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424 points notamy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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Duanemclemore ◴[] No.41845323[source]
I learned about conkers when I was very young and read the Hitchhikers Guide for the first time...

"We bust our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what? Conkers.

The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod. "He gave us food, booze - stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy - lots of conkers, of course, and we had just the most incredible time."

Of course in this well pre-internet age I had to wait literal YEARS to find out what conkers actually WERE. Luckily my aunt was an anglophile and went there six or seven years later. Before she left I asked her to find out what conkers were for me. When she returned she told me what they were and... to be honest I was kinda bummed out it wasn't something more elaborate.

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Symbiote ◴[] No.41845773[source]
Would the word not be in a dictionary?
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1. pavon ◴[] No.41850413[source]
I was curious, and looked in my paperback Merriam Webster american english dictionary that I used through out school and received about the time I first read HHGTTG. Conker is not present.

The big honking dictionary on a pedestal at the high school library probably would have had it, and if that was not enlightening then the library in the closest city that we visited monthly would have good encyclopedias that probably would have described it. But I don't remember the conkers reference catching my imagination, and probably wrote it off as a silly made-up sci-fi word.