Thread: Harvestman
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Old 24-11-2012, 03:51 PM
kay kay is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz[_3_] View Post
Jeff Layman lid wrote in
:

On 11/11/2012 17:52, David Hill wrote:
I didn't know if anyone else heard "The Living World" this morning on
Radio 4 6.35am.
It was about Harvestman (Harvestman spiders) although arachnids they
are not spiders, a fascinating prog. I had never realised they were
different. This explains a lot about them
Opiliones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David @ the soggy end of Swansea Bay


Yes, a fascinating programme. The enthusiast didn't come across at
all geek-like, or even "a true British eccentric". He was just
interested in harvestmen (is that the correct plural?), and that came
across in what he had to say.


Your question, is that the correct plural? I don't know.
If you asked for 2 Ploughmans lunches, should you be asking for a Plougmens
lunch? Meaning more than one.That is the sort of thing that trips me up all
the time.

Baz
The grammar of "Ploughman's lunch" is "lunch of a ploughman". So if you want two, you ask for "two lunches of a ploughman", ie two Ploughman's lunches (or even, "two ploughman's")

Grammatically, "harvestman spider" is a bit different - it's not "spider of a harvestman", it's "spider of "harvestman" type". So plural is "harvestman spiders". And I would consider that "harvestmen" is incorrect. But it's incorrect in the same way that "microwaves" is not the plural of "microwave oven" - it's incorrect because you are using the descriptor "harvestman" instead of the thing itself. But we do it all the time - eg "a bottle of red, please".
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