Ahemmm.

[mugman]

[skirtyscot]

Funny how that meaning of "dress" is becoming less common. Is that part of the much-complained-about dumbing down of everything these days? People are assumed to be too thick to work out which meaning is intended.

[crfriend]

Is that part of the much-complained-about dumbing down of everything these days?

I understood the sign perfectly. Once, that is, I recognised it as being from the UK and not, say Mobile (Alabama) or Jackson (Mississippi) (The "Southern Railway" bit gave me pause.).

[skirtyscot]

Carl, somehow I doubt the dumbing down has reached you yet.

Pete - Backfired? Do explain!

[mugman]

I removed the sign as I misunderstood the response.
Knowing there are those of us who are more serious about the subject than perhaps I am, I didn't want to offend. The sign was found whilst traipsing through ebay. It just tickled my sometimes questionable sense of humour. When I was working in London many years ago they still had such signs in the old urinals around town...maybe they're still there. I haven't needed to visit london for many a year.
Strange that the word 'Railway' was adopted in America. I've always assumed them to be titled as Railroads.

Pete

[skirted_in_SF]

Strange that the word 'Railway' was adopted in America. I've always assumed them to be titled as Railroads

It wasn't uncommon for the XYZ Railroad to re-emerge as the XYZ Railway after a visit to the bankruptcy court. Another possible source would be the fact that many (North) American railroads were financed with British funds.

[crfriend]

The Southern Railway in the US was one of the very early ones and was quite likely assisted by British funding and technical know-how. I believe it got gobbled up by CSX ten or 20 years ago.

[skirtingtheissue]

Yes, most in the US call themselves Railroads, but quite a few called themselves Railways for one reason or another. For example one of today's largest, BNSF Railway, which by the way is the actual name and not an acronym anymore, was created by lots of mergers over the years and many of its components, such as the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, were Railways as well.

[r.m.anderson]

Similiar titles in the airline business:
American Air Lines
British Airways
United Air Lines
Delta Air Lines
US Airways

Air Lines or Airways - same difference although Air Lines is the more common term.
Rail Roads and Railways - the more common is Rail Roads - probably because rails
are anchored to tracks on a road bed and most certainly not on ways !

Such technical stuff for a skirt forum ?

"Skirt-Kilt-ON"
rma

[Raakone]

But my understanding, both the American and the British "Southern Railway" entities used green as their color at some point in their lives, so methinks one influenced the other (the same is true with the American railway called "Great Northern", which essentially ripped off a British railroad of the same name)

At one time, "dress" meant clothing. At another time, "dress" meant any single-piece garment that covered the whole body, old-school divers (who had an air-hose instead of a SCUBA tank) called their outfits, "dresses", and once upon a time, a woman's jumpsuit, when such a thing first existed, was called...a pantdress. I'm sure if the terminology stuck around, people who do outside maintenance on the ISS would be told to "put on your spacedress."

I wonder when "dress" took on the specific meaning of "one piece garment with SKIRTED bottom"?