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"The pound won’t be round for much longer" is a pretty awful tagline, I'm not sure they realised what this sounds like...
by smcl 10y ago
"The pound won’t be round for much longer" is a pretty awful tagline, I'm not sure they realised what this sounds like...
- chrismorgan 10y agoI read it with the meaning “the pound won’t be in use for long” at first which seemed rather incongruous. I was wondering whether there was something I had missed about happenings with respect to brexit (I’m Australian, never been to the UK). It took me a while to interpret it as “the shape of the pound is changing from a circle to a dodecahedron”.
- tfgg 10y agoIf it meant that, I'd expect it to be: "The pound won’t be around for much longer" so the original sentence is sort of a pun. Maybe "around" is a local use of English.
- chrismorgan 10y agoJust like “until” is commonly shortened “till”, “around” is commonly shortened as “round”.
- callumlocke 10y agoI know this doesn't affect your point, but it's interesting: "till" is older than "until". http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=until http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=until
- philh 10y agoThanks to the "you see what you expect to see" effect, it took me until someone pointed out the pun before I realized the word was "round" and not "around".
- tfm 10y agoFortunately the domain name is rather less ambiguous and primed me for the weak pun. I'm ... glad(?) that the wordplay survived the marketeering sessions and civil service vetting. BTW: dodecahedron is the solid object, dodecagon is the 12-sided polygon. D&D style dice as currency would be pretty awesome but it might make it difficult to resolve dilemmas using pocket change.
- raulk 10y agoThe new coin is still called "pound", so indeed the statement makes no sense.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoIt won't be round though, it'll be dodecahedral. It makes perfect sense, but has two possible meanings.
- IshKebab 10y agoYes he knows; he's saying that the pun is a bit shit because only one of the two meanings is actually true.
- Anderkent 10y agoIt's a pun - the new coin is not round/circular, it's got shave edges.
- biot 10y agoThe old pound coin was round. The new pound coin is 12-sided. Thus, the pound coin will still be around but it won't be round much longer.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoI don't expect we'll be changing to the Euro any time soon.
- hanoz 10y agoIt's a play on words. Of course they realised.
- smcl 10y agoI know that, but I'm not sure they realised it's a BAD play on words
- callumlocke 10y agoWhy is it bad? edit: oh yeah I see it now