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Unread 04-13-2012, 11:15 PM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Plum Island, MA; Santa Fe, NM
Posts: 11,168
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Indeed, "tool" has a rich history in the UK. Here are some examples from a wonderful little book called Some Limericks, by Norman Douglas, privately printed in 1928. I found it at the bottom of my father's shirt drawer when I was about eight years old, and for a great many years everything I knew about rhyme and meter - and sex, for that matter, and even geography (and probably a few things about the English upper classes) - came from that slim volume.

There was an old man of the Cape,
who buggared a Barbary ape.
The ape said: "You fool!
You've got a square tool;
You've buggared my arse out of shape."

There was an old man of Stamboul
With a varicose vein in his tool.
In attempting to come
Up a little boy's bum
It burst, and he did look a fool.
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