Previous "why" Questions
If you've been wondering "Why was it that.." or "Why did the..." or just "What is...", then you're not the only one.
We've picked "why" questions that have blown us away with the help that has been given, or just made us chuckle.
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Question:
why is the plural of roof not spelled the same as the plural of hoof?roofs/hoof
roofs/hooves
Answer:
England has always been a pretty open place. Throughout the centuries it had an open house policy on immigration and generally the English have absorbed language from all over the world as their own. This is why there are so many words in English (over 100,000) compared to other languages (average 50-60,000). Unfortunately, while the language and pronunciation evolved in leaps and bounds, the spelling did not. A good idea would be to standardise spelling phonetically, and hav an alfabet in wich evry letter has a standerdised sound. It wud be a bit of a leep for moast of us as we tend to regard speling as a meshure of intelejens. Its a verry gud kueschun.
Answer:
OK, so this is weird. Apparently it's a trick of the eye/mind. When the moon is nearer the horizon, we assume it's further away from us than when it's in the sky (ie. we assume that things in the sky - clouds etc - are closer to us than things on the distant horizon). So our eyes compensate for this by making the moon look larger when it's nearer the horizon. It evolved from a safety thing, they reckon. When things are attacking us, we need to know a) how far away they are? b) how big they are? If things are further away, they look smaller in our eyes, but our brain still needs to know whether they're big/small, so adjusts the info accordingly. All quite interesting or "QI", as they say.
Question:
Why did the guy next to me in the cinema have to make 4 phone calls during the movie and moreover, why did he give me a look like he was Omar (from The Wire) when I looked at him about to ask him to stop?
Answer:
Because, blud, to get on in this life you got to take care of yourself ya know? You gotta speculate to accumulate. Plus, maybe he'd seen Toy Story 3 already and was just being a pr*ck and spoiling it for everybody else. Maybe the Pixar magic wasn't working on him. Maybe his heart is made of stone.
Question:
Why do I sometimes not get hangovers when I really should, and other times I get completely undeserved hangovers from only a single pint?
Answer:
Karma man ... it's all down to karma. When you only had a single pint you were secretly hating the fact that you had to stop, therefore karma paid you a visit and gave you a hangover. Either that or you were dehydrated when you had the single pint and never topped up with water. ;)
Question:
Why is "pig's ear" used as a term for making a mess of something? eg "I made a right pig's ear of that paint job". Pig's ear is rhyming slang for beer but I can't see the connection.
Answer:
Most probably from 16th Century proverb 'you cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear'. You cannot make something good from inferior parts. A sow's ear was something useless.
Answer:
Have you seen what it does to a dirty twopence piece? Now imagine what it does to the grease in your oesophagus and stomach. Your body generally knows what it needs to make things better.
Answer:
Basic animal communication. To let others in the tribe know that we're in trouble or distress and need help. Then again, some people scream when they're happy (e.g. middle-aged women at Take That concerts) so perhaps the theory isn't watertight.
Answer:
Cats require taurine, arachidonic acid, vitamin A, and vitamin B12. There aren't sufficient amounts of these in plant foods. Dogs will eat shit to ingest the amino acids of other animals in order to digest plant foods (cow shit is preferable obviously).
Answer:
for the same reason 21 isnt pronounced twoty two?
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