The collection bag in a vacuum cleaner merely fits the descripion of a "dirt bag" by coincidence. The term arose as I said as a wholly invented, ad hoc euphemism at a time in the sixties when "scum bag" wouldn't yet get by the TV and movie censors, but could be suggested, insofar as many people would recognize what term "dirt bag" was supposed to represent.

I hope none of you folks who say "flake" ever has trouble with your "prostrate". God forbid you should ever need any "nucular" radiation.

As someone said earlier, this discussion is beginning to "flounder". I'm not sure the old terms matter any more anyway, in these days of "alunimum" spars. (They're better anyway because they won't burn, being "inflammable".)

Nautical terms can themselves be quite tortured. Sitting in the half-darkened Purser's Office on B deck at about five one morning in mid-Atlantic, in August of 1952, bored by inactivity since the annunciator board wouldn't start lighting up with calls for the bellboy for another hour or more, I began to ponder what to call the rather deep embrasure into which the porthole was fitted. Because of the inward slope of the hull (is that also called the "tumblehome" or is the tumblehome only at the stern under the counter?), anyway; because of the slope of the hull and the vertical inner bulkhead, the bulkhead was about 18" in from the plane of the porthole.

On the S.S. America the Third Class Purser's office was on the starboard side of the ship. But had it been on the other side I reconed, the nautical name of that deep embrasure would have been the "port port hole hole".

Oh, yes, and there's "dead" reconing for Ded(uced) Reconing.

I once had a patient with fibroids in her uterus tell me she had fireballs in her eucharist. 'Nother guy with cirrhosis said he had a "ferocious" liver.

But in my game terms were not always safely interchangable. Remember the old story about guy who demanded to be castrated and eventually got his way. The day after surgery he was told by his roommate that the roommate was in for a circumcision. "THAT'S the word I was trying to remember !!", the guy exclaimed.

Doc