Things you were shockingly old when you learned

do any latin based words ending in "gue" share that pronuanciation? Cannot think of any

brb checking my catalogway of words now

Merengue, the dance (not meringue, the food)

lol @ Hunt3r

AHH YES! xp

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/words-that-end-in-gue

233 words, but only true heads will know how many are derived from latin

Portsea Island is the third most populous island in the "British Isles" after Great Britain and Ireland.

... population 207,100 (I didn't even know it existed!)

Try Guys

xp I mean it's most of Portsmouth, and it's only an island on a technicality.

Still a good pub quiz question.

https://www.ezglot.com/words-ending-with.php?w=gue&l=ita&l2=&length=&submit=Search

Looking at the least-populated islands in the British Isles, some very odd ones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calf_of_Man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foulness_Island

The most-populated ones are kinda odd too.

Calf of Man's lighthouses built by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson

lundy island was just all over the lore of the puffin club

(i guess bcz lundi means puffin in norse, something i only just learned)

https://www.barterbooks.co.uk/catalog/images/books/ppt201.jpg

I just learned this week that puffins visit the Farallon Islands right outside San Francisco Bay

I had no idea they ventured this far south

Lundy = knights templar, puffins, "self-proclaimed king Martin Harman", pirates & wreckers, gets a shout-out in the shipping forecast, quite a Big Deal for a barely-populated island.

HEY

You are talking about my kindred

We can dig it.

what a 'try guy' is

I'm hoping to never learn

I vaguely knew that Alsatians were a dog breed but I guess I'd never been curious enough to discover that they're just German shepherds utilizing an alias.

of Glen Ballard's involvement in Thriller and Bad, and writing credit on "Man in the Mirror"

After detour through the Glen Ballard Wikipedia links, I learned that Ringo is putting out a record every year of late.

Wow, wonder who is buying them apart from Rob Sheffield?

Calling the breed Alsatian or German Shepard is just another point of contention in the ages old border dispute between France and Germany over the Alsace region.

Disputed Terri(tory)ers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolley_Kibber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colley_Cibber

https://fullhouse.fandom.com/wiki/Kimmy_Gibbler

(xp) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0714457/?ref_=tt_ch

Cell-mates Titus Oates and Colly Kibber plan a robbery together whilst they are in prison. However, when they are released, they stage a dramatic fight to give Regan the impression that they have fallen out with each other. Regan trails Kibber, believing that he may have killed Oates, but this is just the diversion the two villains are looking for, leaving Oates to put the criminal plan into place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeKLydy_nTM

Crinkle-crankle walls use fewer bricks than straight ones which need at least two layers of bricks for strength: here arch support provided by the curves. I like them because they teach that a straight line is not always the best model, true for poetry and us all. pic.twitter.com/o62JUYnKXc

— Ian Duhig (@ianduhig) October 10, 2022

That Suella Braverman actually was named after Sue-Ellen from Dallas.

Was born two weeks after JR was shot! Sue Ellen Ewing was in a really bad state at that point, so that was an interesting choice.

This week I realized “brainstorm” is a play on “rainstorm”

I also recently realized “Van Morrison” isn’t one surname. I always thought the Van was a prefix - I took me realizing Morrison isn’t a Dutch name to consider it. Then I looked it up and saw it’s short for Ivan (also learned Ivan can be Van). Growing up I didn’t really encounter any Vans, and also lumped Van Morrison and Donovan together so kind of just assumed it was a mononym.

never thought about brainstorm/rainstorm

there was a period in the UK when people had decided that the word "brainstorm" was offensive to people with epilepsy but my ex contacted a few campaingning groups who said they thought that was bollocks

i did used to think Van was his middle Dutch name tho :D

i mean fuck it, orangemen

I knew a kid whose middle name was Van.

Looked it up in the SSA's baby name registry and it has never left the top 1000 names! Morrison's birth year, 1945, is pretty close to peak Van though. It topped out the next year at 265.

Oh wait, it dropped out of the top 1000 between 1992 and 2005.

like famous composer Van Gelis

Van Heflin and Van Johnson would both have been popular when Van Morrison was growing up.

Van Cliburn, but that was a nickname

I doubt he was as famous on the streets of Belfast as Van Johnson.

(xp) It was short for his middle name Lavan.

Van Heflin = middle name Evan

Van Johnson = middle name Van Dell

As a kid I too thought Van Morrison must be his last name, but then I thought about it a bit and realized it was extremely unlikely there was any place in Netherlands called "Morrison"

I have a sister named Vanessa (whom we called Van) so it never occurred to that it wasn't his first name, but I also never thought about what it could be a short form of. I guess I thought "Van" was the male form of the name.

His full name is Vanagon.

I think part of the confusion comes from the fact that people often emphasize the "Mor" instead of the "Van" which makes it sound more like a last name.