Anybody know the origin of this utterance? Anybody know
of alternative utterances that mean roughly the same thing?
Anyone know translations of this utterance into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, Nahuatl etc.?


William

Anyone remember BMOC -big man on campus?

Yes. Your question reminds me of three social fraternities that were popular at my Unisversity. You may be familiar with them:

TappaKegaDay, ITaptaKeg, and Gamma Delta Iota (God's Divine Independents).

William

SIPI = Specialist In Poop Irradication. One who cleans up after one's dog(s).

William

Octogenescent for those in their 79th year,
Septigenescent for those in their 69th year,
and Centigenescent for those in their 99th year.

William

When traveling from Arizona to visit relatives in Utah and Idaho we have two routes to choose from, the Lake Mead crossing or the Lake Powell crossing. My wife prefers Lake Powell, but I prefer the Lake Mead route, because, as everyone should know, Lake Mead is a dam site better than Lake Powell. Wi...

No, deriva del verbo parar, en el sentido arcaico de proteger o defender, oriundo del parara latino. Bueno, tienes razón. The verb parar does make more sense in both paragolpes and parabrisas. Voler es volar en francés. En español se dice volar. Ok, excuse my typo. However, the "cerca" co...

Parabrisas, paragolpes, and chupacabras are composed of a verb and a noun. Anteojos is a prefix (preposition) plus a noun. Vuelacerca is a verb + an adverb and marimacha (or marimacho) is two nouns. What I meant to say is that words are not created ad libitum as they seem to be in English. Hmmm, BD...

You can easily place a noun before another noun in Germanic languages and turn words of different classes into whatever, but neither is possible in Romance languages, which rely very much on noun + de + noun and verbs ending in -ar, -er, and -ir or something similar to that. I'll take your word for...

Anders wrote: Numerous journalists have already swallowed the absurdly specious claim that the English language is going to add its millionth word some time later this year. But doesn't "one million" sound a little paltry? The Story of English, 3rd revised addition, page 10 starting at lin...

In stores I have always seen rubber bands labeled as rubber bands, never anything else.

William

Dick Meyer's article posted on the CBS website reminded me of George Orwell's 1984, though Meyer never mentions Orwell or 1984.

William

*Minnesotans seem to be the only ones who say "duck, duck, grey duck" instead of 'duck, duck, goose." I haven't even found other Mid-Westerners who say this. I had not heard of "duck, duck, goose" until I was almost 30 when my first child was between toddler and kindergarte...

When it comes to foreign policy goals, Clinton administration, Bush administration same same, the differences in execution - aside from being due to Clinton's being more knowledgeable and better prepared - are mainly a result of the fact that the latter was not burdened by a domestic agenda of «sta...

Henri, I haven't yet had time to read the article you posted about Human Rights Watch. I really don't know much about that organization or whether they have a political agenda such as characterizes the NYT and the Guardian. Frankly, Henri, the following made me chuckle. Thank you for the laugh: Why ...

I understand that it is painful to have consider that one's own country engages in practices which it justly condemns when performed by (certain) others. But to my mind, the consequences of acquiescing in them, either passively by ignoring reports, or actively by saying that all these reports arise...