posted on Apr, 10 2006 @ 12:44 AM
Not Iran. The question is what's a rahn (rähn)?
The word rahn comes form the days of the British Empire, where real men wore big red coats and stood face-to-face with thousands of foriegners and,
without the feintest glimmer of sanity, tried to steal their country. When things would get particularly heated then would come the dreaded order,
'Soldier, get me a rahn.'
The rahn, or in it's original spelling rah'rn was a short length iron rod with the British used to place just under their nose. Then,
normally with some army standard horseglue (but really anything handy could be used and tree sap was a widely used substitute), they would glue this
rod in place. The idea was that this pulled their top lip up and bared their teeth in a manner which (due to extremly bad Army dentistry in
the 1800's) would scare the native inhabitants so much that they would simply relinquish their lands without any further a struggle.
Unfortunately this proved to be singularly ineffective, rather than scare anyone it just made those in command authorised to carry out these tactics
look very silly and dribble a lot because of there 'Stiff upper lip'. After which many of the local inhabitants would proceed make
(Brit)ish-kebabs out of the visiting English Gentlemen.
It did though lead to the phrase remembered today, 'Stiff upper lip' which the British understand actually means 'Stop moaning, you think things
were bad before, now all seven of us have to try steal an entire continent inhabited by many, many, many while wearing these very lightweight and
inconspicious red jackets those clever government bods have so kindly provided us with' or 'Come on mate, it could be worse'.
Next week I shall be explaining the meaning of a rähk.
[edit on 10/4/06 by Mark Harris]