On Tuesday 02 September 2003 11:02 am, cr wrote: > On Monday 01 September 2003 23:13, Geoff Thurman wrote: > > Apologies for picking up a dropped thread, particularly when it has > > little (read nothing) to do with Debian, but a couple of things > > have been gnawing away at my mind. I have snipped from various > > branches of the thread: > > On 2003-08-19 at 11:08, Kevin Mark wrote: > >On Tue, 2003-08-19 at 04:50, Dave Howorth wrote: > >> PS For any yanks who don't know the word, 'poms' is equivalent to > >>'limeys' > > > > > > > Limeys - saliors eat limes to avoid scurvey > > > POMS - prisoners of mother england > > > equal? > > -K > > > I don't recall ever hearing this Prisoners Of Mother England thing > > before (although sometimes I don't recall things I was told > > yesterday). > > I've heard that story and it sounds incredibly UNlikely to me. For > starters it would give 'POME' not 'Pom'. But also, it's usually > applied (in Oz) to English immigrants, who obviously (at the stage > they were at large in the colony) were not prisoners, and if they > ever had been prisoners, would obviously have escaped and no longer > be such. It's also a term used in NZ, which never had convicts > transported here; it could have been adopted (sans derived meaning) > from Oz, but it's unusual for NZ to adopt anything Australian > voluntarily. > > That account of its origin sounds like a rather lame attempt at a > riposte to the jibe levelled at Aussies that *they* were all > transported English convicts. > > I must say, though, that I haven't heard any story that sounds > remotely convincing to me. "Limeys" is much more likely, since > limes were I believe known and carried to prevent scurvy; but were > pomegranates even known in those days? > > cr
'The pomegranate is one of the earliest cultivated fruits. Historical evidence suggests that man first began planting pomegranate trees sometime between 4000 B.C.E and 3000 B.C.E.' (From http://www.pomwonderful.com/history3.asp). Why the E? It also seems that the apple in the garden of Eden might 'in fact' have been a pomegranate, in which case it does go back rather a long way. I accept your point though; this doesn't prove they were widely known in this part of the world. I've spent a few minutes on google and can find no support for the anti-scurvy theory, except that the fruit provide lots of water and are nutricious. Geoff -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
