Posted on 06/26/2005 11:06:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
So, what does OED say the etymology of the word is?
If you follow the paternal line (which is the English custom), Victoria was still a Hanover as that was her birth family (her dad the Duke of Kent was definitely a Hanover.) I don't think somebody's homepage is a definitive source - wikipedia says contra.
"But other than that, I've heard that the food in the UK is awful."
Actually, no country does candy like the brits. I hadn't lived until I first tasted a Turkish Delight.
(actually that sounded kinda dirty. But the candy's fantastic.)
What's wrong with kidneys? I love steak and kidney pie, and if I could get a pie made with just stewed kidneys I'd be even happier. To my taste kidneys are much, much better than liver, which I don't like at all. When it comes to organ meats it's all a matter of what you're used to, I guess.
Another one! What's wrong with blood pudding? Just the fact that it's made with blood? What do you think that stuff is that oozes out of a rare steak? Cooked up properly it is very crisp on the outside and very black (thus its other name), and very tasty.
Just don't ask for Iced tea. I ordered it once, the waitress said, " we do not serve, iced....tea" to which I responded, oh, sorry
He's so cute he can do that without offending anybody (just imagine Grizzly Adams on a bad hair day with an engaging smile and twinkling blue eyes).
I'll tell my Bagpipe playing friend..Every year they have a 'Scottish Haggis' Dinner & Ale..he never talks about the food, only the Ale. :D
''Sailor King'', bah! A loser and a thoroughly dishonourable person. He kept one mistress for more than 20 years, had X number of children, then ditched her and tried to marry wealth (and failed, btw).
A loser all round. You do know that he was rather uniformly called ''Silly Billy'' by the populace, right? (w!) I'd say the English were damned lucky that he preferred to be on the ocean to infesting London.
As noted, all I said was that there seems to be some disagreement as to which house Victoria ''belonged''. Hanoverian is fine w/me, don't have a dog in the fight, but, by the same lights, Elizabeth might well be termed of the Hanoverian house, too.
I suppose I'll have to apply to the College of Arms for all the straight bumf, but thank you for cutting through a lot of it.
lol, must have been in London, we were in a pub next to the Cantebury Cathedral. She was insulted that I asked.
On the link I posted it says there are a number of competing explanations of the word (some based on acronyms) none of which entirely fits with the evidence, so I'm probably being over-zealous in saying that your great-grandfather's explanation is definitely wrong. It seems a little unlikely to me though.
Anyway, my original reason in bringing it up was to point out that, whatever it's origins, it is a derogatory term, so it's probably not a word you should really be using if you want to avoid giving offence, especially if you're ever in the UK.
Just a friendly word of advice from a native Brit.
I wouldn't call him a "loser" either - he certainly was a bluff person who didn't stand on ceremony and preferred hob-nobbing with the "lower classes" to doing the royal bit (hence his nickname), but his reign was one of significant reforms (including revising the poor law, the child labor laws, the passage of the Reform Act, and the abolition of slavery). And back in those days, the monarch wasn't merely a figurehead and could affect legislation directly.
Elizabeth can't by any stretch be termed a member of the House of Hanover. Patrilineal descent is the key, as the College of Arms notes. Since Elizabeth was the first female monarch since Victoria, she married out of her house (Windsor) to her husband's (Mountbatten), but the house of her birth remains hers - same as Victoria, who remained a Hanover even though she married into the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
If Henry Tudor could invent his own church, surely it would be a small matter for the College of Arms to adopt Egyptian succession rules (couldn't resist, sorry...). As noted, I've no dog in the fight, and was broadly teasing about Elizabeth being Hanoverian.
We will have to agree to disagree about the ''quality'' of William IV, though.
:^)
Well, frankly, I agree with the Duke of Wellington re the sons of George III -- "the damndest millstones about the neck of any government that can be imagined." Profligacy, betrayal, drunkenness, gluttony, cruelty, debauchery, bigamy, even murder and incest, they were a bad lot all told. Considered in THAT company, ol' Bill wasn't so bad.
:^)
( . . . can we set that room on fire? Lansky will just have to suck it up and enjoy being collateral damage . . . )
Heh, heh, heh....
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