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Monday 21 March 2011

Spot the frippet - coach.

All the very best coaches are, of course, drawn by horses.

I like the new ones that look like giant caterpillars, though, too.

Getting on a coach is always exciting. Even a trip somewhere like a stately home or power plant always has the possibility of thrilling disaster: the coach's getting stuck on a hump-backed bridge, for instance; or someone opening the emergency door as you go along; or the driver suddenly stopping in the middle of nowhere and announcing that he isn't allowed to drive any further that day; or the engine overheating so that people have to keep stealing water from cow troughs to keep the coach moving.

What? Doesn't that sort of stuff happen to everybody on coach trips?

Ah. Just me, then.

Spot the frippet: coach. This word is from the French word coche, which is from the Hungarian kocsi szekér, wagon of Kocs, which is a village in Hungary where coaches were made.
In the tennis coach sense, it's probably from the idea that a coach carries his pupils along with him.

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