Discussion Groups / British English / August 2004

One months notice
or
One month's notice
How does that work then?

I work for a voluntary sector mental health project. One of the large
voluntary organisations, formerly the National Schizophrenia Fellowship,
recently changed its name to "Rethink", a name I feel to be a little
pretentious.

Does anyone here know the origin of the phrase "Charlie's dead",
meaning 'your petticoat is showing'? I've done a Google but found
nothing, other than "Queen Anne's dead" is used also.
Anyone?

In Arthur Conan Doyle's "Hound of the Baskervilles" (1901) he uses the word
"goyal" in Chapter 2.  The meaning is pretty clear from the context:
  "...a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor..."
What puzzles me is that "goyal" appears in none of the dictionaries on the

Over the last few years there have been quite a few posts lamenting a
gradual loss of past tenses in -a-; for example, shrunk is taking over
from shrank, stunk from stank etc.
The general view seems to be that this process has occurred in only

Previous message posted in error to wrong newsgroup

"  right out of the box", what's the meaning? the whole sentence is below:
Apache was one of the first servers to support IP-based virtual hosts right
out of the box
thx

I've noticed in UK English we seem to use the word 'backpacker' which I
assume is imported from North America, or Australia, yet we don't generally
use 'backpack'. 'Rucksack' seems the most commonly used UK English
equivalent.

If, when writing a short story, I neologise, should I italicise the
neologism?
(And do pardon the neologism in the above sentence.  It was irresistable.)

My question is, since this sentence is grammatically an affirmative
statement, should it or shouldn't it have a question mark at the end.
A one word answer would suffice, as long as it's not 'maybe'.
regards, Vic Joseph, Amsterdam, a translator suffering from nocturnal

I recently visited Cotehele, a very pleasant country house in the Tamar
Valley. At the entrance to the house there was a notice asking people with
babies in baby carriers to remove them, but stating that "Hippy Chicks are
available". I was disappointed to discover that this referred ...

what does the abbrevation "w.o." stand for, when a sportsman throws in the
towel?
Thanks in advance for your help,
Martin.

Seven years over the death of princess Diana are celebrated this 31 th
August 2004
Visit this wonderful site to celebrate her life...
Download photos, movies, music, photos, screensavers and more, on the most

as a german, I quite regularly read english books, magazines and
newspapers (british and american) and watch british and american TV
programs. So I am quite sure to know the word "arkward". Today I
wanted to read about the exact pronounciation. So I walked to the book

can anyone tell me why a lot of British people tend to suddenly adopt an
American accent when singing? Words like "can't" and "after" are suddenly
pronounced with an American accent, even they are not spoken that way, and
nobody seems to notice it or have a problem with it.