How do you explain pavement (sidewalk, the rest of the roads are also usually paved), windshield (windscreen? A window screen has holes in it!), jumper (it’s a shirt, why would it be jumping?), etc!
These are mostly code words designed to keep those pesky foreigners confused.
Pavement comes from the latin root “pavire” meaning to tread down. Vehicles drive on the road, a word which may stem from a proto-indo-european root meaning “to ride”. If there’s one thing we like more than tea, it’s tradition, and millennia old words really scratch that itch. Besides, only crabs walk on a sidewalk, or do you lot all shuffle along like you’re trying to get through a narrow gap?
Windscreen is, again, perfectly logical when you consider that in the 14th century “screen” referred to a barrier that might be used to block draughts. If it was a good enough word 700 years ago, it’s good enough now by Jove!
I must take exception to your description of a jumper being a shirt. A jumper does not open at the front, and so cannot possibly be compared to a shirt, whose defining feature is the opening, typically finished with a placket on each side, unless it’s a tee-shirt, but it’s too chilly to wear those here, so we don’t talk about them. The garment you are referring to is, of course, a cardigan. Both the jumper and the cardigan do share the trait of being a made of a heavier material, or knitted, often by your Granny, out of heavy wool.
If defend it I must, then defend it I shall! Oxford’s finest scholars have spent countless hours studying the usage and history of this fine language, and I’ll not have these people coming along with their sidewalks and their windshields sullying their fine works! Harumph.
This kind of childlike literalism is why the colonial darlings call train drivers “engineers”. Not because they have skill in engineering, but because they operate “engines”.
How do you explain pavement (sidewalk, the rest of the roads are also usually paved), windshield (windscreen? A window screen has holes in it!), jumper (it’s a shirt, why would it be jumping?), etc!
These are mostly code words designed to keep those pesky foreigners confused.
Pavement comes from the latin root “pavire” meaning to tread down. Vehicles drive on the road, a word which may stem from a proto-indo-european root meaning “to ride”. If there’s one thing we like more than tea, it’s tradition, and millennia old words really scratch that itch. Besides, only crabs walk on a sidewalk, or do you lot all shuffle along like you’re trying to get through a narrow gap?
Windscreen is, again, perfectly logical when you consider that in the 14th century “screen” referred to a barrier that might be used to block draughts. If it was a good enough word 700 years ago, it’s good enough now by Jove!
I must take exception to your description of a jumper being a shirt. A jumper does not open at the front, and so cannot possibly be compared to a shirt, whose defining feature is the opening, typically finished with a placket on each side, unless it’s a tee-shirt, but it’s too chilly to wear those here, so we don’t talk about them. The garment you are referring to is, of course, a cardigan. Both the jumper and the cardigan do share the trait of being a made of a heavier material, or knitted, often by your Granny, out of heavy wool.
We’re gonna be here all day if he has to defend an entire dictionary
If defend it I must, then defend it I shall! Oxford’s finest scholars have spent countless hours studying the usage and history of this fine language, and I’ll not have these people coming along with their sidewalks and their windshields sullying their fine works! Harumph.
I’ve got time 🍿
This kind of childlike literalism is why the colonial darlings call train drivers “engineers”. Not because they have skill in engineering, but because they operate “engines”.