On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 12:48:41 -0500, Phil Kwok wrote:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Rebeka Thomas wrote this about
Rod M's "The Pursuit of Happiness" Prelude:
Blablablablablablablablablabla
-SNIP-
Anybody else that
came to town wanting a free car was usually chased out by an
angry stampede of Pathfinders.
Things with wheels don't stampede. The word has onomatopoeiatic roots in
'stamp', and the sound of a stampede is vaguely like the word.
Yes, but what other word do you suggest? Traffic jam? Rush Hour traffic?
The problem is that 'stampede' has both a definite meaning and a
colloquial connotation
of: 1 : a wild headlong rush or flight of frightened animals
(e.g., cattle stampede) and 2 : a mass movement of people at a common
impulse (watch any generic monster movie and you'll see examples of
this).
I would define it as "a bunch of scared animals running as hard as
they can without really caring what direction they're going in" so
no, the Pathfinders themselves can't stampede.
Suggest something on the order of: gaggle of Pathfinders, or pride of
Pathfinders or some other recognizable word that is used to describe
groups. The most generic I could think of is 'cluster'.
"Anybody else that came to town wanting a free car was usually chased
out by a cluster of angry Pathfinders." But that makes less sense,
Pathfinders don't get angry. How about:
"Anyone else who came looking for a free car was often subject to an
Amazonian variation of an old Spanish custom . . . the running of the
Pathfinders."
Of course, I still don't see how a Pathfinder could drown in the
first place.
Richard Person
Seattle
<Where the Sunshine, dry or wet, never ends>