Apparently cabbage is going to be the next big thing. Particularly pickled cabbage, as in the Korean kimchi and the German sauerkraut.
Amazing health benefits in pickled cabbage, apparently, and anyone who's anyone is going to be scarfing barrels of the stuff - and as it is, between us we humans eat over seventy million tons of cabbage a year.
But then why should a fondness for cabbage be a surprise? Cabbage has long been close to our hearts. I mean, if the French, so dedicated to elegance and haute cuisine, can refer to their loved ones as little cabbage (petit chou*) then who is to argue?
The cuteness of cabbage is also a matter of simple patriotism for any member of the Commonwealth, for it has the approval (presumably) of Her Majesty the Queen herself, cabbage being the Duke of Edinburgh's affectionate and intimate method of address to his wife (by which I mean that he is said to call her cabbage; he doesn't, as far as I know, go waving them about in her face in moments of high emotion).
If you really can't bear cabbage anywhere near you, then cabbaged can mean exhausted, and cabbage can be a slang term for either tobacco or cash - though neither of these products is nearly as lavish with the vitamins and minerals as the original thing.
So let's hear it for cabbage.
After all, a billion slugs and caterpillars can't be wrong, can they?
Word To Use Today: cabbage. A lot of European and Asian words for cabbage come from the Celto-Slavic cap, meaning head. Our English word has come directly from the Old French caboce.
*Okay, chou in this case is probably more to do with its cream puff meaning than actual cabbages (though French baby boys are found in cabbages, so, um...no, perhaps best not to think too much about that) but hey...
Friday, 31 March 2017
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Cruising: a rant.
I love the holiday brochure season.
I have a leaflet here from Hurtigruten Cruises bearing a photograph of a small cruise liner nosing its way through the waters of an impressively sparkling mountain-lined fjord.
The headline?
Immerse yourself in the beauty of Norway
I can't honestly say it inspires confidence.
photo of Geiranger Fjorby karaian
Word To Use Today: immerse. This word comes from the Latin mergere, to dip.
I have a leaflet here from Hurtigruten Cruises bearing a photograph of a small cruise liner nosing its way through the waters of an impressively sparkling mountain-lined fjord.
The headline?
Immerse yourself in the beauty of Norway
I can't honestly say it inspires confidence.
photo of Geiranger Fjorby karaian
Word To Use Today: immerse. This word comes from the Latin mergere, to dip.
Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Nuts and Bolts: a four letter alphabet.
Describe yourself in four letters.
Yes, all right, cute is fair enough, but that doesn't give us the full picture, dpes it? it doesn't give any hint of your penetrating intelligence, brown eyes, and ability to crack your knuckles.
What I'm looking for is a system to describe every single physical and mental aspect of you in just four letters.
Yes, I'm talking about a four-letter alphabet.
Now, there doesn't seem to be a human society that uses an alphabet that only has four letters (though Hawaiian has only thirteen) but such a thing would be possible.
However, there is already a language that describes you, every part of you, using four chemicals usually represented by the letters A C G and T (they stand for adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine).
These chemicals make up your DNA, and therefore they form the instructions that make you your own self, and not your mother, say, or Scarlett Johansson or Leonardo da Vinci.
Or Donald Trump.
Yep: powerful stuff.
Now, because you are made up of lots of cells stuck together, these DNA instructions have to be present in nearly every single cell in your body*.
Okay: so if you laid out all the DNA-based instructions in all the cells of your body end to end, how far do your think they'd reach?
a) if you curled it round in a spiral you could fit it on the head of a pin.
b) it'd go all the way round a football pitch
c) nearly as far as a marathon
d) more than sixty five times from the Earth to the Sun and back.
What do you think, truly wonderful person?
The answer's below!
Word To Use Today: guanine. This word comes from guano (which is seabird poo), which is very similar stuff to guanine. The word comes to us from Spanish, from Quechuan huano, which means dung.
The answer to the multiple choice question is, astonishingly, d. Yes, it does seem vastly unlikely. I worked it out partly from information in Bill Bryson's excellent book A Short History of Nearly Everything...I think I got it right. Another estimate I found says your DNA stretches twice all the way round the Solar System. Mind you, no one's sure about how far that is, so it doesn't help all that much, but either way we're talking billions of kilometres.
*Though not in mature red blood cells, hair, or hard skin.
Yes, all right, cute is fair enough, but that doesn't give us the full picture, dpes it? it doesn't give any hint of your penetrating intelligence, brown eyes, and ability to crack your knuckles.
What I'm looking for is a system to describe every single physical and mental aspect of you in just four letters.
Yes, I'm talking about a four-letter alphabet.
Now, there doesn't seem to be a human society that uses an alphabet that only has four letters (though Hawaiian has only thirteen) but such a thing would be possible.
However, there is already a language that describes you, every part of you, using four chemicals usually represented by the letters A C G and T (they stand for adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine).
These chemicals make up your DNA, and therefore they form the instructions that make you your own self, and not your mother, say, or Scarlett Johansson or Leonardo da Vinci.
Or Donald Trump.
Yep: powerful stuff.
Now, because you are made up of lots of cells stuck together, these DNA instructions have to be present in nearly every single cell in your body*.
Okay: so if you laid out all the DNA-based instructions in all the cells of your body end to end, how far do your think they'd reach?
a) if you curled it round in a spiral you could fit it on the head of a pin.
b) it'd go all the way round a football pitch
c) nearly as far as a marathon
d) more than sixty five times from the Earth to the Sun and back.
What do you think, truly wonderful person?
The answer's below!
Word To Use Today: guanine. This word comes from guano (which is seabird poo), which is very similar stuff to guanine. The word comes to us from Spanish, from Quechuan huano, which means dung.
The answer to the multiple choice question is, astonishingly, d. Yes, it does seem vastly unlikely. I worked it out partly from information in Bill Bryson's excellent book A Short History of Nearly Everything...I think I got it right. Another estimate I found says your DNA stretches twice all the way round the Solar System. Mind you, no one's sure about how far that is, so it doesn't help all that much, but either way we're talking billions of kilometres.
*Though not in mature red blood cells, hair, or hard skin.
Tuesday, 28 March 2017
Thing Not To Be Today: miserly.
Did you know that to a civil engineer a miser is a large hand-drill-type thing for making holes in loose soils?
Well, you do now.
The usual meaning of miser is, of course, a person who hoards money or possessions with a great and fierce fervour.
It seems that the pleasure of a hoard, whether of beautiful shiny gold or of invisible (and really non-existent) money in the bank, means that a miser can't bear to exchange any of it for anything, whether flowers, respectable clothes, or friends.
At the bottom of being miserly is a desire for control; and at the bottom of that must almost always be a lurking well of fear.
There's something else connected with misers, too: I used to do yearly a door-to-door collection for charity, starting at the rich end of my street and finishing with the shared-house single-roomers.
Not only did the donations get larger as the means of the people reduced, but the connection between the words miser and miserable was absolutely as plain as day.
Have a happy day!
Thing Not To Be Today: miserly. Miser is Latin for wretched.
Why the drill is called a miser no one knows: but then as very few of us have heard of the thing this is perhaps not surprising.
Well, you do now.
The usual meaning of miser is, of course, a person who hoards money or possessions with a great and fierce fervour.
It seems that the pleasure of a hoard, whether of beautiful shiny gold or of invisible (and really non-existent) money in the bank, means that a miser can't bear to exchange any of it for anything, whether flowers, respectable clothes, or friends.
At the bottom of being miserly is a desire for control; and at the bottom of that must almost always be a lurking well of fear.
There's something else connected with misers, too: I used to do yearly a door-to-door collection for charity, starting at the rich end of my street and finishing with the shared-house single-roomers.
Not only did the donations get larger as the means of the people reduced, but the connection between the words miser and miserable was absolutely as plain as day.
Have a happy day!
Thing Not To Be Today: miserly. Miser is Latin for wretched.
Why the drill is called a miser no one knows: but then as very few of us have heard of the thing this is perhaps not surprising.
Monday, 27 March 2017
Spot the Frippet: raffia.
All right, all right, the real reason the word raffia is featuring on The Word Den is that I've just discovered that the scientific name of the raffia palm was until quite recently Raphia ruffia, and I want to share the joy of it this Monday morning.
No, really, it's my pleasure.
The leaf veins of the raffia palm (now, apparently, called Raphia taedigera, (though all delight is not lost because its fruit is still called an uxi nut)) yield a useful sort of stringy stuff, used as, well, string, but it's also woven and knotted and knitted together to make decorative (occasionally) items for the home (a source of delight to me ever since an imaginary body called The Country Crafts and Folklore Council was described in the BBC TV comedy series Yes Minister as the Raffia Mafia...and anyone who's ever been to any ordinarily competitive mothers' coffee morning will laugh, too).
You might find raffia around the pace in the form of baskets, hats or shoes. It's favoured for tying up plants in the garden, too.
The raffia palm:
Photo by Andrew Massyn (Kirstenbosch Gardens Cape Town, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1742192)
is grown in Madagascar, Tropical Africa, and Central and South America. This might be rather a long way away from where you live, but the stuff is probably to be found in your local garden shed or handicraft shop, or in a placemat near you.
Mind you, if you're in Bandundu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you might be able to get yourself a Munganji suit made of raffia to dance in.
No one will have the slightest trouble spotting raffia then.
photo by By Nick Hobgood (Flickr [1], CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5112437)
Spot the Frippet: raffia (or raphia). This word comes to us from from Malagasy.
No, really, it's my pleasure.
The leaf veins of the raffia palm (now, apparently, called Raphia taedigera, (though all delight is not lost because its fruit is still called an uxi nut)) yield a useful sort of stringy stuff, used as, well, string, but it's also woven and knotted and knitted together to make decorative (occasionally) items for the home (a source of delight to me ever since an imaginary body called The Country Crafts and Folklore Council was described in the BBC TV comedy series Yes Minister as the Raffia Mafia...and anyone who's ever been to any ordinarily competitive mothers' coffee morning will laugh, too).
You might find raffia around the pace in the form of baskets, hats or shoes. It's favoured for tying up plants in the garden, too.
The raffia palm:
Photo by Andrew Massyn (Kirstenbosch Gardens Cape Town, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1742192)
is grown in Madagascar, Tropical Africa, and Central and South America. This might be rather a long way away from where you live, but the stuff is probably to be found in your local garden shed or handicraft shop, or in a placemat near you.
Mind you, if you're in Bandundu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you might be able to get yourself a Munganji suit made of raffia to dance in.
No one will have the slightest trouble spotting raffia then.
photo by By Nick Hobgood (Flickr [1], CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5112437)
Spot the Frippet: raffia (or raphia). This word comes to us from from Malagasy.
Sunday, 26 March 2017
Sunday Rest: submental. Word Not To Use Today
Submental is an impossible word to use. Not only does it reek of intellectual snobbery, but there's also a distinct tinge of prejudice against those we now sadly have to call differently abled.
In fact submental is such a disaster zone that even the fact that it means situated beneath the chin doesn't help much.
Does it.
Word Not To Use Today: submental. This word comes from the Latin mentum, which means chin.
In fact submental is such a disaster zone that even the fact that it means situated beneath the chin doesn't help much.
Does it.
Word Not To Use Today: submental. This word comes from the Latin mentum, which means chin.
Saturday, 25 March 2017
Saturday Rave: the meaning of music.
What does music mean to you?
No, really: what does it mean to you?
Well, obviously a 'March' is meant for strutting about, a 'String Quartet' is meant for two violins, viola and cello, and an 'Allegro' is meant to be fast.
Sometimes, especially with music from 1800 onwards, you get more of a clue what's going on. Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave, for example, goes in for what I imagine to be solitude, and then you get some crashing waves (though unless you know that Fingal's Cave is by the sea the piece might bring to mind...shepherds and whirlwinds? An artist's garret and a busy airport?).
Now, it's entirely possible that someone's written a piece called Ham and Mustard Sandwiches at Four o'Cock in Basingstoke - and if they have then I'd love to hear it - but the thing is, what can music really convey? Most people can pick up happiness or yearning, but what about those ham and mustard sandwiches? Apart from anything else it's going to depend upon whether you like mustard, aren't gluten-free, and don't think pigs unclean, isn't it.
The piece below doesn't, I think, call up anything prohibited or likely to cause an allergic reaction. But what is it about?
Try not to peek until you've listened to it (it's only about a couple of minutes).
No, really: what does it mean to you?
Well, obviously a 'March' is meant for strutting about, a 'String Quartet' is meant for two violins, viola and cello, and an 'Allegro' is meant to be fast.
Sometimes, especially with music from 1800 onwards, you get more of a clue what's going on. Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave, for example, goes in for what I imagine to be solitude, and then you get some crashing waves (though unless you know that Fingal's Cave is by the sea the piece might bring to mind...shepherds and whirlwinds? An artist's garret and a busy airport?).
Now, it's entirely possible that someone's written a piece called Ham and Mustard Sandwiches at Four o'Cock in Basingstoke - and if they have then I'd love to hear it - but the thing is, what can music really convey? Most people can pick up happiness or yearning, but what about those ham and mustard sandwiches? Apart from anything else it's going to depend upon whether you like mustard, aren't gluten-free, and don't think pigs unclean, isn't it.
The piece below doesn't, I think, call up anything prohibited or likely to cause an allergic reaction. But what is it about?
Try not to peek until you've listened to it (it's only about a couple of minutes).
How close did you get?*
Word To Use Today: allegro. This means fast to a musician, but it's actually the Italian for cheerful, from the Latin alacer, brisk or lively.
*Jardins sous la pluie = gardens in the rain.
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