Posted by Robert Hill on March 30, 2002 at 20:56:16 from 195.92.168.168:
In Reply to: Re: Naughty words posted by Adam Quinan on March 29, 2002 at 12:01:11:
In Britain the usual word for a pencil eraser is a rubber, because you
rub with it; that is how rubber, the substance, got its name. But in
the USA, "a rubber" means something quite different.
It was somewhere online - conceivably even on Tarboard - that I learned
that a leading brand of sticky tape in Australia is called Durex.
In Britain, Durex is a leading brand of ... guess what!
Who would have thought that the humble stationery store offered such
perils to international travellers?
The pun is intentional, by the way.