I recently finished Going Postal , which BTW is now one of my favorite Discworld books. One thing in it I didn’t get. I don’t have the book in front of me so I can’t get a direct quote but if you read the book you’ll know what I mean. The bad guy dressed like a pirate and had a bird. Not a parrot, I believe it was a cockatoo. The bird keeps repeating “twelve and a half percent” Is there something I’m missing? Something British?
12.5 percent == 1/8.
Parrot suggests pirate.
Pirates parrots sitting on their owner’s shoulder repeating ‘pieces of eight!’ is a cliche.
A ‘piece of eight’ is 1/8 of a Spanish Dollar.
Ok that makes sense. I don’t find it funny, but it makes sense.
I am disappointed that it took 11 minutes to get an answer.
I found that funny, but maybe it was just because I was explaining to someone the other day about pieces of eight, the pirate, and ‘treasure island.’ (Was that book the original source of the cliche, or does it predate??)
I know that in Shakespeare’s time plays about pirates were very common, and pirate characters would frequently have a bird on their shoulder. Whether the bird said “pieces of eight”, I’m not sure.