Hrair

Daughter laughs at me because my English is a bit strange.  Sometimes she even confesses that she has to call her mother to find out what on Earth I was saying because she knows the words - just not their meaning in conjunction.  Of course, my mind just went blank and I can't think of an example now!  Oh well - old age.

But, I am also noticing at school the same tendency with my group partners.  Perfectly good English is wasted because sometimes they have never even heard of the words - and a few of them are as old as I.  Take the word - Hrair, for example.

No one had heard that word before.  I think I was in grade five at my NATO school, where we were forced to read Watership Down.  Personally, I really did not care for the book, but I do like rabbits, and it is about rabbits after all.  So hrair was explained as being the maximum conceivable  number - might be the only question I got right on the test which followed.  Why?

Well, Richard Adams, in a section wrote at how the rabbits were counting - One, Two, Three, Four, Hrair!

Yeah, silly bunnies could not count past four, therefore any number of bunnies over four were Hrair!

I remember laughing myself silly over that one!  Probably a hormone surge and my brain shorted out.  But the idea stuck with me, Hrair - an inconceivable number.

Now how many uses can you find to use Hrair for today?!?