Is it possible to be a creationist, or a fixed-earth geek?

I would say not.

(Dunno why. I just do.)

eta: Maybe it's because geekiness typically involve those things known as "facts."

Poor Ethelred. He was really called Ethelred the Unraed, which means uncounseled or possibly badly counseled.

(There's no geek like a geek who took two semesters of Old English.)

Ethelred the Unraed

Now I want to call him Ethel the Unleaded.

Shrift, I bet your phone does. Get on down there.

I am so tempted to crawl under my desk and nap, ita. If I had a job where I actually needed to Get Shit Done, I would so do that right now.

If I can just power through the next four hours somehow, I'm going to bed when I get home, and I'll be setting the alarm for tomorrow.

In this situation, the foodstuff has the Norman name, and the animal the Anglo-Saxon name

I was thinking of the cheerful multiplicity of "I made something else out of ___" names, too -- steak and ribs and bacon and ham and hamburger and chops and sausages and all. Actually, those words are probably just an acknowledgement that cattle and pigs are gigantic animals, aren't they?

Because I sure wouldn't want to order pork and get pork knuckles, not if I had been expecting a ham sandwich.

Speaking of fixed-earthers: [link]

I unfortunately learned about this site because a Georgia legislator from North Georgia (that's Deliverance country) has proposed a bill [link] to ban evolution because it's really a Jewish plot. Sigh.

Speaking of fixed-earthers: [link]

That is one ugly website.

That's what I was talking about! points upthread

Me, too! I wasn't just randomly talking chili v. pancakes. Not that I wouldn't ever do that; I just wasn't this time.

Call it Butter Sunday and you're in good with the Russians.

Mmmm. Butter. Way to go, Russians.

Protestants used skim milk; Catholics used whole.

Adorable! Kids' minds are awesome. Also, feel better.

those words are probably just an acknowledgement that cattle and pigs are gigantic animals, aren't they?

They split up names for chickens too, and they're not gigantic. Any time I got gizzards would be a bad thing, but I'm especially partial to the dark meat, thigh most of all.

The names are more prosaic, but I'm sure the names of pig cuts were prosaic to someone at some point in the pig eating history of the world.

Well, but like, chitlins and haggis are definitley poor people's food (they're made of stomach, intestine -- basically, they are proto-hotdogs). And chitlins are not called pig-intestines; they are called chitlins.

That's a good point, but I think I can handwave it through the specificity of the dish they refer to.

Also, between mutton and lamb, mutton is definitely poorer -- being both tougher and gamier in taste -- but which one is the same name as the critter being et?

But I think they didn't used to be - lamb as a common meat was a by product of expanding wool markets, something about culling the herds and adult sheep being more valuable, I forget the details. Back in the day, there weren't surplus lamb to get eaten and mutton was, as juliana's cite puts it better than me, eaten by Normans.