QOF's Interesting Word of the Day
Sedan: U.S. equivalent of 'saloon', a type of motor car with a closed body for four or more passengers.
Why it's interesting: I find car names interesting! 'Sedan' derives from 'sedan chair', an enclosed box on two poles that would be carried by lackeys. How this came to mean a type of car, I'm not sure. 'Sedan' itself is of obscure etymology - it is logical that it might derive from some variation of 'sede', the Italian for 'seat', since sedan chairs originated in Italy, but there is no evidence for this.
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Where did all this come from then?
I studied English Language and Literature at Sheffield University for three years (1999-2002) and during that time I wrote many, many words, some of which were quite good. I thought it would be shame if no-one saw the words anymore, so below are links for some my undergraduate essays. They all received Firsts or 2:1s so you can copy them with equanimity. Speaking of which, here is a note of citation…
A note on citation
It doesn’t bother me much if you ‘borrow’ my ideas or even my words and don’t cite me. If you want to mention it in a footnote, this website will tell you the right way to do it. But remember – if you just cut’n’paste the whole thing then you’re only cheating yourself (not to mention your teachers, professors, fellow students and examining bodies). And more importantly, the frogs will hunt you down and kill you.
WARNING: END OF QUALITY CONTROL!
Everything beyond this point was done in my own time, for my own twisted interest, and has never been marked or otherwise assessed as being any good. So watch yourself :-)
This here is a brief analysis of government spending by department and taking into account GDP and inflation and things like that. It's in the form of a Powerpoint show, which you can download and save or view in your browser. If you do the latter you might want to make it full screen (press F11 now) because some of the graphs are quite fiddly.