1082: Geology

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Geology

Title text: That's a gneiss butte.

Explanation

Here we have Cueball and Megan (with her stylish Geology hat) discussing Geology and the words they use are ripe with puns and double entendres which also have sexual meanings. In the end they just decide to get it on.

In the alt text, gneiss (pronounced "nees") is a type of rock, and butte (pronounced "but") is a conspicuous isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top. Thus, phonetically, a "gneiss butte" is pronounced similar to a "nice butt".

Transcript

[Two people are doing a geological survey]

Person 1: Forget the bedding - we were wrong about the whole valley.

Person 2: The spreading is recent.

Person 1: See the friction breccia?

Person 2: Oh - flow cleavage! Deeper in the rift.

Person 1: Deeper.

[An idea pops into Person 1's head]

Person 1: This orogeny

Person 2: is driven by a

Person 1: *huge*

Person 2: *thrust* fault

[The same idea pops into person 2's head]

[They both drop to the ground in a fit of passion]

Geology: Surprisingly erotic.

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Discussion

Actually, in the UK "gneiss" is pronounced exactly "nice", so it fits even better there.

If Wikipedia's phonetic guide is any authority, it's also said that way in the US (hover-text: 'n' as in 'nigh', long 'i' in 'bide', 's' as in 'sigh')... it doesn't make any distinctions between regions. -- IronyChef (talk) 04:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. American geologists also pronounce it "nice" lcarsos (talk) 18:06, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

According to my geologist father, 'gneiss' is pronounced as "nice" and 'butte' as "beaut." He also says that buttes are almost never gneiss: gneiss is a metamorphic rock, and buttes are almost always formed from sedimentary rocks. (Gneiss can form bornhardts, which are also bumps of rock, but form by a different process and don't look very similar.) Variables won't, constants aren't. (Osborn's Law) (talk) 00:58, 29 August 2012 (UTC)