May 1, 2009
equivoque
I discovered the word equivoque through deepleap.org, my favourite online thing-to-do. Meaning a pun or a double entedre, it comes through the French équivoque, from Late Latin aequivocus, ambiguous.... Read more
March 29, 2009
vatic
From Latin vates, vatic means "prophetic". Merriam-Webster's Word-of-the-Day comment notes: "Some people say only thin lines separate poetry, prophecy, and madness. We don't know if that's generally true, but it is in the case of "vatic." The adjective derives directly from the Latin word "vates," meaning "seer" or "prophet." But that Latin root is in turn distantly related to an Old English word for "poetry," an Old High German word for "madness," and an Old Irish word for "seer" or "poet." "... Read more
March 24, 2009
ordure
Reading an article on beetle armament and sexual selection, I found ordure, a cognate with Latin. It comes to contemporary English from the Middle English, from Anglo-French, from ord dirty, foul, from Latin horridus horrid. The article also contains this colourful, editorial remark: People have pathetically puny teeth and claws compared with the armaments of other dominant species. This is a sign not of pacific intent but of the fact that they manufacture their weapons. The manufactured weapons, just like biological ones, have assumed a display function — think of the fearsome appearance of samurai helmets or armored knights, or the menacing tanks and rockets that paraded through Red Square in Moscow in the days of the Soviet Union. ... which, upon re-reading, calls to mind a Gary Larson cartoon -- not any one in particular, but the notion of one.... Read more
February 13, 2009
friggatriskaidekaphobia
friggatriskaidekaphobia describes an irrational fear of Friday the Thirteenth. Also paraskavedekatriaphobia. The Phobia List has more.... Read more
February 6, 2009
graupel
The Utah Avalanche Center's online dictionary provides this definition for graupel: Graupel is that Styrofoam ball type of snow that stings your face when it falls from the sky. It forms from strong convective activity within a storm (upward vertical motion) caused by the passage of a cold front or springtime convective showers. The static buildup from all these falling graupel pellets sometimes cause lightning as well. Graupel may come from German, but I do not know whence.... Read more
January 2, 2009
bruit
An abnormal sound heard in auscultation, or an unusual cardiac sound, or, better yet, as a verb: to spread news; a rumour; a din.... Read more
December 31, 2008
fladry
A fladry [line] consists of rope with strips of fabric, often red, to deter wolve. Fladry lines have been used for several centuries. According to Polish Scientific Publishers (Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, SA), fladry is the plural of the German flader or flattern, "to flutter." Fladry is probably not related to the Polish flądry, the plural of flądra, which signifies either "a flatfish" or "a slattern" (from the 2002 Oxford PWN Polish English Dictionary, which is not available online, but see this paper on machine translation [pdf]). In English fladry tends to be used in the plural only, meaning you can have “some fladry,” very rarely “a fladry,” and never “some fladries.” The term has a cognate in French. Researchers from the University of Calgary discovered that wolves will not cross this type of barrier for up to 60 days when it encloses livestock. In addition, it has recently been adapted to include an electric current, called Turbo fladry, which may provide a longer period of protection.... Read more
December 10, 2008
יש דבר שיאמר ראה זה חדש הוא כבר היה לעלמים אשר היה מלפננו׃
Codex Sinaiticus. Although the screen controls tend towards inaccurate, seeing the codex itself in such clear reproduction is a joy. The lettering is beautiful and clear, and the accompanying modern text rendering useful for navigation. Now if only I could find a reasonable online edition of the Hebrew text .... Aha: looking through Google for the Hebrew phrase turned up a few sites with multi-lingual texts (and some imaginative renderings) of Ecclesiastes. יֵשׁ דָּבָר שֶׁיֹּאמַר רְאֵה-זֶה, חָדָשׁ הוּא: כְּבָר הָיָה לְעֹלָמִים, אֲשֶׁר הָיָה מִלְּפָנֵנוּ.... Read more
October 27, 2008
June 19, 2008
prurient
Sometimes I find that a word in a completely ordinary context leaps away from the page and stands out. When reading Alberto Manguel's editorial piece on libraries — on his personal libraries — in The New York Times, prurient leaped out at me. From Sanskrit through Latin, it denotes something "marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire". It has as its immediate root the Latin word "to itch" as in "to crave": prurire, which the Online Etymology Dictionary suggests has a shade of "to be wanton". The Sanskrit root means "to singe", which conjures up all sorts of Roman poetry. Alberto Manguel is a fabulous author and a writer of breathtaking skills.... Read more
June 12, 2008
Ys
While looking up the mythical town in France, Wikipedia's helpful disambiguation page pointed me in the direction of the yoctosecond, a unit of time representing one-quadrillionth of a second. Yocto is the smallest of the SI units, denoting a factor of 10−24. The yotta in yottasecond, with the same ys abbreviation, denotes a factor of 1024 and is the largest SI unit.... Read more
June 9, 2008
May 19, 2008
In which we make all languages one
Google's new translation tool has more languages and more shine. This tool has helped me read through innumerable web pages in the past. Although it does not answer all questions about internet sites in other languages, it provides excellent tools for reference-checking and for aiding me in understanding foreign-language posts. The new languages include Bulgarian and Greek (although not Attic, or classic, Greek; I am encouraging Google to apply statistical machine-translation methods to the corpus of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit literature), as well as improvements to the existing languages' translation facilities. I didn't say babel fish, nor babelfish. Nor 72 views of the tower of babel (I have been waiting for a while to incorporate that into something. Now is the opportunity!).... Read more
May 9, 2008
shoddy
Shoddy entered our language as a noun, mid-nineteenth century; it denoted a garment made from recycled or already-used wool, and shortly afterwards became an adjective describing anything shabby or inferior (it has an interesting secondary meaning, "pretentious vulgarity": showy). Where it came from, I know not; nor does Etymology Online.... Read more
May 1, 2008
Sir, or Don't call me darling
I get a shifty feeling when people call me "Sir". I admire honorifics and epithets, but none apply to me: I am neither lord nor baronet to anyone, nor am I their sire. I suspect that people calling me sir have a mild inferiority complex, or a misguided sense that they are being polite, or labor under the painful misapprehension that they need to defer to a client. Just as on the venerable television news program "60 Minutes", which I watched assiduously as a young'un, I see a pattern. When someone being interviewed on that program started calling the reporter conducting the interview "sir", then they were hiding something. The "sir" was a verbal distraction, a sleight-of-tongue (as it were) that meant, "Oh, I'm entirely honest and without reproach". I don't mind if someone calls me "boss" or "chief" as much, although those do have a slightly disparaging edge (perhaps I read The Catcher in the Rye too often?) I prefer that people call me by my name, and, if they do'n't know it, that they ask. During a business transaction, the man on the other side of the handshake kept calling me "Sir", without irony or sarcasm or even a hint of inflection other than his northern New Jersey accent. I found myself wondering, Why? and after we parted company (deal intact) I was humming a song with the refrain "Don't call me darling". Of course, this video is available from the YouTube. Bless the YouTube for its ability to fulfill the vision that Eyebeam had two decades ago: FTv, or Filler TV. This channel gives you endless two- and three-minute pieces of programming designed to fit into the awkward gaps between other programs, before leaving the apartment, perhaps even between courses. Filler TV! The Fall!! Don't Call Me Darling!!... Read more
April 28, 2008
cenotaph
Cenotaph was a word familiar to me from name-play in Asterix and the Normans, in which the Gauls seek out the meaning of fear. I have yet to use it in a sentence, however; I could say, "What is the way to The Cenotaph" if I were looking for the memorial in London which has all sorts of curious geometry; I could more usefully ask, "Is this a cenotaph or a tomb?" when looking at a memorial; or I could wonder about the word's origin (literally from the Greek κενοτάϕιον, κενοϲ "empty" + ταφοϲ "tomb"). Or I could consult Wikipedia for a list of cenotaphs around the world.... Read more
April 20, 2008
In we doff our hat
Seeing Adam Albright's name at the top of the new Language Log brought a smile to my face. The Language Log, long a favorite of both esoteric and popular linguistics, brings together academic writers on a delightful variety of topics. It also introduces me to other language-related blogs, including Mr Verb.... Read more
April 15, 2008
A few words on growing up Scots
In my younger years, I often fell asleep hearing pipers practicing on a nearby hill, and a subliminal message has since compelled me to avoid wearing pants -- although I missed last week's Wear a Kilt To Work Day, part of the Tartan Week festivities. Some words on the historical importance of the kilt (and of whisky), from The Glenlivet's advertising posters: The Glenlivet and the kilt share more than just Scottish origins – both were once against the law! Under England’s King George IV, the 1746 Dress Act banned all items of Highland dress. The same monarch imposed excise laws banning all production of whisky in 1781. Despite this, when King George IV visited Scotland in 1822, he himself insisted he would drink no other whisky than the “illegal” The Glenlivet. On this same trip, the king and his retinue also donned tartan outfits, reinstating both Scotch whisky and the tartan in the same visit. Kilt is a Scottish word that means “to tuck up the clothes around the body.” The word derives from the Old Norse kjilt, which means “pleated.” A 1746 description of the versatile garment states: “The garb is certainly very loose, and fits men inured to it to go through great fatigues, to make very quick marches, to bear out against the inclemency of the weather, to wade through rivers and shelter in huts, woods and rocks upon occasion; which men dressed in the low country garb could not possibly endure.” Today, the kilt is generally regarded as formal dress and can be seen at wedding and black tie occasions. The mutual vocabulary of Scots and Swedish intrigues me: words such as bairn and the comparable formations of sijkhus stand out. Through reading about the history of Scots, I came upon the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, which promotes languages and linguistic diversity.... Read more
April 11, 2008
A few words on riding the subway / bibelot
Often, when riding a crowded subway car in the morning, I will necessarily stare at the advertising placards, reading in each medical condition for which a cure is on offer (bunions! hammer-toe! skin blemishes! weight loss! weight gain!) and the social ills I might solve with a phone call: bankruptcy, a divorce, an injured child; the pleasures I will gain from cologne, whiskey, candy, patent medication. I stare at the ads to avoid staring at the newspapers around me, which I have learned is not done (in fact, I learned this from a whisky ad on the subway and then confirmed it with Anna). Sometimes I bring my own book, but more often I stare at the ads. On occasion, music from someone's headphones will bleed out into the subway and a tune will stick in my head. This morning, the word bibelot popped into my head, and I couldn't get it out: where does it come from? (Latin, through French) How might I use it? (in lieu of bauble, chachka, geegaw, gimcrack, knickknack, trinket, or whatnot; the latter is a special favourite of mine).... Read more
April 8, 2008
Serendipities
I read and enjoyed Umberto Eco's slim volume Serendipities, a collection of lectures edited for publication. The power of falsity focuses on the legend of Prester John and the impressive force of verisimilitude (a concept that hearkens to my high-school Spanish lessons, reading Borges in Señora Schmerz's classroom). Languages in paradise: what was the primordial language, the tongue used in the Garden of Eden? In addition to the cabalistic obsession with discovering this, wild theories abound since the days of the Greeks. Eco pays special attention to an essay by Dante Aligheri. The essay predates the Paradiso by a decade and presents a different Dorothy L. Sayers died thirteen cantos short of completing the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy; Dante himself died before publishing these same thirteen cantos, andd only after his death did his sons discover and publish them. Or so goes the legend retold by Eco; I can never decide whether he quotes the truth, or even a well-told but unsubstantiated rumour. At one point in his second lecture he goes so far as to quote from an unpublished paper which quotes a manuscript attributed to Abulafia, and this particular attribution made me wonder whether his examination of language was real, or an exercise in fiction. The book has the subtitle Language and Lunacy.... Read more
April 6, 2008
Low Life / desuetude
"The Bowery itself had fallen into desuetude." desuetude: "disuse," from desuetus, pp. of desuescere "become unaccustomed to,". Re-reading Luc Sante's Low Life, an account of New York's nineteenth-century underbelly, has proven a mixed bag. I enjoy the anecdotes and historical tit-bits about ragamuffins, pick-pockets, houses of ill repute, and political antics; but I yearn for more, and perhaps even a highly-illustrated reference to the dissolute Manhattan of yesteryear. An edition replete with maps, historical documents, and larger prints of the photographs Sante already includes would be splendid. In conjunction with my perpetual reading of Burrows's and Wallace's Gotham and of The Power Broker, Robert Caro's monumental biography of Robert Moses (the latter links to his typsecript comments, from The Bridge and Tunnel Club web site), books such as Low Life provide a more digestible, or at least more portable, account of Gotham's yesteryear.... Read more
April 2, 2008
On the tribulations of language: words and punctuation
This fellow read the OED from soup to nuts (perhaps from alpha to omega?) and is now blogging about it; this fellow documents the inconsistent treatment accorded to the letter L in hand-written signs, and blogs about it (with photos!); me, I am fond of the grocer's apostrophe and puzzling punctuation. ... as are other people: Apostrophe Abuse illustrates the perils of modern-day puncuation; ritual observation of the importance of punctuation happens on National Punctuation Day; and the "emphatic" use of quotation marks in signs and signage. And the most excellent writers of The Language Log share this gem: Proofreaders rejoice! The missing apostrophe on the granite base of the new Ernie Banks statue is now in place. It took a stone carver about 30 minutes Wednesday morning to complete the work, said Lou Cella, the sculptor who made the statute. The missing punctuation was noticed when the statue was unveiled on opening day at Wrigley Field Monday. later corrected to... Read more
April 1, 2008
nonplussed
I have been mis-using the word nonplussed for quite some time; like fey, inflammable, and unravelled it means the opposite of what I think it does (the latter two more so than fey, I suppose; I became overly excited about the denotations of fey one day in the eleventh grade, and eventually the teacher removed me from the classroom.) Nonplussed means "surprised, perplexed to the point of speechlessness": ... The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: “Nonplused does not mean fazed or unfazed. It means bewildered to the point of speechlessness.” To me, it does (more or less) mean ‘fazed’ but does not mean ‘unfazed’. Despite this confusion, perhaps The New York Times copyeditors should pay more attention to the basically sound advice in their usage book. The fact that this book takes on the topic shows that the meaning of nonplussed has indeed become an issue; the previous edition did not have an entry for this word ... "... Read more
February 26, 2008
On tits and ass.
Did Apple make a clbuttic mistake? Whose conbreastitution does President Bush trample? Whose parish buttets are up for sale? Although spell-checkers are a boon, arbitrary use of global replace can be devastating. Take it from me, who removed all of the us from a client's web site some years ago.... Read more
February 20, 2008
petitio principii
Authors and orators often use the expression "beg the question" to mean "This brings up the question ...". This is wrong: to "beg the question" means to assume, incorrectly, in order to make a point. The wikipedia has a section "Modern Usage controversy" in its entry, but reduces the problem to pitting prescriptive grammar against descriptive. Being a stout prescriptivist, I disagree: the damn phrase has a specific connotation. Mis-use of this phrase, especially by those putting on airs, irritates me.... Read more
February 18, 2008
In praise of the semi-colon
The New York Times writes in praise of the semicolon, as found on a placard on MTA trains. It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train. "Please put it in a trash can,” riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, “that’s good news for everyone.” Semicolon sightings in the city are unusual, period, much less in exhortations drafted by committees of civil servants. In literature and journalism, not to mention in advertising, the semicolon has been largely jettisoned as a pretentious anachronism. This particular semicolon has aggravated me, perhaps because I prefer staccato sentences in advisory signs. This sign's exhortation becomes more of an admonition with the sentences split that way; the semicolon becomes a lengthier pause than a period, because the reader may have to read the following clause, and then re-read the entire sentence in order to parse it properly. The sign does have sophistication; I give it that. As for the New York Times: I am happy that they, despite their plummeting level of sophistication, printed this piece.... Read more
February 13, 2008
A few words on the subway
While riding the rush-hour subway northwards a few evenings ago, I overheard a few medical students talking about how they would rather be in a car, or on the shuttle, but the subway was faster. As we progressed northerly, more and more people crowded in to the carriage, and the medicos pressed together, joking about how tight the space was becoming. One asked another about a syndrome in which people derive physical pleasure from pressing up against others in crowded area, and pronounced it "frawternize", somewhat along the lines of "fraternize" but distinctly different in its first syllable. I could not find references to the word online, and wonder if the M.D. wasn't joking for the sake of eavesdroppers, but am curious. The MTA announced its trip planner, which looks a sight nicer than HopStop, and is speedy.... Read more
February 12, 2008
Wordcraft
Wordcraft is Alex Frankel's examination of the business of branding: of finding words, creative slogans, and stories to express a brand's identity. He presents five case studies: BlackBerry, Cayenne, Accenture, Viagra, and IBM's e-business, each peppered with anecdotes and solid first-hand reporting. The studies veer between business journalism and language commentary; Frankel's practical, straight-forward prose makes them easy to read and to follow. Although far from thrilling, this book was much more informative about brand development and identity than Dana Thomas's Deluxe, and provided more insight into why people want to identify with a brand. It's cool to think that you are part of the same consumer experience as your favourite sports figure, motion-picture actor, or politician ("Bob Dole knows a thing about Viagra.").... Read more
February 11, 2008
gunnel
Gunnel, /ˈɡʌnəl/ gunnel is a nautical term describing the top edge of the side of a boat; it is synonymous with gunwale. The word may come from weal, the ridge formed in a skin injury, but more likely comes from wale, a plank. Hi, Erik.... Read more
February 5, 2008
brume
A word meaning "mist" or "fog", brume comes to English from Fr., whence Old Fr., perhaps from Provençal; ultimately from Latin brūma, winter; I wonder why I have never seen it before, as it is so pretty and expressive. I read it in a New York Times article on the Morgan.... Read more
January 27, 2008
schraubverschlüsse
I used Google to help me understand the "öffner fur schraubverschlüsse" that I picked up today from the not-quite-a-store, not-quite-an-art-gallery Kiosk. I know that the device, a Monopol Hermetus, can open a beer bottle with a patent top; and, with its rubber gasket, can keep an open bottle, patent or cork-topped, sealed. The schraubverschlüsse opener works on screw tops, which may sometimes act recalcitrant.... Read more
January 23, 2008
cow-byre
I came across this word, distinctively hyphenated, in a translation from the German original of "The Confusions of Young Törless". It struck me not only because I had never before seen it, but in using this word -- from the English byre, "a building for sheltering cattle; a barn", the translator's art impressed me. The choice of words in German must also have reflected a certain time, for in these times one would never write "cow-byre" where one might instead write "cow-barn" or simply "barn". A byre might also be a shed or other generic outbuilding, but the emphasis on cow-byre seems unusual and significant. I could not glean the shade of meaning from the context in which the novel presented it, however (and have lost the note in which I jotted down the page number).... Read more
January 16, 2008
scorbutic
scorbutic means "afflicted with scurvy", a terrific word (and one I am surprised I never saw before in Captain Haddock's irascible vocabulary). I knew it from the Italian adjective scorbutico, meaning "irritable, grouchy", but had not yet seen it in English; when I saw this word on today's A.Word.A.Day I had a sudden realisation of its familiarity.... Read more
December 31, 2007
tun
tun |tən| a large beer or wine cask; a brewer's fermenting vat. Also an imperial measure of capacity, equal to 4 hogsheads. To store beer or wine in a tun. Probably of Gaulish origin; from the Old English tunne, ex. medieval Latin tunna.... Read more
December 13, 2007
In which I cannot spell worth a dam'
accommodate vs. recommend curiosity however: instal, traveller, and: hiccough, kerb, what would I do with the OS's built-in red-underlining (nuts to the green)?... Read more
December 11, 2007
apophenia
apophenia is an invented word, coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad and describes the ;spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena", such as seeing the sainted Virgin Mary in a burrito wrap or Elmer Fudd in the oil shimmering on the macadam after a light rain. More examples of apophenia, including some terrifying observations from Strindberg, reveal this condition (syndrome?) as some sort of spontaneous creativity. Somewhat related, I began reading Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter’s Guide, an unexpectedly amusing and enthusiastically comprehensive guide to clouds.... Read more
December 3, 2007
negus
negus might refer to a hot drink of wine, water, lemon juice, sugar, and nutmeg, or to an Ethiopic king (from the proto-Semitic root N - G - Ś). As a mulled wine, probably consisting primarily of sherry, negus recurs in Dickens, Brontë, and other mid-19th-century authors, and is eponymous for a certain English military person, Francis Negus. I came across it in Dickens's "A Christmas Carol".... Read more
December 1, 2007
deuteragonist
The descriptive literary phrase deuteragonist, ˌd(y)oōtəˈragənist, comes from the Greek δευτεραγωνιστης, deuteragonistes, "second actor". Clearly, the deuteragonist falls in importance between the protagonist and the tritagonist in order of importance in a dramatic work; the term also describes the number of lines a character spoke to the audience during the three-actor presentations typical of plays at Attic festivals. I came across the word in a description of Jacopo Belbo's character in Foucault's Pendulum. It makes perfect sense, but I had never before seen it. A similarly logical word, Deuteronomy, took on almost mystical meaning when pronounced by a particular member of the faculty. He would emphasize that it described the second presentation of the law, and waggle his preternaturally long, tobacco-stained index fingers to indicate "second".... Read more
November 29, 2007
digamma
Ϝ The digamma is an alphabetic character to which I am especially and sentimentally attached; I first came across it my first week at College, in Hardy Hansen's and the late Gerald M. Quinn's "Greek: An Intensive Course" (some info. available through Google Books). [ a brief tussle with the six-year-old bundle of twine that holds together the code producing this blog ] I especially liked Ϝ because it explained how οινος became wine: the initial labio-velar consonant had disappeared a few centuries before the Golden Age of Athens, but the whooshing sound remained in the aspiration of the initial omicron. I thought of the digamma when looking at the katakana character ヲ, which represents a "wo" sound. The digamma more closely corresponds to other Mediterranean languages, such as the Arabic و and the Hebrew ו (vav or waw sound; I think the و has no fricative articulation). ... I don't know phonetics. I do enjoy disappearing things in literature, like characters and consonants.... Read more
November 27, 2007
bloviate
The invented word bloviate, from today's Brenda Starr: boviate has a verbal sense roughly synonymous with blowhard, but I do not know how to compare verbs and nouns in this context.... Read more
November 3, 2007
gelid
gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold." gelid \JEH-lid\ "extremely cold, icy" From Usenet (post itself unattributed, modifications mine): "Gelid" is used in English to describe anything of extremely cold temperature (as in "the gelid waters of the Arctic Ocean"), but the word can also be used figuratively to describe a person with a cold demeanor (as in "the criminal's gelid stare"). "Gelid" first appeared in English late in the 16th century. The related gelatin refers to an edible jelly that undergoes a cooling process as part of its formation, and comes from the verb gelare, "to freeze.")... Read more
sumptuary
Sumptuary laws addressed the "... concern was that money spent on frivolous display would be better spent on the state of more important things, such as horses, critical to a society always in peril of the neighbors. The other concern was that letting anyone wear just anything must lead inexorably to moral decline. If you couldn't tell a milkmaid from a countess at a glance, the very fabric of society might unravel." Black's Law Dictionary (1999, Sixth Edition, p. 1436) defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc."... Read more
verst
A verst (Russian versta, верста) is an obsolete Russian unit of length. It is defined as being 500 sazhen long, which makes a verst equal to 3500 feet (1.0668 kilometres). Google Calculator doesn't know about it, even though it can handle factor-label problems.... Read more
October 29, 2007
assuage
I think I have been mis-pronouncing assuage, but I am not certain. Instead of \uh-SWAYJ\ or \ə-ˈswāj\ I have been eliding the sw sound entirely \ə-ˈsāj\. I think; I am not sure. I know for certain that I did not properly pronounce cooperate when I first saw it (in second grade, I thought that two os together indicated a diphthong, a long sound. I still write coöperate in defiance of the lack of separation most editors have. Similarly, I had the emphasis in esophagus as equal on all syllables.... Read more
October 24, 2007
lexiphanes
The oddly euphonic lexiphanes cheers me: although an adjective, it appears plural; it includes one of my very favourite roots, phain-, "to show" (cf. epiphany); and it means "bombastic, or "a pretentious user of words". It is also a dialogue (of Lucian? in imitation of Lucian?), the name of an Athenian comic poet, and a sort of beetle.... Read more
cagoule
A cagoule, a type of cover-all waterproof jacket, also refers to the right-wing Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire. This sort of jacket went out of style with the end of the Seventies, apparently.... Read more
October 22, 2007
meanderthal
The cute neologism meanderthal comes from the barely-evolved slowcoaches who crowd city sidewalks, plodding along and gumming up the works. The New York Times has some words of advice for these and other pedestrian miscreants.... Read more
October 18, 2007
ophidian
Again, my experience with freerice.com educates. I learned that ophidian is an adjective meaning "snake-like"; that an ambry, or "cupboard, pantry" is Chiefly British; and that bruxism is "the habit of clenching and grinding the teeth" (from the Greek brūkein, to gnash). I guesed cauline, "growing on a stem", because of that indie-rock album I kept seeing but never playing at the WHPK station library (whose album was that?); I moved ahead in the game, but was wrong about the word's origin, though, because it comes from the Latin word for helmet and describes the sheath over a newborn human infant's head; pileus is given as a synonym, and also comes from the Latin.... Read more
apothegm
apothegm, an aphorism. I learned this word through the addictive and refreshing Free Rice, a vocabulary test through which one can donate rice to an "international aid agency". The game also tossed out an old favourite of mine, lagniappe, at vocab level 47. I proceeded to level 48 and culverin, a sort of mediaeval cannon or "musket" as the site had it, without missing a word (I guessed at apothegm). I became retrograde, sank to level 44, and struggled to return to 47. Where I called it quits. After about forty-five minutes (and more than two thousand grains of rice).... Read more
September 30, 2007
thumble-rigged
I came across the expression "thumble-rigged" in a twenty-five year old book on the New York City subway, but do not find any online references to the expression, nor any reasonable usage of thumble itself. The context of the phrase suggested a meaning not along the lines of jerry-rigged or its predecessor, jury-rigged, but something more like "built by influence".... Read more
September 26, 2007
síbín
A blind pig or blind tiger, a speakeasy by another name.... Read more
September 25, 2007
In which you are what you eat
After a weekend thinking about Nabokov (thinking, mind you, not reading), seeing this blog posting about menus and anagrams made me quite cheery.... Read more
September 23, 2007
shiv, part III
Another candidate for the etymology of "shiv": chiv, Geordie slang for 'knife'. The Random House Unabridged of 2006 cites this as an American synonym dating to the 1850s.... Read more
September 11, 2007
On the ham in our dictionary
Lexicographer extraordinaire Erin McKean discusses "serependipity" versus "searchability", the joy of the steampunk element in dictionaries, and how the English language is approximately the size of a ham. In this brief talk she drops some delectable expressions: "charismatic megafauna", "ballpeen", and a comparison between mobile sculpture, traffic cops, and the language we use daily. And, interestingly, she vets words: how does one determine that words are real, in the sense that they are valid. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction, she asserts; using and loving a word is what makes it real. Link to talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161. The embedded widget wasn't embedding.... Read more
August 31, 2007
rasorial
From the illustrious A-Word-A-Day mailing list, I learned rasorial, a rarely-used (a mere 742 occurrences in the Google index!) word meaning "Characteristically scratching the ground for food. Used of chickens and similar birds." From the Indo-European root rd-, whence also the thing I see scurrying along the quiet rails of the subway, and the thing I scrape across my face each morning. rasorial (ruh-SOR-ee-uhl) adjective Given to scratching the ground to look for food. [From Latin radere (to scrape), ultimately from the Indo-European root red- (to scrape or scratch) that's also the source of raze, razor, erase, corrode, rascal, rat, and rodent.]... Read more
August 25, 2007
enswell
An enswell is a piece of metal -- lately, "a screw-top steel jar packed with that is applied directly to the injurymore closely resemble an iron than a medical device.... Read more
August 14, 2007
eremitical
"Of or pertaining to an eremite; hermitical; living in solitude." eremitical has a connotation of religion about the reclusivity.... Read more
August 2, 2007
Sic transit gloria mundi
Today I saw the mis-spelling "break" for "brake" in The New York Times and received an email from a company I have long respected, suggesting that I consider working there as a "Sr. Software Engineer or Principle Engineer". As I have principles, I will not consider it. &mdash I am saddened to see increasing and careless errors caused by homonyms (as I learned the term; today they are often referred to as homophones). I am pedantic about spelling and usage, but seeing two such prominent examples startled me.... Read more
July 26, 2007
In which I am having fun while learning
I am learning lots of new words (in between some hot craigslist action) while playing Chicktionary, which sounds like the sort of reference Bukowski wishes he had but is really an innocuous game — well, innocuous enough once you turn off the sound. And while playing Boggle online. Words like raphes and ephas, which actually turned up on different boards, seem like filler, but Chicktionary is good fun. Good promotional fun.... Read more
July 18, 2007
cathected
A back-formation from cathexis, it describes an emotional, perhaps libidinal, attachment to something, often a person but also a concept.... Read more
July 15, 2007
Horses for courses
Some years ago, I began enthusiastically collecting slips of paper with citations for various idioms, and stowed them alongside editions of Rawlinson, Partridge, and Fowler; I thought that I might, someday, produce a definitive work on pre-1970s English idiomatic phrases. Every now and again I come across a phrase new to me, such as "horses for courses", which means "to each their own". Where it comes from, I know naught; I could guess that each horse might be best-suited to a certain course, and that some races are not as good for some horses as others. I like the explanation at The Hindu, in which a cricket analogy appears. Of course.... Read more
July 5, 2007
stook
A word pruned from contemporary dictionaries, stook was in use at the time of Webster's 1913 Dictionary. It means "A small collection of sheaves set up in the field; a shock; in England, twelve sheaves." It comes via the Scottish, from the Middle English, and ultimately through a Low German word.... Read more
July 4, 2007
hiatal
A medical term to describe a certain hernia, hiatal appeared in this morning's New York Times Crossword, and it took my cheating^Wlooking at Rex Parker's explanation to figure it out; I had been trying to shoe-horn hiatus into the solution. The hernia in question occurs when the stomach protrudes into the chest cavity.... Read more
June 28, 2007
commensal
I mis-read the root for this word in Natalie Angier's excellent article on parasites, but the New York Times pounced on my hapless double-click (which I intended to select, so that I could look up "commensal" on-line) and popped up a medical definition: "Of, relating to, or characterized by a symbiotic relationship in which one species is benefited while the other is unaffected." It comes from the Latin "mēnsa" via the Middle English for "to share a meal", apparently.... Read more
June 20, 2007
char[r]ette
CMU's Architecture Librarian defines the charette as "a creative process akin to visual brainstorming that is used by design professionals to develop solutions to a design problem within a limited timeframe"; Wikipedia says it is "... pronounced [shuh-ret], often misspelled charette and sometimes called a design charrette) consists of an intense period of design activity."... Read more
June 17, 2007
knout
After years of wondering what a knouter might be, a correspondent pointed out the obvious: it comes from knout, the whip of the Russians (perhaps imported from Scandinavia, perhaps a Tatar device, perhaps Germanic) and comparable to a cat o' nine tails. Thus: a knouter is one who uses the knout, and Ivan in Richard Connell's story The Most Dangerous Game had served in the capacity of torturer to the Russian court.... Read more
June 7, 2007
barratry
barratry, spuriously creating quarrels in order to produce lawsuits and other legal make-work, also means the act of bringing lawsuits solely in order to harass.... Read more
May 30, 2007
prompt side
According to the Theatre Protective Union Local No. 1, the "prompt side" comes from opera, and means "stage right": "Our backstage tour began on the prompt side of the stage (many of the Radio City stagehands use the opera term prompt side for stage right)". I read it initially in a P G Wodehouse story describing the weekend-morning mob at Marble Arch, replete with Communists, sham-artists, and run-of-the-mill lunatics.... Read more
stumer
The inimitable Plum, P G Wodehouse has taught me many words (and many shades of meaning) in his delightful comic novels; re-reading a story included in the "Wodehouse Bestiary" anthology, I came upon stumer, "something which is worthless; a failure, a flop, a dud" describing a particular horse's outcome at Goodwood. The word comes from Cork slang, and also has a specific meaning of "counterfeit", but generally refers to a sham or failure. (Answers dot com generally labels the word as "British slang", which would infuriate any Corkonian I know.)... Read more
In which we collect the modern language
Describing email as "the first major upheaval in written English since the invention of the printing press", sociolinguists at The British Library are collecting common-or-garden email messages in an effort to document the evolution of our English language. The effort takes place with the coöperation of Microsoft's email system, New Hotmail (or something like that; the site is abysmal and I couldn't look at it for too long). Aside from the changes in spelling (eliding non-leading vowels, omitting repeated consonants, such as "chng splng, avd grmmr corctns" -- a short-hand scheme my ninth-grade English teacher espoused), and increased use of acronyms, even for common phrases (AIUI for "as I understand it", IM[H]O for "in my [humble] opinon", et al.), the more subtle change in attitude is notable. I receive communication from a lawyer who immediately addresses me on a first-name basis, even though we are in a business relationship; similarly, each of the many messages bears the imprimatur of the email service provider or device ("Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld"). The decrease in formality intrigues me, as email breaks down barriers of society: anyone can easily write to anyone else. One of the many spelling, grammer, and style exercises repeated in my grade-school lessons was to write a letter to my Congressman, my Senator, the President; we learned formal modes of address, penmanship, and style as well as the format of a proper letter. Salutations, closings, and post-scripts: all part of a concept disappearing.... Read more
May 28, 2007
posy
Along with tantivy, another good hunting term: posy, which means "a bunch, an arrangement" for game as for flowers. Imagine a brace of rabbits, but a posy of partridge.... Read more
May 14, 2007
lart
Although I do not often worry about jargon, and especially not computer/geek jargon, something about the casual bounciness of "lart" caught my eye.... Read more
May 2, 2007
aubergine
Although not as tortuous as this might suggest, I had an online adventure. It all began when I wondered about the word juggernaut (not related to astronaut, except through an attempt an English orthographic standardization) when I confirmed my little knowledge of Rath Yatra by looking it up on the internet, which led in turn to Wikipedia, and thence to the discovery that aubergine comes to English through Catalan and Arabic, but ultimately the word comes from Sanskrit.... Read more
April 16, 2007
bowyer
What fascinates me about bowyer is not its meaning ("one who makes bows"), but its root: "From Old English boga, ultimately from the Indo-European root bheug- (to bend) that is also the source of bagel, buxom, and bog." An online edition of the American Heritage Dictionary provides more detailed eytmological information.... Read more
April 12, 2007
oche
Although Google does not offer a definition, oche is a legitimate word, not mere jargon. Denoting "the line behind which darts players stand when throwing", the word has a mysterious and murky origin (and, when properly pronounced, rhymes with "hockey"). Flemish? rhyming slang? ale-laden linguistics fail us here.... Read more
April 9, 2007
shiv, part II
Both a New York Times crossword clue and the David Mamet movie Heist use "shiv" to mean "a switch-blade knife", a denotation I had not heard before.... Read more
March 27, 2007
haptic
haptic: of or relating to or proceeding from the sense of touch, from the fantastic and ancient Greek root, haptesthai, "grasp, touch". It commonly refers to the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with computer applications.... Read more
March 26, 2007
cerumen
My expensive classical education came to naught, again, as I failed to recognise the root for this year's winning word in the Chronicle Spelling Bee: cerumen, which comes from the Latin cera, for "wax", not serum, "watery fluid". The brownish yellow, waxy secretion of the ceruminous glands of the external auditory meatus, or earwax.... Read more
February 22, 2007
leveret
levertn, a young hare, especially one under a year old; although as I read it, the term was used as an adjective; such is the endless malleability of the English.... Read more
tantivy
tantivy, adv: galloping, at full speed. According to World Wide Words the word is an archaic British hunting term. I read it in Kate Atkinson's charmingly neat social crime thriller, "Case Histories", which I bought on the strength of its cover (endorsements from Stephen King and Janet Maslin. I am easily swayed. Oh, the paper had a nice texture, too).... Read more
February 5, 2007
ailurophile
I have stupidly always figured that the scientific words for cat came from the Latin felix, for "happy"; no, the words from the Latin feles, felis, itself of uncertain origin, and meaning "cat, marten" (interesting conflation, that). The Greek word for cat is ailouros, whence ailurophile: one who loves cats. So much for my expensive classical education.... Read more
January 16, 2007
affordance
Affordance refers to the psychological concept of "action possibility"; the 'adaptation of the meaning of affordances has caused many people to also use the verb "afford", which the noun was derived from, in a new way that is not consistent with its dictionary definition. Rather than "to provide" or "to make available", designers and those in the field of HCI often use it as meaning "to suggest" or "to invite".' As do some some computer programmers.... Read more
January 13, 2007
carcanet
carcanet (kär'kə-nĕt', -nĭt): "A jeweled necklace, collar, or headband." Perhaps from Medieval Latin carcannum, which means "pillory" or "prison"; ARTFL gives a more complete etymology: [Dim. fr. F. carcan the iron collar or chain of a criminal, a chain of precious stones, LL. carcannum, fr. Armor. kerchen bosom, neck, kechen collar, fr. kelch circle; or Icel. kverk troat, OHG, querca throat.] A jeweled chain, necklace, or collar. [Also written carkenet and carcant.]. Some dictionaries mark this as archaic.... Read more
January 11, 2007
crepitation
Although crepitation seems to have a strictly medical denotation, I came across it in this sentence: "A crepitation, a pair of antennae against the sky on his right, heralded the arrival of the second snail." crep·i·ta·tion (krĕp'ĭ-tā'shən): A rattling or crackling sound like that made by rubbing hair between the fingers close to the ear; The sensation felt on placing the hand over the seat of a fracture when the broken ends of the bone are moved, or over tissue in which gas gangrene is present; The noise produced by rubbing bone or irregular cartilage surfaces together, as in arthritis; A noise produced by the rubbing of fractured ends of bones, by cracking joints, and by pressure upon tissues containing abnormal amounts of air, as in cellular emphysema; The noise produced by a sudden discharge of wind from the bowels. It is certainly a descriptive word, but I had no idea what it meant when I read that sentence; upon closer examination, I see that it comes directly into English from the Latin crepare, "to crack", whence also decrepit.... Read more
nacreous
An adjective from nacre (nā'kər), "mother-of-pearl"; it means silvery or cloudy. From the French nacre (Old French nacle); from Old Italian naccaro, "drum"; nacre, from Arabic naqqāra, "a small drum", itself from naqara, "to bore, pierce".... Read more
January 7, 2007
kerf
I learned kerf and many other carpentry-related words, such as rabbet (also rabbit, which I much prefer) through "One Good Turn", by the eminently readable Witold Rybzcynsky.... Read more
December 19, 2006
In which we enter Safe Mode and screw the pooch
I have had some trouble getting Firefox to trim certain built-in toolbars. I want to maximize the screen space I have, eliminating the Bookmarks and Navigation toolbars (but keeping the Status bar -- I could not cheerfully browse without the "Connecting to ..." messages!). Each time I load the program, I find that I had to make the customization; the changes would not persist across restarts. I looked through the various .js bits in my Profile, but could only find the incantations to make third-party toolbars go away (and these worked, curiously). I looked into the userChrome.css file, and mucked around with user.js, to no avail (I had to guess at element names). I looked through the Mozillazine Knowedgebase and tried making the changes in Safe Mode; that didn't do the trick. Someone helpfully pointed me to the workaround for a localstore.rdf bug, and this worked like a charm. Yay: another 24 pixels. Bye the bye, the magnificent expression "Screwed the pooch" comes from Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff": The phrase 'screw the pooch' itself was derived from an earlier phrase that was quite familiar to those of us in the service in WW2. I was a Fire Control Computer technician (Fire Controlman) in the US Navy 1944-1946. Anyone who has ever been in the military has spent an inordinate amount of time in a 'stand-by' formation waiting for someone to get the orders to start some activity. Many man-hours were spent in an activity that was commonly known as 'Effing the dog.' [Note: They didn't really say, 'Effing,' but I'm sure you can figure it out.] Back home in civilian life this was cleaned up to the slightly more acceptable 'screwing the pooch.... Read more
December 16, 2006
paraphernalia
Salim's tips for holiday merriment: Asking about the number of rs in paraphernalia makes a great way to break the ice at a party. Almost as good as the classic opener, "Do you know if 'banal' rhymes with 'anal' or 'canal'?". paraphernalia comes from phern?, the Greek word for dowry, and para, "in addition to", and describes the possessions a woman brings to the marriage. Historically, this included a water bong, roach clip, and baggie full of uncut Turkish hashish. A-propos of Greek whatnots, a new bookstore opened on Hayes St., between Gough and Franklin: Symposium Books. Run by two St. John's College graduates, it sells "classic" books, or the Great Books, or Greats as we Oxonians know it, and the window has a very attractive (and, as it turns out, seasonal) display of Loebs. The red and green spines drew me in, actually, and I was pleasantly surprised at the warm atmosphere and pleasant seating areas in the shop.... Read more
December 1, 2006
amain
amain: "at full speed; with great haste; with all your strength; with full force"... Read more
November 29, 2006
ditto
The word I learned in kindergarten for the double-quote mark on our lunch-leader list ("Lunch leader: Monday, Salim; Tuesday, ditto"; et c.) comes straight out of Latin along an almost unremarkable path, as I learned from the title="Offsite: Houghton Mifflin dictionary">Houghton Mifflin dictionary: Italian dialectal, past participle of Italian dire, to say, from Latin dicere; from the Indo-European radical deik-. Ditto, which at first glance seems a handy and insignificant sort of word, actually has a Roman past, for it comes from dictus, "having been said," the past participle of the verb dicere, "to say." In Italian dicere became dire and dictus became detto, or in the Tuscan dialect ditto. Italian detto or ditto meant what said does in English, as in the locution "the said story." Thus the word could be used in certain constructions to mean "the same as what has been said"; for example, having given the date December 22, one could use 26 detto or ditto for 26 December. The first recorded use of ditto in English occurs in such a construction in 1625. The sense "copy" is an English development, first recorded in 1818. Ditto has even become a trademark for a duplicating machine.... Read more
November 27, 2006
pernickety
Pernickety is the original and Scots spelling of the word many spell as persnickety: "characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details". Pernickety is itself of uncertain origin, and may be an extended form of Scot. pernicky, itself perhaps a corruption of particular. The s probably crept in for euphony; I don't know whether the American tongue deals more readily with the sibiliant intervening, as compared to the prickly sound of the Scots. I can feel my lip curling in a sneer each time I say it.... Read more
November 15, 2006
cachinnate
Latin cachinnare, cachinnat-, imitative; "to laugh hard, loudly, or convulsively; guffaw" If you split your sides, roll in the aisles, or die laughing, you may be cachinnating. Although this word has been in my vocabulary for about twenty-five years, since I first read The Castafiore Emerald, a Tintin adventure (a "comic book", I suppose.), I never looked for it in a dictionary until just now. I think I just assumed that it was one of Captain Haddock's colourful epithets; but, then again, even bashi-bazouk has a proper origin! The Comics Museum in Brussels -- the Musée des Bandes Desinées, to be precise -- has excellent exhibits in a beautifully-restored Art Deco warehouse. You can see the rocket-ship from Destination Moon and Explorers on The Moon through the atrium.... Read more
November 2, 2006
sweal
sweal, v.i. 1. To melt and run down, as the tallow of a candle; to waste away without feeding the flame; 2. To blaze away; 3. To singe, as a hair on a pig or a hedgehog; to scorch, as skin on ditto; I could not find this word in my dictionary; I need a bigger, or older, set, methinks. I like that this verb does not take an object.... Read more
October 29, 2006
In which we play merry[-]hell
The reason I earlier stumbled through several online reference dictionaries, including the Hobson-Jobson, was to determine the origin and punctuation of the phrase play merry hell. Does a hyphen belong between the latter two words? In that case, is merry-hell a particular sort of hell? The Peevish Dictionary of British Slang cites this as a verb phrase: "To be very angry". Most citations or uses of this phrase on the internet omit the hyphen. Where does this term originate? It does not ever seem to mean "wreak havoc", as the phrase "raising hell" does, but strictly "to be mad".... Read more
mephitic
In between checking references in the Dictionary of Difficult Words, the Hobson-Jobson Dictionary (of words coming into English from Hindi), I came upon mephitic, an adjective meaning "miasmic; poisonous, foul-smelling, having an unpleasant odor"; also "capable of killing by poison"; this word seems most appropriate for the coming All-Hallows Eve, which is a typically boisterous celebration in San Francisco. With the preternaturally warm weather we have enjoyed it may well be a particularly fine night out.... Read more
October 23, 2006
office
While reading the delightful exploits of working-class sleuth Montague Egg in Hangman's Holiday, I came across an unexpcted usage of the word office: "We had the office he was expected this way," spoken by a police-sergeant describing how they suspected that one of the men in the bar-parlour of an inn was a criminal. This usage may be the same as illustrated in the Cardshark online definition of office in their Gambling Glossary: "A secret signal passed from a gambler to his confederate".... Read more
October 15, 2006
stridulate
v.intr. To produce a shrill grating, chirping, or hissing sound by rubbing body parts together, as certain insects do; v.tr. To produce by rubbing body parts together. From Latin stridulus, from stridere, to make harsh sounds; onomatopoeic. A cricket or tarantula may stridulate, the former to report the temperature, the latter to ward off predators.... Read more
October 1, 2006
diegetic
The adjective diegetic refers to the source of music in a film: "if [the music] is part of the narrative sphere of the film ... if a character in the film is playing a piano, or turns on a CD, the resulting sound is 'diegetic.' If, on the other hand, music plays in the background but cannot be heard by the film's characters, it is termed non-diegetic or, more accurately, extra-diegetic." I learned the terms "source" and "cue" music some years ago in a film-theory something-or-other, but I prefer this term, which comes from the classical Greek philosophical contrast with mimesis: the contrast of exposition with demonstration.... Read more
September 30, 2006
tombolo
The mouth of the Irish Sea around Dublin also features a tombolo, a sandbar that extends from a beach to connect with a substantial island. I had a spectacular view of this recently, but was not carrying a camera -- my recent habit of wearing pants without ample, baggy pockets has some unfortunate side-effects, alas.... Read more
September 16, 2006
swivet, thew, faineance
Several new words, most of which entered my lexicon through reading books written a century or more ago. swivet One might now say that so-and-so is "in a snit"; swivet describes a "state of excited distress or discomposure". P G Wodehouse uses this word in his earlier novels. thew thews, an exemplary English word, means "A well-developed sinew or muscle; Muscular power or strength", and typically is used in the plural: thews. From the Middle English for "virtue, strength", itself from the Old English th?aw, "a custom, habit"; its form and meaning are similar to sinew. Initially the word signified that an individual had "good qualities", thews "acquired a sense of "muscular development" when it was revived by Scott (1818)". faineance faineance: idleness, or the trait of being idle due to a reluctance to work. This word may have a distinct legal denotation as well.... Read more
September 13, 2006
umbrella
A lunch-time conversation revealed that I had no idea, none!, of the origin of the word "umbrella", nor of the origin of the device itself. Several western european languages refer to the device with multiple names, depending on whether it is used for protection against sun (parasol, Sonnenschirm) or rain (parapluie, Regenschirm). We speculated that the word comes from a long-expired trademark or patent, or perhaps was epoynmous, much as biro comes from its inventor, László Bíró. Almost anti-climactically, "umbrella" comes from the Latin umbra + a diminutive, ella. The word itself dates back thousands of years, and the concept of the "portable device that creates a shady protected area from the elements" is probably as old as civilization -- a large leaf might qualify as an umbrella.... Read more
September 11, 2006
replevin
Today I encountered another legal term: replevin means "An action to recover personal property said or claimed to be unlawfully taken." Apparently having a writ of replevin can help one regain property unlawfully taken (!!). I do miss that bicycle. The poor Kogswell sure had a lot to live up to. That bike, in one fixed-gear incarnation or another, rode Marin fire trails, down Highway One (and, in fact, up that damn highway all the way to Point Reyes, one brutal and blisteringly windy summer day in '00 or '01), and got me to and from bookstores, friends' places, markets, parks, and pretty much anywhere I wanted to go.... Read more
September 9, 2006
modem
After reading Arnold Zwicky's latest entry in the Language Log, I discovered that I did not know the origin of the word modem, which he lists along with radar and scuba as acronyms that have entered the language as common, rather than proper, nouns. modem is a portmanteau, the sort of word that delighted Humpty Dumpty: from modulate and demodulate, it describes the function of the instrument which sends digital signals over analogue carriers. The genial egg describes the concept of linguistic portmanteau while explaining the poem Jabberwocky (one of the few English poems I have committed to memory). I supose that modem will now apply for extra wages.... Read more
September 8, 2006
appurtenant
I learned the legal term appurtenant after reading Clayton Counts's write-up about his being forced to remove the Beachles mash-up album from his web site. Meaning "A right, privilege, or property that is considered incident to the principal property for purposes such as passage of title, conveyance, or inheritance", appurtenant comes from the Late Latin ad + pertinere, "to relate to".... Read more
September 5, 2006
-licious
Yet another reason to love the Language Log: its explanation of the alicious suffix drew my attention to the following quotation. Going back further still, the American Periodicals Series reveals a punny example of the -(V)licious formation while it was still very much in its infancy. This poor excuse for a joke appeared in the New York Observer and Chronicle of Jan. 3, 1878, in the "Odds & Ends" column: There are beautiful warm soda springs in Colorado, and people who go bathing in them at once exclaim: "Oh! but this is soda-licious!"... Read more
August 29, 2006
baculine
I still do not know the word "knouter", which I read in "The Most Dangerous Game" -- for the first time probably twenty or more years ago! -- but now suspect that it relates to the word "baculine", which relates to punishment by a rod or cane. This would make a knouter one who flogs or beats. I found baculine through the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form, which is on its way to presenting definintions of English words in limerick form. Delightful stuff.... Read more
August 22, 2006
The Golden Spruce / albedo
John Vaillant's first long work of non-fiction, The Golden Spruce, tells the riveting story of Grant Hadwin, a renegade logger; the sad tale of the Haida and the Haida Gwaii, the Americans native to a gorgeous set of remote islands in the Pacific Northwest; and the epic of the majestic, luminous, and biologically unique golden spruce. A fantastic set of circumstances produced the Golden Spruce, and an equally interesting set produced the man who swam across a freezing river, chainsaw on his back, to cut it down. We could not see the forest for the trees, he said: allowing lumber companies to clear-cut old-growth forest while leaving token, unique trees like the Golden Spruce was a hypocrisy. Why fetishize a single tree? We should preserve the entire forest, and not small stands: the massive ecosystem of a forest requires massive land. Curiously, Hadwin the assassin might not have realised the strong connection the Haida have with the tree, which they believe to contain the incarnation of a boy who, fleeing his moribund village, looked back despite his grandfather's warning. The tree was itself several hundred years old, and a biologically admirable specimen. From Vaillant's book I learned the word albedo, "The fraction of incident electromagnetic radiation reflected by a surface, especially of a celestial body." (Alternatively, it's "the spongy white substance on the inside of a citrus rind" -- perfect! I can drop that in conversation quite nicely.) Vaillant describes the proud history of the Haida, their ties to the land, and the recent revitalization of Haida Gwaii, their native islands (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands). He discusses the social, environmental, and psychological factors that shaped Grant Hadwin, a rugged individualist who claimed to have cut down the tree -- and then subsequently disappeared. The story gripped me from the first I heard about it, almost a decade following the incident.... Read more
August 16, 2006
anent
A preposition, meaning "with regard to"; according to the Dictionary of Difficult Words, it is "Archaic or Scot[tish]", and "archaic or jocular". (The combinations fascinate me: Jocular Scottish? Archaic Archaic?) The Columbia Guide to Standard American English notes that anent "has a stuffy, impersonal quality, [and is] inappropriate in many contexts". I first came across it in the crossword, filling space in a rather mundane puzzle. I dislike the New York Times more and more, but the crossword remains true to itself.... Read more
August 8, 2006
kapok
kapok is a tall tropical West African tree; the fibre obtained from its seed pods can stuff zafus and other cushions. It is also the national tree of Puerto Rico.... Read more
July 30, 2006
Word Freaks and patzer
patzer, a bungler, and specifically an amateurish chess player. I learned the word in reading Stefan Fastis book on competitive Scrabble™ play, Word Freak (note the tactful singular in the title; I first read it as a derogatory plural), which has several dozen words I had never before encountered, and probably never will again, with the exception of patzer. Scrabble™ vocabulary is not conversational, but is tactical: use words to maximize point value, but not to show off vocabulary. For this reason the World Championships attract many players who do not speak English fluently, who acquired it as a second, or third, or fourth, language, and who may not be able to define many of the words they play on the board. At times confusing, other times almost confessional, the book is ultimately a let-down. I enjoyed reading about strategy in the game, but found the author's three-year odyssey through the anxiety-inducing world of competitive game-playing almost patronizing. He tells a good story, and he tells it well, but he undoubtedly takes the perspective that people have to be weird, or unusual, to play this game with this intensity -- and here he goes, crossing over, and feeling himself becoming less socially adept, mawkish, and inept. A widely-read and impressively-travelled correspondent sent this to me last year, but I only uncovered it while excavating books a few days ago. I am going to send it on to my peripatetic Scrabble™-playing sister, who has devised an excellent variation of the game well-suited for pub play. It's sort of like the Anagrams game described in Fastis' book: using tiles from one Scrabble™ set, players draw seven and begin forming words on the table. The words may intersect with other players' words; as soon as a player has used a tile, draw enough to continue with seven. Turns do not exist: play is fast and furious. First person to finish and not be able to draw additional tiles wins. Insert ale as necessary.... Read more
July 26, 2006
In which the singular are back
was posted on a door along Market St. in San Francisco, and the clashing singular of "THIS PREMISE" and plural "SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS" made me chuckle. Surveillance cameras are all the rage in San Francisco these days: our Supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi, is a tentative proponent of using cameras to 'deter crime', especially in the theft- and graffiti-plagued neighbourhood of the Lower Haight. UPDATE: I snapped a better photograph this evening while I walked past transexuals turning tricks, odiferous oafs, slobbering junkies, dazed disenfranchised, and pungent perverts, really putrid. I have grown to intensely dislike the hopscotch I must play while walking between the bus stop at Eighth and Market and home -- I was trying to find an endpoint there, but the nastiness does not really stop until I cross Scott Street after Duboce Park. All along the path home, and especially in the "bike way" between Church and Market, the sidewalks are teeming with unhappy faces.... Read more
June 8, 2006
redound
redound comes from the Latin redundare, to overflow; a secondary meaning, in English, is "to return" or "to recoil".... Read more
May 26, 2006
May 8, 2006
miching mallecho
The Night Writer has the best explanation of the curious phrase "miching mallecho": it means mischief. As the play within the play begins in Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2) and the players act out the poisoning of the king and the wooing and winning of the queen by the poisoner, Ophelia enters and cries, "What means this, my lord?" and Hamlet answers, "Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief. Thus Shakespeare himself supplies the definiition (sic): mischief. Mallecho was derived from the Spanish noun malhecho (evil deed), base on the prefix mal-(evil) plus hecho (deed). Miching (MICH ing) is an adjective made of the present participle of the verb miche, meaning to "skulk" or "slink," thought to be a variant of mooch (British slang for "slouch about" or "skulk," differing from the American slang usage, to "scrounge," both, however, coming from the same source, Middle English michen, to skulk or hide)... Thus, miching mallecho means "sneaky mischief." You may never run into this eloquent phrase in contemporary literature, unless you happen to read An Awkward Lie by the English whodunitist Michael Innes (b. 1906), where his detective Sir John Appleby, considering the mysterious disappearance of a corpse from a golf bunker, wonders about this "elaborate piece of miching malicho." Malicho is a variant of mallecho, or vice versa. Some authorities say that it is vice versa, mallecho, influenced by the Spanish, being a learned emendation of malicho, the form favored by Michael Innes. I know it not from Innes, but from Dorothy Sayers, who uses it for a provocative heading in Unnatural Death.... Read more
May 2, 2006
On eggcorns
The eggcorn site features this introduction: In September 2003, Mark Liberman reported (Egg corns: folk etymology, malapropism, mondegreen, ???) an incorrect yet particularly suggestive creation: someone had written “egg corn” instead of “acorn”. It turned out that there was no established label for this type of non-standard reshaping. Erroneous as it may be, the substitution involved more than just ignorance: an acorn is more or less shaped like an egg; and it is a seed, just like grains of corn. So if you don’t know how acorn is spelled, egg corn actually makes sense. Mark Liberman’s colleague Geoffrey Pullum chimed in and suggested that this type of linguistic error should be called an eggcorn. Then Arnold Zwicky, wrote an enlightening article (Lady Mondegreen says her peace about egg corns) in which he gave his blessing to the term eggcorn and explained that new labels for spontaneous reshapings of known expressions are sorely needed, and listed the aspects under which eggcorns overlap with but yet differ from known classes of lexical creativity: malapropisms, mondegreens, folk etymologies etc. Mark Liberman subsequently gave some more thought to eggcorn terminology.... Read more
April 26, 2006
In which whom shuffles off it's mortal coil
Photographic evidence of the eroded distinction between who and whom: Although not an ex-word, whom, the objective form of the interrogative pronoun, is a vestige of Old English. Modern English usage rarely calls for a clear distinction between the subjective and objective cases, nor provides inflections for words in different cases: word order and context indicates case, not word ending. Still, I do appreciate a piece of writing that uses whom properly. In the Language Log post, Geoff Pullum (author of The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax), notes "There is an error in the plural of thief, too, but that one is in the direction of regularizing the irregular (regular *thiefs for the irregular thieves). Using whom for who isn't regularization. It's a desperately insecure clutching after a form that people no longer know where to use or how to control. Whom is like some strange object — a Krummhorn, a unicycle, a wax cylinder recorder — found in grandpa's attic: people don't want to throw it out, but neither do they know what to do with it. So they keep it around, sticking an m on the end of who every now and then when it seems like an important occasion. Columbus Day, for example, or when trying to impress a grammarian or a maitre d'hotel (whom will be our waiter tonight?)."... Read more
April 22, 2006
seiche
The word seiche describes the sloshing motion of water following a seismic event. The word comes from the French, or perhaps Swiss-French. On the North American Great Lakes, seiche is often called slosh. It is always present, but is usually unnoticeable, except during periods of unusual calm. Harbours, bays, and estuaries are often prone to small seiches with amplitudes of a few centimeters and periods of a few minutes. Seiches can also form in semi-enclosed seas; the North Sea often experiences a lengthwise seiche with a period of about 36 hours.... Read more
March 31, 2006
thixotropic
thixotropic is a medical term meaning "The property exhibited by certain gels of becoming fluid when stirred or shaken and returning to the semisolid state upon standing," it also describes the liquefaction of the earth during a 'quake, and turns up in the Offsite: oilfield glossary">oilfield glossary. It comes from the Greek: thixis, n., the act of touching; and thinganein, v., to touch)... Read more
March 29, 2006
melisma
melisma comes from the Greek melizein, meaning to sing: melodic, but not mellifluous, comes from this same root (note the double ell in the latter). Melisma means "A group of many notes (usually at least five or six) sung melodically to a single syllable. Melismas are found especially in liturgical chant." I saw this word in the caption to Sasha Frere-Jones's current essay in The New Yorker. Alas, the online edition lacks the stunning photograph of Mariah on a Vespa, with the caption: Carey established R.& B. as the sound of pop and made melisma a requirement on "American Idol." Frankly, other than her airbrushed smile, the only thing I know about Ms Carey is that she shares an (impressive!) vocal range with Frank Zappa. ... when she sang her perky dance hit “Emotions” at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, she reportedly sounded a G-sharp three and a half octaves above middle C, one of the highest notes produced by a human voice in the history of recorded music. (Party poopers say that the note was actually an F-sharp.) Carey’s freakish vocal ability explains part of her appeal. In the same way that people went to a San Francisco Giants game in order to see Barry Bonds hit a home run, people buy Carey’s records in order to hear her do things with her voice that no one else can do. ... Carey can sing lower notes, like an alto, and extremely high notes, like a coloratura soprano, which says something about her range but little about her style.... Read more
March 28, 2006
cwm
from the German or Welsh ("hanging valley", pl cymau, cymoedd), cwm means "a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain; may contain a lake". It is synonymous with cirque and corrie.... Read more
March 23, 2006
gasconade
gasconade, n.: boastfulness; bravado. From the French word for Basque. Used as a verb, it is a synonym for rodomontade, a reference to the Sarzian ruler of Orlando Furioso. Two days in a row I have stumbled upon references to the Basques. Perhaps a visit to Euskal Herria is in the cards.... Read more
March 15, 2006
in which we get off of this english roundabout
What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point? The Harvard Dialect Study has the answers -- or at least the questions. The New York Times has some words on regional dialects, and especially Pittsburghese.... Read more
March 9, 2006
swale
I knew the geographic term swale, "a trough that carries water following snow melts", a "marshy depression", but recently came across it used as a verb: "to consume or waste away", as a candle guttering in the late night. Apparently this is a North Yorkshire meaning, but must have some Scandinavian etymology. One of the characters in Bram Stoker's thrilling novel Dracula bears this name: a cantankerous, chatty old Scotsman, he lends the sombre tone to the beginning of the adventures that befall Mina Murray. I think of her as the heroine and protagonist of the novel, for she imbues strength in all the other central characters: Seward, Holmwood, and her husband Jonathan.... Read more
March 2, 2006
In which I stuff the slang into my wallet
Aram and I are both excited about the United States' new ten-dollar bill. I stopped at the bank on Tuesday to see when they will have some, and they said probably over the next few days, but that they could not promise me any until next week. The five is a finif, the twenty a sawbuck, the fifty a nifty, the hundred (recently, I suppose), a benjamin. Even the lowly one-dollar-bill has a moniker: the single. What of the ten? Do Americans call it a tenner? And let us not speak of the two-dollar-bill. And I suppose that I should fess up: finif is my favourite of the slang names, not for what it's a palindrome and all, and also quite pleasant on the tongue. Sawbuck ... ugh! Gives my mouth the shivers just to say it. UPDATE: Aram says that "ten-spot" is what he calls the bill, and Greg calls them "Hamiltons".... Read more
February 20, 2006
frowst
Apparently a nineteenth-century British word, meaning "stuffy" or "stale" in a uncomfortable way. And the word frowst is used as an informal measure of air pollution.... Read more
February 4, 2006
wodge
In A Certain Justice I came across the "noun, mainly UK informal" wodge (variant wadge): a thick piece or a large amount of something. As in "She cut herself a great wodge of chocolate cake." P.D. James's vocabulary continues to confuse me. Why doesn't she just write "heaps" or "a whole bloody lot" or "great greedy amount" and be done with it? Nat thinks that wodge is Kiwi slang, adapted for use in the blogosphere to mean "more than a snippet"; Merriam-Webster suggest that the word comes from "wedge", which, given how people use it to describe a goodly amount of some food -- cheese, chocolate, and cake all appear in the citations -- seems plausible.... Read more
February 3, 2006
In which it's it
Catherine Poole, from Dunfermline, talks about the bad grammar that makes her cringe. Three cheers for her denounciation of the grocer's apostrophe. grocer's apostrophe!... Read more
January 6, 2006
In which the gov'mint has a long way to go
From the first paragraph of the American Forces Press Service newsletter: "President Bush today kicked off a new national program designed to increase the number of Americans fluent in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindu, Farsi, and other critical-need languages." The first critical need is noting the distinction between Hindi, "an Indo-European language spoken mainly in North, Central India and Western India; and Hindu, an adherent of "the dominant religious, philosophical and cultural system of Bharat (India), Nepal and the island of Bali".... Read more
December 2, 2005
skunkworks
The phrase 'skunkworks' usually applies to the shadowy labs area of a company, the incubator within from which energetic new projects emerge. Sometimes these projects are underfunded, or not funded at all; they have no official role within the corporation's Grand Strategic Plan. Or, perhaps, they are just mixing up the medicine: according to techtarget, the name comes from a bootlegger's setup in Al Capp's justly legendary newspaper comical strip, Li'l Abner, which I have been recently enjoying anew. "skunkworks" was popularised at Lockheed Martin: A skunkworks is a group of people who, in order to achieve unusual results, work on a project in a way that is outside the usual rules. A skunkworks is often a small team that assumes or is given responsibility for developing something in a short time with minimal management constraints. Typically, a skunkworks has a small number of members in order to reduce communications overhead. A skunkworks is sometimes used to spearhead a product design that thereafter will be developed according to the usual process. A skunkworks project may be secret.... Read more
November 25, 2005
compere
com·pere (k?m'pâr') Chiefly British. n. The master of ceremonies, as of a television entertainment program or a variety show. compere, a word I first noticed in the Tour Dates section of ol' Big Nose's web site. I just dusted off the two-record set of "the first 21 songs from the roots of urbane folk music", it makes me want to polish up the ol' dancing shoes and go find Maggie's grave. It was'n't until the difficult third album and the poignant (really!) love songs that Billy Bragg became more than a protest singer to my still-young ears. The politics and attitude enchanted me first and foremost, and, feeling justly disenfranchised from the machinations of the Reagan government, I soured on the establishment. I snuck two tape recorders and several cassettes into the pockets of my parka one wintry evening when he was playing a concert, again with Michelle Shocked! and dutifully bootlegged the proceedings. After I wore that recording to shreds, I found myself becoming dissatisfied with his politics when he started selling out stadia -- emphasis on the selling -- and although his albums still bore artwork, not HMV stickers, insisting that the weary consumer "pay no more than £5.99", he struck me as more commercial and less activist. Shades of Jimmy Thudpucker, but not Bob Dylan. He still wrote and sang great songs, and won some measure of redemption when he researched the unpublished Woody Guthrie material that eventually formed the two glorious two Mermaid Avenue albums.... Read more
November 21, 2005
shiv
shiv, a mellifluous word that never ceases to amuse me when it reaches my ear, means a razor; cited in 1915, variant of chive, thieves' cant word for "knife" (1673), and is of unknown origin. It may be from a Viking word, shiver: (n) A splinter, a small piece of wood. Shiver is the diminutive of shive (a thin slice). Ice skífa (a slice). Compare with Yorkshire dialect (to split, to pare - especially of leather) and the E slang shiv (a knife). And, of course, there's always the Don Cheadle take on it, from the same film as "You know, in a situation like this, there's a high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out. "... Read more
November 9, 2005
de(s)cant
Transfixed by a rapid succession of bottles, glasses (O! beautiful stemware! How come I drink from a humble tumbler at home?), and, finally, a decanter passing over the counter at Hotel Biron, Aram wondered about the origin of that name. Is it related to canto, to sing? I suggested that the Latin root cant- came into english with the prefix de to form descant, and I was correct: descant: Middle English, from Anglo-Norman descaunt, from Medieval Latin discantus, a refrain : Latin dis-, dis- + Latin cantus, song, from past participle of canere, to sing. See kan- as for decant(er), the original question, I should have known (and Meiling would doubtless have remembered) that it comes from the greek noun kanthos, meaning 'eyelid'. The greek poets drew a visual simile between a wnie-jug's lip and the tear-duct-y bit of one's eye. Ah, for the sound of popping corks.... Read more
October 5, 2005
banjaxed
Thanks to the esteemed Mr O Connor, I was reminded of banjax, verb: banjaxes, banjaxed, banjaxing 1. To ruin, stymie or destroy. Etymology: 1930s: Anglo-Irish. But what else did you expect from swearing dot org? Google Print cites a half-dozen works for banjax, but three are dictionaries!... Read more
September 26, 2005
marmoreal
marmoreal, straight from the Latin marmoreus, an adjective from marmor, marble: "Resembling marble, as in smoothness, whiteness, or hardness". From the always-wonderful English pen of Sarah Caudwell.... Read more
September 14, 2005
In which we learn about the grocer's apostrophe
Mr Looney (of Looney-Field-Effect notoriety!) informs me that this is 'the grocer's apostrophe' and causes much merriment. It certainly gave me a chuckle as I went walking around Ballsbridge this morning. The Wikipedia, of course, has an article that describes the (green)grocer's apostrophe's phenomenon. It has been a while since I belly-ached about apostrophes and quotation marks.... Read more
September 1, 2005
In which I hear phrases around the office
The jargon sometimes irks me, but jargon goes with almost any job. orthogonal web-scraped definition straw man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Decision_making remediate http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=define:+remediate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8... Read more
August 21, 2005
In which we pay homage to a colorful profanity
Yo: Russian City to Erect Monument Alphabet Letter Created: 10.08.2005 15:29 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:29 MSK MosNews Monument to the Russian alphabet letter, an e with an umlaut, pronounced as “yo” is planned to be erected in the Central Russian city of Ulyanovsk. This letter called “yo”, the only Russian character with an umlaut, was introduced in 1797 by the famous Russian historian and writer Nikolai Karamzin who was born not far from Ulyanovsk, then called Simbirsk. The monument will be made of red granite. Linguists to this day dispute the utility of the letter. It is replaced by the simple e in official documents. Controversy that has for years delayed permission to proceed with the monument centered mainly on the fact that to the Russian ear the “yo” sound is closely associated with a range of colorful profanities or other exclamations considered in poor taste by opponents, AFP noted.... Read more
July 31, 2005
In which we keep a stiff upper lip
Reading through a short piece by Thomas Vinciguerra (great name!) in the Week in Review, I remember what a great piece of resedarch the Oxford English Dictionary is, and how awesome a tool the online edition (command-line access!) is. Londoners have largely refused to be cowed by terrorists. Our phlegmatic cousins across the pond, admirers say, are "keeping a stiff upper lip." The expression is synonymous with resolution in the face of adversity. But where did it come from? The phrase sounds quintessentially British, and the British-born writer P. G. Wodehouse is often credited with popularizing it in his Jeeves and Wooster stories. But it is actually American; the Oxford English Dictionary traces it to an 1815 issue of The Massachusetts Spy: "I kept a stiff upper lip, and bought [a] license to sell my goods." In 1833, the American author John Neal offered this line in his novel "The Down-Easters": "What's the use o' boo-hooin? ... Keep a stiff upper lip; no bones broke." And in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe had a character say, "Good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip." The upper lip tends to quiver under emotional pressure. There are, however, more colorful explanations for how its immobility came to signal self-control. According to one legend, when a sailor was sewn into his burial shroud at sea, a stitch would be passed through his upper lip. This was done not only to ensure that he was really dead, but also to trip up would-be deserters, who obviously needed stiff upper lips to avoid crying out in pain. Another story holds that in the Napoleonic era, European military officers shaped their mustaches with tar. Any soldier brave enough to sit still while his mustache was smeared with hot pitch and molded into shape obviously kept a stiff - you know. Whatever its origins, the phrase has begun to grate. "If I read one more story about Londoners' 'stiff upper lip' I'm going to scream," wrote Kevin Drum in the "Political Animal" blog of The Washington Monthly on July 8. One reader responded, "Personally I think the phrase 'stiff upper unibrow' needs to be added to the lexicon." Least Likely Ladder to the Presidency Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is moving on up. The Senate approved a bill on Tuesday that would alter his place in the presidential line of succession from last (No. 18) to No. 8, after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. You'd think that with his job description, Mr. Chertoff, right, would already be higher on the list, ahead of people like Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns (No. 9) and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings (No. 16). But the presidential chain of command has never been that logical. It has been fraught with anachronistic oddities since Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act of 1792. Back then, the Federalists controlled the White House, and they wanted to block their archrival, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, from possibly succeeding their second-in-command, Vice President John Adams. So under a compromise, the largely ceremonial post of president pro tempore of the Senate was made second in line, the speaker of the House third and secretary of state fourth. (The speaker and president pro tem were bumped altogether in 1886; when they were restored in 1947, their positions were switched.) This has made for some improbabilities. From 1995 to 2001, the president pro tem was Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Though well into his 90's, he was only three heartbeats away from the Oval Office. Moreover, the Presidential Succession Act of 1886 dictated that cabinet officers would succeed the president in the order in which their departments were created. That rule holds. Hence, the secretary of transportation (No. 14) comes before the secretary of energy (No. 15), but not because the former is better qualified. Last year, Senate Republicans introduced a bill that would again remove members of Congress from the line of succession. The rationale was that the presidency could go to someone from the opposition party with vastly different notions of how to run the country. This might well have happened during two months of the Watergate crisis in 1973. The Republican president, Richard Nixon, was under intense pressure to resign, but he had not yet replaced the vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, who already had resigned. So House Speaker Carl Albert, a Democrat, was next in line. Mr. Albert said that if Mr. Nixon resigned, he would serve only as acting president because he had no popular mandate. He pledged to step down as soon as Congress appointed a Republican vice president. There are other wrinkles. The Constitution requires that the president be born in the United States. Thus, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez (No. 10), who was born in Cuba, and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao (No. 11), a native of Taiwan, would be ineligible. That is also why the second female secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice (No. 4), is also the first woman to be so close to the Oval Office. The first female secretary of state, Madeleine K. Albright, was born in Czechoslovakia. If you are confused, you are not alone. In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was shot, Secretary of State Alexander Haig famously declared that he was "in control" at the White House. "Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order," he told reporters. He was only off by two. Thomas Vinciguerra is an editor of The Week magazine. Correction: Aug. 3, 2005: An article on July 31 about on the presidential line of succession referred imprecisely to the citizenship requirement. The Constitution says only that the president must be "a natural-born citizen," not that the president must have been born in the United States. The provision is generally regarded as barring naturalized citizens, not those born elsewhere to American parents.... Read more
July 27, 2005
sedulous
Just after I describe his research as assiduous, I stumble across a synonym: through his writings.... Read more
July 26, 2005
murrain
Through reading Simon Winchester's assiduosly-researched books, I am picking up much new vocabulary: murrain, a weighted word which comes from a Hebrew word for plague, and has a modern denotation for a disease of cattle or other domesticated beasties.... Read more
July 12, 2005
In which I am not a knouter
One of my favourite stories is Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game (anthologised in a paperback my father read to us often; the collection also included "Miss Hinch", a creepy story indeed). The famous hunter Dr Zaroff mentions that his hench-man Ivan was a knouter for the tsar. Where does this word come from? Russian via French? French via Russian? update A knouter uses a knout.... Read more
June 16, 2005
prove{n,d}
During a conversation I found myself vacillating between proven and proved. A cursory look through the dictionary proved them equivalent: (v) prove, turn out, turn up (be shown or be found to be) (v) prove, demonstrate, establish, show, shew (establish the validity of something, as by an example, explanation or experiment) (v) testify, bear witness, prove, evidence, show (provide evidence for) (v) prove (prove formally; demonstrate by a mathematical, formal proof) (v) test, prove, try, try out, examine, essay (put to the test, as for its quality, or give experimental use to) Ditto proven; so why did the particples cause me such confusion? I think I expect the weak version (proven) to accompany a verb of being (e.g., I was proven wrong), and the regular particple form (proved) to be the simple past tense, or the second verb in a compound with a helper such as had: I had proved the theorem.... Read more
June 13, 2005
In which I do not have an aptronym
From the always-engaging A-Word-A-Day email newsletter, I learned the word aptronymically, which indicates a name that describes the occupation or other significant attribute of the named. I suspect that my name, although descriptive ("safe", "salubrious") does not qualify, because I am typically full of vitriol, bile, and irritation (in fact, this evening I snapped at a human-rights worker who stopped at the stoop to solicit funds). Most online baby-name sites merely describe the origin of Salim as 'African' and with meaning 'peace', although the name has Semitic (Phoenician?) origins (cf. Heb. shalom, Ar. salaam) and appears in the Book of John and in place names ancient and modern (or at least less ancient).... Read more
June 9, 2005
I have Sind.
Puns get in my sind: peccavi (pe-KAH-vee) noun An admission of guilt or sin. [From Latin peccavi (I have sinned), from peccare (to err).] The story goes that in 1843, after annexing the Indian province of Sind, British General Sir Charles Napier sent home a one word telegram, "Peccavi" implying "I have Sind." Although apocryphal, it's still a great story.... Read more
June 1, 2005
In which my head is full of skriking kids
The word whinge evokes solid middle-Britain travails, and, that leads squarely to The Fall. Not only are they the quintessential loser (not in the Oasis sense, in the echt British sense) band, but they sing about whingeing (q.v., "Joker Hysterical Face", "It's a Curse!", and undoubtedly scads more), and the irascible singer, a certain Mark E. Smith of whom I am speaking, has a nasal voice that lends itself very well to complaining.... Read more
May 15, 2005
What is wrong with schmetterling?
In my quest for the delicious warm croissant with ham, gruyere, and butter -- mustn't forget the butter! -- I have discovered Kerry Gold, a magnificent and sweet Irish butter. The German expression alles ist in Butter ("Everything is in butter"): everything is in order. It is based on the fact that in the Middle ages, fragile articles were transported using butter as we use thermocol today. For this for example tableware was inserted into warm liquid butter. The butter solidified itself as it cooled down and so protected the fragile goods. At the destination, the butter was again liquefied and poured off. The English word "butterfly" has its origins in the medieval superstition that witches transform into butterflies in order to steal farmers' cream or butter.... Read more
May 12, 2005
Hobo ho
From A-Word-A-Day: today's word, the historically awesome bindlestiff. Reminds me of days tramping on boxcars, going 'round to the side door for a plate of warm stew, sitting down by the tracks and having a toothless cigarette. Oh yes.... Read more
May 3, 2005
salmagundi
While trawling a pirate web site I saw the word salmagundi used. I knew this first as a journal that my father read, and that introduced me to the academic study of kitsch. I turned to the ever-ready google for a definition of salmagundi and find that it is "a highly-seasoned pirate dish made from available meats or fish" or, generally, "meat-salad dish with hard boiled eggs, beets, anchovies and pickles", or, even more generally, an assortment.... Read more
April 26, 2005
doggerel
As the word doggerel appeared in the book I read on the morning bus and in an email message, I decided to search the internet for it, and was justifiably alarmed at the first result (I'm feeling lucky, indeed!). Usually I hear the word and immediately think of poetry by Ogden Nash.... Read more
April 19, 2005
Putting the classical edu. to work
This morning, one of my colleagues played the audio stream of the announcement from The Holy See. The College of Cardinals announced "habeamus Papam Benedictum XVI" and I heard and understood the Latin. Then the radio commentator burst in with an analysis in Italian, and I was lost (my knowledge of the vulgar tongue drops off after the 14th century). I was never a Latin nurd, though. I blame Virgil and his bees.... Read more
April 18, 2005
calipygian merriment
Everyone's favourite lexicographer, Erin McKean, propped up the internet as a source for analysing trends in vocabulary. As for the calipygian merrimentsic, well, that came from the recesses of Aram's mind.... Read more
April 11, 2005
H is for hapax legomenon
Amazon now produces a concordance for each book for which it has digitized content; it also has a short list of "statistically improbable phrases", which amount to hapax legomena. Amusingly, the wikipedia entry suggests that a googlewhack is the modern-day equivalent.... Read more
March 15, 2005
chicane
Through Driving in the Burgh, I discovered chicane: A series of tight turns, in opposite directions, in an otherwise straight stretch of road.... Read more
February 27, 2005
But of course!
crème, as in "crème fraîche", has an accent grave, not an acute, nor a circumflex (as I initially, stupidly thought). Which letter might have disappeared from crème? Nary a one.... Read more
February 17, 2005
Agglutinate this!
Matt Davis has an amusing summary of a meme that circulated several months ago, and its linguistic challenges. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.... Read more
January 31, 2005
lagniappe
This San Francisco Chronicle story on the 30th birthday of casual carpool uses a bit of creole vernacular, lagniappe, the origin of which I couldn't discern. According to this etymology , the word originates in Quechua (!!): n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi. A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called boot. See Regional Note at beignet. [Louisiana French, from American Spanish la ñapa, the gift : la, the (from Latin illa, feminine of ille, that, the) + ñapa (variant of yapa, gift, from Quechua, from yapay, to give more).] REGIONAL NOTE Lagniappe derives from New World Spanish la ñapa, “the gift,” and ultimately from Quechua yapay, “to give more.” The word came into the rich Creole dialect mixture of New Orleans and there acquired a French spelling. It is still used in the Gulf states, especially southern Louisiana, to denote a little bonus that a friendly shopkeeper might add to a purchase. By extension, it may mean “an extra or unexpected gift or benefit.” I would have written boon or perhaps convenience. But lagniappe is one of those rare words in American English that has a deeply regional flavour. The note for beignet reads: REGIONAL NOTE New Orleans, Louisiana, has been a rich contributor of French loan words and local expressions to American English. Many New Orleans words, such as beignet, café au lait, faubourg, lagniappe, and krewe, reflect the New World French cuisine and culture characterizing this region. Other words reflect distinctive physical characteristics of the city: banquette, a raised sidewalk, and camelback and shotgun, distinctive architectural styles found among New Orleans houses.... Read more
January 7, 2005
Kalevala and you
Cori Ellison started off his piece on the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's Northern Lights Festival with this appetizing paragraph: You may not think you know a thing about the "Kalevala," but if you're acquainted with Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the heavy-metal band Amorphis, or Don Rosa's Donald Duck cartoon books, you've got a running start.... Read more
January 6, 2005
This is the city of angels, and you don't have any wings
On the heels of Charlie LeDuff's story on the re-naming of baseball's Angels, the New York Times ran a pointed editorial: January 6, 2005 EDITORIAL City of Angels ometimes an idea comes along that is so stupid, all you can do is stand back, give it some room, and stare: THE LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM That is the new official name of a major league baseball team in Southern California that (1) does not play in Los Angeles, (2) is not moving to Los Angeles and (3) has no plans to put "Los Angeles" on its uniforms. So what, exactly, is the team doing? It's trying to make more money. It wants to convince advertisers that its market extends far beyond Anaheim, a city in Orange County about 35 miles from Los Angeles, so it can charge them more. The team would just as soon drop "Anaheim" from its name altogether, but it can't. Its landlord is the City of Anaheim, which spent $20 million on stadium renovations as part of a deal in 1996 with the Walt Disney Company, which used to own the team. The contract includes this clause: "Tenant will change the name of the Team to include the name 'Anaheim' therein." Therein lies the problem. But the Angels are not letting it stop them. If it requires a bit of geographic Dadaism - changing their name but not moving, and adding not one but two bilingual redundancies - then so be it. They are sticking to their marketing strategy. Anaheim city officials are hurt. They say they will go to court to stop what they call a breach of good faith and fair dealing. The Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles are upset, too. So are many Orange County residents of Southern California. We're not sure what the New York Jets of East Rutherford or the Detroit Pistons of Auburn Hills think. We have to ask, though, what team name in Southern California isn't nuts? The names "Lakers" and "Dodgers" once made sense in Minnesota, land of lakes, and in Brooklyn, land of trolleys, but not in the land of Mickey and Goofy. Don't get us started on the Mighty Ducks.... Read more
January 1, 2005
This is the dawning of the year of the languages
The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has hopefully designated this year The Year of Languages. From what I see, hear, and read, American's ain't not too good with our own language (cheap shot): we read less, read material of "lesser quality", and rely more on our single language to communicate rather than learn the languages of others.... Read more
December 31, 2004
She is certain she has never smoked tobacco.
Tongue-twisters in 105 different languages (including an example in Gujarati), although not all in the correct alphabet. Some are just silly. Bonus points: showing the correct character-set for each example; showing the region where the language is spoken; providing a phoenetic rendition of each. Despite being a .de site, this seems aimed at English-speakers.... Read more
December 29, 2004
London to a brick, the web reveals all
At the espresso machine, Peter told me that having my work schedule would make him downright ropeable. Imagine my surprise when, having taken a look-see on Google for the definition, I found nowt. Eventually, the web revealed that "ropeable" means "angry, irritable". He also pointed me to this site of Australian slang, which reminded me of Ben Schott's "perilously close to useful (sic)" Schott's Original Miscellany.... Read more
December 26, 2004
What's in a name?
My name, for example, is an alias for the "Millionaire Marxist" Carlos the Jackal; the place-name of John's watering-hole: "And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized"; and, of course, it comes from the honourable Semitic root for peace, health.... Read more
December 22, 2004
The sacred and the profane
Brad, in discussion of the famed Caltrain party car, mentioned the Profanisaurus. Endless amusement; rib-tickling fun; side-splitting euphemisms. And I got to watch Snatch, a superlatively profane movie. And while I'm on the movies tip, how about the latest Korean animated flick, "Doggy Poo", in which a dandelion sprout guides an existential turd through the thicket of life? (There's a colouring book for the young 'uns). I suppose this might join Léolo as an all-time classic movie about shit. "Gummo" doesn't count.... Read more
December 17, 2004
A few remarks on the mathematics of words
The Washington Post's Style Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners: 1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. 2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly. 3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future. 4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid. 5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period. 6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high. 7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it. 8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late. 9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness. 10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.) 11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like a serious bummer. 12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you. 13. Glibido: All talk and no action. 14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. 15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web. 16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out. 17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating. ........And the pick of the literature: 18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole... Read more
December 13, 2004
Neither fear nor fur
Igor, my colleague from St Petersburg, illustrated a cultural difference between Americans and Russians today. If you're going out hunting, your friends will say to you: "Ni puka, ni pura": Neither fear nor fur. And you'll tell them: "K chortoo!", Go to the devil! "Russians underestimate, and then deliver more than they underestimate -- so they have a feeling of accomplishment. In America, you over-estimate, and are happy if you can deliver a part of what you promised." Our 'can-do' attitude leads us to commit, but can we deliver?... Read more
November 21, 2004
subfusc
subfusc: a. dusky drab; n. formal academic dress at Oxford University. I read the adjective in Dorothy Sayers' "Have His Carcase"; although I knew the second, nominative meaning (probably also from Sayers, perhaps "Gaudy Night", a novel replete with Oxonian trivia), the description of a cheap overcoat threw me.... Read more
(Jack's) Elixir Celebrates It's Resurrection
If anything, I'd expect "Authentic" to appear in quotation marks. The "new" paint job at The Elixir (neé Jack's Elixir), at the corner of 16th and Guerrero, lacks the boisterous appeal of the old.... Read more
October 11, 2004
The Secret Lives of Words
ANTIMACASSAR This cloth covered the backs of chairs from the nineteenth century on to protect them from greasy hair, unwashed or pomaded or both. The oil was Macassar, a proprietary brand made by Rowland and Son, supposedly from ingredients found in Makassar, part of the island Sulawesi, once Celebes, in Indonesia. Some folk still have antimacassars in their possession, but the need seems not to have survived World War One, not that men began using less oily hair creams, although there was a distinct shift in men's pomade from the brilliantines of yesteryear to less perfumed lotions such as Brylcreem, easily squeezed from a tube and stably perched on the palm. Brylcreem left the hair feeling tight and rigid, with no need of antimacassar behind the recliner's head. Another name for Makassar was Mangkasra, hardly commerically concise. From the Secret Lives of Words, a hit-or-miss endeavour by Paul West. I recollect that in Flight 714, the millionaire Laszlo Carreidas is kidnapped while flying his new aeroplane over Sulawesi; the last radio contact is with Macassar tower.... Read more
October 9, 2004
I'm a Marxist and I read.
Today I learned the word "rivalrous", which means "emulous", or "eager to surpass others". Resources that cannot be shared are rivalrous. I also picked up three long-time favourite classics of economics: The Marx-Engels Reader; de Tocqueville's Democracy in America; and Mr Adam Smith's "truck, barter, and trade" (the po-mo title of "On The Wealth of Nations"). Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.... Read more
July 1, 2004
Mind your prefixes
In the sentence "After immigrating to New York in 1964, he worked as a clerk at the Indian Consulate ..." shouldn't the use of the accusative be required?... Read more
June 22, 2004
Cock-eyed and painless
How many ways are there to spell Viagra?... Read more
June 21, 2004
The place of salt
The place-name wich indicates a place where salt was made. The citation states that it is merely a variation of wick. Mark Kurlansky suggests this definition in his unsatisfying book Cod.... Read more
June 17, 2004
It works on two levels!
Cutting remarks from dullards. ... and speaking of which, how about them bicycle-mounted sidewalk-printing dot-matrix printers?... Read more
June 15, 2004
With forked tongues
Irregardless, speaking more than one language keeps your brain sharp.... Read more
May 30, 2004
Of verbal raspberries
ah, Latin: here I was, thinking that it's only good for reading a Greek lexicon, while a humble Carmelite toils in obscurity to preserve the lingua franca of ancient courtesans and cheats: Father Foster prizes simplicity. His office is as spare as his work clothes, which he buys while visiting relatives in the United States. It contains a table, a few books and a bonsai tree. A bottle of vermouth, which he occasionally sips while working. Across the hall is his manual typewriter. He dislikes computers, though he did provide Latin text for the screen of a Vatican Bank teller machine"... Read more
Bedbugs and
BALLYHOO A free show given outside a sideshow to attract a crowd (a 'tip') of potential patrons. Word came into being at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The fakirs, gun spinners and dancing girls from the Middle East that were working at the Streets of Cairo pavilion spoke no English, only Arabic. The interpreters used the expression "Dehalla Hoon" to call performers outside to the show fronts. The Western ears of the pavilion manager, W. O. Taylor, mistook it as 'ballyhoo' and used it when the interpreters were away for lunch. The phrase was picked up by the other showmen working at the fair and was spread throughout the outdoor show business industry. A-propos of the 1893 Exposition, a few months ago I devoured Erik Larson's wonderfully-written Devil in the White City, the story of a greedy and cruel 'doctor' in the heady days of Chicago's Columbian Exposition. I later lived for two years facing the Midway Plaisance, part of the beautiful areas of Chicago constructed for the Expo.... Read more
May 15, 2004
La vomitera
Un altre conte fantàstic sense cap relació amb la realitat real... Aquesta setmana un virus m'ha destorbat la digestió, m'ha... (comentaris: 2) [Sarcophilus.blog]... Read more
May 14, 2004
m4d sk1llz but l33t to the game
I blame Aram for getting l33t speak into my craw. Then again, I also have him (or the most eligible bachelor in Chicago) to blame^W credit with the introduction of Röyksopp into my video and audio life. This photograph is kind of hippie bling, I suppose:... Read more
May 13, 2004
For the what now?
yesterday I got the word nonce in my noggin. Does nonce have a notion of ephemeral tucked into it? What of the gentle decay of the moment? The decay of machinery?... Read more
May 11, 2004
An empty space, or a missing part?
lacunary appeared as a predicate adjective at work today, but I didn't realise that the term applies more commonly to mathematical problems than to linguistic.... Read more
May 9, 2004
test
This is a test This is a test This is a test This is a test This is a test... Read more
March 3, 2004
Stop that talking.
Reading Ben Brantley's Theater Review in today's paper, I learned a new word. ... this oddball speculation has been given amusing flesh in the Second Stage Theater's production of Charles L. Mee's "Wintertime," the logorrheic romp of a sex farce that opened last night.... Read more
March 1, 2004
She had nut-painted arms.
The suggestive power of media: all the talking, the opinion columns, the cinema marquees have embedded a certain word in my mind, and with that word a certain shade of its meaning. And that's why I have "The Passion of Lovers" by bauhaus in my mind. Thank goodness for the ipod, which has soothed this desire.... Read more
February 27, 2004
The Oakland School Board needs this.
Somewhere between laconic street slang and overinformed academic prattle comes Word.... Read more
February 22, 2004
To fathom Hell or soar angelic
Some cranks wrote that "by the rules for combining Greek roots, the word should have been psychodelic. They also said that even in the late 70's, psychedelic had mostly been replaced by hallucinogenic". All due to Humphry Osmond, who introduced Aldous Huxley to L.S.D., and who died this past week after a lifetime devoted to research into medicinal uses of hallucinogens.... Read more
February 3, 2004
The true object of my visit is:
Over a workplace espresso yesterday, John recommended Bulgakov's... Read more
November 3, 2003
Only the king has a jester.
Aram asked me where "majesty" comes from. I quipped to cover that I didn't know: OE. magestee, F. majest['e], L. majestas, fr. an old compar. of magnus great. I do know that one addreses royalty in the ablative. And that Poe wrote the best story about a deformed midget jester getting revenge on a tyrant. The Visual Thesaurus describes spatial relationships amongst synonyms.... Read more
October 18, 2003
The most popular finger?
Thanks to memepool, I saw this classical rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot's classic ditty. Our heroine used to boogie down the newsprint to the sounds of the mixmaster. I don't think she would approve of the official web site, though: it loads all at once, taking half a minute over a residential cable link. Of course, without some background in dactylic hexameter and other forms of Greek metre, this wouldn't be as enjoyable. The New York Times reports on a legal precedent in Texas: Is it legal to give someone the middle finger? Yes, says the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, which ruled for a man who had appealed his conviction for making the gesture to a couple in a car. The court majority, in its opinion, decided that flipping "the bird" did not rise to the level of "disorderly conduct" unless it can be shown "to incite an immediate breach of the peace." "That the gesture may be thrust upon unsuspecting or sensitive viewers falls short of the type of conduct in a public place that would incite those present to violence," Judge Jan P. Patterson wrote for the majority." Which do you think is the most popular finger?... Read more
October 17, 2003
Wolfgang, you cheap bastard.
The lead paragraph of a music review appearing in today's Chronicle disparages Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "We think of Mozart as the prototypical musical wunderkind, but compared with Felix Mendelssohn, little Wolfgang was a piker. " This irritates me. It's the lead in an above-the-fold front-page article of a major metropolitan newspaper, and more than 10% of the words (non-grammatically necessary) are misused. Specifically, piker, which is an American slang term meaning "a risk-taker, gambler; a stingy person". The synonyms are uniformly negative. Merriam-Webster goes so far as to suggest TIGHTWAD as the first synonym and linked definition. I wrote a letter to the editor (and author). I'm well on my way to roaming the city with a MUNI transfer in hand, plastic bag full of books under my arm. FOLLOW-UP: received email from the author, to wit: I quote from Webster's 11th Collegiate: one who does things in a small way "Slacker" would've served my purpose too, I suppose. But the locution I used is a common and venerable one in drawing a comparison unfavorable to a particular party (in this case Mozart): Compared to X, Y is/was a piker. Thanks for reading my words so closely, though.... Read more
