Confetti

My life is strewn with bits of paper, words scribbled on them, and shards of newspapers and magazines with words or phrases circled. I find them in my pockets, all over the house, serving as bookmarks, on dry cleaning tickets I now can’t surrender, on cash register receipts, and restaurant napkins. I seldom remember to carry one of the little pads purchased to keep words I hear or read organized in one place.

I’m sitting with a small pile of these jots I’ve gathered to share. They look like large confetti. So let’s do a gala!

On the day of “the wedding,” “regalia” was used all day long to describe the royals’ dress (except for Princess Beatrice’s hat! That was called many other things.) The word originally applied to the symbols of royalty, e.g., the crown & scepter; gradually, to the symbols of rank, like military officers’ brass; and, eventually, to any finery in dress. It’s a Latin plural (as is confetti) used as a singular noun in English to describe, sometimes facetiously, any dressed-up look. Used in this sense, the opposite/antonym of “regalia” that I like best is “rags.”

I came across “spavined” in Morris West’s 1963 novel, “The Shoes of the Fisherman:” “He had flung his cap at the whirling windmills, but when the time came to assault them…how would he be then? A knight in shining armor…Or an aging Quixote on a spavined nag, an object of laughter for men and angels?”

For hundreds of years, it’s been used only to refer to a bony-hipped horse. But why not broaden its definition a bit and extend its use? Aren’t there millions of humans in the world who would rather think of themselves as “spavined” than “arthritic?” It sounds more elegant, begs elaboration, and might just save the word from becoming archaic.

David Brooks is helping coin a couple of neologisms. In his new book, “The Social Animal,” he writes of “sanctimommies”/ mothers who critique their peers’ parenting skills and “extracurricular sluts”/ their kids who participate in too many organized after-school activities. No one has more fun with our language than he.

The hero of a 2005 novel, “Indecision,” by Benjamin Kunkel is described as “the 21st-century literary descendant of Holden Caulfield” except that he suffers from “abulia,” a disease characterized by a lack of will or initiative. “Dwight knows that his indecisiveness makes him a sociological cliché.”

“Fracking” is the buzzword in the world of energy technology. It describes a new, economical method of hydraulic fracturing of underground shale rock allowing vast supplies of otherwise trapped natural gas to flow. Promoters say it’s a safe method to tap into 100-plus years’ supply in the US & Canada; detractors say it may pose a threat to drinking water. It’s controversial, and “fracking” will soon be on everyone’s lips….a new “f-word” at last!

One syndicated version of cryptograms is called “Cryptoquote.” I love to work these puzzles and watch the wise words of well known people emerge from the eyesore of encryption. A recent cryptoquote yielded this from Dr. Seuss: “… There is no one alive who is youer than you.” It’s a psychological principle, a spiritual concept, and a great word all rolled into one! Seuss could have properly used “more you,” but, oh, how I appreciate his lexi-play that, at last, gives us a homonym of “ewer.”

I hope you will accumulate some confetti of your own and enjoy a party with fellow word lovers

Remembering a Special Word

There it was, spelled out in all its glory…
O-C-H-S-E-N-S-C-H-W-A-N-N-Z-S-U-P-P-E. I’d never seen a word like it.

At the end of my first day in Germany, August 1, 1962, I had changed into civvies and walked off base from Coleman Barracks, five miles outside Mannheim, to a modest country gasthaus at the end of a farm lane, just a few yards from the Rhine River.

From its position at the head of the menu and its final five letters, I figured OCHSENSCHWANNZSUPPE must be soup. But what kind? … I had no idea. When the waiter came to take my order, I wanted the word. I pointed to its 19 letters, spread out like a banner across the top of the left inside page of the speisencarte.

“Ja, ochsenschwannzsuppe?” he asked, pronouncing all five beautiful syllables slowly and clearly. I loved hearing the word; it was so exotic. It occurred to me that the only German word I knew for sure at that point was gesundheit.

“Ja” I replied, taking to the language with lust, “ochsenschwannzsuppe.”
I had made my first transaction in a foreign language although my pronunciation was risible.

The waiter seemed pleased, all affability, as though it were a triumph of understanding for both of us. Then, as so often occurs when only one of two speakers is native to a language, he was encouraged to go on and speak a few sentences, quickly, and replete with the gutturals I would come to love. I only understood, from the uptick in his voice, that he had ended with a question.

I decided to just say “Ja.” I’ve always been a culinary adventurer, able to eat anything, so it didn’t matter much to me what I had ordered. I could wait to find out.

But I hadn’t been able to wait to get out among the German people, to experience “exotic” after 23 years during which I’d never traveled further from my native New York City than Columbus, Ohio.

I had arrived only that morning, a newly minted ROTC Second Lieutenant, fresh from four serious party-hard years at Cornell University. Two months in Armor Officers’ Basic at Fort Knox, Kentucky, had hardly prepared me for the introduction to my platoon… four sergeants and eighteen enlisted men, who had lined up, chests out, in front of their shiny washed tanks with guns pointed to the sky, and saluted me only a few hours earlier. It felt strange to be addressed respectfully as “Lieutenant Mc Kay, Sir” when I still felt like Joe, the Phi Delta Theta social chairman.

As I signed the documents accepting responsibility for the inventory of five tanks, a 2 ½ ton truck, two jeeps, machine guns, and many hand weapons, a shiver passed through me. I realized that I might have to lead these men, on a minute’s notice, in our five brutish, rattling panzers to defend the West German border. Tensions were high since the Berlin Wall had gone up the previous summer.

Guaranteeing that plenty of vodka and grape juice for “purple passions” was on hand for a toga party, and that “Bobby and the Counts” showed up on time with their rockin’ guitars, suddenly seemed like a faraway life.

The ochsenschwannzsuppe arrived, incredibly hardy and incongruous on that warm summer day, a thick, dark brown concoction with bits of meat, more like gravy than soup, and incredibly delicious. What I had agreed to with my second “Ja” was a huge platter of varied, healthy-looking brotchen with pads of butter stacked neatly at one end, slices of golden cheese at the other, and a smaller plate with pickled beets, cauliflower, and onions. I gauged it was enough, no multiplying miracle necessary, to feed my whole platoon. And all of it, it turned out, was provided at no extra charge.

I walked out to that gasthaus many times during my two-year tour of duty and was always greeted with a big smile and a welcoming, ochsenschwannzsuppe? Before I returned to the States, I asked the waiter/owner for that menu because the word held such a special place in my life. It had prompted me to study German and I became quite fluent.

This memory came back recently as I was preparing a session on compound words for a “Crazy About Words” class I originated and teach in my community. I love the fact that languages stretch and adapt, through compounding, to express new concepts. I read that other Germanic languages compound by stringing out a single word endlessly (eriebnisgastronomisches restaurant is a “theme restaurant”) while we English speakers use open compounds like “oxtail soup.” I think that love was born when I first saw ochsenschwannzsuppe, and I thank all the oxen who have donated their tails to making this word so memorable.

It's Greek to Me

The other day, following a talk I’d given, a word enthusiast raised her hand and asked, “Why do you feel entomology is so important?” I responded, deadpan, “Because they say insects will one day dominate the earth.” She blushed as the audience laughed. But I am all too familiar with that mistake. I apologized to her for my smart-aleck response. Until I really got into etymology, the study of the origin of words, I hesitated in my reach for the correct one of those two words myself.

Among the nearly 500 “–ologies,” (Greek suffix for “the study of”) listed in the dictionary, many are difficult to remember or distinguish from another. Cosmetology (cosmetics) and cosmology (the cosmos, the origins of the universe) or ethology (animal behavior) and etiology (the origins of disease) could hardly be more different in meaning. Yet the words are similar enough in their look or sound that we blunder ceaselessly and tend to avoid using them. Too bad!

One of the banes of my existence is that favorite word of writers waxing philosophical, a word I really like but, ironically, can never remember: epistemology (the study of the origins of human knowledge). I have to look it up every time, but I know one day it will stick.

Our problem, it seems to me, is most acute when the front part of the word is Greek as well. It’s so much easier to say, “He studies fish… or spiders” than to risk, “He’s an icthyologist…or an arachnologist.” If the root is a familiar word, even when of Greek origin, like anesthesia, we have little problem. Or if the word is thought of without regard to its being in two parts like anthology (literally, “a gathering of similar flowers”), or archaeology, it presents no challenge.

In modern times, many areas of scientific inquiry have had “–ology” added to them and work fine in our everyday language because we understand the root, as in climatology and angelology.

In American humor, we add all kinds of things up front of “-ology” to get a laugh or to be sarcastic, e.g., “I spend all this dough on tuition and my kid is studying “beerology.” Or, when asked to take out the trash: “What am I… a “garbologist?”

As problematic as “-ologies” may be, English owes Greek a big debt: almost 30% of the 80,000 words educated people use derive from Greek.

Back to the intended question, I feel “etymology” is important because language is inextricable from history. Historic events, periods, and trends bring changes that are reflected in the words/language we use. Investigating the origin of a word can serve as the threshold to the study of some interesting aspect of history.

There are, of course, major events like the Norman Conquest that resulted in our language adapting to become one-third French…and a big story there!

On a smaller scale, consider two words: pajamas and shirtwaist. Also spelled pyjamas, it derives from the Persian peyjama, and was incorporated, via Hindustani, into English, during the Raj, the period of British colonial rule in South Asia (1857-1947), along with many other words including khaki, dungarees, and pundit. A parent might use the time of putting on the kids’ pajamas for a short etymology/history lesson, “Do you know where that word came from?”

The word shirtwaist, a woman’s upper body garment, fell out of use after the deadly and much publicized Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire one hundred years ago last month. “Blouse” replaced it, and the ILGWU was born. Etymology in the making!

March and Other Ambiguities

What with the lion, the lamb, and the ides hovering around our “bewareness,” March is an iffy month.

“Well, old hag, the ides have come.” mocked Julius Caesar to the seer on his way to the Senate on 3/15/44 b.c. “Ah, yes, but they have not gone.” she retorted ambiguously, a short while before he was stabbed 23 times by his iffy friends.

I really wanted to use “iffy” in writing. It’s such a wonderful creation…an adjective coaxed out of a conjunction by the simple addition of the underappreciated little suffix, -y. Like the currently controversial “truthy,” it leaves me feeling uncertain every time I hear it, exactly as intended by whomever first used it.

But the dictionary labels it a colloquialism, meaning it originated in informal conversation, and is “not suitable for formal speech or writing” such as you experience here! Ah, how different things would be had Dickens written, “They were very iffy times.” in opening “A Tale of Two Cities!”

In keeping with the “iffiness” that abounds this month, let’s look at a few words, phrases, and facts I’ve come across recently that demonstrate, in one way or another, just how ambiguous (from Latin, ambigere, to wander about) life is.

I like the word amphiboly (an ambiguous grammatical structure in a sentence) and these nice examples of it: Disraeli once said to a man who handed him a book to read, “I shall waste no time reading it.” And how about a recent news story headlined, “Victims Advocate Counts Yellowstone Wolves.” (say whaaat?), or the made-for-Groucho road sign, “Eat Here and Get Gas.”

Humpty Dumpty got Alice going when he said, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – nothing more nor less.” To which she replied, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” (It’s a fact, according to the OED, that the 500 most used English words have an average of 23 different meanings! The word “round,” for example, has 70 distinct definitions. That explains much of the ambiguity in our beautiful language.)

Legerdemain (pronounced ‘lejerdeman’) is a neat word, meaning sleight of hand. Sy Safransky in an interview about The Sun, said, “…as if I were a magician and my ad-free, nonprofit magazine an elaborate feat of legerdemain, each issue another rabbit pulled from my hat…”

Lagniappe, (pronounced ‘lanyap’) per the dictionary, comes from Creole meaning a trifling present given to customers by a salesman. The iffy thing about that is it doesn’t sound like either a French or Spanish root. Sure enough, further research indicates that its origin is likely a Quechua word, nyapa, that made its way into Spanish, then traveled up from the Inca empire into New Orleans where the French article, la, was added. Ayelet Waldman, author of the recent best seller,“Bad Mother,” rewarded readers who preordered her book with a copy of one by her famous husband, Michael Chabon, as a lagniappe, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As this iffy month barrels past the ides, the time of the equinox (half night-half day), will be upon us. We might look on that as another example of March indecisiveness. But no ifs, ands, or buts about it, the longer days say that Spring is here at last. And whether March goes out like a lion or a lamb, the weather is going to get better… maybe!

Katherine Hepburn said of Humphrey Bogart, “He walked straight down the center of the road. No maybes. Yes or no.” He is the antidote to March iffiness!

Oh, To Be a Sandwich! …or… What Does It Take to Become an Eponym?

If you were born in July or August by Caesarean section, you have an eponymous connection… the first and last names of an early Roman Emperor, Julius or Augustus Caesar.

But, do you ever wish you could be an eponym, with something named after you…something more enduring than your not-totally-reliable progeny?

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, James Brudnell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, and, no kidding, Joao Marmalado (1450-1510) of Portugal, are all folks whose names were taken by the items they originated, which survive centuries later.

Eponyms also attribute to something discovered, like America (although Vespucci must give indigenous people their due!), something invented, like the derringer (Henry Derringer, American gunsmith), or something inspired, like the axel (Axel Paulsen, Norwegian figure skater). They surprise us frequently… we just never think that there might have been a Mr. Doyley, a 17th century London draper, who inspires the tatting of doilies to this day!

Some are very subtle, like maudlin, which derives from Mary Magdalene’s effusive sentimental behavior in the New Testament. Others are more obvious, like ritzy after Caesar Ritz, Swiss hotelier. Don Quixote’s tilting against windmills is forever preserved in the idealistic quixotic.

Eponyms come not only from people’s names, but from the names of places where things originated like the mazurka, a dance from Mazury, a region of Poland, and madras, that wonderful cotton fabric, from a city now renamed Chennia, the 5th most populous in India. (Back in “the day” I had to have bleeding madras, whose dyes were not fast, so that it looked different every time it was washed…cool!)

Writing this column, I have to be careful of something not so cool, malapropism, after the fictional character, Mrs. Malaprop from Sheridan’s “Rivals.” She was noted for her blunders in the use of words.

Two of my personal favorite eponyms come from nineteenth century circus performers, who died before their time only fifteen years apart.

Jumbo, whose name is from a Swahili word jumbe meaning “chief,” was a 6½ ton French Sudanese elephant, born in 1861. He toured the US and Canada with “The Greatest Show on Earth,” the Barnum & Bailey Circus, where he was the largest of its 30 elephants, a big hit with the public, and featured on most of the Circus’ posters. On the night of 9/15/1885, he was hit and killed by an express freight train in St. Thomas, Ontario. The resulting publicity inspired “Jumbo-size” food items like hot dogs and sausages. The word stuck to describe anything large or huge, including Boeing’s Jumbo Jets.

Jules Leotard (1842-1870) invented the flying trapeze and popularized the one-piece gym-wear that bears his name. He joined the Cirque Napoleon, went on to international stardom, and inspired the 1867 hit song “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” Although he sprained his ankle in a bad fall in Boston, he died in Spain of smallpox.

So now you have some idea of what it takes to achieve eponymous immortality. Remember… that favorite lunch food, the ham sandwich could just as easily have been called a ham sullivan, or a ham smith. If your name is John, you don’t have to bother…you’re already a famous necessity.

And if you want the easy way to eponymic status, simply be my Valentine!

New Aught-itude

It still impresses me that the 100,000 plus words in my dictionary (2006 pages in the American Heritage, 4th. Edition) are each constructed simply from some combination of letters derived from our 26-letter alphabet. From aardvark to zyzzyva, we have managed to create the most expressive language imaginable, the toolbox of writers, poets, and all who use and appreciate words.

The beginning of a new year puts many of us in a reflective mood. As that mood extends to my writing this column, I wonder what single word I might select as my “most important word in the English language.” Looking at a smorgasbord of candidates, I quickly realize that I have long regarded “attitude” as basic to just about everything in life.

It’s a great word that originally had a physical meaning, the “position of something relative to some other physical thing” (e.g., an aircraft or a ballet dancer assumes an attitude). It was later adopted by our ancestor-wordsmiths looking for a word to describe a “mental or emotional position relative to some aspect of life” (e.g., a person has a positive or negative attitude about money).

Because we all have the power to wake up each day and assume the attitude we choose, and so set the course for “the first day of the rest of our lives,” I rank it my #1 word.

Viktor Frankl, Dachau survivor, when asked upon liberation in 1945 to describe his experience, simply said, “I learned a lot about myself in these past three years.” In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he says that “the ultimate human freedom is to choose one’s attitude.”

Looking at the word, and focusing on the fact that it begins with “a,” the abecedarian in me comes out, and I reach for a “b” and a “c” word that will fit into this New Year’s reflection.

Bittersweet is a nice compound word with a yin and yang quality to it. The strong, fast-growing bittersweet vine chokes its host bushes and trees in growing season, but decorates their bare branches in winter with its glowing red berries encased in orange. Look up on a sunny day in the winter woods, or gather pieces of the vine to bring indoors, and you’ll appreciate the -sweet end of this word.

Frankl’s point was that many life experiences, even the toughest, are bittersweet, but we can learn and grow as human beings from each of them if we have an attitude of openness and an interest in learning about ourselves relative to Life.

Circumstances, a Latin word meaning, the things that surround us,
need not dictate our attitude. Attitude comes from within us, is self-determined. Imagine you have only six pennies. Are you poor? Circumstances might say so. But you give two away with generosity in your heart, then buy a piece of bread with a third, consciously savoring the taste of it. You are rich.

Cheers! Here’s to a rich and rewarding 2011.

Talking With My Mouth Full

Élan, long a favorite word,
so full of itself and uplifting,
leans low now
and whispers,
“anagram of Neal”

Neal Hartman, 1/9/46-10/13/10
Great Friend
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Welcome to the “Crazy About Words” Café ...catering to epicurious food & language lovers!

More new words and usages have evolved around food recently than just about anything else but communications technology. Foodies are grazing throughout the day, eating many small meals, rather than the old fashion three squares (named for a square wooden board on which food was served at inns and from which ‘room and board’ was derived). Tapas is in, and locavores are priding themselves on eating nothing that’s grown or raised beyond an ever-shorter radius of their homes. CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) are popping up all over, and cow shares (you get the front quarter; I get the hind) are burgeoning. People are tweeting about it all and e-mailing photos of their food as they eat!

So we’re going to visit the “Crazy Café” periodically and sample a few food words, some old… others new, to chew on.

A new reader reminded me last month in response to my “Silent Knights” column, that knish has the distinction of being the only kn- word in the dictionary in which the k is pronounced. It’s a Yiddish import from Russia (1916). Think of it as a big Jewish ravioli.

A good friend and successful cookbook author suggested that barbecue has an interesting etymology. Indeed, it derives ultimately from barabicu, a Caribe Indian word meaning sacred fire pit, and has become a kind of suburban altar. It’s also morphed into a sacred symbol, BBQ.

Cauliflower too, my friend thought. It’s from the Latin caulis (cabbage) and flower. It’s a standout in a family whose siblings are all edible leafy greens: kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and broccoli.

Looking at the two words together in his e-mail, I was inspired to barbecue some cauliflower. Voila! it was some degustation (tasting or savoring). If you’d like to “eat my words,” steam a trimmed cauliflower head al denté, cool and separate the “flowers,” toss with a light Tuscan herb or ginger sauce, marinate a few hours, & grill for 10 minutes. Here on Eastern Long Island, home of the LI Cauliflower Association, it might become a locavore’s dream… “Crazy Cauliflower.”

Are you aware of the cupcake craze? After losing in popularity to muffins and doughnuts, they have roared back in the last few years. I read of cupcake parties and cupcake wars, (with decorations like 5-star generals). They are the original patty cake of nursery rhyme fame, (patty cake, patty cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as quick as you can) dating to 1796, baked in cups, and designed to serve one person. They are also less rich and heavy than their uncle, pound cake, for which the ingredients of both, butter and sugar, were measured by weight (pound) rather than by volume (cup).

And did you know that Carry Nation, the six-foot tall Prohibitionist, also railed against foreign food? Clearly she did not win her uphill battle. The first volley sounded when Thomas Jefferson served “potatoes in the French manner” at the White House in 1802. Silly Carry, what was she thinking? Where would we be without our beloved French fries, without being able to hear ourselves say pommes frites to a waiter although we speak no French?

Food has, as always, brought us together—for sustenance as well as for good conversation. Happy Thanksgiving!

(Please feel free to forward this column to friends you feel would enjoy it, or give me their e-mail addresses and I will add them to our list.)