I'm all at sea with this question!

Quite clearly, the navals in Dragon Fruit come from their parents, Dragon Boats.
And I'd like to point out that "gender" is a term applied only to language and can be masculine, feminine or neutral (he, she, it). When discussing if a person is a bloke or a shiela then the discussion is about their "sex". (Younger Fforumites should ignore that last word, it means, er... a type of biscuit; yes! That's it... biscuits! whew.)

Grammatical gender applies to language, gender can be applied to electrical connections as well as people. I agree that nowadays it is almost exclusively used as a polite synonym for..... a type of biscuit, but that does not necessarily mean that such use is wrong, just limiting.

And traditionally the Swiss are neutral.

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing

once again troubled by the infamous double send key



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2009 09:01AM by SkidMarks.

SO the Swiss all belong to the same biscuit? There are no boy and girl Swiss, they are all it Swiss - so how come they used to call Martina Hingis "The Swiss Miss"? Or have I missed the point somewhere.

It all involved a Swiss roll, (which is closer to a Jaffa cake than a biscuit) I believe.

I suppose that being neutral must define their gender, not their biscuits. Of course I may have got that bit wrong in which case one or more of their languages and they are in fact war-like. Perhaps the Swiss Guard in the Vatican in an expiditionary force? To all intents, poor little Lichenstein has already been annexed by the Swiss

Have now spent some time dividing our biscuits into two different tins, so as to maintain proprietary in the larder.

Am at a loss to know what to do with the almond thins....

robert, you are wrong, possibly about the Dragon Boats, but definitely about the use of the word gender. Only fair to warn you that am armed with OED, should you decide to turn nasty.

Would I be right in assuming that the Garibaldi's are masculine?

A Swiss roll is definitely closer to a jaffa cake, but the blackcurrant version and not the orange version.

Yumm.

Blackcurrant "Jaffa" Cakes? I am going to have to go exploring in English food shops! The only problem is that Mrs CR won't touch Orange ones - but I'm sure she would be into the new version.

Garibaldi's are definitely masculine

I was in Iceland last year and they had orange, blackcurrant and lime varieties of Jaffa Cake. I have no idea if they're still around or if it was the year before that year.

Hmmm. I could do with a Jaffa Cake now.

E.


Edited to indicate Iceland the food store and not Iceland the country, or my friend Iceland who's invested the first Rubik boomerang, available in all good stores ending in the letter Tweg.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2009 02:39PM by EgonSpengler.

How can they be called Jaffa Cakes if they don't have any "jaffa" in them - oops, sorry the power of marketing.

How about cheesy goldfish crackers?
I mean, does anybody have any?

I, for one, could use a snack...

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I think that I am scarred, Mrs CR has just shown me choc-coated potato chips (crisps) in the current Aldi catalogue - what an abomination!

I expect that from Aldi. The only thing worth going there for is the avocados, they have them very cheaply when other places place exorbitant prices onto theirs.

I don't know much about Jaffa cakes, having never eaten one - the combination just seems... wrong... to me; but chocolate coated chips sound okay. Nothing beats a chip sandwich, except maybe a scallop sandwich (Australian Mexicans call scallops 'potato cakes', the schlemiels).

Geg! The OED? Phhht! The Macquarie (genuflects), notes "colloq" for its listing of 'gender' (from the latin 'genus' - race, type, sort) when applied to biscuits. Decent folk look down their schnozzes at riff raff who use colloquialisms.

Isn't the Macquarie an Oz dictionary noted for being inferior to OED and Websters?

Certainly anyone or anything that thinks that "word" and "phrase" are interchangeable terms should not be trusted. (Evidence: Word of the week. This week's word is "gone to Gowings".)

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing

The Macquarie is superior to Webster's in that you can lift it. I have a 1940 Websters (not morocco bound) and it is the size of a decent breeze block.

I am actually using it at present to hold the 28" tv which has lost a leg.

But Skids is right. When a self proclaimed expert makes a mistake in a simple thing about which you know to be different then it casts doubt on the expert's reliability on matters about which you do not know.

bunyip Wrote:
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When a self proclaimed expert
> makes a mistake in a simple thing about which you
> know to be different then it casts doubt on the
> expert's reliability on matters about which you do
> not know.


That is why I stopped subscribing to "Which" magazine

Is wondering how much time to spend trawling fforum for use of colloquialisms by robert. But is too struck by the thought that anybody has managed to go through life without eating a jaffa cake to be able to concentrate properly.