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  Bernie Woolfrey <woolfrey@oz*.co*.au*> wrote (Re: Referendum News):-
> What's wrong with spelling ARSE correctly [rather than as `ass']?

  Indeed what's wrong with it?
  ARSE = the bottom or posterior or buttocks; or by slang extension the back
end of anything, e.g. "round-arsed 'uns" (annoyed factory slang that I heard
once for gas cylinders with hemispherical lower ends).
  ASS = an animal like the horse but smaller, alias DONKEY or (in USA) BURRO
(Equus asinus); and slang for a stupid person.
  The pronunciation `ass' for `arse' probably started as a euphemism.
  Compare writing e.g. `sulphur' rather than `sulfur', or `mediaeval' rather
than `medieval'.

  P.S. Re `round-arsed' cylinders, aqualung cylinders with round ends and no
cylinder boots cause a LOT less drag in swimming! If I could collect and add
up all the extra swimming power that all the world's divers have to use to
counteract drag caused by trailing flat ends of cylinders with boots on, I
could run a fair-sized ship on it. Ditto the flat back end of the Carmellan
automatic backpack-box rebreather, as Peter Readey (the Prism man) found. OK,
round-ended cylinders can't be stood up unsupported on land. How often do
designers of ordinary sport scuba gear consider the hydrodynamics of swimming
with it on? One thing useful would be a short but pointed `torpedo-tail' that
an aqualung diver could attach to the back end of his cylinder to streamline
it. This, and trailing pressure air lines running to this and that: drag,
drag, endless hydrodynamic drag, in sport diving, the expression `dressing in
drag' is no figure of speech but literal. How often ever is a man in sport
diving gear tested in a hydrodynamics lab stream-flow tester? Meanwhile UK
naval rebreathers are beautifully streamlined, and less rotation-inertia: for
ordinary shallowish diving give me a set of UK naval frogman's kit any day.

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