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>Not sure... there's still some trace of ambiguity. I'm not quite sure they didn't mean a geometric construction until I see all those Vogon-colored machines labeled "Cat".

Talking of cats, we seem to be the only country in the world to have "cats' eyes" demarking lanes on our roads. A British invention, they're like pairs of wee reflective discs, set in a rubber "bunker", that can squash and rebound as cars drive over them. They reflect your car lights and resemble the landing lights of a runway. Lane dividers - white, kerb markers 0 - red (as in NO), intersection boundaries - green (as in can cross), mediajn/outside lane boundary - amber. I miss them when I'm abroad (not meaning "out of doors") as they so perfectly illuminate your way for you.
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>And surely there's a sign "No parking on the meridian" :)

Well there's a brass plate, marking the GM, on the pavement (meaning side-walk here, not road), in the nearby town of Lewes, outside a pub. Owing to the narrow streets, I'm sure the brewer's dray parks over it occasionally.

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>>Actually, I think you'll find that the rear luggage compartment on the old horse buggies is still called the boot. To us a trunk is the large box you drag onto passenger liners.
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>So there's a passenger liner and the other kind of liner that goes into non-travel suits and coats. Ahem. And the practice of reusing existing words to mean new things seems to be alive for centuries. Just from this line of messages I've picked half a dozen missing words in English - you know, things that don't have a word which would have them as its primary meaning.

So you find that diapers are often full of ship? :-)