Perhaps no word in English has undergone more transformations in its lifetime than toilet. Originally, in about 1540 it was a kind of cloth, a diminuitive form of toile, a word still used to describe a type of linen. Then it became a cloth for dressing tables. Then it became the items on the dressing table (whence toiletries). Then it became the dressing table itself, then the act of dressing, then the act of receiving visitors while dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any kind of private rom near a bedroom, then a room used lavatorially, and finally the lavatory itself. Which explains why ‘toilet water’ in English can describe something you would gladly daub on your face or, simultanously, ‘water in the toilet’. –From Bill Bryson’s “At Home”
Tag Archives: Quote
“[T]rue computer literacy is not just knowing how to make use of computers and computational ideas. It is knowing when it is appropriate to do so.”
— Seymour Papert (“Mindstorms”, 1980 in Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986)
Reminder to myself
Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
“Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” -Benjamin Franklin