---- Original Message ----
From: "Wirt Atmar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 4:13 AM
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Two questions - Software Suttee

> Roy writes, in a different form of English than I'm used to:

Oops, sorry people, momentarily forgot I was on a largely US mailing list
here.... you'll have to excuse us inventors sticking blindly to the original
:-)
But I'll try to rein it in a bit.

> I'm still not sure if I understand the term, "stap", but I'll let that go.

Even Google nods....oops sorry, literary reference you might not get..... I
mean 'the normally comprehensive Google lets us down here', as I cannot find a
valid definition of 'stap', in the sense in which I used it above.

But I see that Neil Harvey has been able to correctly track down references to
the original expression 'Stap me vitals', sometimes given as 'stap me
vittles'.
I still don't quite know if it means 'steep (soak in brine or some other
preserving liquid) my vitals (internal organs)' or 'stop my victuals (i.e.
deprive me of food)'.
However, all references to it on Google have in common it being an expression
of surprise, which was my usage.

Neil's achievement is all the greater when you consider that 'stap' is a
common word in Dutch and Afrikaans, so he will have had to wade through a
large number of false positives that US users will be spared.

> The other word that greatly confuses me is "suttee", as it
> appears in the subject of this email. Looking it up in my Webster's,
> the only definition presented is this one:

> ": the act or custom of a Hindu widow willingly being cremated on the
> funeral pyre of her husband as an indication of her devotion to him;
> also : a woman cremated in this way"

Yes, you found the appropriate definition.

> I am completely befuddled by the correlation of this definition to the
> subject at hand.

OK - by analogy:

": the act or custom of the use of a piece of software unavoidably being
discontinued at the same time as the use of the computer it has been installed
on, as a consequence of the way they are inextricably bound by the security
arrangements deployed; also : a piece of software discontinued in this way"

As they used to say in Reader's Digest: 'Towards more picturesque speech'.....

--
Roy Brown

Posting with the OEnemy, tamed by OE-QuoteFix 1.17.6
http://jump.to/oe-quotefix

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