The results to last week-and-a-half's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
The word "seam" rhymes with... (choose all that apply)
"Beam" - 43 votes
"Seem" - 29 votes
"Seam" (the word itself) - 27 votes
Total - 46 voters
I am deeply, deeply troubled by that. Clearly "seam" rhymes with "beam" and also "seem". For example:
"Things aren't always what they seem,
It's not a joist; it is a beam"
Is surely a perfectly acceptable rhyme? Three out of 46 think it isn't.
Similarly:
"Things aren't always what they seem,
It's not a zip; it is a seam"
Is also a perfectly acceptable rhyme. Why do over a third disagree?
As to words rhyming with themselves, that is an abhorrence. I challenge the 27 out of 46 who think that "seam" rhymes with "seam" to knock up a half way decent stanza.
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Here's someone who agrees with The Stigler on the topic of bank holidays:
I’m not a Gradgrind. I don’t want to stop workers seeing daylight. I just think they should choose their own holidays, instead of politicians choosing for them. Today, all UK workers have a right to 28 days’ paid annual holiday. Nobody has an automatic right to paid leave on public holidays, but in many sectors, it is the norm...
Why can’t we choose our own holidays? Why can’t Jews or Muslims take their own holidays instead of Christian ones they don’t recognise? Why should we be funnelled into traffic jams and overcrowded airports? Why can’t we take holidays when the weather’s likely to be better, rather than when politicians dictate?
Workers of the world dis-unite! Denationalise our holidays!
I can't remember exactly what The Stigler's Killer Argument was, but I have to agree. I know what we like clinging to tradition, even if that tradition is everybody is stuck in the same traffic jam on a rainy Money, but surely common sense/liberty should prevail?
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5 comments:
Thing with Bank Holidays is they make it easier to organise meetups. E.g. you can very easily organise a picnic or day trip on a bank holiday rather than try to get a bunch of people to all take leave at the same time.
Bank holidays are sensible here at least - in South Africa they have many that fall on a specific date rather than always a Monday, which causes chaos in some years
M, yes, but 8 meet-ups a year?
"Things aren't always what they seem,
It's not a zip; it is a seam"
Is also a perfectly acceptable rhyme. Why do over a third disagree?"
Possibly because, like me, they think that homophones are not rhymes. Rhyming is a function of the spoken word, not the written word, it's all a matter of sound. Otherwise "cough" would rhyme with "through". A word therefore doesn't rhyme with itself or any word that sounds like it. In your example you have two homophones that mean different things. That is also true of "rose" (the flower) and "rose" (went up), but you wouldn't say that "rose" rhymes with "rose", even though they do mean different things.
I like bank holidays as they force me to take time off. But i am self employed....
B, OK, you take the purist view, seam rhymes with neither seam nor seem. I have more sympathy with that point of view than people who say it rhymes with itself.
L, Bank Holidays, madness, but collective madness, shared hardship, something we can all laugh/moan about, that's what builds a nation.
(he replied, over a year later)
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