Spot the Frippet: broom.

 I wonder if witches use their broomsticks to sweep their houses, or whether they have vacuum cleaners just like everyone else?

photo by Asurnipal

Actually, now I'm thinking about it, I wonder how a flying broom is powered? You never know, witches might know the secret to combating global warming.

Hey, and if brooms fly by magic, rather than by some kind of fuel, then you could probably get a vacuum cleaner to fly, too. A vaccuum cleaner would be much more comfortable to sit on than a broom...

...though I suppose you'd have to be careful not to get the lead caught up in a tree.

Anyway. Brooms. Much cheaper and longer-lasting and more versatile than the most high-tech of vacuum-cleaners. And more soothing to operate, too.

There are quite a few plants called broom. They come from the group called the Genisteae, which you can find more or less all over the world. Lupins, gorse, and laburnum are included in the group, as well, of course, as broom:

French broom (found in California, apparently). Photo by Calibas

They tend to have long spiky bits that you can use to make, well, brooms.

Spot the Frippet: broom. The Old English form of this word was brōm, which is basically the same word as bramble and comes from a Proto-Indo-European word bherem- which means something like to project, or a point. The word started off meaning the prickly shrub, and took over from besom as the word for a sweeping implement in the 1400s.

Sunday Rest: manoeuvre. Word Not To Use Today.

 This word begins with man- but quite frankly I couldn't care less about that.

The middle syllable sounds like a cow in labour, but I don't care much about that, either.

To be honest, my main difficulty with this word is the spelling.

I know it's different in America. But it's still horrible.

Sunday Rest: manoeuvre. Or maneuver, if that's acceptable where you are at the moment. This word is French, of course, but it came to England in the 1400s so you'd have thought people would have had time to tidy the thing up a bit. The Latin word manopera means manual work, from manū operāre, to work with the hands.

Saturday Rave: The Cloud by Alexandr Pushkin

 Alexandr Pushkin is Russian literature's founding poet, and he is  generally reckoned by Russians to be their greatest poet, too.

Now, what kind of poems would you expect from a Russian poet who lived from 1799 to 1837, thus dying young (as a result of a duel with his wife's alleged lover) in a time of revolution and therefore being just about as Romantic as it is possible to be?

Well, probably not a hopeful one like this:

The last cloud of a scattered a tempest,

You fly alone in azure, the prettiest thing.

Alone you bring in woeful shade,

Alone you sadden a day that should be glad.

 

Not long ago you stormed the skies. Mighty,

And entwined with potent lightning,

You were the womb of divine thunder,

And quenched with rain the thirsty earth.

 

Enough, now: vanish! You cannot last forever.

The earth is refreshed and the tempest has fled,

And now the wind, fondling the leaves of the trees

With pleasure, is banishing you from the blissful sky.  

Word To Use Today: tempest. This word comes through French from the Latin tempestās, storm, from tempus, which means time.

Word To Use Today: scuttlebutt.

 Well, we all know about the word scuttle, and we also know what a butt is, so...

...hmm...actually, I think this approach might be going to lead us in the wrong direction...

Let's start again.

One of the meanings of the word scuttle is to sink a ship, and the scuttle of scuttlebutt is indeed a nautical term. It's nothing to do with making holes in the bottom of a ship so it sinks, though, because on a ship a scuttle can also mean a hatch, or its cover, and in scuttlebutt it means the place where the cask of drinking water is kept - or, nowadays, it'll probably be a drinking fountain (actually, nowadays, it'll probably be fenced off with hazard warning tape).

Yes, a scuttlebutt is an old form of water-cooler.

And both, pleasingly, are known as fountains not only of water, but of gossip.

Word To Use Today: scuttlebutt. Here the word butt meaning large cask is nothing to do with the word butt meaning backside...at least, there is a connection but it's coincidental. Butt meaning backside is related to the Old English butuc meaning end or ridge, but butt meaning cask comes from the Old French botte, goes back to the Latin buttis, cask, and before that perhaps it's something to do with the Greek word butīne, which means chamber pot.

The word scuttle in this sense comes from the Old Spanish escotilla, a small opening, from escote, an opening in a piece of cloth.

As reliable as a Kalashnikov: a rant.

 Look, when one uses the formulae:

 x is like y

or

as x as y

then the whole point is that x does have to be quite like y. Otherwise, as I would have thought fairly obviously, the whole conceit falls to pieces.

A few years ago I read of legs like golfing umbrellas, and I am still trying to work out in which way legs might be like golfing umbrellas. Were they striped? Did they not bend at the knee? I just don't know.

Anyway, as I expect you know, these types of constructions are called similes, and the similarity between the words simile and similar is not coincidental.

Vladimir Putin is not a professional writer, but he does seem to have come up with a completely original way of messing up a simile. He's been trying to encourage the use of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, which people worry might do them harm.

He described it as reliable as a Kalashnikov.

That may not have done much for the uptake of the Sputnik vaccine, but it gave me a laugh.

Word To Use Today: Putin. In Russian, put means way or road. So Putin means man of the road.

Kalashnikovs are believed to have killed more than a million people.

Nuts and Bolts: antimetabole.

 Here's another long Greek word that turns out to mean something really simple.

Antimetabole is when you repeat a phrase, but swap around two of the most important words in it.

I know what I like, and I like what I know

is an example of antimetabole (and also, of course, of the very deepest possible stupidity).

It's not necessary to know about antimetabole in order to use it. Did Snoop Dog know he was using antimetabole when he used the lyrics I've got my mind on my money and my money on my mind? Did Shakespeare know when he wrote Fair is foul and foul is fair?

I'm pretty sure that my late mother-in-law didn't know she was using antimetabole when she used to say I like cheese but cheese don't like me.

It was still a clear and effective expression of her predicament, though.

Nuts and Bolts: antimetabole. This word is Greek, from anti- against, or opposite and metabolē, turning about or change.

Thing Not To Be Today: curt.

 The word curt, describing someone who speaks in a rather rude and also brief kind of a way, is, unsurprisingly, linked to the Latin word curtus, which means cut short or mutilated.

The interesting thing is that the first synonym for the word curt in my Collins dictionary is blunt.

Thing Not To Be Today: curt. Or, indeed, blunt. 

(Yes, I know, so many people are idiots: but they're never going to improve unless you explain things nicely, are they?

Mind you, if you get it wrong and end up being patronising then that's not going to help anyone, either.)

photo from the Korean Culture and Information Service at Korea.net