OMG I'm thick as mince

[OopsInamechangedagain]

I was just doing an online trivia quiz and one of the answers mentioned that zebra crossings are so-called because the black and white stripes resemble a zebra's coat. I can't believe that not once in my 40-odd years on this planet did I twig the connection!

What else have I missed...?

Snaccidents and Maui, sorry, of course it is. No wonder I hadn’t realised before then. Doubly thick!!

A ‘rebus’ is a puzzle, hence the play on words.

Wow loving this, I didn't know about Navy Blue. Love it.

I was going to say about Flo Rida but someone beat me to it.

What do you mean, you only just realised the process of pressing the up or down arrows to call a lift..

Dark

Just did the thing with an emery board and it's not true!

Smidge I’d spent my formative years pressing random buttons to call a lift. I realised, quite late in life, that there is a correct way of doing it.

"When someone tells you to hold your horses they're telling you to be stable

Be there or be square means you won't be 'a-round'"

I don't think that either of those really make sense tbh.

Who ever tells anyone to "be stable"??

Were people who weren't square called round?

Watching that Romesh Ranganathan programme yesterday it suddenly occured to me that a the Inuits (Eskimos in old speak) live in Canada (and a bit of Alaska/Greenland).

In my head they all lived in 'the Arctic' - which is a big circular island at the top of earth, like the cartoons... 😂. Knob.

www.tameside.gov.uk/traffic/pedestriancrossings

There are puffins and pelicans too

Not sure on the logic of those though

Hold your horses means don't rush into things, not to be stable.

Be there or be square means you won't be 'a-round'

Well I think that might be a fanciful explanation. "Square" was 60s slang for somebody not trendy.

The little piggy that went to market wasn't going there with his basket over his arm.

around diddl, not a round!!

As in, "don't be around, be there!"

Be stable means not rushing into things surely?

Back in the early two thousands I thought that there were brothers playing for the English Cricket Team called Freddie and Andrew Flintoff. When England won the ashes and there was a celebratory bus ride around London with the team holding the cup up on the top of the bus I wondered why only Freddie was there and not Andrew and thought maybe he was ill.

It was a good few years after that that I realised that Freddie was Andrew and I was a halfwit. To be fair I've known I was a halfwit for most of my life.

"Not sure on the logic of those though"

Do you mean why they are called puffin & pelican?

"pedestrian user friendly intelligent crossing"

" pelicon crossing, which stood for "pedestrian light controlled crossing""

Paddy Ashdown is actually called Jeremy.

“Paddy” was a nickname he acquired at Bedford school because he had an Irish accent.

My friend who is in a successful band and is one of the biggest music buffs ever said this to me:

"Ffs Shady, I dunno why I called the band (bands name)! I mean why are Blur called Blur? Why were The Beatles called The Beatles?"

And I went, "Cos it's wordplay..the Beat-les"

And he looked at me blankly.

So I said, "Beat...beat as in rhythm..BEAT-les"

And he was like, "Omigod HOW DID I NEVER REALISE THAT?!"

Also, overheard;

Person A: I'm making myself a Chamomile Tea, would you like one?

Person B: I dunno...I've never tried it!

Person A: I've got other herbal teas if you'd like to try one?

Person B: Yeah, I would like to try. It's meant to be healthy isn't it?

Person A: Chamomile then?

Person B: Yeah, I better.

Person A: Hmm?

Person B: Well, does it come in Camel Mild and Camel Strong? Cos I think I best start off with the Mild first. The Camel Strong might be too much, don't you think?

We all pissed ourselves laughing.

"As in, "don't be around, be there!""

Sorry, yes, I get it but I think that that was a meaning that was thought up afterwards.

When someone tells you to hold your horses they're telling you to be stable

That's surely not true - when you're told to hold your horses when riding; it stops you. You hold to stop your horse from walking for a moment; until you release.

It means pause for a minute.

Hold your horses was surely meant literally?
As in, don't gallop of into the situation just yet

Hold your horses means wait.

When controlling a horse you make them wait by holding them back via the reins.

Oops cross post

Took me years to twig Diagon Ally in Harry Potter is diagonally

Oh that, yes, I've known for simply ages. When? Oh about 10:22pm I should think.

My contributions-
The name bell ringer and graveyard shift- (I learnt this in a taxi on the way to an airport)
In England a long time ago they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."