An implantable artificial pharynx, with a variable internal cavity shape capable of creating vowel sounds. Valves on each end control the entry of vibrational media and are designed to enable the creation of consonant sounds.

A remote control will allow the entry of short bits of text, which are converted to speech when the next bubble is encountered.
-- lurch, Feb 17 2007

Pict's Language http://en.wikipedia...ki/Pictish_language
take your Pict. [xenzag, Feb 18 2007]

David Cronenberg, eat your heart out!
-- jutta, Feb 18 2007


Yes, you caught me using an already overused idiom. The phrase is in my active vocabulary because it was a solution in last Sunday's heart-themed New York Times crossword puzzle. Which was how I found out that it doesn't mean what I thought it meant ("eat as much as you like")!

There's a lot of online speculation about the phrase, but the only answer that addresses the odd grammar came from Mark Israel in the alt.usage.english FAQ, who suspects Yiddish origin ("Es dir oys s'harts"). That's claimed by one popular author, but several other people have contradicted him.
-- jutta, Feb 18 2007


"Har tout" is a Pictish term for a dying person's last meal and the phrase was deployed to signify the gravity and finality of a desperate situation. This meal was usually carried around in the form of a dried mackerel head on a length of string.

When folk were described as being in a state of extreme jealousy, they were said to be fit to: "Ee toor har tout"

In time this became absorbed into "regular Anglo Saxon, then eventually English in the corrupted form we recognise today.
-- xenzag, Feb 18 2007


Originally "eat your hard trout"?
-- normzone, Feb 18 2007


[xenzag], my credulousness is rebelling. //dying person's last meal... usually... dried mackerel head on a... string// Really? I'd think you'd only do that to a convicted criminal - who'd refuse it. Or a starving person - but why would you plan that event far enough ahead that you'd know when to use it? Was starvation always just minutes away? Were Pictish wives history's worst cooks? Was the ultimate insult to take someone's dead fish? The mind reels.
-- lurch, Feb 18 2007


I thought they used pictograms?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 18 2007


Up home we say, "Cut your heart out and eat the bones."
-- reensure, Feb 18 2007


[lurch] to the Pict, the mackerel head was a most treasured prize, mainly for its contents: i.e. one canny brain of walnut dimension. If consumed close to the point of death, it enabled the subsequently departed soul to traverse the treacherous waters, that separated them from heaven, with the ease and swiftness of a frolicking mackerel.

ps + for your notion
-- xenzag, Feb 18 2007



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