkarā), meaning "ground or candied sugar", came Persian shakar and Arabic sukkar. The Arabic word was borrowed in Medieval Latin as succarum, whence the 12th century French sucre and the English sugar. Sugar was introduced into Europe by the Arabs in Sicily and Spain.

the word sucre always reminded me of an arabic word. so, i was in the right ballpark.

i imagine shîr is also the origin of the word “sheer” to describe very thin fabric?

Sheer sounds distinctly Germanic to me.

hmm you’re right

schiere "thin, sparse" (c. 1400), a variant of skere, from late Old English scir "bright, clear, gleaming; translucent; pure, unmixed." The Middle English word might also be from or influenced by the Old Norse cognate scær "bright, clean, pure." Both of these are from Proto-Germanic *skeran (source also of Old Saxon skiri, Old Frisian skire, German schier, Gothic skeirs "clean, pure"), from PIE root *sker- (1) "to cut."

"mano a mano" means hand to hand, not man to man

A door blows open in your mind when you learn about the suffix -le, it explains so much. People used to add it to verbs to mean ‘more than once’ or continuously—so originally, to ramble is to ‘roam’ on, to jostle is to joust repeatedly, and to sparkle is to emit lots of sparks.

A door blows open in your mind when you learn about the suffix -le, it explains so much. People used to add it to verbs to mean ‘more than once’ or continuously—so originally, to ramble is to ‘roam’ on, to jostle is to joust repeatedly, and to sparkle is to emit lots of sparks. pic.twitter.com/85oefNHMfa

— Wylfċen (@wylfcen) April 10, 2024

I wouldn't call my reaction to this knowledge "shock" as much as "bitter amusement, and relief that two other people have been spared" but TIL that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson are married.

(xp) Awesome.

xxp I like that one

yes.

I've been known to ILXle.

Literally this morning it struck me that Ludacris is a pun on his name, which is Christopher Brian Bridges. For a while he went by the name Ludichris, but he streamlined it.

His first album was called Incognegro, which is either genius or naff. Or both.

Andy Murray's dad was a former footballer who played for Hibs.

https://www.doingthe92.com/images/uploaded/previews/U2P29481.jpg

There is a fourthJonas Brother who isn't in the band. He's called Bonus Jonas.

Careful he flies off the handle when you call him that

Sojourner Truth's first language was not english - she was born enslaved by a Dutch family in New York, and spoke with a dutch accent the rest of her life

Terence Trent D'Arby changed his name in 2001 to Sananda Maitreya.

what a wonderful phrase

That mum in the phrase "mum's the word" is not actually yer mother, but 'mum' is a word that means 'silent' and is probably related to 'mummer'.

keep mum

Yeah, somehow I'd forgotten that one.

feel like there should be a cheeky playground rhyme from the 1940s that begins "my mum's a mummer"

luckily i am too busy this morning to develop this project further

While we're on the subject, I noticed an American ILXor using the phrase "keep shtum" recently, a phrase I thought was only really used in the UK. Then I googled and found it was only in 1958 that it was first used in print. In a novel by Frank Norman, an interesting sounding writer I'd never heard of before.

I always thought it was Yiddish!

Ah yes it is

this poster deeply confused me as a child

https://shop.iwm.org.uk/images/product/prod_12797.jpg

(xp) Yeah, it is but it crossed over into, well, not quite mainstream but usage outside Jewish communities. Not aware that it had in the US.

this poster deeply confused me as a child

you're older than you look, ledge ;)

never beating the born-in-the-blitz charges

i was expecting that!

did i ever know that andy samberg was married to faerie queene joanna newsom? i saw a picture of them yesterday and either i wiped the memory from my banks or i never knew.

I definitely didn't know that!

I feel like the worldwide reach of pop culture and the internet puts the various lands of the Anglosphere together so that we each start to adopt each other’s slang.

Last night I learned that “3 Women” is not a fun Altman film but is a tense Bergman homage. Had friends over for Indian and a fun movie night, toasting the memory of Shelley Duvall, only to have our moods darkened. Great film tho

And as the night progressed you decided to lift the mood with back-to-back screenings of Quintet, A Wedding, and OC and Stiggs. The few people who remained will be your friends forever.

faerie queene joanna newsom

Are people still doing this?

Beyond the pale. Comes from the lawless and ‘uncivilised’ lands to the west of the Dublin area (The Pale) which was outside English control in the Middle Ages.

I remember learning that from a Robert Wyatt interview.

I remember back in the early 90s there was an Irish band called The Pale and only now realise it refers to where they’re from and not their pasty white skin tones.

...and the etymology is from stakes placed in the ground to demarcate territory. Which survives in words like impale, impalement, and Palo Alto.