Ay, where are they?

I'm going home in a minute. I think I shall need;

- forty cubits of gopher wood and

- two of every sort of animal.

Oh, and a better raincoat ....



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I gather it's raining a bit?

I claim the prize cos we've got sun in Farnham- we've had sun for nearly 3 hours without a break!

We had rain this morning though and last night it teemed down stair-rods!

We had sun in Leeds once. 1883 it was. One of those stories that's passed down from father to son. I think it's probably a myth.

Now rain. I can tell you all about rain...

you know, last year we had a horrible drought. This year we're up to our knees in rain water. Go figure!

Today and yesterday were the first two sunny days in a row in over 2 months!

Days !

If we get two sunny minutes in a row we consider ourselves lucky.

This weekend we've hired a canal barge from Skipton. I'm worried we may sink...

It's even been raining on and off for three days in Cambridge.

Now I know that doesn't sound very impressive, but we're not used to it, you know -- a little known fact about Cambridgeshire is that we have a lower average annual rainfall than @#$%& (that's the middle-eastern kingdom, not the 'model')



Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.

Talking of little-known facts about Cambridgeshire: Did you already know about the county's nineteenth-century coprolite-digging & processing industry?

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!"

I did, but then I'm like that...

(coprolites = fossilised turds)



Post Edited (05-20-03 19:32)

PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

H'mm. We didn't even get any warning of it yesterday. One moment it was a lovely warm sunny day, next minute it was torrential rain with a generous admixture of hail and it was jolly cold. David left his sun roof open and had to bale out the car. I fared slightly better - I just got caught out in a spring outfit, large white sunhat and espadrilles...



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

That's the thing about living in Britain, we have so much weather. If the Inuit have 40 (or however many) words for snow, the British probably have as many for water falling from the sky.

Saying I heard somewhere:

America has climate: England has weather.

Actually, that's a well-known factoid which is exploded by Steven Pinker in his book "The Language Instinct". The Inuit don't have any more words for snow than anyone else does. It apparently all started with some enthusiastic but not very scholarly amateur linguist who reported that they had (I think) ten different words for snow, and this story got passed on and repeatedly exaggerated... it just, er, snowballed, in fact.

My ex-husband had just one word for snow, but it wasn't printable.



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

In that case, do the English have more words and phrases for describing the weather (especially wet), than anyone else ?

I'll make a start:

rain
drizzle
sleet
pissing down
pouring
raining cats and dogs
raining stair rods
throwing it down
spitting
cloudburst
chucking it down
shower

In that case, do the English have more words and phrases for describing the weather (especially wet), than anyone else ?

I'll make a start:

rain
drizzle
sleet
pissing down
pouring
raining cats and dogs
raining stair rods
throwing it down
spitting
cloudburst
chucking it down
shower

It's entirely possible. In Italian, if you want to say it's raining heavily, you have a choice between "diluvia" (it's pouring) and "piove a catinelle", which literally means "it is raining in small bowlfuls". Picturesque, but it doesn't quite give you the full impact of it. Oddly enough, the second way of saying it seems to be by far the more common.

Perhaps it doesn't usually rain very heavily in Italy?



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

we use all of those except "pissing down" "raining stair rods" and "chucking it down"

and we also have "mist", "frizzle" (at least here on the East coast- freezing drizzle), freezing rain (again a big East coast thing), "raining buckets", "monsooning" or "monsoon rains" (aka afternoon thunderstorm after a very hot humid day). I'm sure there's more but I'm brain dead at the moment

I'm sure we have hundreds in (British) English, but I'm darned if I can think of any more . . .

Oooh, Scotch mist -- that's just another way of saying heavy drizzle (yes, we have grades of drizzle here) but it sounds so much better, doesn't it?



Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.

We have "coming down in buckets" here, too.
'Mizzle' = an intermediate state between mist & drizzle.
'Torrential'.

'a Sprinkle', 'Sprinkling' = slightly heavier than 'Spitting' but still not worth worrying about...

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!



Post Edited (05-22-03 11:16)

What book has the Rain God? I've got a horrible feeling it's T*m H*lt, actually, but there's this truck driver who's put rain into 150 or so categories...



:--

Do something pretty while you can...

It's one of the Dirk Gently ones isn't it ?

Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul ??