That’s So Retro!

Taken pictures with a film camera lately?  Ridden an upright bicycle?  Or eaten any pork bacon?  These seemingly redundant expressions are known as retronyms—new terms created from existing words in order to distinguish the original referent from a later one, usually as a result of technological advance. The word retronym was coined in the 1980s, from the Latin retro (“backward”) and the Greek onuma (“name”).

Time was when all cameras used film, all bicycles were upright, and all bacon was as porcine as Paddy’s pig.  But then came digital cameras, recumbent bicycles, and turkey bacon, so the qualifier was needed for the originals.  Same thing with acoustic guitars, cloth diapers, snow skis, beef fajitas, analog clocks, hot tea, biological parents, manual typewriters, push mowers, the naked eye, and snail mail. Even real life has been coined to distinguish what we live every day from soap operas or simulated life in a game with avatars.

Wikipedia goes so far as to suggest that George H. W. Bush is a retronym, since he used to be plain George Bush, but felt the need to be distinguished from his son, and you can understand why.

Speaking of “backward,” one is inevitably put in mind of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, whose middle name is Retro.

            With that indispensable utensil,

            A plain old yellow wood-and-graphite pencil,

            A writer once could make a sentence caper

            Upon a ragged sheet of wood-pulp paper.

            But now a writer has to be astuter

            And utilize a digital computer

            In order to be praised as smart and metro,

            And not condemned as something old and retro.

Ugly, Ugly, Ugly

Which words do you think are the ugliest in the English language?  Apparently everybody has a different set of words they dislike, and many people feel compelled to make lists of them. 

There are at least three factors operating in choosing ugly words—sound, meaning, and appearance.  For some really ugly words, all three elements are operative at once.  Here are a few of the ugliest, so deemed by various parties. (Obvious four-letter profanities and vulgarisms don’t count.)

In 1946 the National Association of Teachers of Speech issued this list of the ten ugliest words based on a survey of its membership:

            cacaphony, crunch, flatulent, gripe, jazz, phlegmatic, plump, plutocrat, sap, treachery

Mississippi State University Professor Robert E. Wolverton polled 75 students in his classics classes and came up with:

            vomit, moist, puke, phlegm, slaughter, snot

Willard R. Espy, an old hand at wordplay, compiled this list of his favorite uglies for the Book of Lists:

            aasvogel, Brobdingnagian, cacaphonous, crepuscular, fructify, gargoyle,             jukebox, kakkak, kumquat, quahog

A website called Altalang.com puts forward this batch of repulsive abominations:

            smegma, phlegm, pus, pregnant, rural, moist, juror, regurgitate, crotch,             bunion, pulchritude, schmear, scab, sticktoitiveness, discharge, blog, synergy, crepuscular, ointment, chunk, curdle, tax, fetid, routine, honk

Our British cousins have their own ideas. The Guardian assembled this list after asking its readers to submit their nominees:

            crotch, sac, fiscal, gusset, nappy, gutted, rectum, gash, pustule, obligate,          

spatula, privilege, masticate, kudos, boobs, feisty, veggie, kooky, pasty, pamphlet, spouse, poet

What are your choices for the ugliest words in English? Don’t be bashful! Click that comment link and talk nasty.

You will note that the Brits put poet among their ugliest words.  This indicates that they are undoubtedly familiar with the work of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who has attempted to write the ugliest verse in the world (and has almost certainly succeeded).

            Vomit, smegma, phlegm, and pus, all pasty in a sac,

            Schmeared with a fetid spatula upon a plump kakkak,

            Discharge a kumquat ointment on the scab of that smallpox,

            Then honk in moist cacaphony in the jazz of some jukebox.

            The curdled veggie, full of snotty sap--just masticate;

            If kooky, flatulent, don’t gripe or puke—regurgitate.

            A gargoyle with no boobs is feisty, pregnant and phlegmatic,

            For routine slaughter, kudos for a pustule plutocratic.           

            A gutted, Brobdingnagian, crepuscular quahog           

            Has so much sticktoitniveness, you can crunch it in a blog.

            A bunion on a rural juror’s crotch is treachery,

            Pulchritude and privilege fructify with synergy.

            My spouse’s fiscal tax will leave my gusset with a gash.

            Tell me what aasvogel means, I’ll give you a chunk of cash!

Ave Atque Vale, Edwin Newman

According to The New York Times’ obituary, Edwin Newman, the pundit, newsman, and defender of the English language who died last month in London at the age of 91, could not abide jargon, idiosyncratic spellings like “Amtrak,” the non-adverbial use of “hopefully,” the conversational filler “y’know,” awkward prefixes and suffixes such as “de-,” “non-,” “un-,” “-ize,” “-wise,” and “-ee”; and using a preposition to end a sentence.

The Times writer goes on to point out that this highly prescriptive approach to English usage had critics, such as linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, who complained that Newman never cited a dictionary or a standard grammar book to back up his dicta.  “Evidently,” said Nunberg, “one just knows these things.”

Well, yeah.  That’s what being able to speak and write with ease means.  You can’t be stopping every few seconds to verify that this is what Webster or Fowler or Garner will justify.  You simply know what sounds or looks right and you say it or write it.

I’ve never been as insistent as Newman on certain rigors.  Jargon has its place (a contract just doesn’t sound official unless there’s a “party of the first part”), “Amtrak” and its cousins such as “Kwik-Kopy” and “E-Z Pass” have a nice, breezy ring to my ear; “hopefully” has clawed its way to an acceptable adverbial role by simply refusing to give up gracefully; to unionize, theatrewise, is a non-issue to me; and ending a sentence with a preposition has been OK in my book since Winston Churchill (allegedly) said a rule against doing so was the “kind of nonsense up with which I shall not put.”  But y’know, I’m not going to defend “y’know,” which is an abomination.

The important thing is to pay attention to what you say and write. Language usage evolves, and the deadly sin is to let it do so on its own, without the control of the user. Carelessness, not error, is the great enemy of grammar, a sentiment with which I think Newman and Nunberg would both agree, not to mention Webster, Fowler, and Garner. 

As for the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, well, he naturally takes an idiosyncratic view:

            

            If you are lacking proper grammar,

            You do not speak, you only yammer.

            If you’re deficient in your diction,

            It is a monstrous great affliction.

            If you can’t parse a compound sentence,

            Get on your knees and start repentance.

            If you should fail to spell correctly,

            Beg forgiveness most abjectly.

            Still, these faults will qualify you

            To be a Bard on Buffalo Bayou.

Verb That Noun!

A recent newspaper ad for a bank had a headline that read: "Feel the EARN" (the point being that its CDs would earn high yields for the investor).  It’s an example of what is called “conversion” (or “anthimeria” if you want to be grammatically technical)—the use of one part of speech as if it were another.  In this case the verb earn is used like a noun.

Some people deplore this practice.  I have friends who grow livid with rage, with flaming daggers shooting from their eyes and smoke emanating from their ears, if anyone uses contact, access, or impact as a verb.  Others regard such conversions as a natural evolution of language or perhaps as creative poetry.  Will Shakespeare was especially fond of turning nouns into verbs, with such locutions as: 

            "Season your admiration for a while..."

            "It out-herods Herod..."

            "No more shall trenching war channel her fields..."

            "Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle..."

            "Julius Caesar / Who at Philippi the good Brutus     
                      ghosted..."

            "Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels..."

            "I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase..."

            “The hearts that spaniel’d me at heels”.

Tom McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language writes, “Conversion has for centuries been a common means of extending the resources of English and creating dramatic effects: It is often said that there is no noun in English that can't be verbed: bag a prize, doctor a drink, soldier on.”  

Ben Zimmer, writing in The New York Times, pointed out a new verb now used in Oympic sports: to podium. To medal has been around for a while, and will surely soon by followed by such verbs as to Oscar, to Tony, to Grammy, to Emmy, to Pulitzer, and to Nobel.

Conversion works the other way as well, with verbs changed into nouns, e.g. "a good read," "an invite to the party," "it's a go," "come in and have a sit," "take a bite," "I went for a long run and a short walk."  Some are jocular but others are now standard.

Adjectives are also getting into the swing of things, becoming nouns in phrases like "my bad," "come here, my pretty," and "do you want a long or a short?" Sometimes nouns become adjectives: kitchen sink, church music, theatre party, voice mail, text message, computer screen.

It’s all a bit much for the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who has enough trouble as it is, sorting out all the parts of speak.

            There was a little noun, who said, “I’d like to be a verb,

            And learn to run, and jump, and skip—oh, that would be superb!”

            And so he practiced every day, to try to learn to move,

            For he supposed that if he could, then that would surely prove

            That as a verb he’d be the very best you ever saw,

            And all the other parts of speech would simply stand in awe.

            Alas, it worked out otherwise—his efforts met defeat:

            Before that noun could even crawl, why, he was obsolete.
 

Roger That

Have you ever used the word “Roger” to mean “understood”?  Do you know why the name Roger is used in that way?  Do you care? If you do care, you probably already know that it’s the international military code word for the letter “R”—which was in use between 1927 and 1957. As used in radio lingo, the letter “R” means “received.” 

Beginning in 1913, all letters of the alphabet were assigned words to be used in order to avoid confusion of similar sounding letters.  In addition to Roger, for example, Baker, George, Mike, and William were other names used to stand in for the letters with which they started.  Dog, Fox, Hypo, Jig, King, Love, Pup, Quack, Sail, Tare, and X-Ray were some of the other words used. 

Various branches of the military in the U. S. and other English-speaking countries had their own variations.  Nowadays the alphabetic code is administered by the International Civil Air Organization, and almost all of those early designations have been replaced by new ones.  Baker is now Bravo, George is Golf, William is Whiskey, Roger is Romeo, and so on down the line. 

Of the words in use between 1927 and 1957, only Mike and X-Ray have endured through the years and are still in general use.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou always hates to see the passing of the Old Guard, inasmuch as he is an Old Guardsman himself, and he has composed this lament, which he keens from the rooftops when there is a full moon:

            

            Roger, William, George, and Baker

            All have gone to meet their maker.

            Sexy Roger’s Romeo,

            For Baker, shout a bold Bravo!

            George took up Golf (he’s getting frisky),

            Teetotal William’s turned to Whiskey.

            Oscar now won’t play the Oboe,

            The King’s deposed, and some new Kilo           

            Reigns supreme, and that’s no joke.

            A Yankee’s in, and that’s no Yoke.

            Quebec at one time was a Quack,

            Now Delta’s here, Dog won’t be back.

            And do you think you can remember

            When N was Nan and not November?

            Love’s now Lima—does that mean

            A Peruvian city or a bean?

            They’ve changed a Tare into a Tango—

            Where, oh where, did that old gang go?

            Are there more changes down the pike?

            Oh, please, let us hold on to Mike,

            He’s been loyal, brave, and true—

            And let Mike have an X-Ray, too!

Bar None

I get lots of supposedly funny emails, most of which are not, and some of which threaten me ominously with dire consequences if I don’t forward them to at least ten more people.  I never pass them on, and dire consequences have indeed befallen me.  Many of these emails are about people who walk into a bar, and I now share with you now a few that tickled my funny bone (which is adjacent to the humerus).  Now, perhaps no more dire consequences will plague me.

            A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says, “I’ll have a beer, and one for the road."

            A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "You’d better not start anything."

            A C, an E-flat, and a G walk into a bar. The bartender says: "Sorry, but we don't serve minors."  So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat.

            Two peanuts walk into a bar.  One is a salted.

            A termite walks into a bar and asks, “Is the bar tender here?”

            A Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Jewish rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Is this is a joke?”

            A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou walks into a bar every chance he gets, but he doesn’t joke about it.  Instead, he versifies:

            A florist walked into a bar,

            And said, “I’ll have two Buds.”

            A laundress who was with him said,

            “Just pour me up some suds.”

            “On second thought,” the laundress said,

            “Make that a cup of Cheer.”

            And then an undertaker said,

            “I think I’ll have a bier.”           

            An optician walked into the bar

            And said, “I’d like two glasses.”

            A fisherman then said, “I want

            Some ale—make that two Basses.”

            A milkman walked into the bar,

            And said, “I’ll take a quart.”

            A sailor right behind him said,

            “I’m really into port.”

            A cotton farmer in the bar

            Remarked, “I need a gin.”

            A census-taker then came in

            And asked for Mickey Finn.

            A contortionist squeezed in

            And called out, “Bottom’s up!”

            Omar Khayyam came in then

            And wrote, “Come fill the cup.”

            A gunman walked into the bar

            And said, “I’ll take a shot.”

            A realtor scanned the drink list and

            Declared, “I’ll have the lot.”

Variety-ese Is the Spice of Life

Variety, an entertainment newspaper founded in 1905 by Sime Silverman, is sometimes known as the Bible of those who worship in the Temples of Dionysos, Orpheus, and Terpsichore.  It covers movies, television, theatre (which it calls legit), and other show-biz activities in both daily and weekly editions.  It’s where you’ll find how much the distinguished actress Miley Cyrus was paid for her most recent movie and whether Phantom of the Opera is likely to run for another decade or two.  Variety reports these juicy items in a jargon all its own, sometimes known as slanguage, that might sometimes leave inexperienced readers baffled.

Some words coined by Variety have entered the mainstream vocabulary: the aforementioned show-biz, for example, as well as sitcom for situation comedy, emcee and deejay (from the initial letters of master of ceremonies and disk jockey), and nitery for night club, striptease, and payola.  Others are pretty much confined to the entertainment trade, such as the adjectives boffo, socko, and whammo, all descriptive of movies or plays that have strong ticket sales and therefore have legs—enabling them to “run” for a long time. Whammo, by the way, is considered much better than boffo or socko.

Press agents, who hope the shows they represent will all be whammo, work in a praisery, and if they throw a cocktail party to help with promo, it’s known as a pour. They hope their clients achieve heavy mitting from the auds, that is applause from the audiences, so that they will not have to resort to twofers (two tickets sold for the price of one).

Variety has its own shorthand for certain genres of entertainment.  We all know what a whodunit is, you may have watched a TV dramedy, and crossword puzzle fanciers are bound to have encountered oater, which is a Western (horses eat oats). You can probably decipher meller, laffer, biopic, suspenser, tuner and chopsocky (martial arts film)—not to mention that most dreaded of all performances of any type—a yawner.

A female singer, to Variety, is a thrush, a warbler, or if the writer is feeling especially frisky, a chantoosie.  Thrushes, of course, do not sing, they chirp, using their pipes to do so.  Dancers hoof, and are hence known as hoofers, or sometimes terps, in a classically learned allusion to Terpsichore, the Greek Muse of dance. Actors, in a similar vein, are known as thesps. Writers are scribblers or scripters, songwriters are cleffers, and directors are helmers.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who would perhaps be known to Variety as an oder (hmmm), is an avid reader of entertainment news, as you can tell by this quatrain:

            If you’ve had a satiety

            Of the news in Variety.

            Then you sure shouldn’t orter

            Read The Hollywood Reporter.

Gussy Up

A friend recently returned from the opening night of Santa Fe Opera, at which she said the patrons were “all gussied up” even though the temperatures were uncomfortably warm.  “To gussy up” means to dress in your finery—those gold Versace gowns and midnight-blue Pierre Cardin tuxes—or to make something smarter or more interesting in a flashy way, like festooning a Presbyterian pulpit in chartreuse crepe paper.

The origin of the term, generally dated from the 1950s, is obscure.  Gussie is actually a 19^th century Scottish word for swine, so maybe it all started with putting lipstick on a pig.  Since the first usage is in the 1950s in America, however, it’s probable that it has another origin.

Michael Quinion at his “World Wide Words” blog site suggests that Gussy was a 19^th-century American term for a weak or effeminate man. Since it was written with a capital letter, Quinion surmises it came from a proper name, such as Augustus, although no specific Augustus is cited.

Since 1952 is the first recorded use of the verb gussy up, I think it is far more likely that the term derived from the American tennis player Gertrude Agusta Moran, who was known as “Gorgeous Gussie” after she wore frilly panties at the 1949 Wimbledon tournament.  The experts, however, insist on paying it safe and stick to “origin obscure.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou likes to get gussied up—although not in frilly panties—when he moseys out for a big night on the town.  Here’s what he brought back after his last one:

            A tennis-player named Gussie

            About her panties was fussy,

            She sewed on some frills

            To give the crowd thrills—

            But most of them thought her a hussy.

No Crosswordese, Please

When is the last time you found an olio of Oreo orts in your olla?  Did you ever see a naiad atop an arête on an ait in the Aare or the Isere? Does Oona ogle you through an ogee in an oda in Eire?  And I do hope that your ilia have never been injured one iota in a melee by an inee-tipped epee.  

The italicized words in the previous paragraph are all examples of crosswordese—words or names that tend to appear far more frequently in crossword puzzles than they do in ordinary discourse. Some of them are a wee bit archaic, perhaps, or a wee bit foreign, but you’ll find them in most standard dictionaries.  Ideally such words are avoided like noxious oil slicks when constructing a puzzle. But try as they may, editors can’t stamp them out completely; they will keep cropping up when a constructor is backed into a corner.

The reason they are so popular is that they are full of vowels, which tend to make it easier for the puzzle-maker to come up with words that will cross them to complete the grid. My favorite vowel-heavy word, which only rarely can I work into a conversation (or a puzzle) is giaour—a French-Italian-Turkish-Persian word meaning an infidel in the Islamic faith.           

The best puzzles are those with tricky clues for very ordinary words. They may be puns or phrases that can be taken more than one way.  Some of the cleverest I’ve come across are:

            West of Hollywood (answer: MAE)

            Place for notes on a piano  (TIP JAR)

            Bolt with no threads (STREAK)

            Norwegian city in Czechoslovakia (OSLO)

            Stale Italian bread (LIRA)

            French flower (SEINE)

            Pecking order (KISS ME)

            Perfect pitch (STRIKE)

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has never uttered a cross word in his life, but he has waxed poetic (not to mention floors) with undecipherable clues, like these:

            You cannot stand to have this—

            The answer is your LAP.

           

            It may give you a turn-on—

            The solution is a TAP.

           

            Stops crashes on your hard drive—

            Well, that would be a MAP.

           

            For the empty-headed—

            In just three letters—CAP.

One Man’s Epigram is Another’s Aphorism

In a BBC-TV adaptation of G. K. Chesterton’s “Father Brown and the Three Tools of Death,” a police sergeant makes a smart-alecky remark, and his boss tells him, “I can do without the epigrams.”  The sergeant—proving he is, in fact, an incorrigible smart-aleck—replies, “Aphorisms, really.”  So what’s the dif?

Not much, when you get right down to it. An epigram, from Greek words meaning “to write or carve upon,” is a terse, sage, witty, often paradoxical, saying, sometimes in verse, but very often in prose. Musician and wit Oscar Levant said, epigrammatically, “An epigram is a wisecrack that played Carnegie Hall.”  A famous epigram is Benjamin Franklin’s “If we do not all hang together, we shall all hang separately.”

An aphorism, also Greek, from a root meaning “shaped by boundaries,” is a concise statement of a principle. Sounds pretty much the same as an epigram, with more truth and less paradox. An aphorism that expresses the same thought as Franklin’s epigram is “There is safety in numbers.”

While we’re on the subject, we might as well let it all hang out and let you know that an adage, from a Latin root meaning “I say,” is a saying, often metaphorical, that embodies a common observation. “Birds of a feather flock together” is an adage that expresses the same notion of solidarity as the epigram and aphorism above.  A maxim, from the Latin for “largest,” is a general truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct. “Be loyal to your friends” is a good maxim to follow.

If you need to know any more, well, there’s a dictionary in every public library, which is the last possible place you might expect to find the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who ventured outside his unkempt lair just long enough to slip the following epigrams—or are they aphorisms?—under the door:

            A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,

            And a slap on the back is worth two on the tush.   

            A stitch in time, they say, saves nine—

            But to go without a stitch is also fine.

            A fool and his money may soon be parted,

            When the fool has a car that can’t be started.

            A rolling stone will gather no moss,

            And a stone with no moss is like a goose with no   

                    sauce.

Y Not?

The Young Men’s Christian Association, commonly known as the Y.M.C.A., has let it be known that henceforth it wishes to be called simply “The Y.”  Irrespective of the fact that most people already refer to it that way, this re-branding fails to take into account several contraindications.  In New York especially, “the Y” more often than not refers to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, specifically the one on 92^nd Street, which has already beaten the Christians in the abbreviated name game by calling itself simply “92Y.”

Then there’s the matter of women.  “Y” could also mean the Young Women’s Christian Association or the Young Women’s Hebrew Association.  But maybe the Young Men think they have a chromosomal claim to the “Y.”

Finally, there’s the problem of the Village People’s song “Y.M.C.A.”  Change it to “Y” and you’re going to be short three syllables, and a melisma can carry you only so far.

The Y’s decision reflects a trend toward shorter and shorter commercial names.  It probably started with IBM, which does not like to be called International Business Machines any more, or with KLM, which realized early in the game that it wouldn’t attract many English-speaking passengers as Koninklije Luchtvaart Maatschappij.  Nowadays the single letter “E,” embellished with an exclamation point, is a television network, “V” is a perfume, and versatile “W” is a hotel chain, a fashion magazine, and a former president.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, whose sobriquet is far too long, has decided to join the trend.

            YMCA is now the Y,

            The Entertainment Network’s E!

            Someone, somewhere, is surely π,

            And Valentino’s perfume’s V.

            If Bush is W, then I

            Think it’s O.K. if I am B.

Caught in the Web

The World Wide Web is a wondrous resource, brimming with useful facts, relevant data, and accurate information—except when it isn’t. For example, if you google “Shakespeare quotes,” one of the sites to which you will be referred ascribes the following quotation to the Bard of Avon:

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

Anyone who has read ten lines of Shakespeare’s should know that he could not have written these words.  In the first place, no source, either play or poem, is given, and that immediately arouses some suspicion about the authenticity of the quotation. The diction of the passage could not possibly be earlier than late nineteenth century; more likely it is mid-twentieth or later.  The style is pedestrian, lacking any of the poetic imagery that infused every line Shakespeare wrote.  And the cloying sentiment, with its message of uncritical encouragement of personal self-fulfillment, is a contemporary notion, something you might expect to find in a New Age sermon to a happy-clappy congregation—not in the rigorous ethos of Elizabethan England with which Shakespeare was imbued. 

No, this is a spurious Shakespearean quote—which is attributed to him on more than 7,000 websites!  It was initially posted either as a hoax or as the result of exceedingly careless research, and then picked up and replicated by thousands of others without checking.  Beware the Web.

That other Bard, who splashes about in the sepia waters of Buffalo Bayou, was duly impressed by the alleged work of his colleague:

            Who knew that Will, our best of bards,

            In his spare time wrote Hallmark cards?

Busted

You may remember the late legend Ray Charles singing about his financial troubles in a song called “Busted”:

            “The fields are all bare and the cotton won't grow,
            Me and my family got to pack up and go,
            But I'll make a living, just where I don't know, cause I'm busted.”

The lyrics—by Harland Howard (who also wrote such country hits as “I Fall to Pieces” and “Heartaches by the Number” and who described country music as “three chords and the truth”)—use “busted” to mean “bankrupt or broke,” a slang usage since 1837. 

Steven Greenhouse used “busted” in quite a different way, when he wrote in a recent issue of The New York Times: “…shoppers at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, N.Y., busted through the doors…”  Here “busted” is used as a synonym for “burst”—meaning “entered by causing something suddenly to give way to impact or pressure.”  This usage of “busted” (and its present tense cousin “bust”), according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a “dialectical and vulgar pronunciation of burst, especially in the U. S.” It did seem a peculiar usage, to say the least, in the pages of The Times, but things are getting slipshod everywhere these days.

Americans have been using the vulgar pronunciation “busted” since 1806 to mean a variety of things: broken or made inoperable (“BP’s oil rig was busted”), arrested (“Lindsay Lohan was busted for violating probation”), to bring to an end (“Liz busted up Debbie’s marriage”), tamed (“the cowboy busted ten broncos in one day”), worked hard (“the U. S. soccer team busted their butts to no avail”), demoted (“General McChrystal was not busted to three stars”), to lose at cards by exceeding a limit (“that ten of diamonds busted me at the blackjack table”), hit (“Sean Penn busted the photographer over the head”), and raided (“Belgian police busted the bishops’ conclave”).   Such a useful to word to be so vulgar!

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is second to no one in being vulgar, but as to being useful, the jury is still out—and you can reach a verdict based on this evidence:

            A lover of sculpture had such a great lust

            For torsos of Caesar he felt that he must

            Exhibit his passion

            In suitable fashion--

            So he bussed out to Rome, where he bussed an old bust.

Toward A More Perfect Onion

In Hamlet, the treacherous King Claudius plans to poison Hamlet’s wine cup, saying:

            “The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath,

            And in the cup an union shall he throw…”

So what does he put in the cup? With “an” preceding the word, it looks as though he might have meant to say an “onion.”  That’s hardly the thing for better breath, is it? No, actually what the King puts into the wine is a pearl—and presumably one that has been dipped in some lethal marinade.

The word union and the word onion are from the same Latin root—unionem, meaning “oneness, especially that formed by joining separate parts.”  So how did this abstract concept of unity become the name of a both a precious gem and a pungent vegetable that adds zest to bland food?

Evidently the term unionem was used in colloquial Roman Latin to mean, first a pearl of high quality, believed to occur singly, and then an onion—owing to its resemblance to the pearl, plus the fact that it was formed of successive layers of skin joined into one whole, as opposed to the solid structure of its culinary mate, garlic.

By the 12^th century, oignon was an Old French word for the vegetable, and in English spelled union or unyoun.  By the 14^th century the u had become an o, and Chaucer refers to “garleek, oynons, and lekes.”  The sense of “pearl,” spelled union, remained in usage until about the 17^th century.

The “pearl onions” that one sees on a toothpick in Gibson cocktails are something of a redundancy, since a pearl is an onion, and an onion is a pearl, and they are both unions.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is no pearl, but he does exude a certain pungency on occasion, sometimes in his verses:

            I like onions, garlic, jalapeños,           

            Barbecue, hot wings, chiles relleños,           

            Corn dogs, bacon burgers, guacamole,

            Tiramisu, cherry pie, cannoli,

            Filet mignon, béarnaise sauce, spumoni,

            Gorgonzola, Stilton, cannelloni,

            Vindaloo, biryani, curry powder,

            Deep-fried shrimp and scallops, lobster chowder,

            Kippers, salmon, oysters, baked potatoes,

            Ice cream, chocolate, and fried tomatoes.

            And when at last I’ve finished all the crumbs,

            I’m also fond of Rolaids and of Tums.

It’s the Pits

If a prune or an olive is “pitted,” it means the pits have been removed.  If a grape is “peeled” (as a Mae West character once asked Beulah to do for her), it means the peeling has been taken off.  And if your knee is “skinned,” it means there’s no skin left on that unfortunate spot. 

Okay.  But if a bird is “feathered,” it does not mean that it has had its feathers removed—just the opposite. And if a possum—or a fashionable socialite—is “furred,” the creature is not deprived of its warm fluffy coat, but is swathed in it. (If the fur coat is removed, has the creature then been “defurred”?)

Just to make matters even more confusing, if lemons are “seeded,” the seeds have been removed, but if soil is “seeded,” seeds have been planted in it.

Brits refer to small seeds in fleshy fruit as “pips.”  But I have never heard fruit from which seeds have been removed referred to as having been “pipped” or even “depipped.”

The differences in usage can only be explained, I suppose, through the inexplicably wondrous development of the English language by people who use it to mean what they want it to mean.  Or, as the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who says it’s no skin off his nose, wonders:

            Birds of a feather

            Flock together.

            But do fish of a fin

            Swim with their kin,

            Do hares of a hide

            Run side by side,

            Do prunes of a pit

            Stay closely knit,

            Do grapes of a seed

            Become friends indeed,

            And are pears of a peel

            The real deal?

How Cool Is This?

Would you believe that the term “cool” meaning “very good” or “fashionable” was in use as early as 700 A.D.?  Well, I wouldn’t either, but the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, written about that time, begins a long etymological path, down which “cool” evolved from a word for “moderately cold” into its current hip meaning. Courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary, here are four steps in that path, beginning with a few familiar lines in Old English:

1. “Cool” - Dispassionate, calm, composed (700):                        

            “Gyf him edwendan æfre scolde

            bealuwa bisigu bot eft cuman,

            ond þa cearwylmas colran wurða…”

                (“If evil woes should ever retreat, and comfort 
                follows, and seething sorrow turns cool [colran]…”  
               Beowulf, ca. 700)

            “Such seething braines…that apprehend more

            Than cool reason ever comprehends” (Shakespeare,  
            Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600)

           

            “A man of understanding is of an excellent cool spirit.” 
            (Authorized Version of the Bible, 1611)

         
            “The bloody actor is less detestable than the cool       
            unfeeling historian.” (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of  
            the Roman Empire, 1781)

        

            “While she wept, I strove to be cool.” (Tennyson,  
            Maud, 1855)

            “Don’t get stampeded.  Just keep cool…” (King,  
            Stampede Pass, 1890)

2. “Cool” - Attractively shrewd or clever; sophisticated, stylish, classy; fashionable, up to date; sexually attractive (1884):

            “Dat’s cool!” (J. A. Harrison, Negro English in Anglia, 
            1884)

            “A cool kid” (Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1918)

            “She was a cool put-together chick that made men 
            thrill.” (Frank Loesser, "Hamlet," 1949)

           

3. “Cool” - A general term of approval, admirable, excellent (1933):           

           

            “And whut make it so cool, he got money 'cumulated.  
             And womens give it all to 'im." (Zora Neale Hurston,  
             Story, 1933)

           

            “This is a cool pad, man.” (Neurotica, 1950)

            “These jeans are so cool.” (Anne Beattie, Falling in 
            Place, 1981)

4. “Cool” - And, finally, in a diminished sense, to mean satisfactory, OK, acceptable, safe (1951)

            “He [the marijuana dealer] was absurdly cautious. ‘Got

             to look out for myself, things ain't cool this past 
             week.’” (Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1951)

            “He had seen Devon in the street and hid from him, 
            unable to smile in his face and say that everything 
            was cool.” (Gareth Joseph, Homegrown, 2001)

“Cool” is not one of the words that come to mind to describe the Bard of Buffalo Bayou.  “Scary” is more apt, especially when he’s caught red-handed in the act of poiesis.

           

            Cool or hot? That question may seem dotty.

            Although truly,

            Wouldn’t you prefer to be a hottie

            Than a coolie?