Collective Noun Contest Winners
John Swan and I are pleased to announce the winners of the Collective Noun Contest. We decided we should have both French and English winners. We won’t ask you to imagine the Herculean task it was to select amongst the candidates.
Simon Chester earns the French language prize based on quality of submissions, too. Singling out one of his was difficult. His French offerings include “un jaillissement des juristes“, which I ranked first not the least because of the almost-English punning misdirection: “jaillissement” contains “jail” but has nothing to do with punishing judges for their errors, perceived or otherwise.
Wendy Reynolds and Connie Crosby tie for the English language prize.
Wendy wins for the perspicacity of her “panic of law students”. We’ve all observed that sort of conduct, of course, but all of us, here, have to take that emotion on faith, either always having been too smart or never smart enough to panic.
Connie wins for her “leverage of law librarians” – both for the triple alliteration and the truth that none of us, practitioners or academics, would be able to work as we do without the leverage provided by the law librarians.
The first prize, as we mentioned (I think), is lunch with John and me (at our expense) in the Library Bar at the Royal York, on a suitable day. (Sorry, there’s no second prize option.)
The thread containing all of the candidates is here.
John and I will be in touch in early May to sort out the luncheon arrangements.
Thank you, all,
David Cheifetz / John Swan
Wow! I feel honoured. :-)
Sacre bleu, je suis un anglophone unilingue qui parle le français comme une vache espagnole – http://www.francparler.com/syntagme.php?id=174 Merci chers copains
Connie – hold that thought. (John and I will assume that it’s not because you’ve yet to have lunch with us.)
Simon – nice … horns. They compliment your eyes ever so appropriately. I’ll remember not to mention that site when I’m next hiking through the Pyrenees on the Basque side.
That site reminded me of an event in Johannesburg, S.A., in 1993. I was there for the 1993 IIHF Group C [hockey] championships. Spain had a team. Most of its players played for teams in France in one of the divisions in France’s national hockey league and, as it turned out, many of them (none of them were more than 25 years old) as I remember it were from the Pyrenees’ area of Spain. (That’s probably one reason why they didn’t have problems with Johannesburg’s elevation – about 1 mile above sea-level.)
I don’t speak Spanish. My French was better, then, than it is now, but I had difficulty with the accent on the French that many of them spoke.