Both variants are common. “Shark” seems to be slightly more common.
And it usually means someone who *cheats *at cards.
When it’s being mentioned repeatedly in all the news media on a daily basis and discussed heavily in all sorts of public fora, it’s a little weird to still not remember WWI started in 1914. Remember, this was happening in 2014 and there was a ridiculous amount of centenary activity going on in London at the time.
Once again, this is a situation that is much more complex than the average person probably appreciates. The Sun actually rises due East and sets due West only twice a year - on the Equinoxes. The rest of the time, the positions are either North or South of due East & West.
At the poles, there are periods when the Sun doesn’t set for about a month. The Sun doesn’t just hang in one position in the sky. It goes around in a circle, staying above the horizon the entire time.
It can, but the contexts I’ve heard it in just denotes great skill at cards. Wikipedia seems to agree, saying the cheating angle is more likely to be implied in the British use of the term (which they say is more likely to be “card sharp.”)
Ha. Indeed.
I just remembered one that involved my husband, which totally floored me. He grew up in India and had servants all his life. We live in the States and I’ve been washing & cleaning for myself, my sister and my mom most of my life. One day, I was particularly exhausted from taking care of our then-newborn son, cleaning the house, cooking all the meals all while working full time. I temporarily lost my shit, so he offered to help me. I said, “If you really want to help, please wash a toilet or clean a damn sink or something.”
To which he responded, “Ok, but that’s going to take 2 hours.”
Apparently he’d never witnessed someone cleaning a toilet, so his plan was to turn off all the water inlets to the toilet, scoop out all the water, bleach it until you could eat out of the damn thing, then put it all back together again.
I still haven’t figured out whether that was an incredibly clever way of getting out of cleaning a toilet or just a product of his upbringing. If it was a way to get out of it, it didn’t work.
But those are just the first readings for each Sunday.
Yes, but this is basically Pedantry. You know what was said, the meaning of it and that it is largely true. So there is really no need and no persuasiveness in picking nits.
Yeah… I hear you. Let me just explain how I see it & then I’ll just be done. I see people having questions about the fundamentals of the physical world. They learn some vastly over simplified fact and stick that information in the empty space. But, the world is a much richer, more complex place than that.
I was taught in school that the only insect that was beneficial to the human race was the honey bee. I was taught - in college (!!!) - that if you remove all of the alcohol from whiskey, you would have diethyl ether remaining. Never mind the vast oversimplification of US history and all of the rest of it.
I think the wonder and beauty of the world comes from its complexity. I don’t like things that are boiled down and fed to me with a pat on the head. I don’t like the inferred insult that comes along with a dumbed down answer. And… I assumed that you wouldn’t like that either. I didn’t mean to offend or speak down.
That’s it. Scotty out.
I grew up Lutheran in a small Southern town. Most of my classmates and friends were Southern Baptists. I was very surprised to find out that they all thought I was Catholic.
Of course, I once had a Catholic priest think I was Catholic and asked me to help out with communion at mass (small university group, not in church or anything). I was very uncomfortable about that, but I held the tray of wafers anyway.
I had a geography professor who was adamant that “up” was away from the center of the earth, “down” was toward the center of the earth, and that neither was a substitute for North or South.
Ah, yes, if we get to poke fun at our spouses, I had to teach Sr. Weasel to make mashed potatoes. ‘‘I don’t understand why this isn’t working,’’ he said. He was trying to mash raw potatoes.
And he still hasn’t figured out how to boil eggs. I mean, he can do it, but he’s frequently paranoid he’s doing it wrong. ''Let me get this straight, the eggs go in the water first, and then I turn on the burner? I don’t understand why this is so. When you make pasta, don’t you boil the water and then put pasta in? Why is it different?"
The fact that putting a lid on a pot causes it to heat faster was a divine revelation for him.
Needless to say, I do most of the cooking.
My brother made - and served - raw potato salad.
My wife will probably kill me for telling this story again, but here we go:
Some years back, when Kiddo #1 was small, we were on vacation, and ended up at a sort of petting zoo. They had some interesting animals to look at, including one hugely fat pig. The keeper told us that it was a “lard hog”. I found that interesting, because at the time I didn’t know that some pigs were bred and grown exclusively for their lard.
Later we stopped at a place for lunch, and we were sort of rehashing the day. The subject of the lard hog came up. And then my wife asked the question: “How do they get the lard out of the pig?”
Oh my. “Well, the pig doesn’t give it up willingly…” “You mean they KILL the pig?!” Yeah honey, killing animals is a lot of what people do. Apparently she thought they (I am not making this up) milked the pig, or something along those lines, and churned lard out of it somehow.
In fairness to her, she’s not a stupid person; she just has a soft spot for animals, and she definitely did not grow up in the country like I did. I mentioned once how we dealt with the chickens we had when I was a kid, and she was heartbroken. “You killed your PETS?!” No, honey, they weren’t pets…
Yet despite that, she has no problem sticking a fishhook into a minnow to go fishing. A walking contradiction.
When I was back in jr high our science teacher told us rivers run north to south.
Well, he is nominated for this thread 
. Even praticing Catholics have to go through training to be Eucharistic ministers.
I’ve been a poker player for most of my life and I’ve never heard of a “card sharp.” I have heard “card shark” a lot. My guess is that you were hearing “card shark” because that’s what people were saying, and then later heard or read “card sharp” and assumed you were mishearing it…
“card sharp” is a very common term. About 324,000 hits on Google.
I should have linked to this with my earlier post.
My brother had an elementary school teacher who told the class that the temperature of ice was always exactly 32 degrees. He was one of those teachers with whom you quickly learn not to disagree.
Mass has an OT reading, a NT reading, and a gospel reading.