’23 A To Z Challenge – E

The Sound of silence…. Music…. Language

Each language has its own sound – its own tempo – its own delivery.  Even if you don’t know what the foreign speaker is saying, you can often tell what language it is, simply by the sound of it.  Italian and Spanish sound like the machinegun chatter of chickadees on meth.  French sounds like the speaker is trying to evade being charged with child luring.  German sounds like someone is training a dog, and Russian seems spoken by a crew of cesspool cleaners.  I often know the area where an English native is from, just by the local accent.

Most languages don’t change much, or very quickly.  Spanish-speakers can read El Cid in the original, while Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at the same time, requires a translator.  English evolves, and its sound has changed over time.

It’s not just the new words, and the new meanings and usages of old words.  It’s that the world, and therefore the language, has grown larger, and more complex.  We have less time, to say more.  The construction is getting shorter, quicker, tighter, and wider, but not as deep.

A century ago, or two, we had the time – at least the privileged, educated,  upper crust – to converse and orate, using grandiloquent, polysyllabic words, often from Latin or Greek bases.  Those idyllic days are gone.  The grand old days of the unhurried Romance-era are long past.

I recently read a piece from another archaist like me – someone who likes to throw the occasional impressive antique usage in.  He used the word

EFTSOON

Soon after, before 950; Middle English eftsone,Old English eftsōna.See eft², soon

While it was a sweet, caramel-sundae kind of word, we just don’t have the time for it anymore, in our fast-paced, frenetic lives.  The leisurely, imposing sound of it has been replaced by curt, businesslike words like ASAP, or stat.

The Good Old Days were only good for the cream of the social crop, but their relaxed, melodious language usage was pleasing to the ear.  Hurry back ASAP stat soon for another helping of blather.

Substitute Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 said thanks to Marla for providing our words last week.

What do you think these are/mean?

1. Bumfuzzle

It’s a great word to describe some of the more inept police officers.  The type who drops his doughnut in the car park, and then drives off with his paper cup of coffee on the roof.

2.  Gardyloo

With two Scottie dogs, and two cats, we have to latch the WC door during periods of constipation contemplation.  It’s difficult to concentrate on the business at hind, with two pair of beady eyes staring at you, or trying to Stand and Deliver with a cat stropping your ankles.

3.  Taradiddle

When I should have been doing research to find the meaning of this word, I was busy not cutting down the cherry tree, and I was attacked by a purple Koala with a kumquat.

4.  Snickersnee

This is the new roller-coaster ride at the Brighton Beach amusement park.  After a huge loop-the-loop, you go through a dark, tunnel section where they spray you with nitrous oxide – laughing gas.  You come out scared shitless spitless, but giggling your face off.

5.  Bumbershoot

That’s a good feed of albino asparagus – with cheese sauce.

6.  Snollygoster

Luckily, it was a type of extinct (If you’ll excuse the expression) flower.  Historical records indicate that its aroma was enough to make a corpse plant pull up roots and leave the neighbourhood.  The last example was crushed by a charging hippo in Mali, in 1874, and the only people who miss it are etymologists.

7.  Brouhaha

That’s when you think that you’re absolutely hilarious after a dozen beers, but no-one else does.  It’s not wry wit – more like rye wit.

8.  Wabbit

I was researching Scottish dialect, to try to get some inspiration for this word, but I just got so tired.  I was absolutely exhausted, so I lay down for a little nap, and by the time I woke, it was time to publish.

9.  Pandiculation

The batteries in my hearing aids went dead, but I think they’re talking about a Heinz catsup/ketchup commercial from the ‘70s.

10. Borborygm

Borborygm was the tribe of natives in Mali where that last snollygoster was found.  They were a strange people, dressing in feathers and flowers, with lots of strange makeup.  Elton John is said to have purchased the rights to their story.

Prehistoric Humor

A caveman is sitting by a creek, gnawing on a hunk of mastodon meat, enjoying the rare quiet. After a short time, the quiet is broken by a distant shriek and from the direction of his cave, his wife comes running. “Wog! Wog!” she screams, “Come quick! A saber-toothed tiger has just chased mother into the cave.” Wog looks up at his wife with mild annoyance, chews the final remaining piece of meat from the bone, and calmly says, “What do I care what happens to a saber-toothed tiger?”

***

At a wedding ceremony, the priest asked if anyone had anything to say about the union of the bride and groom – it was their time to stand up and talk, or forever hold their peace.  The moment of utter silence was ended by a beautiful young woman, holding a small child.  She started walking toward the pastor.

Everything quickly turned to chaos.
The bride slapped the groom.
The groom’s mother fainted.
The groomsmen started giving each other looks, and wondering how to save the situation.

The priest asked the woman, “Can you tell us why you came forward?  What do you have to say?”
She replied, “We can’t hear at the back.”

***

I recently called an old Engineering buddy of mine, and asked him what he was up to these days.
He replied that he was working on aqua-thermal treatment of ceramics, aluminum, and steel under a constrained environment.
I was really impressed, until further conversation revealed that he was washing dishes with hot water, because his wife had ordered him to.

***

Me; Age 12
Fell off bike at high speed on a gravel road.  Rode home 5 miles.
Me; Today
Used the wrong pillow and was non-functional for 2 days.

***

Who Says Men Don’t Remember?

A couple went Christmas shopping.  The shopping center was packed, and the wife was suddenly surprised to find that her husband was nowhere to be seen.  She was quite upset, because they had a lot to do, so she called him on her cell phone, to ask him where he was.
In a quiet voice he said, “Do you remember that jewelers that we went into about five years ago?  The one where you fell in love with that diamond bracelet that we couldn’t afford, but I told you I would get for you one day?”
The wife choked up and said, “Yes, I remember that shop.”
He replied, “Well, I’m in the pub next door.”

***

When my wife caught me on the bathroom scale, sucking in my stomach, she laughed.  “That’s not going to help.”
“Sure it does.  That’s the only way I can read the numbers.”

***

The difference between an introvert and an extrovert mathematician is: An introvert mathematician looks at his shoes while talking to you, an extrovert mathematician looks at your shoes.

’22 A To Z Challenge – O

I’ve been told to try to keep my posts family-friendly.  This post will be suitable for the Manson family, or the older, nearer Black Donnelly family.  I damned near shit a brick, a couple of years ago, when my son casually told me that, “They let Charles Manson out of prison.”  When I’d caught my breath, he continued, “It was feet first, but they let him out.”

I get a kick, listening to Christian Apologists loudly, firmly, declaiming in a religious debate, when it becomes obvious that they don’t know what they are talking about, and are wrong, but they desperately won’t accept it.  Today’s off-color word is

ONANISM

As The Princess Bride movie told us, I don’t think that means what you think it means.  Masturbation is not high on the list of Christian talking points, but it does get mentioned by a certain group.  From the time of the Bible, a faction of deeply insecure, (mostly) men, believe that there is some mystical power in sperm, and that it is a sin to ‘waste it on the ground,’ and rail about the evils of masturbation.

Strangely, this group usually also denounces female masturbation, even though there is no sperm involved.  They just don’t want anybody else to get some enjoyment, if they’re too tight-assed to get some themselves.  What are you using for birth control??  So far, just my personality.  They call it self-abuse, as if pain or physical damage were being inflicted.

The term originates with the story of Onan, who was forced to marry, and mate with, his brother’s widow.  Not wanting any possible child of his dead brother to be thought to be his, he withdrew at the point of ejaculation, and ‘spilled his seed upon the ground.’

I DON’T THINK THAT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS.

Therefore, Onanism is not the masturbation that Good Christians condemn, but rather, coitus interruptus.  I recently listened to a female caller denounce birth control, because she felt that, “All life is sacred, from conception to death.”  Hello!!!  Have you seen the definition of ‘CONTRACEPTION’???!  Trance gender isn’t allowed by God – No, but stupidity and illiteracy are.

I was watching Women’s Olympic Beach Volleyball yesterday, and there was a wrist injury – but I’ll be okay to post again in a couple of days.  C U then.   😉  😎

’22 A To Z Challenge – H

 

Benny Hill!  Benny Hill!  Benny Hill!

What can you say about Benny Hill?

He was a mediocre actor, a funny TV comic, and a brilliant writer and comedian.  To be the writer and comedian, he was also a brilliant linguist, sometimes making puns and jokes in two and three languages.

He got “Son of a bitch!” past the BBC censors by claiming that a French skit character spoke of, ‘Ze sun, over ze beach.’

He talked about having a bent wood chair in his dressing room.  Not a Bentwood Chair – but a bent wood chair, because his dressing room was in the damp, BBC basement.

With the moving of a couple of letters on a sign, he turned
Dr. Johnson
the
rapist

Into

Dr. Johnson
therapist

Not only was he familiar with French and German, but quite knowledgeable about regional British accents, where, if you travelled 50 miles, the common folk could not be understood, and bread rolls had changed names.  Sometimes he used words and phrases that those born on this side of the pond didn’t recognize.

Once, he wrote a bit, making fun of a commercial from Cheer detergent, which had just begun selling in the UK.  We’ll take two dress shirts, and pour blackberry juice on both of them.  Then we’ll wash one of them in Applaud detergent, (So no-one could accuse him of making fun of Cheer) and the other one in Ben’s Cleanso.  Flash out – flash in.  And there you see it friends (Both shirts still badly stained)  Not a haip o’ the difference.

HAIP

haip = “wattle, sheaf or heap of straw etc.”
(Therefore – something small, or inconsequential)
And you thought that the word for H was going to be Benny HILL.

I took its meaning from context, but I had to wait for Al Gore to invent the Internet, and then wait some more until stable genius (Like Mr. Ed), Donald Trump perfected it, to meet its parents online.  I still haven’t, really.  I finally found one word-site which gave the definition, but only said that it was British dialect, and very rare.  It did not say what area dialect, although I suspect Northumbria/Yorkshire – up north, away from London and the universities, where the poor folk live.  If this word were coined in the US, it would be from Appalachia.

Helpful fellow-blogger and word-nerd Daniel Digby, just introduced me to wordhistories.net, a Frenchman living in Lancashire, who blogs about etymology.  At first I shook my head about a Frenchie in England but it makes as much sense as a Quebecois in Ontario.  It’s 300 miles from London to Paris, and 300 miles from Toronto to Montreal.  Perhaps he’s more successful wrestling search engines than I am.  When I get back from Merriam-Webster on Wednesday, we can have a few laughs.   😆

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

If you have never remarked, at least to yourself, about the number of English words that are almost the same size and shape, have almost the same letters and meaning, and yet are different…. You’ve never done a crossword puzzle.  😳

Where to find Guinness – Any decent bar – but in the crossword, you have to work sideways.  What is the second latter?  Is it Eire or Erin?

Claim – is it aver, or avow?

Price rise – bump or jump?

Cell inhabitants – nuns or cons?

Prohibit – bar or ban?

Talk a lot – yak or gab?

Geological period – era or eon?

Sleep – nod or nap?

The top – acme or apex?

Peak – top or tip?

Not real – fake or faux?

Hand warmers – mitts or muffs?

Gourmet delicacy – snail or quail?

Hurled – flung or slung?

Comics dog – Otto or Odie?

Over – atop or upon?

The 411 – info or data?

Stop up – plug or clog?

Exploited – milked or bilked?

Wicked – evil or vile?

Senate yes – aye or yea?

Kick out – eject or evict?

Made mad – angered or enraged?

Outdo – beat or best?

Pants part – seat or seam?

Agree with – sync or side?

Father-involved – parental or paternal?….or, if mother’s involved – prenatal

Old-time actress, in five letters – starts with GA.  Ooh!  Ooh!  I got this!  Green Acres TV show – Eva Gabor.  Oops. Sorry!  Even old-timier than that – Greta Garbo!  Same five letters – different order.  Rats!

Dog food brand (in four) – Iams or Alpo

Because of the product that they provide, crossword composers are usually exacting and precise in the usage of words in both their clues, and solutions.  Sadly, illiteracy and incorrect usage creep in, even among the best.

The solution to doesn’t want to, is the six-letter word averse, not the seven-letter adverse, which means, unfavorable, contrary, opposing.

The correct response, (in four letters, second letter I), to lay low is kill.  To hide, is to lie low.

The pedant in me says that core group is not a cadre!  A cadre is a frame or border, which contains other things placed inside.  If you’re pretentious enough to use the word cadre, then your core group are the newbies.

Muss one’s hair.  Tussle means wrestle, scuffle or struggle  It’s not accurate, unless we’re talking about Amos, from the 9 Chickweed Lane comic strip – tousle comes from the Scottish touse – to handle roughly – to dishevel.

Finally, we get to related things which occur serially and sequentially, but are not identical.

Festive nights are not eves!  Eve is the short form for evening, the time when light and dark are about the same – dusk, twilight, nightfall, even gloaming – depending on the date, perhaps from Six P.M. till Nine.   ‘Nights’ continue through till sunup the next morning, but very few festive parties do.

To fill a pipe does not mean tamp.  They are two separate actions.  A pipe must first be filled, before the tobacco can be tamped down for a slow, even smoulder.  It’s why Scotty stopped smoking a pipe.  When he was smoking someone else’s tobacco, he crammed so much into the bowl that he could hardly draw.  When he was smoking his own, there was so little that it wasn’t worth it.

Ties vs. laces.  I see teenagers all the time, whose shoes have been laced, the ends of which are dragging on the ground, untied.  I often wonder why they, or someone else, don’t step on a trailing end, and produce an epic face-plant.

Unlatch a gate – open.  I can unlatch a gate, and leave it for the dog, or the cows, or even my buddy the burglar, to open when it is necessary, or convenient.

Assuming that the therapy session goes well, and the meds kick in, I’ll be back, as usual, in a couple of days.  You’ve been warned.  😉

Contrary To Popular Belief

Contrary to popular belief, the Internet doesn’t know everything.

My Mind recently went for a little walk, unaccompanied, but properly masked.  When it returned, it brought back a tiny piece of my childhood – a strange little piece called

UNEEDA LABORATORY

I know that it existed, because Mad Magazine did a send-up on it, and I once read an article saying that jokesters spoofed it with names like Igotta Laboratory, Wewanna Lab. and Theyhadda Lab.  Whether they ever heard of the Laboratory, smart marketers are still using the cutesy name to identify companies like, Uneeda Taxi, Uneeda Tire Center, and Uneeda Burger.

In my youth, I never investigated what Uneeda Laboratory researched, so I plugged it into both Bing and Google.  I got back a black hole.  😯  Nabisco made biscuits that they called Uneeda, back in the early 1900s.  There’s a coated abrasives firm which makes Uneeda wire wheels, sanding belts, and grinding wheels, but they market them as Tanis Brush.  They brag that they’ve been in business for 50 years, but my memories of Uneeda are 65 years or more old.

In the 1960s, there was a Brooklyn company that made a product called Uneeda Dolls.  The dolls are long gone, and the company was bought up by a Hong Kong firm called Tony Toys.  There’s a tiny village named Uneeda in West Virginia, about as big as a mole on a chipmunk’s nose.  It’s not large enough for another outhouse, much less a laboratory.  I’ve heard the joke that, “My home-town was so small; the McDonalds only had one arch.”  This village of 391 at a bend in a mountain road claims to have a McD’s, but there is no arch.

Dictionary sites don’t recognize the name.  It’s probably because I’m a grumpy old technological Luddite: I just don’t know what search terms to enter into search engines like Bing or Google.  When I enter meaning Uneeda, I am referred to the Nabisco biscuits, or the coated-abrasives, sites.  That’s what Uneeda is, not what the word means.

If I enter meaning name Uneeda, I am presented with 6 or 8 baby name sites which claim to know the meanings of every name, but don’t.

Meaning – baby boy name – Uneeda
Meaning – baby girl name – Uneeda

Each and every one of them is a Wiki-style site.  They all say, “We do not currently have a meaning for the name Uneeda.  If you have a meaning for the name Uneeda, please enter it.”

And so, the origin and history of the famous Uneeda Laboratory fades into the mists of time.  Have any of you ever heard of the Uneeda Laboratory?  If you know the meaning of Uneeda Laboratory, please enter it.

Book Review #26

I don’t read anything, just to tick off boxes on someone else’s Challenge list.  I have however, recently read two candidates for ‘A Book Published Before You Were Born.’  I reread the micro-short story, The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allen Poe.  When I downloaded it from the Internet, a note appeared below, saying, People who researched this, were also interested in…. and showing several other old titles, including Herman Melville’s, Bartleby the Scrivener.  I’ve never read it, and free is my favorite flavor.

Published 1853

Back in the ’60s, Ajax Cleanser had a series of TV ads where they claimed that their product was Stronger than dirt.  Since I am Older Than Dirt, it’s a struggle to find interesting books that old.

The book: Bartleby the Scrivener

The author: Herman Melville

The review:
The entire book is an un-named narrator, relating the tale of the strange actions and attitudes of a clerk that he employed.  The titled Bartleby was hired by a lawyer as a scrivener, a man who produced handwritten copies of deeds, and wills, and other legal documents, in the age before typewriters, Xerox machines, or computers.

Bartleby drove his employer to distraction.  He produced mountains of perfect copies, but quietly refused to perform any other menial task, such as proof-reading other clerks’ work, or going to the Post Office, with statements like, ”At present I might opt for not to be a bit reasonable.”

Despite it being locked up at close of work hours, the lawyer discovered that Bartleby somehow was living in the offices.  Eventually, he refused to do any work, yet continued to firmly but politely, decline to leave the premises.

While the book is 170 years old, I can’t believe that people of the time spoke, or wrote, like this.  It must have just been the author’s idiosyncratic technique.  The entire book reads like one of those machine-translated spam comments you receive.  Scores of words with two or more definitions were used with the wrong meaning in the context of the passage.

After a few phrases touching on his qualifications, I engaged him, satisfied to have among my corps of copyists a person of so singularly sedate an issue, which I notion might perform beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery certainly one of Nippers.

Turkey and Nippers were the nicknames of two of the narrator’s other law clerks.  A third was Ginger Nut, because his desk drawer was often full of shells of various nuts, which he irritated the office by cracking and eating while at work.

The fiery Nippers, among other strange actions, had been known to grasp up a ruler, point it at the cease of the room, (taken to mean ‘the far end’) and shout, “Fee the foe!”,  an expression that neither Bing, nor Google, nor Dictionary.com are aware of.  After some thought, I came to assume that the first word should be fie??  An expression of mild disgust or annoyance.

His fourth copyist, is rendered as ¼.  The third key to his private apartment, is described as .33.  It’s a one-trick-pony, or a one-joke-book.  It never sold widely.  It was mildly amusing for what it was, but not terribly deep, or socially significant, and always slightly confusing.  Ah well, it was an adventure.  Despite being as old as it is, it ticked off a box in another blogger’s Challenge.  When was the last time you tried something new?  😕

TILWROT II

Take me out of the ball game.

In the early 1960’s, before I arrived in this burgh, interest in, and support for, Junior, City-League Baseball was waning.  One local team felt that they needed $10,000, a considerable sum, to pay for a year’s uniforms, equipment and transportation costs, and no sponsors were coming forward.

One 16-year-old, baseball-crazy boy had an idea.  He would sit on a 6’ X 6’ platform on top of a 50 foot flagpole in the ball park, until the amount was raised.  He lasted three days, until unexplained stomach pains caused the same fire crew and ladder truck that put him up, to lower him down again.  His almost-feat was recently recounted in the ‘Flash From The Past’ history column in a Saturday newspaper.  His name was Ken Fryfogel.

Things I Learned While Researching Other Things – Act 2 – Fryfogel

The name Fryfogel is very uncommon.  Ancestry.com only has 298 listed in North America.  The unnumbered few in Canada are all in Ontario, and I suspect, most right here in Southwestern Ontario.  I decided to research.

Fryfogel appears to be a Germanic name, like Vogel – which is a bird, or Logel – who was a cooper.  Surname-meaning websites just shrugged.  I tried a translation website, but got nothing.  I tried changing the spelling from ‘el’ to ‘le.’  I tried pulling it apart, into Fry, and fogel – nothing.  I tried entering ‘fogel’ into a dictionary site.  I got, No listing for ‘fogel.’  Did you mean fodgel?’

I don’t know.  Do I??!  I’ve never run into the word.  What does it mean?   Yorkshire/Scottish dialect – a short, fat person-by extension, a fat hen.  So, a Fryfogel is someone who cooks up a big fat chicken.  Twenty miles from here, at the intersection of a concession road and the highway, halfway to Justin Bieber’s ex-home, stands the historic, 200-year-old Fryfogel Inn.  😎  What better name for an innkeeper than one that says that he’ll serve you up some fried chicken along with your ale?

I’ll be serving up some more interesting drivel in a couple of days.  Hope to see you then.  😀

Get A Grip

I have a gripe with English.  It is said that a man with a watch always knows what time it is.  A man with two watches is never sure.  For a word with one meaning, or even several established meanings, I know what is meant.  For words which keep adding, subtracting, and modifying meanings, I am less and less sure what is meant.

The word ‘grip’ originally meant, a grasp, a grab, a hold, by a person’s hand.  Recently, technology has included machines.  Once upon an archaic, the words ‘grip’ and ‘gripe’ meant the same thing.  (Don’t ask me why.  I can’t get a hold on it.)  Now grip can mean a small suitcase with a handle, which can be grasped and carried by one hand.  Gripe can be a nagging complaint by someone who may not have a firm grip on reality.

At one time, ‘grippe’, which is pronounced grip, but which is neither grip nor gripe, was the word to identify influenza, the ordinary, seasonal, gastro-intestinal ‘flu,’ a kinder, gentler, distant relative to COVID.  “Grippe” could cause abdominal cramps, especially among babies and young children.

To alleviate these symptoms, “Grippe Water” was developed and marketed.  My mother dosed me with it several times.  The original formula contained alcohol and sugar in addition to sodium bicarbonate and dill oil – a couple of stomach calmers, some calories to replace what might have been lost to the illness, and a mild sedative to aid with sleeping.  It was once said that the best remedy for a colicky baby, was a good, thick, oak door.

Then the All-Or-Nothing, Save Us From Ourselves, Snowflakes got a grip on it, and removed all the “bad” ingredients, so present-day products do not contain alcohol or sugar, but may contain fennel, ginger, chamomile, cardamom, licorice, cinnamon, clove, dill, lemon balm or peppermint, depending on the formula.

‘Grippe’ was what caused the cramping, but ‘gripe’ is the term for the actual clutching, grasping intestinal pain.  Since the formula was changed, the name has also been changed.  ‘Grippe Water’ is no more, and the new product is ‘Gripe Water.’  That’s only one of the English terms that I have a gripe about.  😯