The perils of "search & replace" in documentation.

Bridle.

There were something like 14 female students at WPI when I started there. 12 more than the year before. For a good time call: Pleasant Pi.

Matthew

Yes, I don't think many of her fellow engineering undergrads were also

30-odd-year-old mothers of two. She was the first female engineer hired by Mass Electric.

Hmm, while I'm thinking of it, here's an article about her from a few years ago:

-jwgh

We're playin' pool, and that starts with a P...

What? Did you eat the brown acid?

Guess you'll have to wait for the next iteration.

Somehow that is funny no matter which way it appears that it was meant.

Maybe... but do you understand why I might?

Is that a sentence ?

Perhaps, but I can't think of the right smiley at this time. ;-]

Batter, batter.. shwiiiiing!

That is sooooooo funny!

Is that your unbridled response?

Certainly. I don't horse around.

I wonder how that phrase came to be. "Don't horse around" is usually used to mean that a) you shouldn't delay in making a decision or taking an action, or b) you shouldn't act playfully rough.

Horses don't seem particularly prone to being unable to make a decision. Horses play around - roughly, but because of their size more than anything else - but no more than other animals. "Don't cat around" would better describe goofy playing, but that phrase has an entirely different meaning.

Why "horse"? Will someone take the bit in their teeth and run...errr, gallop...with this? Canterurt.

You're mixing up your books. Haemorrhoids are caused by the rapes of grot.

These are the times that try mens' holes...

I agree with all those comments.

Life insurance.

I'll say. (But for entirely different reasons, Lz). DC

Did you see the prog about his adopted cheetahs?

DC, getting emotional again

tony cooper wrote: [...]

I've always assumed that the AmE "horse around" was just a version of "horseplay". OED's earliest example is from 1928, and from a glossary at that, so it's probably quite recent. Of "horseplay", OED, surprisingly, doesn't offer a derivation. I'd say messing about on horses would necessarily be clumsy and boisterous, but it's easy enough to believe that idea had faded by 1928.

I don't think the Dictionary is at its best here. It gives us "1. Play in which a horse is used or takes part; theatrical horsemanship. Also transf. Obs." but I'm not at all clear how the examples match the definitions.

It's better on the modern sense: "2. Rough, coarse, or boisterous play, passing the bounds of propriety. " There's an amusing pairing of quotations, too: ". . . 1700 DRYDEN Fables Pref. Wks. (Globe) 506 He [Collier] is too much given to horse-play in his raillery. . . 1856 MASSON Ess. iv. 121 Dryden's best comic attempts were but heavy horse-play." These are sandwiched around a typically Polonial remark from Chesterfield: "1749 CHESTERFIELD Lett. (1792) II. clxxix. 166 No aukward overturns of glasses, plates, and salt-cellars; no horse-play."