Thing Not To Be Today: snooty.

 My adoptive mother seldom went out of her way to spread delight, but she did once declare 'I'm not a snob! I wouldn't speak to people like Mrs Y---- if I was a snob!' a statement which has passed into family lore and still gives joy.

It is necessary, sadly, to be careful when making friends. Is that charming and amusing person honest? Is that beautiful person a crook? Is that ugly person full of intelligence? Is that quiet person over-brimming with love? 

How did that rich person come by his money?

Yes, you have to be careful. 

Does that person's speech display examples of unconventional grammar? Does his job involve physical activity? Is her hair dyed to too bright a hue?

Do they eat their main meal at lunchtime? 

Yes, you have to be careful about making friends.

And being snooty is a really idiotic way of choosing.

Thing Not To Be Today: snooty. Snoot is a form of the word snout (and also a cone for directing television lights). Snoot appeared in English in the 1900s, and snout goes back to 1200s.

Spot the Frippet: viola.

 There are three kinds of viola, all beautiful, and the one which gives you most pleasure reveals a great deal about the kind of person you are, and how you'll best find happiness.

Forget horoscopes or counsellors: take a viola test.

So: which makes your heart lift the most?

These:

photo of Viola reichenbachiana by H. Zell

this:

or this lady here?

painting by Frederick Richard Pickersgill (this Viola is a lot more fun than she looks here)

I know I should be saying Viola form Twelfth Night gives me most pleasure, but for me it's actually the flower. Visual beauty gives me the most joy, even more than Shakespeare's words or music. 

But they're all glorious.

So which makes you happiest? Words, the visual, or music? 

Today, I'm going to make a point of enjoying them all.

Spot the Frippet: viola. There is a small problem here in that Viola in Twelfth Night is very often pronounced VI-olla rather than veeOHla, but never mind.

The flower word comes from Italian, probably from Provençal before that, and perhaps before that from the Latin vītulāri, to rejoice.

The plant name is the Latin for violet. 

Sunday Rest: latus rectum. Words Not To Use Today.

 Using latus rectum in its plural form will cause no problems at all (apart from no one's knowing what you're talking about): latera recta.

But anything with the word rectum in it is going to cause embarrassment and/or sniggering - and possibly some concern.

In fact, a latus rectum is nothing to do with the digestive system, but instead it's something to do with the geometry of cones. To be precise, it's a chord that passes through the focus of a conic [I am copying this definition word-for-word as I don't really understand it] and is perpendicular to the major axis.

I'd better see if I can find a picture:

I think the latus rectum is the green line.

Hmm...

...I shall have no trouble at all avoiding using this one.

Words Not To Use Today: latus rectum. This is Latin for straight side. 

The kind of rectum that's found at the lower end of the digestive system is more properly the rectum intestinum, the straight intestine.

Saturday Rave: To Shakespeare by Frances Anne Kemble

 

The British actress Fanny Kemble (1809 - 1893) was born into a great acting dynasty, and at the age of eighteen wrote a smash-hit play (Frances The First) that enabled her father to pay off all his debts.

She was a massively popular actress - a famous Juliet, Portia and Beatrice - who enabled her family to continue to keep their heads above water for some years.

As if that wasn't enough, Fanny Kemble wrote poetry, and toured America (she was very interested in railways) marrying American Senator Pierce Mease Butler. She retired from the stage, then, until a visit to her husband's slave plantations shocked her into revulsion, protest, and at last (combined with Butler's many infidelities) divorce.

Her most famous work is her abolitionist book Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation.

After her marriage ended she went back to the stage and made a career as a reader of dramatic works. 

Helpfully, she wrote us a poem to describe her attitude to her new career.

To Shakespeare

Oft, when my lips I open to rehearse

Thy wondrous spell of wisdom, and of power,

And that my voice, and thy immortal verse,

On listening ears, and hearts, I mingled pour,

I shrink dismayed – and awful doth appear

The vain presumption of my own weak deed;

Thy glorious spirit seems to mine so near,

That suddenly I tremble as I read –

Thee an invisible auditor I fear:

Oh, if it might be so, my master dear!

With what beseeching would I pray to thee,

To make me equal to my noble task,

Succor from thee, how humbly would I ask,

Thy worthiest works to utter worthily.

**

A useful example to the world, I'd say.

Word To Use Today: wisdom, The English have been wise for a long time. The Old English version of the word was wīs.

Word To Use Today: carceral.

 This is a new word for me, and I came across it next to the word feminism: carceral feminism.

Now, forget the feminism for a moment (because that's actually no help at all) but please (if you don't already know it) have a quick guess at the meaning of the word carceral. Just a very quick instinctive one, no need to be thoughtful or clever.

Have you done that?

To me the word carceral has a clean and hungry look, and brings to mind an image of a nest of fledgling hawks.

I still have no idea what carceral feminism is, but my instincts weren't entirely wrong about the meaning of the word carceral.

It means to do with prisons. Like incarcerate. Of course.

I wonder if somewhere in the depths of my brain some connection was made? 

Was one made, do you think, in yours?

Word To Use Today: carceral. This word comes from the Latin word carcer, prison.

Three Stars of Christmas: a rant.

 How do you persuade someone to buy something?

Do you tell them it's useful, beautiful, amusing? Tell them that it'll make them look clever, sophisticated, classy?

Okay, but what if it's a star on a stick? Or even three stars on sticks?

NEW THREE TIMES THE TWINKLE 

proclaims my Blooms catalogue next to a photograph of three LED-outlined stars on sticks standing on a fake-snow-sprinkled table.

The text goes on:

Three glittering stars - let's call them Venus, Orion and Sirius after the stars in Orion's Belt - twinkling in the December night sky.

And then, I'm afraid, they lose me.

The thing is, that if you're trying to persuade me to buy something then you have to convince me that you understand what it is you're selling. And there are two problems, here, already.

Firstly, the star Sirius isn't in Orion's Belt. It's in the constellation Canis Major; and Orion and Venus aren't even stars.

Secondly, that twinkling in the December sky bit?

At the bottom of the description it says:

 indoor use only.

Word To Use Today: LED. You say this as three letters, L - E - D, which stand for Light-Emitting Diode. LEDs are semi-conductors which glow when a current is applied to them. 

Diodes were originally called rectifiers because they could convert alternating current to direct current, but the scientist William Henry Eccles renamed them diodes, a combination of the Greek di- two, and -ode, short for electrode. The -ode bit of electrode comes from the Greek hodos, which means path or connection.

Elecktron is Greek for amber.

Nts and Bolts: nonpast.

 All languages have ways of describing whether something has happened in the past, the present, or the future. Mostly this is done by using tenses.

Tenses are ways of changing action-words to let people know whether the action happened/is happening/will happen in the past, present, or future.

(There are other ways of describing when something is happening, though: it's not that some languages can't describe the passage of time.)

Anyway, the nonpast. The nonpast tense is one which isn't the past. That means it can be either present or future.

And what obscure language makes use of such a thing?

Well, English, for one.

Just think, when you say I hope we get the all-clear soon, the verb (get) is in what looks like a present tense, but it's being used for something that happens in the future.

There. You've been using the nonpast tense more or less all your life, and never known it.

Feel free to preen yourself.

Word To Use Today: nonpast. The Latin word nōn means not; the Latin passūs means step.