Fahrenheit/Whassup/Pretty/more more more

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Geoff wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38384>:

<< The temperature on our central heating/hotwater boiler is usually
set at 58 or thereabouts wlthough we have pushed it up to about 63-64
in the current spell of severe cold in the UK. We used to have it a
tad higher but now keep it lower for fuel economy reasons. >>

(58 * 9 / 5 ) + 32 = 136.4 + 'thereabouts' = 140, which has been the
traditional setting for American home water heaters, but recently we
have all been advised many times to set them down to 120 [(120 - 32) *
5 / 9 = 48.8888] for fuel economy reasons. With the results that a new
study has recently been published revealing that many bacteria who are
killed at 140 thrive at 120.

Sheryl wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38396>:

<<  Sometimes higher if the temp outside is going down below -30 C. >>

Fahrenheit 22 below zero!? Isn't that uncivilized?

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38400>:

<< has received some odd looks for providing a real answer to the
rhetorical question "How are you?" >>

Miss Manners wrote that people should be so habitual about answering
'Fine' to 'How are you?' that they answer 'Fine' even to the emergency
room doctor examining them. She wrote that the question to ask when a
real answer is desired is 'How are you, *really*?'

Altho' I cherish some unconventional answers to 'How are you?' which I
have heard. I loved 'Perverse and contrary' so much that I borrowed it
for a while. 'I have not interrogated that register recently' is not
my style.

Cabal md wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38403>:

<< "Pretty" is an adverb and adjective and a noun... what the hell is
an intensifier, I teach English, never heard of any such thing :-D >>

I think that 'very' is the only OFFICIAL intensifier. Don't you always
have students puzzled at adverbs that can apply only to adjectives and
adverbs, and can't apply to verbs, like 'He very ran' or 'She danced
pretty'?

Here is the entry for 'very' in the Online Etymology Dictionary:
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=very>. Like 'veritable' and
'verily' it comes from a word meaning 'truth'. Of course, 'true' and
'truthful' don't mean the same: compare a true man to a truthful man.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38428>:

<< Not a tempest in a teapot? Do we really all say it that
differently? (snip) now wondering how Mrs. Figg would say it >>

Surely Mrs. Figg's phrase would be 'in a cauldron'. 'Hurricane in a
cauldron' alliterates better than 'tempest in a cauldron' but still
not well. 'Earthquake in a flowerpot' crossed my mind but is not wizardly.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38429>:

<< Peeves, inciting the House-Elves to fight, yells, "Stick your
fingers up his nosey, draw his cork and pull his earsies" (p.420--"Elf
Tails, about two pages before the end of the chapter). Shouldn't that
be "conk," meaning "nose"? *Is* it a typo and does it appear in the
Bloomsbury edition as well? If it's not a typo and "cork" is correct,
what does it mean? >>

Doesn't 'draw his cork' mean 'give him a bloody nose'? And then the
spilled blood is called 'claret'?

Zanooda wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38445>:

<< One last question about "nice and": we can use it to characterize
*only* inanimate objects/nouns, right? It wouldn't work to describe
people, would it? If a girl is "nice and pretty", it means that she is
pretty and she is *also* nice, not that she is
pleasantly/agreeably/perfectly (and whatever else it was :-)) pretty,
right :-)? >>

I think 'nice and' is also an intensifier for beings. Someone who is
'nice and tall' doesn't have to be exceptionally nice, only nice
enough to reach something down frome the top shelf when requested by a
short person. My friend Lee reports that she once made the day of a
man about 5'5, a fellow customer in the supermarket, to whom she said
'Excuse me, I need a tall person. Can you reach that olive oil down
for me?'