Thursday, October 30, 2008

WTF is... II

mute point

"your point is mute"

Hullo?

it's MOOT point

and while I'm at it, "pure as the driven snow". Ok. It used to denote impurity. It was a derisive thing to say when someone said something or someone was pure. Driven snow is not pure. Have a look at the snow on the road where buggies have driven through it. It's slushy and dirty.

Update:
What is it with some Queenslanders who can't say "variable"? It's pronounced verable. My ex, a Queenslander, used to say sach-et (for sachet), and re-sept (for receipt). Arrgh!

(I shouldn't talk, I have a very, very broad Aussie accent... very broad. I'll never be an announcer for BA!)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha, where'd you see that one Kae?

Interesting about driven snow, I didn't know that (so never used it).

Reminds me when my kids were in kindy and used to sing 'Australians all eat ostriches, for we are young and free' at assembly. I tried to correct them but, 'No Dad, that's what everyone sings'.

kae said...

"Pure as the driven snow" was often used in my mum's family to describe the purity of motive of any one of the siblings who were seen to be "crawling" to anyone else.... to try to get in good with them or whatever.

It was used in my family, too.

Anonymous said...

I always thought “pure as the driven snow” meant wind-driven snow. It’s a blizzard thing… an act of God!

One thing’s for certain, if you find yourself under a snowdrift on your way home from the ski resort, they’ll check your carbon footprint.

You’re pure for sure.

Skeeter said...

For spent most of my life assuming that "moot" was just an obscure adjective, used only to modify the noun, "point". But then the kid next door grew up into being very smart university graduate who used "moot" as a verb and I realised I had to find out bit more about mooting.
In fact, the kid developed into a world champion mooter and led an Australian mooting team to victory in Germany.
You can learn more about the skills at this mooting school.

Skeeter said...

My comment might make more sense if you:
Delete "For", and
Insert "I",
in the first line

Anonymous said...

As pure as the driven snow

Meaning

Entirely pure.

Origin

Shakespearian, although it doesn't appear in that form in any of his writing. Shakespeare used snow as a symbol for purity and whiteness in several plays. In The Winter's Tale - Autolycus: Lawn as white as driven snow. In Macbeth - Malcolm: black Macbeth will seem as pure as snow.

kae said...

Hi Anonymous.
I did google it before I posted about it, and I did find that same reference.