Scotland plus Wales plus England plus Northern Ireland make up the entity of the United Kingdom.
Scotland plus Wales plus England make up the entity of Britian. (??) And is Great Britain synonomous with Britian?
The "big island" made up of England, Wales and Scotland is called Great Britain. What's now called Brittany used to be called Less Britain (because it was settled by a bunch of Britons - Brittonic Celts - displaced by the Saxons who invaded England after the Romans left).
The word Britain was, as Helga said, brought back into use to describe the new political entity when England and Scotland were unified under James I, "King of Great Britain". I don't think anybody troubled, before then or since, to find a word to describe the English + Welsh together. :p The word British is variously used to mean from Great Britain (with or without the Isle of Man), from the UK (including Northern Ireland), or from the British Empire (including the colonies). I think the word Britain is also fairly elastic and sometimes means the UK.
And, Yvonne, I did like your Tittloce suggestion. Instead of Brits, we could be called... no, wait...
Back to Lynn, and shires... "shire" (scyre) was an Old English word for an administrative area of land, looked after by a shire-reeve (sheriff). "County" means the same thing but comes from French. The counties which were formed around cities or towns generally took on their names + shire: Oxford/Oxfordshire, York/Yorkshire, Lancaster/Lancashire, and so on. Other counties got a -shire just for the heck of it, and some of those have lost it again - it's just called "Devon" these days.
There's lots of fascinating - well, interesting - ok, amazingly nerdy
information at
this genealogy site . And there's a cool story
here about Warner Brothers and its cohorts trying to assert rights over the word "shire", with a list of UK "shires" on the second page.
Townships in South Africa, by the way, were sub-urban developments for housing the non-white workforce near the cities but not actually living
next to white people. They weren't a rural phenomenon at all. MLT, I don't know if that makes you feel better or worse about Wendy's confusion.
Picking up other bits and pieces...
"And way, way too close to her partner's throat than she liked."
I had the same problem with this as Paul, so it must be a Scottish/Glaswegian thing rather than general British. I'd say "too close for [comfort]", "too close to [bear]" or "[far] closer than she liked."
The solicitor at the door thing - yes, of course I know no one is suggesting itinerant lawyers drumming up custom on doorsteps, that's just the mental image I got when I first saw mention of a doorstep solicitor in a fic. (And I like it, so I'm hanging onto it, ok?
It's even funnier if you have a clear picture of the classic English family solicitor, with thinning hair and half-moon spectacles, wearing dusty tweeds and clutching a leather briefcase.)
I think the equivalent sign over here to the US "No solicitors" would be "No vendors" - someone please correct me or add other variants.
Oh, another lovely word-nerdy topic: "a whole nother". I like it, actually, and use it deliberately. If "a napron" and "a norange" can be re-analysed to form "an apron" and "an orange", why can't "an other" become "a nother"?
Anyway, the technical term is
tmesis and it can also be seen in things like abso-bloody-lutely. (Although the latter's sometimes called an
infix because the word doesn't split up completely.)
LOL on "iony", Vicki. Back when those messages became so very popular, and there had just been an outcry over the treatment of fur seals, someone produced a T-shirt with "I [club] baby seals" on it. I only knew one person brave/tasteless enough to wear it, though.
And then there was "Nuke the gay baby whales for Satan"... but I digress.
That's probably long enough for one post - have we got to three pages yet?
Mere
