Re: British v. American Vocabulary


Wed, 20 Sep 1995 02:15:13 GMT

jools@arnod.demon.co.uk (Julian Arnold) writes:

>Eli the bearded (bgriffin@ic.sunysb.edu) wrote:

>> 11
>> 6.0 x 10 furlongs per fortnight (the speed of light)

>Obviously physics jokes reach a wider audience in the US than they do in the
>UK. 8)

The reason this joke is funny in the US is that both "furlong" and
"fortnight" are weird ancient ways of measuring that nobody uses.
Doesn't work where "fortnight" really does get used as commonly as "week."

Which brings you back to Adventures: what is "obscure" varies with
culture.

- David Librik
librik@cs.Berkeley.edu