kitchen colonisation

[brokenblossom]

Comments

[randy_gibbons]

Careful... I think they're up to something.

[brokenblossom]

I reckon so; this definitely doesn't seem to be some sort of random gathering* - see how they're all facing the same way?

*I wonder what the collective noun for kettles is...

[randy_gibbons]

A boil? A whistle? I haven't been able to find one, however a group of hawks is called a kettle*, so maybe a group of kettles is called a hawk?

*yes, apparently it is. I don't know why.

[brokenblossom]

That sounds a fair enough verbal (nounal?) swap. I didn't know that about hawks! Ooh, the internet's handy:

A 'kettle' is a concentration of hawks swirling, spiraling, and criss-crossing in an air thermal (hot, rising air).

(from here)

Maybe it's something to do w/ the movement of the hawks resembling the contents of a kettle on the boil? P'rhaps.

The OED website* also tells me this:

3. a kettle of hats: a quantity of hats dyed at the same time in a dye-kettle.

1789 Trans. Soc. Arts I. 184 Upon dying a Kettle of hats of twenty-four dozen. 1900 [Still in use in the trade].

So there we go. A hat of kettles just sounds daft, though.

*which I discovered a few months ago I can access via my Cardiff Public Libraries card number - fantastic!

[randy_gibbons]

Bah, if I had photoshop and any skills whatsoever I would make you a picture of a hat festooned with kettles.

Oh well, please imagine I have done so.