Posted by Nichols on May 30, 2003 at 16:08:23 from 165.91.199.202 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Shiver my Timbers posted by Jon on May 30, 2003 at 13:53:34:
I could not find the words in an Idiom Dictionary.
I had always accpted that I knew what it meant, but be blowed if I can explain it. I am always accused of talking in idiom and being cryptic (by my American friends and my future wife and my ex wife and my PhD supervisor.)
The timbers are definitely the boat hull and to shiver oak is a big hit. That stuff stopped cannon balls under some circumstances. I could ask my cousin she is a whiz at this stuff.
Thank you to the kind soul who pointed out my errors on the compass rose, I will but plead that I did it on a 14 inch screen on a notebook late at night. I wil fix it and replace it.
I think there are at least one bearing in the set in SW on Titty's map that is wrong. (Off by 11.35 degrees) But I am having trouble reading some of the bearings.
Re: Donkey broken. As Ratty said to Mole : ......................
Well even if they are stationary it is still a boat. So my jealousy knows no bounds.
It was hot here on the weekend.
As I said to a Indian friend, Rago, once "There is more than one one way to skin a dead cat." He then told his wife seriously that I had offered to take him cat hunting. He was very new to Australia and came from a small village in India, and English was his second language. But I stopped using that expression.
I also taught him to drive and some friends who drove to Gladstone with him, said he was only a little frigthening at 110 km/hr. I took the bus.
(No guesses why.)
John Nichols