Published on 12, July, 2020
These are not all original t o me but here goes ....
In the supermarket they sell bottles of liquid labelled "Still water". At what stage will it cease to still be water.
And talking of water, one brand says it has percolated and been filtered through rock for thousands oof years before being bottled. Good job they bottled it when they did as its best before date is only in a months time.
What does an occasional table become when it is not a table.
Who did the first person who bought a telephone want to ring?
Where did the first person who bought a car buy petrol from? Or who did the first filling station sell petrol to?
How many people died eating poisonous mushrooms and berries before they knew which ones were ok to eat?
There are many more, so what are other contributors favourites?
At work - in an autism day centre, mind - we have signs in the toilets that read as follows:
Please do not flush anything other than toilet paper down the toilet.
At a workshop I once went to, the autism expert leading it told us about a special school for autistic children she once visited in (I think) Romania. She noticed that all the fire alarm buttons had little flap covers over them. She asked why this was, and a teacher lifted one to show her. Around the button was written 'Press Here'. Apparently, each morning when the children arrived, quite a few of them took that message literally!
"Man-size tissues". You get them out of the box, and they're definitely not.
Reminds me that I've also been puzzling for decades over an advertisement for 'personal sized pizza'. It seems the first word must be modifying the second, but it's an adjective, not an adverb. 'Personally-sized' pizza would be sized for you by a person, but I don't think it's that. To make it grammatical it should probably be 'person-sized pizza'.
I'm infuriated by people on escalators not attending to the rule 'dogs must be carried'. Almost no one using the escalator is carrying a dog.
What's the opposite of 'visible'? What's the opposite of 'flammable'?
Fireworks giving financial advice: 'light blue touchpaper and retire immediately.' Or there were some instructions on food labelling about 'stand upright in boiling water'.
Going more extreme, am I the only one who when facing an ordinary sink, with taps marked in red and blue, is disappointed that they don't dispense red and blue water?
Denis Norden complained on Radio 4 of suffering 'literalism'. Somewhere in the archive there must be dozens of things like the headline 'police seek three armed men' or
He tells of being on the fifth floor of a department store and feeling the call of nature. Locating the loo, he was shocked to see a sign there with an arrow pointing downward and reading 'Out of order. Use floor below.'
Another time, he recalled seeing what he described as most disturbing signage in a do-it-yourself home improvement store. Affixed to a wooden cabinet of considerable size, it read “Put this up yourself!”
OrinocoFlo said:That couldn't possibly be the real reason for adding the water, could it? :-(
...Yes.
Same as adding Fat to Pork, and Sugar to everything else. Ever noticed how, when Water/Fat/Sugar is added to something then the Price of it is cheaper? "Reformed" Meat is the absolute worst...
...As if back to the main topic - "Reformed" Meat may suggest that it has spent some time in a correctional facillity having had Water added in order to make it less likely to go out and steal money from banks or wallets anymore... which is why it is cheaper to buy.
"Fortified" Foods are those which have had something added in order to make them stronger against being rinsed off easily once they have decided to dry onto your cutlery harder than concrete. (I mentioned that upon another Thread.)
"Unsweetened" Foods are those which charming and congenial people cannot tolerate, (like Raw Vegetables,) which is why they are not as popular to the masses, and not so much used as Party Food due to not being sweet and/or "nice" to everyone there.
(I would post more, but I must end this post or else it may disappear...!)
Haha! Mr Logic needs to be in the 'Aspie characters' thread!
I still hate it. Smacks too much of commercialese. Which is another horrible word!
How long before we 'prizeize' people. Surely easier than giving them a prize...
'Proactive' is so overused that I think many people don't even really understand what it means. Likewise 'post-modern'.
The other day, I heard someone say 'It was literally indescribable.' Okay.
incentivise
That's in my list of ugly words that actually do seem to have a distinct and useful meaning, along with words like 'proactive'.
To incentivise is to encourage or promote an activity by the promise of incentives, for example through a tax system, so it can also apply to a system as well as people. It's not solely about directly rewarding with incentives, more about deliberately social-engineered motivation. So 'motivate' (derived presumably from 'motive') might almost do, if it were not that a lot of people see 'motivation' as something internal. 'Enticement' also won't work because you can't talk of 'enticing' an activity, only making it more enticing. I'd welcome any solution to this dilemma that will work when you have a word count to stick to.
Actually I'm confused by the warning for a different reason. Peanuts aren't technically nuts; a nut allergy doesn't mean you're allergic to peanuts, and a peanut allergy doesn't mean you're allergic to 'tree nuts'; they're separate conditions. So did the peanut butter also contain cashew or Brazil nut or something? (Also, it doesn't even contain whole peanuts usually - in many brands, much of the valuable peanut oil is removed and replaced with palm oil.)
From the FSA link:
Where the name of the food (such as a box of eggs or bag of peanuts) clearly refers to the allergenic ingredients concerned, there is no need for a separate declaration of the allergenic food
Here's an autistic caricature to explain it (badly):
I understand that language is organic and ever-changing. It's part of what I love about language - especially the creative use of it in slang.
Having said that, I hate some of the laziness creeping in (thanks largely to the advent of SMS), and some ugly (in my opinion) neologisms and adaptations.
'U' is the 21st letter of the English alphabet, the chemical symbol for Uranium, or a denotation of an attribute of the upper classes. It is not a pronoun!
'Ur' is an ancient Sumerian city on the Euphrates, or a German prefix meaning 'original'. It is not a pronoun! George Bernard Shaw might have approved of it, but I'm not George Bernard Shaw!
And please... give people an incentive - but don't incentivise them! Ugh!
Sorry. A bit off track. Just sayin'...
Yeah, I know why they do it. It still seems funny, though. I mean, the name is pretty self-explanatory: peanut butter. Like putting on a bottle of mineral water 'contains water'.
going forward
It may be for people who don't realise that the English language has tenses. I will be a better person going forward. I get the impression it's from accountancy, because spreadsheets don't have tenses.
Do your remember the Labour election slogan from 2005 when they lost about 100 MPs (seems more recent somehow)?
Forward not back.
The first word is a tautology with respect to any policy, but then it's compounded by the following two words. Seemed totally vacuous.
OrinocoFlo said:Supermarket meat (especially chicken) often has added water "for extra Succulence." Not only does it make a grotty, milky residue in the pan, but it means you get effectively less meat because it's sold by weight.
That couldn't possibly be the real reason for adding the water, could it? :-(
According to a Radio 4 Food Programme, that's exactly the reason for adding it, and also adding phosphates helps retain the water. I think the EU imposed some limits on the practice. (Not that I care much, as I don't eat meat.)
Supermarket meat (especially chicken) often has added water "for extra Succulence." Not only does it make a grotty, milky residue in the pan, but it means you get effectively less meat because it's sold by weight.
I bought some Wems!eydale cheese from a German owned budget supermarket. This only contained one listed ingredient which was ... wair for it .... Wensleydale cheese! I was glad about that and found it extremely helpful.
To Mister Tom ...As you may know, this is for Legal Reasons. They also put "Contains Nuts" on bags of Nuts. Sometimes there will be a "Contains Fish" on packets of Fish. (My only moan would be that, upon signs pointing to London that they do not add: "Contains Pollution."...)
Apart from that - This is to TrainSpotter as well: Finally someone began a Thread like this! It should last long, but I upon this spot cannot recall such things, which I also often notice, for I notice them mostly while in "Street Mode" rather than at "home"...
Lastly, the T.V. Channel "Dave" lists a lot of things like this, which - of course right now - I cannot recall. (No WWW site about them, either.)...
E.G. - "Why do you never hear about any 'single whammies' ?"
Cassandro said:Have they stopped putting use by dates on salt containers and vinegar bottles after someone pointed out that they're used for preserving things?
That might depend upon the material the bottle is made from.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/15/microplastics-found-in-more-than-90-of-bottled-water-study-says
http://mentalfloss.com/article/22098/why-does-bottled-water-have-expiration-date
Retreat from exposure to the vagaries of global markets, to focus on core business?
Maybe drinking the coffee keeps them regular?
Perhaps after drinking it they have to "go" there every day?
'Contains nuts' on peanut butter.
Dreadful business-speak...
'We're looking to expand into overseas markets going forward.'
Which other way can you go when speaking about future plans?
I've got a packet of cooking salt that says 'Best Before 19th March 3019'.
At least, it does now that I've altered it...
I remember at school asking what I should do next. I was told to sit down for the present. I sat down but did not get a present ...