Flanging pearls before the swine

Figaro has developed a fascination with the word 'flange', which I take some blame for. When it first came up in conversation he was giggling over it not because of its naughtiness, but because it sounds so funny in his moon-man antipodean dialect - he'd only heard it in the context of its engineery definition. When I told him what I knew of the word, it seized on his imagination. I must say I can see why.

My use of the word 'flange' was shaped by two forces. The first was a Brighton boy who taught at the school I worked at in Piemonte. He used something like definition 2 in the Urban Dictionary's 34 (!!!) item list, with more emphasis on the notion of overhang. He was fascinating to me as he was the first 'retired' party boy (ie too much E and so met a rich Italian girl, settling down to a life of drug-free, fun-free, drinking-and-smoking-a-little-too-much idleness) I'd ever known well, and I'm inclined to believe him in terms of the word's usage because I don't think he ever thought about much else. "Tha' Kay'ee! I be' she go' no flange a'awl!" Could never say T's, it was absolutely adorable. The name I was going by there has some T's in it so I'd try to make him shout it. And try to make him say 'Tahiti'. It was hilarious but annoyed him shitless, like when bastard Americans try to make me say 'the mouse caroused about the house'.

Anyways. The second force was Not the Nine O'Clock News, a show I've never seen. I've been persuaded for years - like the Oxford English Dictionary of Collective Nouns - that flange was the noun for a group or troop of baboons. Apparently this is from the authoritative mouth of Gerald the Intelligent Gorilla.