Little Whinging (Wing-ing? Winjing?)

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 53729

At 22:04 13/03/03 , Anne wrote:

>This must be a British "English" thing. How is the name of this town
>supposed to be pronounced, and does it mean something?? Being
>American (or perhaps being Midwestern) I've been pronouncing it
>Little Wing-ing (like the Jimi Hendrix song, Little Wing). Is that
>not correct? Is it supposed to be pronounced Little WINJ-ing? Or
>WHINE-ging? or WHINE-jing? In any case, what does that mean? Is it
>British slang for something?

Following on rapidly from French pronunciation, to English. :-)

Little WINJ-ing. Derived from "whinge", which, as you suggest, means whine 
(as in complain). Under normal rules, the 'e' would have stayed put, and it 
should be written 'whingeing', but being a place name, it would have 
undergone changes over the years.

No other pronunciation really makes sense, as "winging" would be spelt that 
way (same rules of placename transformation apply).

And on the issue of uniforms, Anne asked:

>[...] not to mention the stick. Is this supposed to be like a cricket bat??

I've never seen it as such. I've always imagined it to be pretty much like 
it was in the TMTSNBN: about a foot long, with a metal "knob" on one end.