I Love Me

On the same page (Op-Ed) of a recent New York Times two well-known personalities were identified as narcissists.  One is Mel Gibson, who has been receiving tons of publicity (all of which spelled his name right) for reportedly berating, cursing, demeaning, and possibly striking his inamorata.  The other supposed narcissist is the late Larry Rivers, an artist who created a cinematic history of his two pubescent daughters’ developing breasts; the films are now the subject of a dispute between Rivers’ foundation and the adult daughters, who regard them as an invasion of their privacy.

The merits of these two sensational cases, replete with juicy revelations, are not the subjects of today’s disquisition—but lest you be disappointed, I assure you that things are likely to get fairly libidinous anyway.  Narcissism is a Freudian term denoting an exclusive absorption with oneself. It may include an erotic desire for one’s own body and personality.  Normal in childhood, so the Freudians say, narcissism becomes a pathological disorder in an adult when it impairs social functioning.  A narcissist has an exaggerated sense of his own importance, suffers delusions about his unique abilities, and depends on others to reinforce his self-image.  (I use the pronoun his, since the individuals mentioned are male, but females can also be narcissists.  Can you think of any?)

The term comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus. As the Roman poet Ovid tells the story, Narcissus was an incredibly handsome youth about 16 years old (think Justin Bieber) who disdained all who loved him. One day he was followed into the woods by a beautiful young nymph (or perhaps she was a nymphet—think Miley Cyrus, or, on second thought, maybe not) named Echo.  She was unable to utter a word, and finally he heard her footsteps.  “Who’s there?” he called.  And she answered, “Who’s there?”  It went on like that for a few more exchanges until Echo rushed forward and embraced Narcissus.  He pushed her away and told her to leave him alone.  Heartbroken, she spent the rest of her life pining away for him until only her voice remained—but not before she had asked the goddess Nemesis to take revenge on Narcissus for rejecting her.

Narcissus came across a pool of water and, bending over to take a drink, saw a reflection of himself for the first time in his life. He fell in love with the beautiful boy he saw—not realizing at first that it was himself.  When he finally figured this out, he became upset, flailed about, and died. His soul went to hell, where he continues to gaze at his image in the River Styx. A flower called the narcissus (a.k.a. amaryllis, daffodil, or jonquil) sprung up where he had died.  Anyway, that’s the story, which you can believe or not. 

More shrinking violet than narcissus, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou was in full bloom when he wrote the following:

            There was a young man named Narcissus,

            Who said, when disdaining a missus,

            “My image and I

            Are both quite a guy,

            There must be some way we can kiss us.”

           

Slip-Sliding Away

One of the customers, who usually devotes himself to more cosmic ideas, asks where the term “slider” came from.  Sliders—those little three-bite mini-hamburgers—are ubiquitous these days, everywhere from greasy spoons to classier joints with white tablecloths and sommeliers.  Their price ranges from 50 cents to as much as ten bucks each—depending on where you wish to consume them and whether you want them plain or decked out with trimmings like paté de foie gras and truffles.

As with most etymologies, there’s a little indecision in pinning down the precise origin of the word.  Most people agree that the White Castle hamburger chain, which flourishes in the Midwest and has served mini-burgers since the early 1920s, provided the inspiration for the name.  As food writer Florence Fabricant tells the tale in a New York Times dissertation:

“Originally, the term ‘slider’ for the White Castle burger was derogatory, having to do with the ease with which the greasy sandwiches went down….White Castle did their best to ignore the term. That was, until 1993, when it trademarked its sandwiches as ‘slyders.’

“’The spelling had to do with our legal history, a decision made on the corporate side to claim it was a distinctive name,’ said Jamie Richardson, the vice president for corporate affairs at the company’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. ‘In our cultural history there were folks in the company who weren’t fond of it, but it’s now a term of affection.’ Printed fliers in the White Castle stores call the burger ‘the classic slider.’”

There’s a large body of evidence that suggests the term “slider” originated in U. S. Navy slang.  Wednesday, it is said, was called “slider day,” because the menu rotation called for grilled hamburgers, which were notoriously greasy, to be served throughout the fleet on that day.  The greasiness would suggest and the sailors maintained that the burgers not only slid down easily, but also slid all the way through you with the same ease. 

There are other etymological theories including the burgers’ supposed resemblance to the red-bellied terrapin known as a slider, or the fact that burgers slide onto the grill and then onto the bun, as opposed to hot dogs, which roll.  Another pundit says the term referred to an ice cream sandwich in 1915 and then was applied to the burger that resembled it.  Yet another scribe quotes the Oxford English Dictionary’s listing of “slider” meaning a coaster holding a decanter, which was slid along the table, and suggests the mini-burger resembled this object.  You pays your money and you takes your (greasy) choice.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has been sliding for years, with no end in sight.  He bestirred himself from his customary torpor to spin this gossamer web of gustatory rhyme:

            Take back your fine filet mignon,

            Dom Perignon in crystal flutes,

            The choicest chef’s Chateubriand—

            For these I wouldn’t give two hoots.

            I’ll have a burger, if you please,

            Grilled on a grimy, greasy griddle,

            With mustard, onions, cheddar cheese,

            And kosher pickles in the middle.

Welch, as in Squelch

A major airline currently involved in merger negotiations was accused in an article in a major newspaper of being allowed to “welch” on its pension obligations.  Supercilious readers, like me, read that and sniffed, “Tut-tut—whoever said that should have known it’s not welch, but welsh.” But wait a minute, smarty-pants, not so fast! 

The verb, which means “to swindle by refusing to pay a debt,” stems from the adjective describing a native of Wales.  The pejorative verb originated in the 1850s in British horse-racing circles, in which presumably one or more Welsh bookies refused to pay winning bettors and absconded with the money. English mockery of the Welsh, however, goes back even further, as the nursery rhyme “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief” has indicated since the late 1700s.

Welsh has a long, long etymological history from the time the ancient Romans referred to residents of southern Gaul as Volcæ. The word made its way into Anglo-Saxon as wealas, meaning a non-Germanic foreigner. Among the dozens of permutations listed in the Oxford English Dictionary are Wiliac, Wilsc, Wylsc, Welsc, Welisc, Welsse, Welshe, Walish, Walische, Walyach, Walch, Walsh, and, yes—Welch. In fact, the first printed use of the word to mean “swindle” was in London’s Morning Chronicle of June 8, 1857, which observed of a scurrilous individual: “He got his living by ‘welching'…” Welch is regarded by both Oxford and Webster as a perfectly acceptable alternative to welsh.

So if the major airline (no, you’re not going to catch me naming it; I bet there are hordes of idle libel lawyers just sitting around waiting to pounce on some poor chump like me) wishes to “welch” on its commitments it may do so with linguistic, if not ethical, impunity.

Impunity is the watchword of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who likes to argue in circles because then he can’t be cornered. 

            My friend Bert’s in the habit

            Of craving Welsh rabbit

            And Caerphilly eating the cheese.

            After that, he will beg

            For a luscious Scotch egg

            To eat with some fresh English peas.

             
            Then to wash it all down,

            At the old Rose & Crown,

            He’s picky in choosing his quaff—he

            Won’t touch any Scotch whisky

            And finds English ale risky—

            Just give him a strong Irish coffee.

      

Fiddling Around

Why, queries a correspondent who lives not far from the spot on which William the Conqueror defeated Harold in the Battle of Hastings, do we say someone is “fit as a fiddle”?  Sometimes I do feel like a bit like a Stradivarius myself—that is one that has been around since about 1690. Being fit as a fiddle, on the other hand, means to be “in excellent form or condition.”  What makes a fiddle so fit?  Why couldn’t you be as hale as a horn or as glad as a glockenspiel?

Well, first we need to find out where fiddle, as a word for a violin, comes from.  Via Old English, Old Norse, Middle Dutch and German, the word ultimately sprang from the Latin vidula, a stringed instrument, which in turn came from the name Vitula, the Roman goddess of joy and victory.  So from its earliest origin, the fiddle was associated with feeling good.

The earliest known use of the English phrase “fit as a fiddle” was in William Haughton’s 1598 play Englishmen for My Money, in which the term refers to an agreeable state of affairs. Not until 1889, in a work called Fifty Years on the Trail by Harrington O’Reilly, does the Oxford English Dictionary have a reference to the phrase in its current usage: “I arrived at my destination feeling fit as a fiddle.”

Wordman Charles Earle Funk has the funky idea that the phrase came about because the shape, form, and musical tone of violins were so pleasing that they invited complimentary comparisons to human beings.  Well, maybe.  Another source, who for reasons of uncertainty wishes to remain anonymous, offers the dubious explanation that the original phrase was “fit as a fiddler” and referred to the stamina of musicians who played hours upon end for dances without a break.  This was before the days of the musicians’ union, of course.

Be that as it may, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou wishes it to be known that he is as unfit as an untuned ukulele and has the following off-key verses to prove it:

            FIDDLERS THREE

            Sir Yehudi Menuhin

            Sounded quite genuine

            But not very hilarious

            When he played a Stradivarius.           

            Stephane Grappelli

            Hated celli,

            But he was always smilin’

            When he heard a violin.

            Jack Benny

            Could play any

            Song under the moon,

            Out of tune.

And one more, for good measure:

            Joshua Bell

            Sells very well,

            Because everyone expects he

            Will always look sexy.

And if you want a rhyme for Itzhak Perlman, you’ll have to come up with it yourself.

           

Slightly Sprightly

“Remarkably spritely” is how Jennifer Steinhauer described Senator John McCain in a recent New York Times article.  The adjective “spritely,” whatever it might mean, is obsolete.  The most recent usage cited by the Oxford English Dictionary was in the eighteenth century.  The noun “sprite,” which is still in current usage, is a “disembodied spirit, ghost, elf, or fairy.”  Whatever you may think of Senator McCain, you’re unlikely to think of him in those terms.

What Ms. Steinhauer or her orthographically-challenged editor undoubtedly meant to say was that the Arizona Republican was “sprightly,” a word that once meant “ghostlike,” but in modern usage means “vigorous, brisk, lively, full of animation.”  Now that sounds more like McCain, doesn’t it?

The noun “spright,” which, like the adjective “spritely,” is now obsolete, was a variant spelling of “sprite,” introduced in the sixteenth century, in an erroneous analogy to Anglo-Saxon words like “light,” “might,” and “right.” “Sprite” derives, not from Anglo-Saxon, but from the French esprit and Latin spiritus (“breath”).   “Sprightly,” the adjective formed from “spright,” stayed in the language, while “spright” faded away.  It also changed its meaning from “ghostlike” to its present vivacious one.

Unlike Senator McCain, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou can be thought of as a disembodied spirit, ghost, or elf, but probably not a fairy.  Showing his non-partisan (some would say apolitical) nature, the Bard submits the following for your degustation or your disgust, whichever comes first:

John McCain

Can never explain

Anything economic.

When he tries, it’s tragi-comic.

Harry Reid

Knows how to lead.

If Republicans are for it in the Senate,

He’s agin it.

                       

                        John Boehner

                        Is such a complainer--

                        Even if a Democrat is correct,

                        He’ll object.

                        Nancy Pelosi

                        Thinks everything’s rosy

                        And things would be bleaker

                        If she weren’t the Speaker.

                

Eponymic Earls

If you happen to be playing bridge after the Kentucky Derby, while eating a sandwich, wearing your new cardigan underneath your chesterfield, and idly admiring an orrery, when you are suddenly dealt a yarborough—then you are making use of six eponyms derived from British earldoms. As if you didn’t already know, an eponym (from the Greek epi meaning “attached to” and onyma meaning “name”) is a person for whom something is named.

Six British earls gave their names to the items above.  In case you’re wondering who they are, please read on.

Edward Stanley (1752-1834), 12^th Earl of Derby, founder of the horse race known in his honor as the English (now Epsom) Derby, a name adopted by other annual horse races.  He can brag of a double-whammy in the eponym department: in 1888 he visited America wearing a rounded, rigid hat known in England as a bowler (from its manufacturer, the London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler), and Americans named the style of hat as a tribute to the Earl.

John Montagu (1718-1792), the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, ordered his dinner meat brought to him between two slices of bread so that he could continue playing cribbage without getting the cards greasy (as he would have done by eating the meat with his fingers, as was his custom). He didn’t really invent the sandwich—people had been eating meat between pieces of bread for millennia—but his friends soon started referring to food served in that manner as a “sandwich.”

James Thomas Brudnell (1797-1868), 7^th Earl of Cardigan, was a British cavalry officer for whom a sweater that buttons in the front was named.  No one seems to know what the Earl’s connection to the sweater was, but so what, who cares?

           

An overcoat with concealed buttons and a fur collar is known as a chesterfield, named for one of the 19^th-century Earls of Chesterfield, but nobody seems to know which one or why.

Charles Boyle (1676-1731), the fourth Earl of Orrery, commissioned a model of the solar system, including the sun, the moon, the earth and all the other known planets in approximate scale to each other and mechanized to make orbital movements.  This device, often seen in science museums, is known as an orrery.

Charles Anderson Wosley (1809-1897), the 2^nd Earl of Yarborough, was a betting man, and he offered £1000 to anyone who was able to deal a bridge hand containing no card higher than a nine—provided the opponent paid the Earl  £1 each time he failed to achieve such a hand.  The Earl was on solid ground, since the odds of getting such a hand (in a fair deal, of course) are 1827 to 1. Such a hand has since been known as a yarborough, in the Earl’s honor.

Nothing has ever been named for the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, but that has not stopped him from resolutely turning out metrical slop like the following:

            There was a worried little eponym—

            Who always feared someone would step on him.

            He longed, instead, be a toponym,

            And then, he said, there’d be no stoppin’ him.

        

Plumb Wrong

A recent issue of Britain’s respected and usually grammatical newspaper The Guardian commented as follows on the new prime minister: “Cameron's powers of patronage are slightly reduced since he does not have power through government whips to hand out plumb posts chairing parliamentary select committees.”  The writer probably meant “plum” posts, which would mean jobs that were very desirable—especially those given as a reward. 

Plumb, from the Latin plumbum (meaning the metal lead), means “a lead weight on the end of a line used to establish a true vertical.”  By extension plumb can also mean “perfectly straight,” “immediately,” or “absolutely”—as in “you are plumb crazy.”

Plum, on the other hand, from the Latin prunum, refers to the purplish fruit, and,  likened to the sweetness of the fruit, to any desirable thing.  Food companies are now trying to persuade us that the food product so loved by costive oldsters and known for generations as a prune, should really be thought of as a dried plum, which is much more desirable.  No one ever talks about handing out “prunes” as rewards. 

Use of the wrong plumb in The Guardian may come as no surprise to those who remember the paper’s unfortunate habit (now largely a thing of the past) of making so many typographical errors—it once printed its own name as The Gaurdian—that the satirical magazine Private Eye began referring to it as The Grauniad.  

The Brad of Buffalo Bayou hardly ever makes typographical arrows, but he does perpetrate even worse linguistic offenses, like the following:

           

            You may find The Guardian

            A wee bit Edwardian.

            And perhapsThe Observer

            Could display some more fervour.

           

            It’s quite true that the Mail

            Is a tad shy on detail,

            And a few folks were slandered

            By that old Evening Standard

           

            The Daily Telegraph

            Can make a fella laugh,

            While The Daily Express

            Causes only distress.

            No hillside’s dew-pearled

            In the News of the World--

            But if you need some rhymes,

            Then you’d best get The Times

Humpty Dumpty Et Al

 

English boasts many evocative reduplicative words—words in which a sound is repeated, usually preceded by a different consonant—namby pamby, mumbo jumbo, Turkey Lurkey. Such words are usually for either comic or emphatic effect. For some reason unknown to me, a great many of them begin with the letter h.  A dozen or more easily spring to mind: helter-skelter, harum-scarum, herky-jerky, hoi polloi, Henny Penny, hocus pocus, hubba hubba, hurly-burly, hoity-toity, hokey pokey, holy moley, hugger-mugger, higgledy-piggledy, hanky-panky, hodge podge, hob nob, hootchy-kootchy, hotsy-totsy, hubble-bubble, hurdy-gurdy, Humpty Dumpty, and, of course, Hammacher Schlemmer. 

Harum-scarum, meaning “reckless or irresponsible” stems from the roots of harass and scare (sort of like shock and awe, one supposes).   Helter-skelter (“confused, haphazard”) is probably from the Middle English skelten (“to come and go”).  Higgledy-piggledy, which similarly means “in jumbled confusion,” probably was inspired by the way a herd of pigs huddle in disarray.

Hodge-podge (originally hotch-potch) is also a jumbled assortment, and its root is the French hocher (“to shake together”) plus pot. Hocher may also be the root of hootchy-kootchy, a sinuous burlesque dance, which involves a good bit of shaking as well as couching, that is “bending the body.” ­Hocus-pocus, an imitative Latin phrase used as magical invocation, stems from the word hoax; and it morphed into hokey-pokey, which can be ice cream sold by a street vendor or a dance (not to be confused with hootchy-kootchy) involving various body parts.

Hoity-toity (“silly, frivolous, flighty”) comes from the English dialect word hoit (“to play the fool”).  Hoi polloi is Greek for “the general population or the masses.” Hurly-burly ("uproar or tumult") is thought to derive from the verb hurl. Hugger-mugger, of unknown etymology, means "secret or muddled confusion."  Hanky-panky, as if I had to tell you, is "sexual dalliance," and is also of unknown etymology.

You can probably figure out the etymologies of the rest if you put your mind to it.

What you probably cannot figure out is the rationale for verses like the following, which was turned out by the Bardy-Wardy of Buffalo Bayou:

            Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

            But a really lousy winter,

            He had the flu, and then a brawl,

            And infection from a splinter.

            Humpty hoped he’d have a fine spring,

            Filled with birds and flower blossoms.

            Instead, his arm was in a sling,

            And he was bitten by some possums.

            Humpty hoped for joy that summer,

            But it was not that way at all,

            Summer proved to be a bummer,

            And at its end—he had a great fall.           

Capsule Reviews

The television schedule in the nation’s tenth largest daily newspaper summarizes the movie Show Boat as: “A pregnant woman must perform in a cabaret.”  I seem to remember a few other plot elements in the epic sweep of Edna Ferber’s novel and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical book—but if you have to summarize in eight words, something’s got to give.

Other classics meet a similar fate in this zippy journal. The Bounty (Mutiny on the Bounty) gets this capsule treatment: “A captain struggles to keep his crew in line.” And The Alamo: “A small group of soldiers defend a San Antonio fort.”

Perhaps I could get a job as a summarizer.  Here are some samples of how I would encapsulate a few famous works if they were adapted for television.

           

Hamlet: Moody Danish prince acts crazy to nail dad’s killer, gets stabbed, dies.           

Don Quixote: Naïve Spanish retiree, with goofy chum, fights windmills, etc., repents, dies.

           

Les Misérables: Hungry Frenchman steals bread, is jailed, gets out, eludes mean cop, starts new life, dies.           

Moby Dick: Angry New England skipper hunts white whale that ate his leg,            

finds him, gets caught on harpoon line, dies.

Oedipus Rex: Clueless Greek king kills dad, weds mom, regrets it, puts out eyes, is exiled, does not die.

           

I may have to turn for assistance to the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who scrawled a capsule TV version of Genesis shortly before he had a great fall. 

     World is created,
     God makes Adam.
     But he's unmated,
     Needs a madam. 

     So God makes Eve
     From Adam's rib--
     Hard to believe,
     But it's no fib.     

     The hapless pair
     In birthday suit
     Take Serpent's dare,
     Eat forbidden fruit.     

     God's double-crossed,
     And, boy, it shows:
     Tells them, "Get lost--
     Put on some clothes!"    

     After the Fall,
     It's all downhill.
     That's what you call
     Too much Free Will.    

     Will Original Sin
     Keep pair from heaven?
     Stayed tuned in--
     News at eleven.

   

Simply Blimply

 

A blimp is a blimp is a blimp.  As well as a dirigible.  But not a zeppelin.  So what’s the difference?  Well, since you asked, a dirigible, which comes from the Latin dirigere (“to drive”) is a lighter-than-air ship that can be driven, or steered, by a rudder, propeller, or thruster.  “Lighter than air” means the ship is held aloft, like a hot-air balloon, by the presence of a lifting gas (such as hydrogen or helium or simply heated air) in an inflated cavity. 

A zeppelin, named for the German Count Zeppelin, who designed the first one, is such a ship with a rigid framework inside the balloon.  The most famous of these (other than Led Zeppelin) was the Hindenburg, which crashed and burned in 1937, while landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 people.

A blimp is a non-rigid ship, that is one with no solid structure inside the balloon.  The word blimp, which was used as early as 1916, is said to derive from the listing of the two types of dirigible: A-rigid and B-limp.  Other word sleuths, however, insist that it’s an onomatopoeic word from the sound the balloon makes when you thump it with your thumb.  (Why would you do that?)

In the 1930s the cartoonist David Low created a character he called “Colonel Blimp,” a pompous, irascible, highly opinionated British army officer, who spouted passionately held views that were both reactionary and absurd.  Presumably the name was given to him because he was full of hot air.

Quite a different colonel is the subject of this hot air by the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who is up in the air most of the time:

            An amorous lieutenant colonel

            Took delight in his exploits noctolonel.

            Amor Vincit Omnia:

            Love cured his insomnia,

            As I read in today’s Wall Street Jolonel.           

           

Don’t Menschen It

Surely no other language has as many words for undesirable, unattractive, and hapless people as Yiddish.  It’s a treasure trove of descriptive nouns for jerks, dolts, bunglers, failures, boors, pests, slobs, and nonentities.   Each of them has its own nuanced meaning.

You can take your pick from the rich assortment that includes a schlemiel (an unlucky bungler), a schlimazel (an unlucky, inept, habitual failure), or a schnook (a stupid, unimportant, easily cheated dolt).  It’s been said that a schlemiel is the one who spills his coffee on the schlimazel—and the schnook has to mop it up. 

Then there's a schlub (a stupid, worthless unattractive boor) and a schlump (a sloppy, dowdy person).  The shmendrik--named for the title character of an 1877 operetta--is a clueless mama's boy.  The schnorrer is a wheedler.  

Perhaps the most offensive of all the offensive terms is schmuck, which was originally a term for the penis, but now means a jerk of the highest order.  It's synonymous with putz, which had the same original meaning. A schmo is a euphemistic variant of schmuck, and is also a jerk, but not such an odious one, and a yutz is a similarly inspired variant of putz.

The terms of opprobium are rounded out with nudnik (a pest, a pain in the neck), noodge (a nag, a whiner), nebbish (a pitiful, insignificant person), pisher (an inexperienced nobody), and everbody’s favorite—klutz (a clumsy person).

There seems to be only one word to describe a good person of integrity and honor, and that is mensch, something all of us schlimazels would like to be. 

Any one of the putdowns listed above would be a perfect fit for the Bard of Buffalo Bayou:

            When I was young and just a schnook

            I’d always get a dirty look

            From each and every person I would see.

            But then I grew up as a nudnik,

            A certified A-1 no-goodnik,

            And now the dirty looks all come from me.
 

A Dyeing Art

The New York Times must have a shortage of e’s in its type font.  That is the only explanation I can think of for Christopher Buckley’s recent satirical op-ed piece that referred to a hairdresser “dying her ladies’ locks with Egyptian henna.”  All together now, class: dying is the present participle of die, an intransitive verb that means to “pass from physical life, cease to exist, disappear, sink, languish, stop.”  None of those meanings suggest themselves as anything a hairdresser—even a satirical one—would do to a client’s tresses.

I suspect what Mr. Buckley and the slipshod editors on the Times copy desk intended to say was dyeing, the present participle of dye, which means to "impart and new and often permanent color to."  Oh, for want of an e, the world was lost!

The e in “dye” and “dyeing” is our good old friend Silent E. Tom Lehrer’s song about that character didn’t get around to “dyeing,” although he did point out that Silent E could turn a dam into a dame, but when he tried the same thing on Sam it came out the same.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, whose hair is dying but is not yet either dead or dyed, pays his tribute to the English language’s favorite letter in this Owed to E.

            Hail to thee, blithe, brilliant E!

            Silent though you often be.

            Like white wine? Please have some more—

            See those e’s you can ignore?

            Noisy letters can’t keep quiet,

            Some can cause a jangling riot,

            Such as f, j, q, r, v—

            Rest in peace with silent E.

Now! At A Book Store Near You

The free ride is over.  It’s time to pay up.  The book-like object known as Words Gone Wild, of which this blog is a mere harbinger, is now available for purchase.  It’s in book stores hither and thither, and it’s on-line at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, borders.com, and other cyber-outlets.  (How these sites already have “used copies” available, I couldn’t say; someone is reading too fast.)

The good news is the book’s list price, before any discounts, is only $22.95. That comes to only 5.1 ten-thousandths of a cent per word.  And some of them are very long words.  Such a deal!                        

Remember, too, that even if you don’t care to read it, its size and weight make it suitable for use as a doorstop, paperweight, fly-swatter, or blunt weapon.  You may think of other ways to use it on your own; if so, please share them with Martha Stewart.

A word of caution: there is another book out there with the same title. The other one is a book of serious poetry.  Be sure you know which one you’re ordering!

As you are aware, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou is loath to lend his talents, such as they are, to commercial enterprises.   He knows, however, which side his bread is buttered on, and he has therefore agreed—churlishly, to be sure—to do what he can to promote the sale of this gallimaufry by providing a Table of Contents:

              
            Limericks, clerihews, comic palaver, 

            Puzzles, and games by the score,

            Hysterical puns that could charm a cadaver,           

            Malapropisms, and more,

            Double-entendres (rather risqué),

            Nifty Tom Swifties galore,

            Tangy tongue-twisters too tricky to say—

            Like “Edith thinks sick thoughts of Thor,”

            Oodles of nonsense verse for the nonce,

            Slang words at which you will roar,

            Riddles to which you’ll give a response,

            And knock-knocks—who’s that at the door?

           

            Feghoots, and croakers, and odd spoonerisms,

            Acrostics you’ll simply adore,

            Rhopalics and eggcorns, a few euphemisms--

            Soon you’ll be shouting “Encore!”

           

            Anagrams, mondegreens, row upon row,

            To thrill you right down to the core,

            Palindromes going both backward and fro—

            Words Gone Wild is now at your store.

Re: Re and Re

Crossword puzzle constructors can take almost any verb and put re- in a front of it and say it means to do whatever it is again.  Rerun is a frequent puzzle entry, and of course it means “to show on TV again.”  Reshoot is “to film again,” rename “to dub again,” rewrite “to pen again,” etc.  I’ve even seen some stretches of usage like relook, respend, and restand.

There are other “re”-words, though, that don’t mean to do something for the second time.  Reply, repent, recline, regurgitate, and rescind, for example, do not mean “to ply, to pent, to cline, to gurgitate, and to scind” again.

The difference is in the prefix re-, which has two meanings.  The commonly used one simply means “again.”  But another Latin meaning is “back in a former state or position,” and words starting with his kind of re came to us from Latin with the prefix already in place. Reply, for example, doesn’t mean “to ply again,” but comes to us intact from the Latin replicare meaning “to fold back.”

Some words can have both kinds of re- attached to them and mean two different things, as in the story of the upholsterer who accidentally fell into his machine and is now completely recovered.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou will probably never be completely recovered from whatever ails him, but he keeps trying to rid himself of toxins such as the following:

            “Your test score is a B,”

             The old professor barked.

            “But it really rates a C,”

             He suddenly remarked.

The Words, According to Emily Post

Older readers may recall the English teacher of a couple of generations ago who told her class, “There are two awful slang words in current use that I hope you will never use: one is swell, and the other is lousy.”  “Okay,” replied one student, “what are they?”

In that same era—around about 1940—the doyenne of etiquette, Emily Post, provided her own list of proper and improper words and phrases—the rationale for many of which is impossible to fathom in this permissive age.  According to Emily—uh, I mean Mrs. Post—you should never call anyone “wealthy”; say “rich” or “well-to-do” instead. (She is silent on how to refer to poor people.)  Never say someone has an “elegant home”; it should be “beautiful house.”  “Close friend”?  Uh-uh—it should be “best friend” or even (woo-hoo!) “intimate friend.” And as for those horrid truncated words—phone, auto, photo, and mints—don’t dare think of using them instead of the more proper telephone, automobile, photograph, and peppermints!

Some of her directives are peculiar.  While it’s okay to call an unmarried young woman a “girl” until her mid-twenties, any male over 21 must be called a “man” and never a “boy.”  A “lady friend” and a “gentleman friend” are not what well-bred people have; instead they have a “woman friend” or “my best girl” and “a man who is a friend of mine.”

Don't ask the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, "Who was that lady friend I saw you with?" He’s not talking.  Instead, he is trying to rhyme, and only partly succeeding:

            I’m sorry if my words offend,

            It isn’t what I meant a bit:

            I said that you were my best friend--

            And should have said that we were intimate.

Some Cockamamie Ideas

Some people think that the ideas expressed by Libertarian-Tea Partyish-Neo-Republicans like Rand Paul are refreshingly candid.  These ideas include the notion that civil rights legislation should not prevent racial discrimination by private businesses, that it’s un-American to criticize big business, and that the Federal Reserve should be eliminated—and while you’re at it, get rid of the income tax as well.  Other people think such ideas are simply cockamamie.

Far be it from this apolitical commentary to take sides on such a controversial issue, lest I offend my myriad Libertarian-Tea Partyish-Neo-Republican readers. But surely there’s no harm in taking a firm stand in favor of the word cockamamie—that is ridiculous, far-fetched, inane, crackpot, worthless, and nonsensical.   You can apply it to whatever ideas you think appropriate.

I had always thought cockamamie was a Yiddish word, synonymous with meshuggah; in fact, you’ll find it in some Yiddish word lists.  But as it happens—sacrebleu!—the word’s origin is French.  It stems from décalcomanie  (whence, also, decal), and was a word used in the mid-nineteenth century to refer to the peculiar craze for decorating objects with transfers.  The etymology is from décalquer (“to apply a tracing or transfer) and manie (“mania”).

Apparently, scads of American youngsters happily applied the colorful decals that came in candy wrappers to every surface they could find, including their own bodies. During the early twentieth century, especially in New York City, the practice became known as cockamamie, an English garbling of décalcomanie.  How the word took on its present meaning is not clear, but probably through some allusion to the tawdriness and absurdity of putting decals on one’s body.

Tawdriness and absurdity are the stock-in-trade of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, whose political views are difficult to comprehend and impossible to articulate. Here is his most recent campaign statement: 

            A decalcomanic dog and a cockamamie cat

            Were invited out to dinner by a borborygmic bat.

            Ere sitting down to dine

            They chatted over wine:

            Two were fierce Republicans, and one a Democrat.

           

            Quite soon the fur was flying in a heated conversation

            On national security, financial regulation,

            Health care and income tax,

            Bad deeds of Goldman Sachs,

            And things got really nasty when they mentioned immigration.

           

            They called each other dreadful names, and insults vile they spat,

            But finally they got hungry and decided that was that.

            They sat down to the table

            As fast as they were able—

            And found their food all eaten by an Independent rat.  

Come Fill the Cup

A neighborhood bistro I used to frequent wanted to be sure the sommelier clearly understood the patrons’ requests when ordering from its wine list.  A large placard over the bar instructed:

                     ORDER WINE ONLY BY THE NUMBER:

1.    RED

2.    WHITE

Time was when those two distinctions pretty much covered the American taste in wine.  Today, we have many more choices, but American wine-bibbers tend to be partial to four principal kinds: the red Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and the white Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. Even though they come from California, Australia, Chile, or even (mon Dieu!) Texas, the names are all French for particular varieties of grape. 

Where the names originally came from is a fairly arcane question that most etymological sources are too skittish to answer for sure. 

Chardonnay, for example, is the name of a village near Macon in Burgundy, too small to appear on most maps.  It is presumably the source of the white (i.e. green), fruity grape from which the French make a number of wines, including Chablis, Meursault, Montrachet, and Champagne.  The origin of Chardonnay is hard to pin down, since the village has been there for many centuries. Some say it came from its earlier Latin name, Cardonnacum, or “place of the thistles.” Others speculate it is from the Gaulish proper name Cardus or that it has some connection with the French word jardin (“garden”).  The name first appeared in English in 1911, in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Most experts agree that Sauvignon comes from the French word sauvage, meaning “savage” or “wild.”  The white Sauvignon grape is found in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley, and is the basis of many wines, including Sauternes and Graves.

Merlot (or “little blackbird”) stems from the Old French word merle and refers to the color of the bird’s feathers, which are a deep reddish-blue, as is the grape of that name.  In the Bordeaux region, it is frequently blended with Cabernet Sauvignon.

Cabernet, an English word since 1911, is defined as a variety of black (i.e. dark red) grape.  It is a cross between Cabernet franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Cabernet’s etymology is problematic, possibly coming from the Latin caput, meaning “head,” for unclear reasons.  Others suggest it comes from carbonet, meaning “coal black.”

A fanciful explanation of Cabernet, however, comes from a Scottish blogger, who insists that in antiquity a team of Scottish athletes came to France to challenge the French to a game that combined the Scots’ tossing of a caber (a young tree trunk) with French football.  The object was to toss the caber into each other’s nets. Since they were hearty imbibers of the local wine, it was named in honor of this Caber-Net game and given a French pronunciation. Well, it’s a theory, anyway.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, when pressed, calls himself an oenophile; he thinks it has more class than wino. 

            Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir— 

            To them all I’m sympathetic

            Every time I pour.

            Now there is a new wine at my corner bar.

            They say that it’s a diuretic.

            They call it Pinot More.