3 ms·
>Or why a house in Owls Green, a village of about 20 houses near Ipswich, would be numbered 2820 (cute). For those who aren't native British/English-speaking,
by KwanEsq 3y ago
>Or why a house in Owls Green, a village of about 20 houses near Ipswich, would be numbered 2820 (cute).
For those who aren't native British/English-speaking, this is presumably a cute reference to the village's name of *Owls* Green, since at least in the UK the onomatopoeia for one of an owl's sounds is "too-wit too-woo", to which "two-eight two-oh" is similar sounding.
- globular-toast 3y agoAh... I didn't get it. I even put the number into Wolfram Alpha to see if it had a nice factorisation or something.
- gertrunde 3y agoA moderately tangential weird fact... "too-wit too-woo" sort of isn't the sound of an owl... it's the sound of two tawny owls, it's a female call (the 'too-wit' bit) followed by a male response! :) (Ref: https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/birds-prey/tawny-owl https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/birds... )
- thebruce87m 3y agoThe insurance company Guardian Direct had a phone number along these lines. Good marketing since I still remember it to this day: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/the-owl-s-number-is-up-1178590.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/the-owl-s-number...
- teleforce 3y agoThanks for this info, now I know why in English "to woo" means "to entice". [1] woo entry, Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/woo https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/woo