You never think about many things, and when you are hit with the fact, it just seems weird or untrue.
- Pineapples grow out of the ground. Most of us don’t live in tropical fruit fields but we all assume that fruit grows on a tree or on a vine. Bananas, apples, oranges, lemons, limes, cherries, all on a tree. Then you take a vacation to Hawaii and see the pineapple fields and BAM they grow out of the ground. And it just seems wrong.
- Peacocks roost in trees. I’ve only seen peacocks roaming the perfect keep lawn in some stately manner, a zoo, or in ads. I have never ever thought about where do peacocks come from and where do they sleep. It’s like they aren’t even a real bird species, they seem like something a 14c eccentric nobleman created for a monarch I was on a bus tour and the guide said if you look behind you will see peacocks roosting in the trees. As to where they come from, it’s India.
- What late-breaking medical treatment will be made fun of in the future? We all laugh at the crazy cures ancient cultures and more recent ones have, but in 500 years what crazy cure will people make fun of? Like LOL can you believe people in 2000 thought antibiotics worked, I’m glad I live in the now where laser fixes everything.
- How does a microwave work? There are a number of people that know how they work but I would say most people don’t think about it. This is something we grew up with, you open the door, enter a time, and bam it’s warm. Also, those easy bake ovens with lightbulbs don’t help clear up the issue.
- What’s the difference between Mist and Fog, partly sunny and partly cloudy, and why is inflammable and flammable the same thing?
- Fog is a low-lying cloud, Mist forms when water droplets hanging in the air by magic or force.
- However, according to the National Weather Service, partly cloudy and partly sunny mean exactly the same thing, however partly sunny can only be used doing the day.
- Straight from the dictionary: Inflammable and flammable are synonyms and mean “able to burn” even though they look like opposites. In this case, rather than the prefix in- meaning “not,” as it often does, “inflammable” comes from the latin verb inflammare, which means “to cause to catch fire.” “Flammable” was coined later from a translation of the latin verb flammare (“to catch fire”), which inflammare is related to.
- If you find this information useful or fun I highly recommend two BBC series QI (Quite Interesting) and Horrible Histories.
I learned about pineapples about 1956, reading a Hardy Boys Mystery book. Back before Hawaii even became a State, a braggart claimed to have visited, and climbed a pineapple tree to get away from a tiger. I knew there were no tigers in Hawaii, but ground-fruit was a new concept for a 12-year-old.
In modern usage of flammable/inflammable, the difference is in degrees. A log is flammable. An open pail of gasoline is inflammable. Normally a great fan of George Carlin and his humor about the English language, I was quite disappointed when he claimed that there were three words – flammable, inflammable, and nonflammable. Poor non-inflammable! Always a bridesmaid – never a Carlin joke. 😯 😉
I usually think of Gallagher, you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway! I’m trying to think of something weird and new for you; did you know that corn is grass, Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name was Moon, or the word sabotage comes from French weavers, that jammed their wooden clog shoes (called sabot) into the weaving machine taking their jobs?
Corn is grass??! That’s a-maize-ing!
I’ve been researching the language for so long that almost nothing about English is new, or a surprise.
Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name is an interesting coincidence though. 🙂
The dog ate my homework (actually, it was the cat), but WordPress ate my reply.
After years of researching the language, almost nothing about English is new or surprising.
Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name was an interesting coincidence though. 🙂