Re: Issues in Informix - just a little bit Off Topic
"Jonathan Leffler" <jleffler@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:3EC5D969.9010305@earthlink.net... > *** Just occasionally, the Meriam-Webster online dictionary reveals > its American roots - it has no clue about a googly (though the print > version of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has it). The Chambers > Dictionary online version knows about it. It is nothing whatsoever to > do with a certain search engine, either, though said search engine > also comes up with the right answer in the number 2 spot! It may be Australian. Australians do not generally use the word "googly" to describe the leg-spinner's "wrong" ball - which spins from off to leg instead of leg to off - either. When I was young they used to refer to it as a "bosie", after the English cricketer BJT Boasanquet, who introduced the technique into first-class cricket. (Bosanquet is an ancestor of former ITN newsreader and renowned drunk Reggie). But whenever I hear Shane Warne - arguably the greatest-ever exponent of leg-spin and still only in his early 30s - talk, he always refers to the delivery as his "wrong 'un".
"Captain Pedantic" <theharlequin36@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<ba53th$ot40q$1@ID-162943.news.dfncis.de>... > "Jonathan Leffler" <jleffler@earthlink.net> wrote in message > news:3EC5D969.9010305@earthlink.net... > > > *** Just occasionally, the Meriam-Webster online dictionary reveals > > its American roots - it has no clue about a googly (though the print > > version of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has it). The Chambers > > Dictionary online version knows about it. It is nothing whatsoever to > > do with a certain search engine, either, though said search engine > > also comes up with the right answer in the number 2 spot! > > It may be Australian. Australians do not generally use the word "googly" to > describe the leg-spinner's "wrong" ball - which spins from off to leg > instead of leg to off - either. During my internment in the Queensland Education System -- where I put down a thoroughly mediocre assembly of medium pace and was relied upon to hole out in the deep with about 12 runs -- we had a team-mate who would trundle out his leg-spin whenever our keeper's objections weren't loud enough. He used to call it a wrong-un' too, but we used to call it a 'bunyip', because although he used to talk about it all the time, and would tell us wild stories of its terrors, we never actually saw the beast. But I digrees . . .