Grammar Police Gazette

[onetrack]

We all copped beatings as school children, all in the name of "discipline". My primary school headmaster was a properly vicious little bastard, he'd be charged with child abuse today - yet he's lauded, and a suburb is named after him.

[spacesailor]

Your school.  Did many get hospitalised.  Blinded, deafened  ( by the teacher ) clapping hands over your ears.  Broken finger's didn't make a hospital trip . 

Ours were demobbed soldiers. 

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

It's about finding the right balance between the carrot and the stick. History tells us the pendulum between them swings but never seems to stop where it should.

 

But don't ask me where the balance should be.

Edited August 14 by Jerry_Atrick

[pmccarthy]

I depends on where they put the carrot.

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, pmccarthy said:

I depends on where they put the carrot.

I'd never heard of the carrot & the stick.

 

Where I worked, all we had was the pineapple and the stick.

 

It all depended on how deep in shyte we were.

 

 

Edited August 14 by nomadpete

[facthunter]

I think the carrot and stick refers to Donkeys hauling a Cart. Nev

[red750]

[red750]

America's mangling the language strikes again.

 

Taylor Swift's new album is causing a ruckus because of the spelling of one of the songs. The album cover lists a song called CANCELLED. However, Americans spell it with one L.

[red750]

[old man emu]

Do you remember the  half-giant who is the gamekeeper and groundskeeper at the wizarding school Hogwarts? His surname is Hagrid. 

 

Hag-ridden seems to have first appeard in literature in the 1680s, meaning "ridden by hags or witches". It changed meaning a bit so that from 1702 it had the meaning "oppressed, or harassed". By 1758 it came to mean "afflicted by nightmares". At some time hagridden was a term term for sleep paralysis (the sensation of being held immobile in bed, often by a heavy weight, and accompanied by a sense of alien presence).  J.K.Rowling took a bit of leeway when she said it means "you'd had a bad night" and she explained that Hagrid "has a lot of bad nights" due to his heavy drinking. Alcohol is not necessarily the only reason for being hag-ridden. Any number of stressful life events can affect one's dreaming, leading to frightening dreams resulting in one waking hag-ridden.

[pmccarthy]

My favourite is buffalo. French beouf a l'eau. Water cow.