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[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by xilman

What does Scunthorpe mean in English?

I remember it, from my teenage years when I still lived in the UK, as one of the teams in the interminable lists of football results on BBC1 every Saturday afternoon. (Not my cup of tea, but others in my family seemed to sit there watching, enthralled, as the lists continued, read out slowly by the dead-pan voice.) So it's evidently a place in the UK, in England I think.

More recently I remember you mentioning it on this forum as a place name which, since the internet took hold, often gets obliterated because of the unfortunate 4-letter sequence which it contains.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I remember it, from my teenage years when I still lived in the UK, as one of the teams in the interminable lists of football results on BBC1 every Saturday afternoon. (Not my cup of tea, but others in my family seemed to sit there watching, enthralled, as the lists continued, read out slowly by the dead-pan voice.) So it's evidently a place in the UK, in England I think.

More recently I remember you mentioning it on this forum as a place name which, since the internet took hold, often gets obliterated because of the unfortunate 4-letter sequence which it contains.

Exactly, as in the "Scunthorpe effect", a now well-established term for a side effect of imperfect automatic Bowdlerization software. America has exactly the same problem in Turkish. Just as AOL suggested that its users spell the town's name as "Sconthorpe" to work around the censor, so did some wags suggest that AOL re-brand itself as Omerica On Line to spare Turkish blushes.

Incidentally, my first vacation job as an undergraduate was as a weigh-bridge clerk in a sand and gravel quarry. Part of my duties was to fill in despatch notes for the drivers so they knew where to deliver their load. A big construction was going on at the town Penistone in south Yorkshire.

[Batalov]

You shouldn't have! (...added final para)

You joined the ranks of the ~~~(,__,)^'> by telling yer life stories more than once.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by xilman

Exactly, as in the "Scunthorpe effect", a now well-established term for a side effect of imperfect automatic Bowdlerization software. America has exactly the same problem in Turkish. Just as AOL suggested that its users spell the town's name as "Sconthorpe" to work around the censor, so did some wags suggest that AOL re-brand itself as Omerica On Line to spare Turkish blushes.

Oh, I get it, it's not the whole word America, just part of it.

Tremendously more helpful than the person who asked sarcastically(I assume),"What does Scunthorpe mean in English?"

Edit: Oops, same person.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Batalov

You shouldn't have! (...added final para)

You joined the ranks of the ~~~(,__,)^'> by telling yer life stories more than once.

Repeating yourself is a sign of old age.

Repeating others is a sign of plagiarism.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by jasong

Oh, I get it, it's not the whole word America, just part of it.

Tremendously more helpful than the person who asked sarcastically(I assume),"What does Scunthorpe mean in English?"

Edit: Oops, same person.

You assume wrongly. I meant it seriously. As you now get, it was a relevant hint.

I was rather hoping that you would use Google and a modicum of intelligence to work it out for yourself.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by xilman

You assume wrongly. I meant it seriously. As you now get, it was a relevant hint.

I was rather hoping that you would use Google and a modicum of intelligence to work it out for yourself.

Sorry for the insult, I get annoyed easily. It's a character defect of mine. But I wouldn't have picked up on the swear word hidden in Scunthorpe of it weren't for the later posts. It's a similar thing with shittake(sp?) mushrooms.

Honestly, it's rather knee-jerk for people to get offended by that stuff. It's one thing to get offended by strong language, it's quite another to get offended by literary coincidences.

Although, admittedly, I participate a bit by leaving the word niggard out of my vocabulary. Intelligence isn't all that beneficial when you're being beat up because you didn't use it. lol