Dear users!

I am Czech, therefore I read Pratchett´s books in Czech. Now I read The Colour of Magic in English. I do not understand one thing. Please, help! Twoflower tries to explain Rincewind his job. He talks about inn-sewer-ants polly-sea. That is clear - insurance policy. But later on he talks about "reflected-sounds-of-underground-spirits". I guess, this should work the same way as inn-sewer-ants - just words replaced with another ones, that sound almost the same. But I can neither figure out what those original words should be, nor I can find an explanation on the Internet. Does anybody of you know?

Hello Tronmkiheda.

It is supposed to be echo-gnomics (economics).
You can find plenty of information about the books and all the puns and cultural references here : The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Index

oh my... thanks for the explanation (and the Annotated Pratchett link, to be filed away for later time-wasting) ! Yeah, I would have also never associated "gnomes" with "spirits" - last I heard, gnomes were perfectly corporeal creatures, same as the dwarves!

Yep, same here, but the Pterry writes in mysterious ways...

Many thanks for your quick answer. It is all clear now. I was confused by inn-sewer-ants. I believed that I had to search just words with similar sound. I did not look for hidden meanings.

They're underground spirits because in classical mythology there were different spirits for each of the elements (eg air - sylphs), and the earth spirits were gnomes.

Yeah, I know, immature much, but your original spelling of "spirits" made me snort outloud in the middle of workplace, Buzzfloyd!