PeonForHer -> RE: Golden Showers (5/7/2009 5:53:36 PM)
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ORIGINAL: beeble quote:
beeble wrote: While I agree that `whilst' and its friend `amongst' are among the most pointless words in the English language, they've been around essentially forever. The O.E.D. has citations for `whilst' going back to 1375 and `amongst' is only 25 years younger. There really aren't many words in English that have been used for that long. Oh, hang on. There are citations for `amongst' going back even earlier, to ca. 1250. (Normally, entries are ordered by date but the entry for `amongst' is ordered by the corresponding meanings of `among'.) beeble. I could be talking the pulley-blocks at the heads of topmasts, Beeble, but I seem to remember reading, ages ago in the Guinness Book of Records, that the oldest written word in English, still surviving, is "apple".
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