Dirty deeds, Thunder Chief!
Duh! 
Right on the front page of our own Straight Dope website–you do look at the front page from time to time, yes?–there is a link called Weird Earl’s. It is updated regularly and always points to an unusual or bizarre webpage, nominated by Dopers.
I never gave the title much thought, assuming that it was meant to give the impression of a peculiar establishment run by a guy named Weird Earl.
I have been seeing and using this link for years. Am I the only one who didn’t notice until recently that the reason it is named Weird Earl’s is:
(if you don’t know what I’m about to reveal, consider thinking about it before reading the spoiler)
it’s a pun. Unusual or bizarre websites are weird URLs.
I wonder who came up with that one? Hats off to them!
IIRC, “caniggit” is actually the original old-English (Saxon?) pronunciation of the word, which Terry Jones, as a well-read lay historian of the period, would have known. The “nite” pronunciation came after the spelling was established, apparently. One of our better-informed Dopers can either confirm or contradict my recollection.
Recently we went on a cruise. When we arrived onboard and were shown our cabin, we were delighted to discover that we had been upgraded from an ordinary outside cabin, with just a window, to one with a balcony. The shipping company’s website and literature did mention the possibility of an upgrade so we weren’t completely surprised.
Why do they do this? Simple. Because they know that once you’ve cruised with a balcony cabin, you’ll never go back.
The fiends!
I guess I don’t see why anyone would feel stupid about not knowing who the dog and cat are named after. Is there something in the comic strip that I’m missing that makes this obvious?
I installed some remote controls for the ceiling fan and its light. All the installations would work just fine. Then one day, a week later, or a month later, I would press the light button on the remote and the light would turn on but be quite dim. I used a meter to check the power input and determined that it was okay. So the remote installed in the ceiling must have gone bad.
I replaced it. Other remotes would have the same problem. I replaced them, sometimes with the same model, sometimes with another. After three of these replacements, one of the replacements had the problem. What was going on here? I couldn’t figure it out.
Then one day, in exasperation I pointed the remote at the light and pressed and held the button! The light dimmed slowly from full to off. A light dawned in my head. I pressed and held the button again. The light came on dim and slowly brightened to full power.
:wally
Well, the other buttons were Lo, Med, and Hi for the fan! Why should the light have a press-to-dim/lighten feature? Okay, I read the box after the fact and it did say it had a dimmer for the light. I just didn’t need it so never bothered to learn what it meant. The kids must have played with the remotes. Oh, and I have a BS in Electrical Engineering and program computers for a living. :o
On-line sources seem to say that it comes from the Saxon cniht which seems to contain no gs. “Caniggit” seems suspect, especially when there are so many other -ight words in English.
Unless I’m being whooshed. 
It look me months and someone’s else’s counsel to figure out that I didn’t have to use my key to lock the driver’s side door of my car. I could just hold up the handle while pressing down the lock.
When watching the film “The Wedding Singer” I commented to my friend that the guy playing Billy Idol was crap and didn’t even look like Billy Idol. We stayed for the credits only to find that Billy Idol played himself. I felt pretty stupid.
On the misunderstood lyrics front, my dad used to listen to country music when I was a kid. I heard:
You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.
Four-hundred kids, and I’m feedin 'em oatmeal.
And about 3 years ago, I was telling my sister that something was super-flow-is instead of…um…er…superfluous. She looked at me in confusion, realized what I meant to say, corrected me, and then mocked me senseless for the rest of the day.
You’re not being whooshed.
In Old English (~400 to 1100CE) writing, h at the end of a syllable was pronounced much like ch in modern German words like nicht and ich. The g preceding the h wasn’t written until hundreds of years later during the Middle English period. Not long after, people stopped pronouncing the “ich-laut” but kept the spelling.
So it took me two years to discover I had under cabinet lighting in the kitchen. :eek: :eek:
I’m a voracious reader, and have an extensive vocabulary. I think by now, at 41, I’ve learned the pronunciation of most of those words.
But I remember saying something to my grandmother once about my A-chilies heel. She stared at me in bewilderment, and then broke out in laughter whilst telling me that it was pronounced ah-kill-ees.
I also used to think that a ga-ze-bo was pronounced gaze-bo. I thought it sounded peculiar, but what the hey, right?
And Izzybella forgot to tell you that she devoured the Sweet Valley High books when she was a young teenager. She made a comment once about what a funny last name Jessica and Elizabeth have: wak-a-field. It was my turn to stare at her in bewilderment and break out in laughter whilst telling her that it was pronounced wake-field.
and Ving Rhames is short for…I R V I N G ! !
Well, it’s because you know that certain places are to the north, east, south, and west of wherever you are. For example, I know from looking at a map that Saint-Henri is west of downtown and the Village is east. Laval is north and the river is south.*
So when someone tells me to go east on René-Lévesque, it means go towards the Village. If I then have to turn north, it’s obvious I need to go left, since I was going east before. Does that help?
*for the purposes of this discussion, we will ignore Montreal north. Thank you.
So, when we learned about sex in the fourth grade, I couldn’t figure how a flaccid penis could fit in a vagina. 
Yuck yuck everyone knows segue is pronounced seg gew!
So I watched a TV special about Jimmy Rodgers and was surprised they didn’t mention the pork sausages. Jimmy dean was the guy who died on the motorcycle, wasn’t he?
and there was the time I said disassemble meant to lie!! :smack:
No!!
that was the president!! :wally
Doesn’t TBA stand for The Basketball Association>
Guess what!!
Duct tape was once called duck tape.
From DuctTapeGuys.com
I guess we know about as much as anyone about duct tape origins - so we’ve become the “experts,” or the conveyors of folk lore - as the case may be. It was actually rather hard to find anyone to admit to the actual invention of duct tape. The closest we got to a consistent story was the Johnson and Johnson Permacel Division who made the stuff for the U.S. Military during World War II. The original use was to keep the moisture out of the ammunition cases. Because it was waterproof, people referred to the tape as “Duck Tape.” Also, the tape was made using cotton duck - similar to what was used in their cloth medical tapes. Military personnel quickly discovered that the tape was very versatile and used it to fix their guns, jeeps, aircraft, etc. After the war, the tape was used in the booming housing industry to connect heating and air conditioning duct work together. Soon, the color was changed from Army green to silver to match the ductwork and people started to refer to duck tape as “Duct Tape.” (By the way, “Duck Tape” is now a registered trademark of Duck® brand (a division of Henkel Consumer Adhesives) in Avon, Ohio
One time in college I went to my first jazz show with a couple people and after a few “songs” I leaned forward and whispered to me friend:
“It sounds like they’re just making it up as they go along!”
Yeah, I still blush over that one.