«  |  »

Not now, but during past hour

Pas de résumé, désolée.

  • 2007-09-11

Following the link to the World Meteorological Organization chart of weather symbols in Roger Shuy’s LL post, I wonder if Eskimos there are people who have a word for any of the following concepts: “freezing drizzle or rain (not showers), not now but during (the) past hour” or “fog, sky not discernible, and has become thinner during (the) past hour” [including the delightfully vague subject reference], or indeed “snow showers, not now, but during past hour”.

Because even if we have no word for it, the WMO sure has a symbol for it.

Related posts: Finex ! Pooo !, London Signage 03: m*ta-avoidance, Unus, solus, totus, ullus..., BBC "Word 4 Word", Show me your vowels!, Eggcorns and ditchwater, Thy "thee"s, Ed Felten...

Technorati (tags): , , , , ,

2 comment(s) for 'Not now, but during past hour'

  1. (Comment, 2007-09-11 21:25 )
    #1 — Kevin Marks

    Reminds me of the lorry-driver Rain God in ‘So Long and thanks for all the fish’:

    Rob McKeena had two hundred and thirty-one different types of rain entered in his little book, and he didn’t like any of them.

    He shifted down another gear and the lorry heaved its revs up. It grumbled in a comfortable sort of way about all the Danish thermostatic radiator controls it was carrying.

    Since he had left Denmark the previous afternoon, he had been through types 33 (light pricking drizzle which made the roads slippery), 39 ( heavy spotting), 47 to 51 (vertical light drizzle through to sharply slanting light to moderate drizzle freshening), 87 and 88 (two finely distinguished varieties of vertical torrential downpour), 100 (post-downpour squalling, cold), all the seastorm types between 192 and 213 at once, 123, 124, 126, 127 (mild and intermediate cold gusting, regular and syncopated cab-drumming), 11 (breezy droplets), and now his least favourite of all, 17.

    Rain type 17 was a dirty blatter battering against his windscreen so hard that it didn’t make much odds whether he had his wipers on or off.

  2. (Comment, 2007-09-11 23:21 )
    #2 — chris

    Thanks for reminding me of that. Must reread classics.

    So we have symbols and numbers, just not words.