The official place to
cross the street on foot, only not in the
U.S., where we have
crosswalks (i guess this is
canadian, too, since
Pseudo_Intellectual triggered this node by saying it). If
you don't use these, you're
jaywalking.
Presumably called a zebra crossing because of the stripes, this made me laugh and laugh the first time i heard it (crossing the street in Brighton, England with a friend) for three reasons (in this order, because i had to get past one to get to each next one): First, because i'd never heard it before and had no idea he was saying. Second, because i discovered that in West Sussex at least, zebra is pronounced with a short e and not a long one, as i'm used to (they talk funny, hah!). Third, because it made me picture wild zebras crossing the busy urban English street, sort of like the deer crossing and moose crossing signs you'll see in New England. And that made me think of the penguin rolling down the stairs/nun rolling down the stairs joke. And then i got hit by a lorry. hunh.