Sorry RichH
From NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER “The Petty Officer can trace his title back to the old French word petit meaning something small. Over the years the word also came to mean minor, secondary and subordinate. In medieval and later England just about every village had several "petite", "pety" or "petty" officials/officers who were subordinate to such major officials as the steward of sheriff. The petty officers were the assistants to the senior officials. The senior officers of the early British warships, such as the Boatswain, Gunner and Carpenter, also had assistants or "mates." Since the early seamen knew petty officers in their home villages they used the term to describe the minor officials aboard their ships. A ship's Captain or Master chose his own Petty Officers who served at his pleasure. At the end of a voyage or whenever the ship's crew was paid off and released the Petty Officers lost their positions and titles. There were Petty Officers in the British navy in the Seventeenth Century and perhaps earlier but the rank did not become official until 1808.” RichH, It doesn’t look like the origin of Petty Officer is exactly what you thought. I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish but taking wild swings at it doesn’t work. May I offer you a suggestion? Step back and decide what you want to do. Take some time and calm down. Think and plan what you are going to say. If you just want to insult me you need better material. Stop by the local high school and talk to one of the teachers. They can give you the latest, greatest insults. High school kids have raised the level of insulting people to an art form. Common everyday insults just don’t impress me and you need some good tough one’s. If you want to discredit me you are doing it all wrong. First you need to look at what I said and find a misstatement or error. Or even something that is open to discussion. Then find a source that you can quote that will disprove or discredit my statements. I will give you a leg up just to get you started; within the last week I made a post on a nearby bulletin board that misused an engineering term in an embarrassing way. Sort of like your use of “ultimate tensile (compressive) strength” which are opposites and your use in that context was funny to say the least. Find something like that and you have me. Discredit anything and then everything will be questioned. It won’t be hard; I have made lots of mistakes in my life. Or maybe you can find some misspellings or inappropriate word use. I very often type “there” instead of “their” or “weather” instead of “whether”. Find a few of those and you can make some points. But finding a misstatement or error of fact is the mother load and you should try for that first. And to help with the odds I promise not to open either of my books until you get in a good jab or two. On the other hand if you have some need to be the resident expert then we have a problem. I don’t know what subject you would be an expert in. Maybe if you told me what you want to be expert in I can ask around and get some ideas about how you can sound like an expert in that field. I work with a lot of sharp people and I am sure we can come up with something. Instead of cluttering up this thread anymore I will start you off with a new thread of your very own. Whenever you get something good together as your retort just put it in the “Reserved for a clever retort from RichH” spot. Good luck and all the best, Robert Gainer
