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Re: USAGE: names for pillbug/wood louse/woodbug

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Thursday, March 11, 2004, 14:44
Joe scripsit:

> You americans insist on calling everything that looks like an insect a > bug. It's very silly ;-)
IIRC, the story is that we insist on calling all insects and insect-like critters "bugs" (though not spiders, as a rule), whereas you want to reserve the name "bug" for _Cimex lectularius_, the bedbug. Note to And: The Riddle is hardly a stream. If you can't throw a rock (BrE: stone) across it, it's a river. Of course, in the American West, anything long enough is a river, even if it has about as much water as comes out of the average faucet/tap/spigot (or even none at all: the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea, as 100% of it is diverted sooner or later for irrigation and other purposes). -- Andrew Watt on Microsoft: John Cowan "Never in the field of human computing jcowan@reutershealth.com has so much been paid by so many http://www.ccil.org/~cowan to so few!" (pace Winston Churchill) http://www.reutershealth.com