Wednesday 10 February 2010: Shibboleth
A port case put out with the rubbish in our street today.
Also... not something you'd want to be admitted to hospital with :-) Sorry! Remember the TV adverts?
A shibboleth is:
any distinguishing practice which is indicative of one's social or regional origin. It usually refers to features of language, and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group.
[Wikipedia]
The word originates from a story in the Hebrew Bible in which pronunciation of the word "shibbólet" was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect lacked a sh sound (as in shoe), from Gileadites whose dialect did include such a sound.
Around Bath, two place names act as mild shibboleths - Frome, which pronounced froom but which outsiders tend to call froam, and Keynsham (where Kraft is about to close the Cadbury factory) which starts with a kay sound rather than with key. I'm sure there are lots of others.
Comments
What a shame, I'd have that box....where was it?
~ Scobes
Oh....I forgot, you're more than a bus ride on the 35 from Leith aren't you!!
~ Scobes
I don't remember that ad. And now I get the joke - bit slow there!
~ nicky
Jen used to get mountains of these kind of boxes when wine suppliers used to use wood profusely, now it's all cardboard :(
~ nigellus
I hope you grabbed that box, it could be very useful!
~ jamjaragain
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