A question of meanings

[Nemesis]

Ah - kitchen is living room (where the range is) back kitchen is scullery - where the sink is.

If you are lucky you have a front room or parlour - which is where you go on Sundays, where the dead are laid out, where you have the aspidistra.

 

[piper]

Nigel - yes, from Attica. 2 etymology entries from Dictionary.com:
Attic:
1599, "of or pertaining to Attica," from L. Atticus, from Gk. Attikos "of Attica," the region around Athens. Attested from 1563 as an architectural term for a type of column base.
attic:
"top storey under the roof of a house," 1855, shortened from attic storey (1724). The term Attic order in classical architecture meant a small, square decorative column of the type often used in a low storey above a building's main facade, a feature associated with the region around Athens (see Attic). The word then was applied to "a low decorative facade above the main story of a building" (1696), and it came to mean the space enclosed by such a structure. The modern use is via Fr. attique. "An attic is upright, a garret is in a sloping roof"
So now we know!

Fascinating. The Classical 6th Form at my school (Grammar, I hasten to add, not Public in spite of the classics and the weird terminology) was called "The Attic", and we spent our days in some rather squalid little rooms on the top floor of an old house in the school grounds, underneath the crumbling lath & plaster of the sloping ceilings, studying Latin, ancient history including that of Attica and, yes, ATTIC Greek. Well, OK, Homer is a mixture of Ionian and other dialects and there's some Doric forms in the choruses of the tragedies, but basically ancient Greek literature is in the Attic dialect. We also played Attic Tennis while waiting for the teacher to arrive, with screwed-up paper and using dusty old grammar books as bats. And I thought there was no connection between the two possible derivations of the name.

 

[Penners]

I was always getting mixed up between the West Wing and the East Wing. Consequently I used to end up in the ballroom when I was supposed to be going to the classics library.

Pater and Mater did laugh so.

 

[piper]

Pater and Mater did laugh so.

Why is it always seen as amusingly "posh" to have done classics at school? These days, being posh is one of the worst sins there is; people like that do stupidly un-cool things like liking classical music and some of them even live in old houses and take an interest in sympathetically repairing them. Instead of learning Latin you are supposed to have played with the other kids in your street of back-to-back houses, and gone to the Saturday morning pictures.
I'm not posh, I'm just old enough to have gone to an academic state grammar school and got a good education :wink:

 

[Moo]

Lucky old you.
I too had the good fortune to go to a highly selective grammar school and emerged quite untouched by anything to do with culture and intellect. It was little more than an academic sausage-machine.

Inverted snobbery is certainly alive and kicking. When my children went to the local primary school they had to put up with quite a lot of stick because they lived in a big (old, shabby) house and had parents who 'talked posh'. They were also fair game as far as lifestyle was concerned: our rusty old car was mocked, as were the childrens' second-hand clothes (no use pointing out that the big house swallowed up most of our disposable income).
It wasn't allowed, of course, to be in any way critical of the mockers.

 

[Penners]

O tempora! O mores!

 

[DaveBrigg]

We discussed the attic / loft conundrum last summer with a year nine English class, and discovered an almost exactly 50 - 50 split, with no regard to whether their house was inspired by Greek design or not. Sofa / settee were also equally used, for no obvious reason. Lounge is more widespread than living room, although front room is still occasionally used. Serviette is more popular than napkin, and Santa / Father Christmas seem to be interchangeable. When it came to the device used to change television channels, there was no standard at all.

When discussing the path along the side of the house by which means the rear garden may be approached, the term 'back passage' seems to have fallen out of use.

 

[Juju]

I always use the term 'loft' in a modern house and 'attic' in a period property. Don't know why though. Loft just sounds more modern somehow.

When my partner broke his leg and I told the paramedics he was in the attic (ie I meant our attic bedroom), they looked really worried but then very relieved when we got up to the top floor. They thought he was trapped in the attic and they'd have to clamber through a small hatch to get to him. Not sure what they thought he'd have been doing in an attic at 3am. Mind you, it was hard enough explaining how he'd broken his leg just by walking across the bedroom floor. I know we've got sloping floors but....

 

[Nemesis]

Instead of learning Latin you are supposed to have played with the other kids in your street of back-to-back houses, and gone to the Saturday morning pictures.

I did both.

I didn't enjoy the Latin a lot though. Deadly dull stuff.

I read novels under the desk instead.

These days, being posh is one of the worst sins there is; people like that do stupidly un-cool things like liking classical music and some of them even live in old houses and take an interest in sympathetically repairing them.

I'm not posh. But I do these things.

I have some very posh mates (chums) indeed and they do these things too.

But I do narf tek the pee out of them for being posh. :wink:

They don't dare take a rise out of me for not being posh or they know I'd beat them up.

 

[Nigel Watts]

When I was growing up the space under the roof, where my father kept all sorts of fascinating junk, such as a pair of Lancaster bomber radar sets he had once converted into a rudamentary TV, was known as "the roof", which is how we refer to ours now.

When I took my kids and their grandmother away for a weekend break my 6 year old was most impressed when granny announced that she had a macintosh in the the back of her car. He was very disappointed when he found out later that it was a kind of coat rather than something he could play computer games on.

 

[Penners]

Santa / Father Christmas seem to be interchangeable.

Oh, I beg to differ!

Santa Claus is an American. He is incapable of saying anything other that "Ho, ho, ho" and ringing a bl**dy little bell. He wears a kind of two-piece red pyjama suit, trimmed with white fur, plus a red night-cap with a white bobble.

Santa Claus:

Father Christmas (like God) is British. He wears a long red cloak with a hood. trimmed around the edge with white fur.

Father Christmas:

 

[Penners]

I didn't enjoy the Latin a lot though. Deadly dull stuff. I read novels under the desk instead.

Well, at least that was honest.

Most of the boys in my Latin classes used to keep an English translation of Caesar's De Bello Gallico under the desk, to read from when they were asked to translate the Latin viva voce.

 

[Nemesis]

There is some dispute about the green coat too I gather, but:

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/santa.html

 

[Nemesis]

I read novels under the desk instead.

I was just this side of not being expelled most of the time, and I think as long as I was quiet no-one worried what I did. But by golly I knew my Jane Austen.

I was Arty and Awkward you see. Self-educated mostly.

 

[Penners]

There is some dispute about the green coat too

It is said (I can't confirm or deny) that the red attire was actually invented by Coca Cola in one of their early advertising campaigns.

 

[Nemesis]

There's been discussion elsewhere on this recently and I believe it's not true as the red coat pre-dates the ads.

http://friendsofbeamish.co.uk/articles/santa.html

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/santa.asp

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Lucky old you.
I too had the good fortune to go to a highly selective grammar school and emerged quite untouched by anything to do with culture and intellect. It was little more than an academic sausage-machine.

Inverted snobbery is certainly alive and kicking.

I went to a fairly bog-standard Northern comprehensive.


Which my parents had specially built in the grounds of our Gloucestershire mansion...

 

[Nemesis]

And from which you emerged with a great intellect and hugely cultured...

 

[Gareth Hughes]

And from which you emerged with a great intellect and hugely cultured...

yes, well, yoghurt has culture, as do petri dishes and probably that furry green thing at the back of my fridge if only I could chip it loose.

 

[Nemesis]

Ah, we have one of those.

But surely the great intellect will help solve that problem? Is it not razor sharp?