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Post by Bertie on Jun 24, 2008 0:07:11 GMT
Tone is doing a good impression of that little Dutch boy.
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Post by Dave on Jun 24, 2008 3:21:01 GMT
Tone: Did you write the wikipedia article so you could quote it? ;D
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Post by goofy on Jun 24, 2008 3:32:01 GMT
From Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus: arrear n. usu arrears pl syn DEBT 3, arrearage, due, indebtedness, liability Arrearage ... now where did that come from? Old French arerages from arere from Latin ad plus retrō "backward". arrear(s), also borrowed from Old French arere, supplanted arrearage(s) in the 14th century.
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Post by Geoff on Jun 24, 2008 7:36:54 GMT
arrear(s), also borrowed from Old French arere, supplanted arrearage(s) in the 14th century. Supplanted seven hundred years ago. No wonder I hadn't heard of it recently.
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Post by Alan Palmer on Jun 24, 2008 10:35:48 GMT
I suppose you could call 700 years quite a way backward.
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Post by Gabriel-Ernest on Jun 24, 2008 12:08:01 GMT
Paul D, . . . when one's rent is in arrears. Is that you poshing-up a song lyric by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens?
Tone is doing a good impression of that little Dutch boy. You mean because he nether gives up?
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I’m getting a bit confused here. Is someone now claiming that the word arrear is over 700 years in arrears?
(Sorry. I’ll just sit over here with the other drunks.)
G-E.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 24, 2008 17:57:04 GMT
... they've been working all day, all day, all day ...
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 24, 2008 17:58:41 GMT
I wonder if I was influenced by that? The subconscious is a wonderful thing.
A cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake, anyone?
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Post by Tone on Jun 24, 2008 20:54:59 GMT
>Did you write the wikipedia article so you could quote it?<No way. (The grammar might have been better!) Tone's never writ a wiki article (and don't know nuffink about how to do so.) Further evidence will have to wait until Tone again has access to some decent legal dictionaries. Or the time to search further. Neither of which does Tone have currently (but might have presently! ). Back-burner time, I feel. Tone
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 24, 2008 21:45:07 GMT
I'm not sure you'll convince me with quotes from specialist dictionaries, Tone. It's a word in general use, so it's what the general dictionaries think that counts.
If you tell me that insolvency practitioners, when chatting to each other, use it in the way you describe, I'd be very happy to believe you. But that doesn't make the rest of us wrong.
We know Dr Mildr, with her professional hat on, says the data are ...; but she doesn't suggest the rest of us are wrong when we say the data is ...
Chemists (even British ones) write sulfur, but the rest of us Brits are not wrong to write sulphur.
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Post by Tone on Jun 25, 2008 20:30:44 GMT
Interesting point, Paul. I shall ponder on't. Tone
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Post by Pete on Jun 25, 2008 20:46:48 GMT
I'm not sure you'll convince me with quotes from specialist dictionaries, Tone. It's a word in general use, so it's what the general dictionaries think that counts. I agree. As a tax specialist, I see this a lot: there are words that take on special meanings for tax purposes or through the rules of general statutory interpretation are taken to have a meaning specific to a particular context, even though those words are used in 'normal' English in a different way.
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Post by Tone on Jun 25, 2008 21:05:55 GMT
Fair 'nuff. When someone agrees that I can pay them "in arrears" I'll make sure that I'm late paying! Tone
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Post by Vadim on Jun 26, 2008 7:11:09 GMT
Two VD germs crossing the road, about to squished by a lorry. One turns to the other and says: "I'm a gone-arrear." sorry First VD germ asks the second: "Can you see anyone?". Second germ replies: "I can , see-Phyllis". Sorry, was my best attempt
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 26, 2008 7:20:41 GMT
I once shared a house with a hooker who acquired a Staffordshire Terrier pup (which ate all the curtains and rugs!) The housemate aptly named the dog "Phyllis: short for syphillis". Inevitably, housemate contracted her pup's name.
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