Points to Ponder

[SDQ]

Well, the world was due to expire at 11.11, so there'll be many hundreds of thousands of disappointed people, all of whom were certain the world would end, but all of whom will now have to trudge back, wearily to their blogs to add comments about how the world should have ended, but NASA has been continuing to lie to them.

There's still time. The Mayan time zone is 6 hours behind GMT so it could have meant 5:11pm for us!

[Hugo]

Well, the world was due to expire at 11.11, so there'll be many hundreds of thousands of disappointed people, all of whom were certain the world would end, but all of whom will now have to trudge back, wearily to their blogs to add comments about how the world should have ended, but NASA has been continuing to lie to them.

There's still time. The Mayan time zone is 6 hours behind GMT so it could have meant 5:11pm for us!

That's cheered me up no end so there's still time for a few more beers.          Z@@                   Z** Z** Z**

[Nemesis]

Well it didn't happen when Mother Shipton said it would, so I am not holding my breath.
This was due to happen in 1881, but I think we are all still here !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Shipton

Just for anyone who hasn't heard of Mother Shipton.

[Fester]

Yes, there was Mother Shipton, (who used to scare the s##t out of me as a kid)... then Nostradamus, at least once, maybe more.
I think that the Mayan prophecy was the last in line, chronologically, of many such doomsday predictions.

So, when the world ends, no one can turn round and say, 'there, I told you so'

[Nemesis]

 

[Yorkie]

I always remember Old Moore's Almanac, he never did prophesy the World's End, but was a good read all the same.
 

[Nemesis]

Ohhh I used to enjoy reading those!

[Fester]

There are a number of similarities between 'Chalk' and 'Cheese'

Therefore it has always puzzled me as to why those two commodities were chosen to particularly highlight vast differences.

[Ian]

This is an old expression and the earliest citation is in John Gower's Middle English text Confessio Amantis, 1390:

    Lo, how they feignen chalk for chese.

Tourist boards in several of the chalkland areas of the UK try to place the phrase's origin in their locality and allude to vague connections between chalk and the local cheese. None of these is convincing and they clearly owe more to marketing than to etymology. So, how did the phrase come about?

There must have been a time in the development of English when we had no standard phrase to express the idea that two things were 'as different as X and Y'. When someone coined such a phrase, and that someone may well have been Gower in 1390, clearly he needed candidates for the roles of X and Y. That doesn't sound difficult, after all most things are different from most other things.

"Maybe, 'as different as a cormorant and a lamp-post'", thinks our coiner, "or 'as different as floorboards and greengrocers'". "No, 'as different as chalk and cheese' sounds better". Why? For no better reason that the fact the 'chalk' and 'cheese' are short and snappy words that alliterate. The English language is packed full of phrases that contain pairs of rhyming or alliterating words - often just because the person who coined them liked the sound of them; for example, hocus-pocus, the bee's knees, riff-raff etc.

[Yorkie]

Ee by gum lad!  Me dost think that said saying dost come from Yorkshire where it can still be heard today around yon market places!

However:  A modern-day spin-off of 'chalk and cheese' is 'chalk and talk'. This refers to the traditional teaching method where the teacher stood at the front to address the class while writing on the blackboard with a stick of chalk (which those of a certain age will well remember). The phrase emerged in the UK in the 1930s but had a shortish run as a widely used expression as classrooms began to be equipped with whiteboards in the 1960s. 'Dry-wipe marker pen and talk' never caught on.
 

[Merddin Emrys]

My main memories of classrooms are of teachers throwing chalk and sometimes blackboard rubbers at pupils!

[Yorkie]

My main memories of classrooms are of teachers throwing chalk and sometimes blackboard rubbers at pupils!

I remember how accurate some of them were!  I bet today's teachers would be hard pressed to hit the side of a cow at ten paces!  L0L

[Fester]

This is an old expression and the earliest citation is in John Gower's Middle English text Confessio Amantis, 1390:

    Lo, how they feignen chalk for chese.

Tourist boards in several of the chalkland areas of the UK try to place the phrase's origin in their locality and allude to vague connections between chalk and the local cheese. None of these is convincing and they clearly owe more to marketing than to etymology. So, how did the phrase come about?

There must have been a time in the development of English when we had no standard phrase to express the idea that two things were 'as different as X and Y'. When someone coined such a phrase, and that someone may well have been Gower in 1390, clearly he needed candidates for the roles of X and Y. That doesn't sound difficult, after all most things are different from most other things.

"Maybe, 'as different as a cormorant and a lamp-post'", thinks our coiner, "or 'as different as floorboards and greengrocers'". "No, 'as different as chalk and cheese' sounds better". Why? For no better reason that the fact the 'chalk' and 'cheese' are short and snappy words that alliterate. The English language is packed full of phrases that contain pairs of rhyming or alliterating words - often just because the person who coined them liked the sound of them; for example, hocus-pocus, the bee's knees, riff-raff etc.

As ever, an erudite and informative answer from Ian.
I reckon that Gower, back in 1390 could not have used Lamp-posts and cormorants as his example... as neither had yet been invented! 

[Merddin Emrys]

Who invented cormorants? 

[Fester]

Who invented cormorants? 

John Cormorant (1592 - 1658)