Sunday Rest: orogeny. Word Not To Use Today.

Orogeny looks as if it's going to be something to do with giving birth (as in progeny) - and it is.

Now, words starting oro- are quite often to do with mouths, as in orotund (speech made with a poshly rounded mouth) or oronasal (to do with the mouth-nose area). 

So does orogeny describe some creature which gives birth through its mouth?*

Er, no. Orogeny, confusingly, is from oros, which is Greek for mountain. So, yes, orogeny is to do with the birth of mountains.

You've never even missed having a word for that, have you?

Sunday Rest: orogeny. I suppose geologists might have a use for the word orogeny. But only, obviously, among themselves.

The mouth words come from the Latin for mouth, which is ōs.

*I can't actually find an example of such a creature. Some fish keep their eggs and even their young in their mouths for safety, and there is a species of Australian frog which hatches its tadpoles in its mouth - but in both cases the mouth, strictly speaking, acts merely as a nursery.


The platypus frog

Saturday Rave: an infinite number of monkeys.

I was watching a TV programme about infinity the other day, and it said that the chance of a monkey typing the complete works of Shakespeare was equivalent to someone winning the jackpot on the British (presumably) lottery every week for twenty six thousand years.

It brought home to me just how amazing it is that a monkey - or, at least, an ape - has already done it.

The ape was, of course, called William Shakespeare.

As the Great Ape himself had a thirteen-year-old girl (Juliet, of course) say:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea. 
My love as deep; the more I give to thee 
The more I have, for both are infinite

Though I must say that Shakespeare did have a rather cynical view of infinity: I mean, it was so long since his 'fellow of infinite jest' had actually cracked a joke that he rose from the grave (alas! Poor Yorick!) in no great shape to deal with the infinite demands of immortality.

Ah well. As a confused character in the same play observes:



I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space were it not that I had bad dreams.

I mean, you can see why most monkeys would have trouble coming up with that.

Word To Use Today: infinity. The Latin finītus means limited.

Word To Use Today: taenia/tenia.

Okay, a taenia (a tenia in the USA) can be either a narrow hairband of the sort fashionable in Ancient Greece:


illustration by Carl Rohrbach and Albert Kretschmer

 or a strip above a line of columns.


The taenia (you can only see it as a shadow) is between the groups of little triangular thingies. 

So now: tell me what a taeniacide does, if you're so clever.

Word To Use Today: taenia. This word comes from Latin from the Greek tainia, a narrow strip, related to teinein, to stretch.

And a taeniacide?

It kills tapeworms. 

You can see the connection, but did you guess? 

I didn't!

In charge of the asylum: a rant,

Misprints are, of course, a longstanding source of delight and inspiration (Due to a typing error, Saturday's story on local artist Jon Henninger mistakenly reported that Henninger's band mate Eric Lyday was on drugs. The story should have read that Lyday was on drums...) but I saw psycho analysis the other day: and that, I think, is a piece of pure and simple crystalline wisdom.

Word To Use Today: psycho. This was originally short for psychopath, but now simply means dangerous nutter. The Greek word psukhē means soul or breath.

ē

Nuts and Bolts: A Puzzle Inside An Enigma. Code words.

The wonderful BBC Radio Programme The Infinite Monkey Cage came from Britain's GCHQ recently. (GCHQ is the place where the people involved with codes and intercepting hostile transmissions and all that sort of thing hang out.)

Someone on the programme was talking about breaking codes, and he mentioned that a code is only as secure as its password. He gave as an example the Enigma machine, a device used by Germany during World War II. The Enigma code was eventually cracked by the Allies, but this achievement was, obviously, kept secret for as long as possible.

In any case, even once you knew how the thing worked, you still had to know what password was being used before you could read messages.

Progress in this area was swift after the code-crackers realised that the people sending the messages were all unhappily conscripted men aged about nineteen.

The code words proved to fall into three groups:

a) the same as yesterday's code word (this was down to simple laziness)
b) the name of a girl
c) swear words

It leaves me thinking that Artificial Intelligence will never be quite the same as Human Intelligence.

Though I'm not saying that in some ways it won't be rather better.

Word To Use Today: a code word. I'm pretty sure yours will be the same as yesterday's, too! 

The word code comes from the Latin word cōdex, which means book.

Thing Probably Not To Do Today: peach someone.

The Word Den's basic aim is to add sunshine to the world, so I'm sorry to report the disappointing news that impeaching someone does not involve pelting the felon with rotten peaches.

Ah well.


photo by Britt Reints

*

Thing Probably Not To Do Today: impeach someone, or peach on someone. To peach on someone is to inform against them to the authorities, to impeach someone is, in Britain, to accuse him or her of a criminal offence (probably treason), and in the USA to accuse an official of an offence committed while in post.

To impeach can also mean to cast a slur on someone's honesty.

These words come from the Old French empeechier, from the Latin impedicāre, to entangle, from pedica, a fetter, from pēs. foot. 

Peach the fruit is also Old French, from the Latin persica, from Persicum mālum, Persian apple.

Spot the Frippet: guichet.

This word is pronounced gooEEshay (or GWEEshay if you're not being quite so French).

A guichet is a small opening in a wall, a sort of hatch, but particularly the window of a ticket office.


Photo of Nanpingbei Station by SCJiang. It's in China, but you wouldn't know it, would you?

Receptionists sometimes hide behind them.

The important thing with a guichet is to look through it to see what sort of a calendar is on the wall.

Few things in the world are more revealing of character.

Spot the Frippet: guichet. This word is French, as I said. Before that it came from a Germanic language. The English word wicket came along a similar route from a similar source.

Sunday Rest: Huel. Word Not To Use Today.

Suppose you want to sell a powder that gives people all, absolutely all, of their nutritional needs.

Mix it up with water, knock it back, and bam! you stay strong and healthy and slim without the need to eat all that fussy other stuff like cake and steak.

I mean, why wouldn't anyone want to take up a regime like that?

Well, it might be because you'd lose some opportunities for social intercourse, but the chief reason for hesitating, I should imagine, would be the taste.

As it happens such a powder does exist, and is available on line. It's apparently medically recommended, and it even seems to be selling reasonably well.

Mind you, I think it might have sold even better if the stuff hadn't been given a name that sounds quite so much like someone throwing up. 

Huel.

Still, it does come in a chocolate version, so the name just might be misleading.

Word Not To Use Today: Huel. Huel is the Middle English for whale, and also a variety of wheat, but I suspect this word is actually a cunning if unfortunate mixture of health (or whole) and fuel.

 Even the unflavoured stuff is said to taste rather nice.

Saturday Rave: Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard.

It may not be possible to judge a book by its cover, but I've long maintained that you can judge a book by it's first sentence.

The first sentence of Something in Disguise goes like this:

When Oliver saw his sister in her bridesmaid's dress he laughed so much he could hardly stand.

And, yes, the whole book is terrific.

Word To Use Today: disguise. This word comes from the Old French desguisier. Guise means manner, and is connected with the word wise.

Word To Use Today: codling or codlins.

A codling is a young cod, but I'm pleased to report that some codlings never grow up. 

This is one of them. This is a short beard codling:



I'm afraid it looks about eighty six, though, doesn't it?

A codling can also be several varieties of cooking apple:


Keswick Codling Apple from the National Fruit Collection

 or indeed any apple at all if it's unripe.

The larva of the codling moth:


photo by David Short

 feeds on the apples rather than the fish.

Codlins-and-cream sounds delicious but isn't. It's an Eurasian wild flower:



 (it's been introduced to America, too), and it's possibly toxic and may cause convulsions (though in Russia it's traditionally used to make a tea to induce semi-consciousness). Its scientifically known as Epilobium hirsutum, and also known, by those with no poetry in their souls, as hairy willowherb.

I should stick to codlings for dinner if I were you, rather than codlins. Probably with mushy peas and chips. 

And the apples with custard!

Word To Use Today: codling or codlins. Cod is basically a Germanic word. Codling, as in apple, appeared in the 1400s, no one is sure from where, as querdling.

Uniform children: a rant.

At my local Sainsburys supermarket, (which sells clothes as well as such necessities of life as scented candles and Lego) there is an advertising hoarding featuring children wearing school uniform. 

It has the strap-line: 

FOR LIFE 

NOT JUST LESSONS

But who on earth do they think is going to buy school uniform for any purpose other than for school?

Good grief. 

What you need is a slogan that's something like:

UNIFORM CLOTHES FOR NON-UNIFORM KIDS

or

ALMOST CHILDPROOF

or

CLOTHES FOR BUSINESS

Hey...

...do you think someone in advertising might give me a job?

It has to pay better than writing children's books.

Word To Use Today: uniform. This word is from the Latin ūniformis, which means one shape.

Nuts and Bolts: Minced Oaths.

Well, I don't know about you, but my day is brighter just for the knowledge that there are such things as minced oaths.

We all use them. If you've ever said gosh or darn or sugar! or fudge! then you were using a minced oath, which is a swear word that's been changed a bit to disguise it.

They're used exactly like normal oaths, and, apart from being less rude than the originals they also mean you're safe from being struck by lightning by an enraged deity, because anything you swear by will be almost certainly non-existent (by Jove!). 

Mind you, you have to be careful. Saying of course I'm telling the blooming truth may seem safe enough, but blooming is a substitute for bloody, which itself may be a stand-in for by-our-lady...and no one wants to upset a lady.

In England, an impetus to create minced oaths came about in 1606, when there was a ban on swearing on stage - and a further, even stronger impetus arrived in 1623, when there was a complete ban on swearing. This is why so many seventeenth century gentlemen went about saying things like Zounds! (short for God's wounds) or Gadzooks (God's hooks, which were the nails on the cross) or Odds bodikins (God's dear body).

So minced oaths have a purpose. 

But be careful. Be very careful. Blimey, for instance, is a disguised version of God blind me.

And no one wants that.

Nuts and Bolts: minced oaths. These are also sometimes called Rhadamanthine oaths, after Rhadamathus, who forbade his subjects to swear by anything but the ram, the goose, and the plane tree. 

Oh ram it! still works rather nicely.

Mince in all its senses is to do with the Latin minūtia, smallness.

Thing To Do Today: join a ginger group.

Groucho Marx famously didn't want to join any club that would have him as a member (which is one of the worrying things about the idea of heaven: I mean, some of those saints...).

But what if you want something done, and the only way to get it done is to join in with a group of other people?

Well, the thing to bear in mind is that most of the energy of any group goes into maintaining its own structure. This will keep the majority of its members perfectly absorbed and happy, so if you want anything actually, you know, achieved, then it will gradually become clear to you (unless you allow yourself, like most of your colleagues, to be diverted by Rules of Procedure and Any Other Business) that you will have to Do It Yourself.

Now the problem with Doing It Yourself is that the reason for joining the group in the first place is that you can't Do It Yourself: and so you will have to gather together a few friends who are similarly frustrated and form a ginger group to gee everyone up.

Everyone else will profess admiration and support for you. They may even put your cause (rather a long way down) on the minutes of the next meeting.

So your best bet really is that some idiot will change the Rules of Procedure and get you a shot at power. And then you'll find out whether what you want to achieve is a good thing.

Mind you, by that time, you'll probably have got institutionalised by all the rules yourself, and won't want to change anything.

Ah well!

Thing To Do Today: form a ginger group. Ginger is spicy enough to wake up even the blandest meal, and that seems to be the idea behind a ginger group. The word ginger comes from the Latin zinziberi, from the Greek zingiberis, probably from the Sanskrit śrńgaveram, from śrńga- horn, plus vera, body, from the shape of the root.

Spot the Frippet: weasel.

How do you tell a stoat from a weasel?

Well, a weasel is weaselly distinguished, and a stoat is stoatily different.

All right, all right, please yourselves...

This is a Least Weasel:


photograph by Keven Law

but exactly what a weasel is depends upon where you are. In Britain a weasel is probably something called a weasel, but in America and in academia weasel can mean any member of the genus Mustela, which includes stoats and polecats and mink. 

Depending on how you define the word, there are about seventeen species of weasel, and they're found in nearly all of Eurasia and in the Americas about down to the Amazon River. They're all small, and would fit comfortably on your hand (except for the fact that they'd probably be trying to bite your thumb off). They're fierce predators, and those slim hips are especially designed to follow their prey down tunnels.

In Greece weasels also, it is said, prey on wedding dresses, an unhappy bride having once turned into a weasel and still apparently on the look-out for revenge.

Weasels aren't all bad luck - we're just past the lucky weasel-killing season in Mecklenburg, Germany (it ended on Sept 8th) so you won't be able to make a lucky weasel amulet from one, as in times past - but mostly weasels do seem to bring misfortune.

Still, seeing a Mustela weasel isn't easy (unless you're talking about a sly or treacherous person: they get everywhere) but weasel words are common. These are deliberately misleading or evasive, and spotting them is essential.

You may also spot a weaselling out, which is an avoiding of responsibility in a really inconvenient or despicable way.

If you're in America you might spot a truly useful weasel if you're in the far north, where it is a truck with caterpillar tracks designed for use on snow.

Spot the Frippet: a weasel. The Old English for this was weosule. Weasel words originate in the belief that a weasel could suck the contents out of an egg without piercing the shell.

Sunday Rest: zucchetto. Word Not To Use Today.

You'll probably have heard of zucchini, the small vegetable marrows that we in Britain usually call courgettes.

Well, as you'd expect, zucchetto is basically the same word as zucchini, and they both come from the Italian zucca, which means gourd.

So what does zuccetto mean?

I'll give you a clue. It's a badge of rank, and they come in black, violet, red and white, with white the highest.

(It means little gourd, remember.)

Got it, yet?

No?

Well, it's the skull cap worm by an official in the Roman Catholic church (white for the pope, red for a cardinal, purple for a bishop, and black for a priest under that rank).

So, why not use the word zucchetto?

Well, how could anyone use it without sniggering once he or she knows the derivation?

Word Not To Use Today: zucchetto. This word comes from the Latin cucutia, which means gourd.

Maxims of Francois de la Rochefoucauld.

François de La Rochefoucauld was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Most unusually for a writer, it stayed there: so there was no filthy impoverished garret for the Duc de La Rochefoucaud (he was Prince de Marcillac, as well, for a while, but then, finding the title was cluttering up the place he gave it away to his son).

It's not that I'm bitter, or anything. As the Duke said in the book he called his Maximes The truest mark of having been born with great qualities is to have been born without envy.

And how did he know that? I mean, as he also said in the same book Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.

Anyway, the Maximes aren't just a list of how to be good. Old François had a good line in viperish wit, too:

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for being unable to give a bad example. 

Ouch!

And sometimes he was genuinely wise:

Sincere enthusiasm is the only orator who always persuades. It is like an art the rules of which never fail; the simplest man with enthusiasm persuades better than the most eloquent with none.

...though admittedly only sometimes:

Flirtatiousness is fundamental to a woman's nature, but not all put it into practice because some are restrained by fear or by good sense.

...and there are times when he's frankly nuts:

Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely an excuse that we say things are impossible.

...there speaks a man who's never tried to get a live eel into a jam jar.

Still, sometimes there's a small but glorious gem that shines a light through the nonsense and right out the other side:

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.

...and I'm happy to be grateful to the Duke for that.

Word To Use Today: maxim. This word comes from the French from the Latin phrase maxima propositio which means basic axiom.

Word To Use Today: wayzgoose.

You've heard of a hen night, but how about a wayzgoose?

It's a word from Lincolnshire, England, and it's an annual works outing made by a printing works. 

I accept that this is probably something to which you are seldom invited, but its meaning could easily be extended to cover any celebratory trip taken by workmates.

It might even encourage people to go further than the restaurant or the pub.

After all, how much more revealing of your colleagues' inner souls would it be to have a stroll across the downs, or a sail across the lake, or a stagger up the hill? How much better for the health and wealth of all participants.

How much more fun to see them clambering over styles, or dealing with picnic wasps. In unsuitable shoes. And a thunderstorm.

Mind you, once you know them properly it's quite possible you'll be too frightened ever to go back to the office. 

But at least it'd dissipate the boredom for a bit.

Word To Usr Today: wayzgoose. I think this might be the only word in the English language with the letter-string yzg in it. The word comes from the 1700s, when it was waygoose, but before that its origin is unknown. It started off as an Autumn meal given by an employer at the time when printers had to start working by candlelight, but later began to describe a works' outing. Traditionally a wayzgoose took place on August 24th, St Bartholomew's Day (he's the patron saint of bookbinders) but it can happen on any date around this time of the year.

Things Unknown: a rant.

I was given a questionnaire on the way out of the doctor's room*.

The doctor seemed to be a sensible enough woman, and she was a little sheepish about asking me to fill it in, but, hey, I'm happy to be helpful, and the first few questions weren't at all difficult. Age. Ethnicity. Do you suffer from these illnesses?

Then it got slightly more interesting. 

Was the doctor polite? Comprehensible? Thorough? Did she listen to me?

(The doctor's name was printed on the questionnaire, though my own input was anonymous.)

All fair enough. But then -

Please indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with the following statements, it said.

This doctor will keep information about me confidential

Well, as I said, the doctor seemed sensible enough. I mean, she didn't break off my consultation to make a phone call that started hey, there's this woman in the surgery and you'll never guess what!
but she could have been a host of a Radio Show called This Week's Hilarious Diseases for all I could see.

The next statement on the questionnaire was:

This doctor is trustworthy and honest

Again, she wasn't stroking a white cat, and she wasn't wearing a black pointy hat, an electronic tag, or a prison-issue tracksuit - but honest? Trustworthy? How could I possibly tell? 

I drew a circle round the questions, wrote I have no information on either of these points, and despaired slightly that anyone could go to the trouble of writing such questions, in words, on paper, and then print them out and distribute them to all the patients in the practice, and still not think it through.

Word To Use Today: trust. This word comes from the Old Norse traust. It is related to the Old HIgh German trost, which means solace.

*It was just a routine check-up, thank you.

Nuts and Bolts:genteelisms

What does one go when Nature calls? The toilet? Loo? Lavatory? WC? Bog? Restroom? (You'll get a good laugh in Britain if you try using that one.) The wheresit? The Little Boys' (shudder) Room? Or are you just going upstairs?

Of all these only bog definitely isn't a genteelism. Loo, in my present place and time, is as near neutral, I would say, as I can get. Toilet is an odd one, a word often trying hard to be a genteelism but oh-so-tragically failing.

Oh, the infinite shadows cast by wealth, family, and class!

Anyway, do you wear glasses? Or spectacles? Do you look in a mirror or a looking glass? 

These two are well known markers of class. If it's natural for you to say looking glass, is that a genteelism? Or is it only a genteelism if you say it deliberately to appear, well, genteel?

There are some genteelisms so bizarre as to be unmistakable. Male cow is ridiculous; so is calling the legs the lower limbs. People in the USA have many fewer cocks than we do in Britain, the replacements running from roosters to faucets, but those words, though they may have started off as genteelisms, are now perfectly normal and common (though not as common as muck). When did they stop being genteelisms, I wonder?

Do we - should we - say couch, pardon? and serviette? Or sofa, what? and napkin? Should we say Jack or Knave? Ill or sick? Sweet or pudding?

If you really are genteel, do you know something? 

You really won't care.

Word To Consider Today: genteelism. This word comes from the French gentil, which means well-born.

Thing Not To Be Today: dreich.

I've never really known what dreich means, but then as someone living in the south of England I've only ever come across it in books, so it's never mattered that much.

I've always had a vague idea it means something like drily obstinate, probably because it sounds a bit like dry* and seems, from the occasional contexts in which I've come across it, to be something inconveniently egotistical.

I've probably been quite wrong (I'm going to look dreich up in a moment) but that's been my longstanding position on the word. 

I also assume it's Scottish.

The really appalling thing is that a good chunk of my vocabulary exists in the same shadowy valley of ignorance. (As, probably, does yours.) 

Still, that's possibly better than the sunlit uplands of confident ignorance. 

I think.

Anyway. Dreich. Hang on... 

Ah yes, Here we are. 

Oh. 

Well, it is Scots, and there is perhaps a subtle dryness to it, but obstinacy...not really. 

Dreich means dreary.

Still, dreariness is frustrating, just like obstinacy. 

Isn't it?

Thing Not To Be Today: dreich. (Or, apparently, dreigh). This word comes from the Middle English dreig, enduring, from some Old English word which looked something like drēog.

*Dreich doesn't actually sounds like dry at all: you say it dree- and then the sound you get at the end of loch. But then, as I've said, I've never heard anyone say it.

Spot the Frippet: gong.

Is gong the best onomatopoeic word in the English language? I can't think of a more pleasingly dramatic one.

Gongs are essentially Eastern in origin, and quite often to be spotted as part of the decorative scheme in Oriental restaurants.

Large houses also traditionally keep a small gong in the hall to summon the inhabitants to dinner.

It is a legal requirement for any ship over a hundred metres in length to carry a gong (as well as a bell and a whistle); the German radio time signal uses a gong; and so do boxing matches to signal the beginning and end of rounds (well, it's called a gong, anyway, even if it doesn't always sound much like one). 

Berlioz uses a gong when laying people to rest in his Requiem; and traditional alarm clocks use them to get people up.


photo by Ales Krivek

In the 1500s in Britain we used to have gong farmers, who went around emptying cesspits (though I can't help wondering in this case if this was a misprint for pong).

In Britain medals, especially medals for bravery or as a mark of distinction, are called gongs. Perhaps you have one for swimming or spelling or attendance or dancing in a drawer somewhere.

I haven't, but there's always this:

Rank, who used this gong to introduce their films, made Brief Encounter, Black Narcissus, Great Expectations, and The Red Shoes, so it's worth looking out this particular gong if you feel in the mood for an old-fashioned thrill.

I mean, who doesn't?

Spot the Frippet: gong. This word came to English from Malay.

Sunday Rest: canicule. Word Not To Use Today:

No, a canicule isn't a small receptacle for baked beans, it's something much bigger. And less beany.

Actually, if a canicule were a small receptacle for baked beans I wouldn't mind the word so much.

No, the canicules are the dog days, the hot days at the end of summer in the Northern hemisphere when the star Sirius is bright in the sky as it follows the path of the constellation Orion the hunter (like a dog, geddit?).

The canicules are associated with heat, as I said, but also originally with drought, thunderstorms, lethargy, disease, rabies and bad luck.

Nowadays the dog days are mostly just associated with lethargy.

I always thought the dog days were the days when it was so hot that all you wanted to do was flop down on the floor like a dog and pant quietly until dusk.

And they are. 

So dog days will do very well for me.

Sunday Rest: canicule. This word comes from the French, from the Latin canīcula, which means puppy.

Saturday Rave: Fulgens and Lucrece by Henry Medwell

Fulgens and Lucrece by Henry Medwell is the first non-religious play in English that survives.

It was performed before 1500, probably at Lambeth Palace in London in 1497. Cardinal Morton, whose house it was, had important guests (the Ambassadors of Spain and Flanders, no less) and the play was probably put on the amuse them.

Fulgens and Lucrece is based on a Latin work by Buonaccorso da Montemagno that had been translated by the Earl of Worcester and published by William Caxton in 1481. The play itself was printed in about 1512, but quite soon nearly all of it was lost until a copy turned up in an auction in 1919.

The plot concerns Lucrece's choosing of a husband. I tried to read it on-line and found something rather wonderful.

The introduction to the Henry E. Huntington edition is interesting, but it's the text of the play itself that I really wanted to read.

Here's the very end of the text:

3t tlje led pe toil! tatte it in pacience 

3nD pf fyetbe onp offence 

^boto b toljece in o? toe go fcence 

feoneintljefame 

31 1 10 onelp far lacbe of conpnge 

3tiD not l?c /but lji0 toit runpnge 



3; s thereof to blame 

3nD glaDe tool&e &e be/auD rpgfjt fapne 

Cbatfomeman of ftabpUijjapne 

tool&e take on !jpm tlje la&out and papnc 

(C^ts tnater to a mcnDe 

3nD fo be topHpD me fo? to faj> 

3no t^at Done of all tljts plap 

The last line in particular fills me with awe: 

3no t^at Done of all tljts plap

Surely it must mean something extremely deep and marvellous.

If only I had the faintest idea what.

Word To Use Today: plap, I think. Whatever it means. Thackeray used it to mean to fall down with a light slapping sound, but he didn't use it until the middle of the 1800s. 

So what it meant to Henry Medwell - or the computer program that chewed up his work - I really can't imagine.

Word To Use Today: bonce.

Bonce is a playful sort of a word. It's British slang for the sort of head that isn't too obviously overburdened with dignity, beauty or brains.

Still, nothing too bad can happen to your bonce. You can bang it, but not fracture it; it can be stupid, but not diseased; it can inconveniently block out the view, but not terrify the children.

In fact, if we all shed our dignity a bit and accepted that we have bonces then the world would be a jollier place all round.

Word To Use Today: bonce. In the 1800s a bonce was a type of ball, often made of terracotta, used for playing jacks. 


The Children's Museum of Indianapolis https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21064230 (though that ball looks as it it's made of rubber, I'm afraid).

There's a theory is that bonce is a form of of the word bounce - though I wouldn't try bouncing anything made of terracotta, myself.

Raindrops on roses: a rant.

Raindrops on roses
And whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things...

People get into a terrible state about how much the electronic imps of the internet spy on us. 

It's true that being bombarded with advertisements for hotels in the city of Brighton (Hipster Capital of the World, apparently) was disconcerting when all I'd done is type in a query about Graham Greene's anti-hero Pinkie; but on the other hand it's rather encouraging to reflect upon how much the sprites of the internet get wrong.

The other day the internet auction company ebay sent me an email. 

We found your favourite things, it said, and then tried to sell me an axe sharpener, a tape measure, a brick bolster (sorry, I've no idea what it does) a cordless drill, a spirit level, a camping cool box and a set of G clamps.

I have three observations: 

1)who on earth does ebay think I am?

 2) why does it think this?

and 

3) how come Oscar Hammerstein managed to get so much closer?

But then I think we all know the answer to the last point.

There was considerable quantities of sanity, wisdom and genius involved.



Word To Use Today: favourite. The Latin favēre means to protect.

Nuts and Bolts: more calques.

A calque, as we saw last week, is a word inspired by one in another language. Instead of borrowing the word itself, though, it borrows only its meaning.

For example, many languages call a computer mouse by the local word for an animal mouse (in European Portuguese it's a rato, for instance). As it happens, the idea of calling a computer pointer after the long-tailed animal began in English.

What else has English given the world? Well, French, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian speakers all go on a honeymoon (lune de miel, lluna de miel, luna de miel, lua-de-mel, luna di miele and luna de miere, respectively).

Skyscrapers also get everywhere, from the French gratte-ciel to the Italian grattacielo, from Hindi gagan-chumb to the Hungarian felhőkarcoló.

Baloncasto? Pallacanestro? That's Spanish and Italian for basketball.

Of course the inspiration doesn't go all one way. The German Kindergarten, meaning preschool (literally children garden), for example, has versions in French, Spanish, and Portuguese (though not English: here in England we've borrowed the word as it stands (though without the capital letter): kindergarten).

But my very favourite calque of all is one that English has inspired: the Danish have borrowed our English foolproof, translated it literally, and it has become the completely wonderful idiotsikker.

I rather wish we'd borrow that one back just as it is.

Word To Use Today: calque. This word comes from the French calque meaning to copy (papier calque is tracing paper). 

Loanword, by the way, is a calque of the German Lehnwort.

Thing To Do Today: pamper yourself.

Henry Luttrell's idea of heaven, according to his friend Sydney Smith, was eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.

It's not mine.

So: what's your idea of heaven? What situation would put you into the most complete possession of relaxed and contented bliss?

Would you like to be fanned by palm leaves? Massaged with scented oils? Or would you be happiest completely alone with your sofa, kitchen, or swimming pool?

What would you eat? Steamed broccoli? Chocolate? Venison? Champagne? Coca cola?

Will you be having a friendly chat with someone dear to you? Or be at a noisy party? Or would you like to be surrounded by the melancholy strains of a solo oboe? Or a soprano, a musical, a film, a sit com, an opera? Bach? Gershwin? Techno? Or a bit of peace and quiet to read a good book?

By Austen? Enid Blyton? Dan Brown?

And how about the view? Will it be Mount Everest? Manhattan? Madras? A wildflower meadow? The sea? Suburbia? Harrods? A cathedral? Wembley Stadium? The Rokeby Venus?

What scent will beguile you? Coffee? Fresh bread? Something by Chanel? Freshly laundered linen? A good clean pig? Wood smoke? Incense? Rain? Lilies?

Oh dear...

...I've got an horrible feeling that a lot of us have just discovered how shallow we are.

Whoops.

Thing To Do Today: pamper yourself. This word used to mean to feed to excess. It's a Germanic word originally. Pampfen is a German dialect word meaning to gorge oneself.

Spot the Frippet: something palmary.

Now, this is a personal sort of a thing, but as three examples of something palmary I'd come up with this:



and this:



and this:


buddleja "Buzz" lavender. Photo by Ptelea

But whether or not you agree, every day spent trying to spot something palmary is a day happier than one not.

Spot the Frippet: something palmary. This word comes from the Latin palmārius, and is to do with the palm of victory. Palms were long believed to make a connection between heaven and earth, and so became the symbol of various gods, and also of the people who worshiped them. This led to Cimon of Athens making part of a monument to the Greek victory at the battle of Eurymedon in the shape of a palm tree (it also enabled him to make a pun, because the Greek for palm tree was phoinix and the defeated enemy were the Phoenicians).

Palm leaves were later given to the winners of races, a habit which spread round the ancient world.

Nowadays, something palmary is something deserving of praise.

Sunday Rest: palp. Word Not To Use Today.

A palp is a finger-like appendage which sprouts from near the mouth parts of a crustacean, arachnid, insect, mollusc, or worm.


bee mite, illustration by Pavel Klimov.


another of Pavel Klimov's delightful illustrations of a bee mite.

Here is another palp:


anatomy of a female spider. Illustration by Peter Coxhead.

A palp is designed for touching (can't you feel the soft, inescapable, clammy touch of the thing in the sound of the word? Because I can). 

Ugh!

 Palp can describe the fleshy part of a finger tip, too, but whichever way you cut it the word gives me the creeps. This post was palp-typed...

...excuse me. I think I'm just going to have an attack of the screaming abdabs...

...aaarrrgghhh!

Word Not To Use Today: palp. Palpus is Latin for feeler, and palpare means to stroke or touch softly. Errrgghhhh...

Saturday Rave: sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare.

It's the first day of Autumn - or possibly Spring if you live in the South of the World - but here's an Autumn poem anyway.

The poem looks as if it's going to be a bit miserable, but this has been written by genius, and it has a twist at the end.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all the rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Word To Use Today: choir. The bare ruined choirs of this poem aren't a group of elderly cracked-voiced nudists, but the area of a church in front of the altar where the choir and clergy sit. There would have been quite a lot of bare ruined choirs about in Shakespeare's day because so many of the monastery churches would have been abandoned or ransacked or recycled after Henry VIII threw out all the monks a couple of generations before.

The word comes from the Greek khoros.

By the way, Shakespeare never did get to the bare-ruined-choirs stage: he died, retired and wealthy, after a night out with some writer friends, at the age of fifty two.