Wednesday, October 17, 2007

ICE

A hummock is a hillock or small hill of broken ice which has been forced upwards by pressure. The ice may be fresh or weathered. The image above is Shackleton's ship the 'Endurance' being gripped in a pressure ridge and was taken by Frank Hurley.

A bummock, on the other hand, is the submerged counterpart of a hummock and one should not do as I did before posting, leave the 'o' out of counterpart. Freudian slip, ahem.

10 comments:

Brian Hughes said...

I always thought a bummock was a pair of string undies.

JahTeh said...

The vagaries of the English language, I thought of shopping bags because we call them thongs in Oz which is confusing because we also call flipflops, thongs and looking at this, they could all mean undies. What's your preference Lord Brian?

TimT said...

A hummock is a hillock...

And I always thought it was what happened when you humped a pillock.

Brian Hughes said...

I prefer no undies at all. Unless I'm wearing a kilt, in which case I'd need a very long sporran.

"I always thought it was what happened when you humped a pillock."

No...that's called 'drowning in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool'.

JahTeh said...

Timt, so young to have such wisdom or you've humped a lot of pillocks.

So that would be a ferret sporran not badger then? And Barrymore beat that charge I see.

Middle Child said...

I had something in mind to say soooo clever till I read brian hughes and laughed so hard I forgot what I was going to write.

JahTeh said...

MC, That's the 'Hughes Factor', happens a lot to anyone entering his sphere of influence.

Lord Sedgwick said...

... as opposed to his spear of affluence.

Lord Sedgwick said...

... and his deafening ear of flatulence.

JahTeh said...

I'm interested, so he's stinking rich, hmmm.