@realDonaldTrump As they used to say in the British army to a soldier when he had a leg blown off by a cannonball .”you shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke”...!
@macinnes_john@joannemacinnes I stayed at Cul Bhuirg in 1964 when I was working on my geology thesis . Mrs Macinnes always gave me extra potatoes !! Michael
@RichardDawkins Some 75 years after this, Foote's passage appeared in a book of stories for children by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It took another quarter century before English speakers actually incorporated panjandrum into their general vocabulary.
@RichardDawkins ow actor Charles Macklin, who had asserted that he could repeat anything after hearing it once." Foote's made-up line was, "And there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at the top."
@RichardDawkins Panjandrum looks like it might be a combination of Latin and Greek roots, but in fact it is a nonsense word coined by British actor and playwright Samuel Foote around 1755. According to the Oxford English