Thing Not To Do Today: simper.

No, please don't do this.

A single simper can be enough to wreck a huge and passionate  relationship:

'What do you want Rhett?'
'I'll tell you, Scarlett O'Hara, if you'll take that Southern-belle simper off your face. Someday, I want you to say to me the words I heard you say to Ashley Wilkes. I love you Scarlett...'

Simpering is for the self-important, the pompous and the patronising. That is, utter, utter fools.

Really, it'll do you no good. A simperer reeks of falsity and self-centredness. You can suss out a simperer in a second.

If you're not blind, probably even faster.

 Thing Not To Do Today: simper. This word arrived in English in the 1500s. It's quite like the Middle Dutch zimperlijc, which means elegant, but there's a Danish dialect word simper which means affected or coy.

Spot the frippet: flange.

Flange is one of the God-given words, like mollycoddle and scrummage, which it is impossible to contemplate without joy.

Flange.

Flange: flange, flange, flange, flange!

Do you see what I mean?

The fact that a flange is in itself rather a dull thing doesn't matter. A flange is glorified by the fact that it's called, well, a flange.

Flanges are used mostly for strengthening things - perhaps to make a collar round a hole in some metal, or as part of a metal joist.

Where to see them?

Well, flange rails are nice and obvious, because trains generally run on them.



A closet flange:





may have been doing sterling service in a small room of your house for years, so in simple justice it's probably time it was appreciated.

The extra bits at the toe and heel of these ski boots, which are used to fix them onto the skis, are called flanges, too.



Apart from that, flanging is part of the process of blocking a felt hat, and, since the word flange was used on the BBC TV series Not The Nine o'Clock News between 1979 and 1982:



 it's been the collective noun for a group of baboons.

Spot the frippet: flange. This word appeared in the 1600s. It's probably a variation of flaunche, which is a curved section at the side of a heraldic field, and before that from the French flanc, which means flank.

Sunday Rest: Word Not To Use Today: pone.

Pone can either be maize bread, or it can be the player to the right of the dealer in a card game (or opposite him if it's a game for two).

Now, it may be possible to say the word pone without making it a cross between a honk and a whinge, but if it is I've yet to hear anyone do it.

No, no. No need to practise...

Word Not To Use Today: pone. The word meaning maize bread comes from from Powhatan (Algonquian) apan something baked, from apen she bakes.
The card-playing word comes from the  Late Latin pone, from Latin pōne, imperative form of pōnere, to place.

Daddy Fell Into The Pond by Alfred Noyes.

I was going to start off by saying that this poem isn't a masterpiece, but as it's been giving me joy for getting on for half a century I think that actually it must be.

We didn't have a gardener when I was little, and my daddy never fell into the pond. But this poem, as all the very best poems do, gave me a sense of possibility: not necessarily of my daddy actually falling in the pond, but that the world might yield comparable delights.

Daddy Fell Into The Pond

 

by

 

Alfred Noyes

 

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And there seemed to be nothing beyond,
THEN
Daddy fell into the pond!

And everyone's face grew merry and bright,
And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
He's crawling out of the duckweed."
Click!

Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
And doubled up, shaking silently,
And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft
And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.
O, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond
WHEN
Daddy fell into the pond!

 

Word To Use Today: pond. This is a rather staid sort of a word, though redeemed by the ease with which it can be mis-typed pong.  It's been around since the 1200s, when it meant enclosure. It's related to the word pound.

 

 

Word To Use Today: limivorous.

Something carnivorous eats meat, something insectivorous eats...

...but you know all that.

The only exception to the -vorous rule, as far as I know, is that some herbivorous humans (who tend, as you will have noticed, to call themselves vegetarians) eat...well, more or less everything, really.

Will steak be all right?

No, I'm a vegetarian, could I have some chicken?

Crab sandwich?

Not for me, thanks, I'm vegetarian. I'll have the prawn mayonnaise.

Which, of course makes them omnivorous, as well as hypocrites and extremely annoying.

Anyway, limivorous, anyone?

Well, it's one of those words to make us glad to be human.

Yes, someone limivorous feeds on...

 ...mud.

I mean, lovely.

Still, it's a useful word for describing some invertebrates:

Earthworms by Petr Kratochvil

 

as well, of course, as certain journalists.

Word To Use Today: limivorous. This word comes from the Latin līmus, which means mud and vorāre to swallow up.

 

good to go: a rant

I've got WORD 2013 on my new laptop.

Yes, there are some uniquely irritating things about it, but on the whole I'd give it the thumbs-up.

I would have more confidence in the spell-check function, though, if, once a document has been processed, the blasted thing didn't come up with a message which says:

Spell check complete.

You're good to go.

Good to go?

Good to go????

Would the wretched program have told Shakespeare he was good to go after he'd just killed off just about everyone at the end of Hamlet?

Er...yes, it would, wouldn't it.

Oh, and I bet that would prompted some new last words for the Dane.

Mark this, Horatio: this tablet here,
This casement, this dead eye, this soulless pane:
It has my words, my very heart's depths, caught
And whispered to me thus: you're good to go... 
                                                                  [Dies]

Ooh, there's nothing like a bit of blank verse to relieve the feelings, you know.

I feel better, now.

And I suppose Hamlet might have died just a bit happier, mightn't he.

Word To Use Today: good. This word has hardly changed in a millennium. The Old English version was gōd.

 

Good to go, though, is modern. It's fine in an informal context, but I really expect my computer to be more professional.

Nuts and Bolts: exonyms.

Here's a dashing sort of a word: exonym.

Can't you smell the excitement, danger and strangeness of it?

I think it must be the exo that does it. As in exocet, exotic and exoskeleton.

(Exocet, as in the missile, doesn't actually have anything to do with the exo in the other words - rather sweetly, the missile is named  after Exocoetus volitans, aka the flying fish, but, hey, it still sounds really smart, doesn't it.)

So what's an exonym? Well, it's that increasingly rare thing, the version of a place name used only by foreigners. Londres, the French form of London, is an example.

Here in England the trend is for us to give up using exonyms. We've lost Peking, for instance, which we now call Beijung; Bombay, which has become Mumbai; and Cologne, which is increasingly becoming known as Köln.

We're sticking firmly with pronouncing the s at the end of Paris, though, because any Englishman pronouncing Paris in the French way will be despised by absolutely everyone.

I do not understand this.

But should we say Basel or Basle? Well, we used to say Basle, and now usually we say Basel. I do not understand this, either. As it happens, the French name for the town is Bâle, and the Romansh name is Basilea.

It's when the English go to Wales that things get really strange, though. I can see why the town of Yr Wyddgrug is usually called Mold by most English people; but surely there's no excuse for Abertawe's being called Swansea, and Mongomery Trefaldwyn.

Though, come to think about it, Swansea is a lovely name.

Word To Use Today Or Perhaps Not: an exonym. Munich's still used round here most of the time instead of Mönchen, and we still talk about Naples, Rome, Milan and Venice.

All places worth talking about.

Exonym comes from the Greek words for outside of and name.