5 ms·
See also the 'Punic ditch'. I can't find a good description online ([1] is the most specific), but basically it's a fortification comprising a human-scale haha
by twic 7y ago
See also the 'Punic ditch'. I can't find a good description online ([1] is the most specific), but basically it's a fortification comprising a human-scale haha with the wall on the outward side, and the slope on the inward side. The idea is that attackers can cross it easily, by jumping down the wall, then charging up the slope, at which point you open fire on them, then when they turn to run way, they have to climb up the wall to escape, at which point they are sitting ducks.
These ditches are called Punic not because they were invented by the Carthaginians (Punic is the adjective for things from Carthage, don't ask me why), but because they were incredibly brutal, and Rome's early wars with Carthage were so horrific, they became a byword for anything eye-wateringly cruel like this.
[1] https://luntfort.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/punic-ditches/ https://luntfort.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/punic-ditches/
- orpheline 7y agoPunic refers to the people. Carthage was the name of their city, so they're also referred to as Carthaginians (see also: New Yorkers, Londoners, Dubliners, Parisians, etc.).
- wyldfire 7y agoYou chose some relatively ordinary demonyms, these are some fun ones: Mancunian, Muscovite, Liverpudlian, Glaswegian, Munsonian, Buddies.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoEquatoguinean
- orpheline 7y agoI know the rest of these, but Buddies is a new one; to whom does it refer?
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoPeople of Paisley. https://www.paisley.org.uk/paisley-history/paisley-buddies/ https://www.paisley.org.uk/paisley-history/paisley-buddies/
- orpheline 7y agoMany thanks!
- tdy721 7y agoI was _almost_ sure it goes right alongside “fwiend” and referred to Canadians... Facts FTW
- jcrawfordor 7y agoBurqueño, which comes from both the Spanish convention and a slang term (with some history grounding), but is extremely widely used.
- asdff 7y agoloa angeleno
- benj111 7y agoGeordie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie Quote of the day: "poems by the Anglo-Saxon scholar the Venerable Bede translate more successfully into Geordie than into Standard English" The Venerable Bede will for evermore have a Geordie accent. I also like to call people for Norfolk, Norfolk (as in folk), I don't think that's standard though.
- twic 7y agoAnd let us not forget their neighbouring tribe, the Mackems!
- esrauch 7y agoPeople from Cambridge are Cantabrigians.
- gjm11 7y agoAnd their perennial rivals from Oxford are Oxonians. The English class and education systems being what they are, many in both categories will have been students at Winchester College (a "public school", which is to say an old, prestigious, expensive private school), which makes them Wykehamists. If not, perhaps they went to another public school, Shrewsbury School; its students, and people from the county of Shropshire, are of course Salopians. England is particularly good (if that's the right word) at these but it's not alone. If you're from Buenos Aires then you're a Porteño (because it's a _port_). If you're from Christchurch then you're a Cantabrian (because of a historical association with Canterbury in the UK). If you come from Rio de Janeiro then you're a Carioca (from the name of a tribe that lived there before the Portuguese invaded).
- csswizardry 7y agoI’m a proud Loiner.
- aasasd 7y ago‘Muscovite’ is from ‘Muscovy’, denoting the Middle-Ages' Duchy of Moscow and in turn descending from Latin ‘Moscoviae’. Since English has chronic trouble mapping sounds, especially vowels, that are fundamental for Russian, ‘Muscovy’ is in fact a rather reasonable approximation. ‘Moscovia’ would be better, but alas. It's like we're seeing different fundamental colors―which we sort of do with English ‘indigo’ and Russian ‘light-blue’ (the latter being close to Newton's ‘blue’).
- derefr 7y agoQuoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROYGBIV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROYGBIV (emphasis mine): > Newton divided his color circle, which he constructed to explain additive color mixing, into seven colors. His color sequence including the tertiary color indigo is kept alive today by the Roy G. Biv mnemonic. Originally he used only five colors, but later he added orange and indigo to match the number of musical notes in the major scale. So, the concept of there being uniquely-important indigo (and orange!) points on the hue spectrum were just, kinda... made up, as a bit of numerological whimsy, by Isaac Newton. And everyone else in the Western world just followed his lead, because he seemed to know what he was talking about. I would note that no English-speaker actually seems to describe anything as “indigo” in practice. People do tend to describe plenty of things as “light blue”, though! We get taught “ROY G BIV” in kindergarten, but we basically ignore it, because it doesn’t actually fit anything else we get taught. (I don’t even recall any children’s picture books that bother with examples of “indigo” objects.) IMHO, there’s also a much more fundamental distinction made in English-in-practice, between three kinds of green: yellow-green (“spring green”, “olive green” when desaturated), “green green”†, and blue-green (“sea blue”, cyan, turquoise.) Many people will insist that, if orange is a separate color from yellow or red, then yellow-green and green-blue are separate colors as well. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrastive_focus_reduplication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrastive_focus_reduplicatio...
- bookofjoe 7y agoROY G BIV... I still use that about once a year (I'm 71).
- barrkel 7y agoPunic derives from the same etymology as Phoenicians, Carthage was founded by Phoenicians. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punicus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punicus Basically, Latin version of Greek version of Phoenician.
- dannyw 7y agoThe ancient world’s dark pattern.
- replyguy912 7y agoYes, likely the inventors' ancestors now work for Facebook or EA.
- stygiansonic 7y agoPunic can also mean “treacherous”, presumably because of the Roman opinion of their adversary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Punic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Punic
- twic 7y agoOh, maybe it's called a Punic ditch because it's treacherous, rather than brutal? My memory of this is dim.
- chinhodado 7y agoI have a hard time understanding this. Do you have a simple drawing for this?
- nyc_pizzadev 7y agohttps://www.autodraw.com/share/SOZ6P8TKWJO3 https://www.autodraw.com/share/SOZ6P8TKWJO3
- Sharlin 7y agoBasically just a ha-ha but reversed so that it’s easy to get in but difficult to get out.
- aaron695 7y agoI would not believe it is true. Or, if one was created, not used. People in the old days also had flights of fantasy I guess. You want to keep the enemy out, not kill them. Or more importantly you want a functioning fort, keeping out people in general is a bigger every day use than the mass killing of a enemy you don't yet have in a well planed exercise that may occur.
- asdff 7y agoSeems pretty irrelevant if you've got the numbers on the defenders. Just don't retreat and throw bodies into the wide open breach. You'd drive right over just fine like a spike strip facing the wrong way.
- simonh 7y agoTypically a Punic Ditch would be used in front of the walls of a fortification.
- pharke 7y agoThe ditch itself is also filled with caltrops and ankle breaking traps. The fortifications behind the ditch usually involved a wooden palisade or stone walls. Even so, these defenses were generally for defending against small groups of loosely organized attackers. If a large force attacked, infantry and cavalry would deploy to the field to oppose the enemy with the fort perhaps protecting a flank or offering other strategic support.
- amelius 7y agoAlways bring ladders.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 7y agoIt made me wonder whether "punic" was the root of words like "punish" and "punitive". But there seems to be no connection. http://www.fantasy-writers.org/forum/question-about-word-punitive http://www.fantasy-writers.org/forum/question-about-word-pun...