Friday, November 03, 2006

What I Learned This Week


That the long iron beak on those train engines I used to see in Westerns as a young fellow is known as a 'cowcatcher' though as Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day points out, the use of the word was scorned by railroadmen in the 1830s and 1840s, who preferred the word 'pilot'. Spin is no recent invention, I suppose.

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