I Say It’s Hamburger, and I Say the Hell With It

When I was about ten, I was taken to a fancy restaurant, perhaps for my birthday, and allowed to order anything I wanted (within reason, of course).  I scanned the elegant menu, and my eyes lighted on a dish that was new to me, having subsisted during my early years mainly on Spam, peanut butter, tuna fish, and bologna sandwiches. The entrée I craved had a name that rang with a Lucullan aura in my callow ears, and I conjured images of a delectable feast for an epicurean of noble lineage in a baronial English banquet hall. Even though I mispronounced it, I ordered it with anticipatory gusto: Salisbury Steak.

Imagine my dismay when the waiter brought me a thin hamburger patty topped by some gooey brown gravy.

In The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet’s Nest, Lisbeth Salander, the computer-hacking Swedish bohemian supergirl, is served Salisbury Steak while she is in the hospital.  That should be a dead giveaway to this concoction’s medicinal origins.

It was invented, if that is the word, by an upstate New York doctor named James H. Salisbury as a cure for diarrhea among Union soldiers in the American Civil War.  Salisbury, whose low-carb, high-protein ideas preceded the Atkins diet by a century, believed that a steady diet of coffee and lean chopped beefsteak was just what the doctor ordered for the intestinally challenged men in blue.  He believed vegetables produced poisonous substances that caused heart disease, tumors, mental illness, and tuberculosis.

Dr. Salisbury—alas, the steak’s name has nothing to do with the historic English town and its lofty cathedral—added onion, egg, mushrooms, and milk to minced beef and served it to the soldiers.   The dish became popular as “Hamburger” steak, but during World War I, when German names were anathema, it became known by its inventor’s friendly English name of Salisbury.

Next time I think I’ll order Chicken à la King.  That sounds pretty regal, doesn’t it?

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou swore off Salisbury Steak years ago, as his tastes are somewhat more exotic.

                       

                      A Salisbury Steak

                      I take for a fake,

                      It might even be laced with pink slime.

                      As for SPAM,

                      It ain’t ham, it’s a sham

                      From a pig that was not in its prime.

                       

                      And a Chicken McNugget?

                      I won’t hug it or plug it,

                      For the meat has been flaked and then formed,

                      And the stuff in a wiener

                      Could be cleaner and leaner,
                      And through it who knows what has swarmed?                                         

                      
                      For a good wholesome treat

                      I just eat Potted Meat—

                      So what if it’s ground to a paste?

                      It uses all of the cow,

                      And obscure bits of sow,

                      And not one part is going to waste!

Leicester Jeicesters

Yanks who visit Great Britain are forever getting their tongues tangled around the non-phonetic, counterintuitive pronunciation the Brits give to many names of places and people.  It’s not so hard to remember Berkeley is “Barkley,” Leicester is “Lester,” and the River Thames is “Tems.” And we all can dredge up from our reading of Macbeth that the ill-fated Scot was the Thane of “Glomz” (spelled Glamis). 

But it gets dodgier when you encounter names like Barnoldswick (“BAR-lick’), Cockburn (“COE-burn”), and Colquhon (“kuh-HOON”). 

Even some Brits throw up their hands in confusion when confronted with Cholmondeley, which is pronounced “CHUM-lee,” Woolfardisworthy (“WULZ-er-ree”), Belvoir (“Beaver”), or the seemingly unsayable Featherstonehaugh, until you know it is “FAN-shaw.”

Most of these weird ways of saying words stem from the Norman conquerors' attempts to wrap their French-speaking tongues around Saxon names—and vice versa when the English were confronted with French imports. To this day, there are some diehard John Bulls who insist the Belgian town of Ypres is called “Wipers.”

Of course, Yanks themselves have some pretty odd pronunciations, including the family name Taliaferro, which comes out “TAHL-iv-ur”; Achilles (“uh-CHILL-us”), Kansas; Skaneateles, the New York town that sounds something like “skinny atlas”; Schuylkill (“SKOO-kle”), Pennsylvania; and the Purgatoire River in Colorado, which is rendered “Picket wire” by most natives.

Arkansans Americanize El Dorado to “EL-duh-RAY-duh,” and I have been told that there are some folks who call it “EL DOR-uh-DOO.”

Then, of course, there’s all the mangling Anglo speakers do to Spanish names in Texas: Mexia (“muh-HAY-ur”), Refugio (“ruh-FURY-oh”), and San Felipe (“SAN FILL-uh-pee”), among many.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has enough trouble pronouncing his own name, especially after the sun has been over the yardarm for a while, but that doesn’t stop him from grappling frivolously with the arcana of other people’s nomenclature:

                                                I.

            I met a young lady from Cholmondeley,

            And thought her exceedingly colmondeley.

            I gave her solmonde rolmonde,

            And she burbled, “Yolmonde! Yolmonde!”

            As I stood there, watching her dolmondeley.

                                                II.

            I met a young lady named Taliaferro,

            At a matinee showing of “Oliaferro!”

            Her looks made me quiaferro

            From my lips to my liaferro,

            In fact I was quiaferroing alliaferro!

                                                III.

            A theatre critic named Featherstonehaugh

            Saw Pygmalion and rushed out to peatherstonehaugh.

            He declared, “I’ve no quamis

            To say his plays are all bamis,”

            And he urged the producer to beatherstonehaugh.

What the Funk?

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, currently has an exhibit of artifacts relating to the Egyptian King Tutankhamun, or Tut, as his pals called him, or Funky Tut, as Steve Martin referred to him in that eponymous golden oldie “King Tut.”  What is a “funky Tut”?  What, for that matter, is “funk”? 

As it turns out, there are two kinds of funk. One means “a state of extreme fear” or “depression,” either emotional or economic. This funk derives from the Flemish word fonck (“agitation, distress”) and was first noted in English as Oxford slang around 1743.  This kind of funk is sometimes known as a “blue funk”—and has nothing to do with Martin’s views of Tut.   (A 14^th-century Middle English but now obsolete funk meant a “spark.”)

Funky Tut is more than likely a reference to the kind of funk derived from the dialectical French funquer (“to give off smoke”), which was applied to certain popular music in the early 20^th century.  Funky, meaning “having a strong, offensive odor, like smoke or cheese” has been in use since 1784.

Another view says that funky has semantic roots in the Kikongo word lu-fuki, meaning “bad body odor,” which was emblematic of work of great integrity, requiring great exertion, i.e. perspiration.  Those who were lu-fuki (or funky) were energetic, positive, sweaty achievers with B.O.

As applied to African-American jazz music, around the turn of the century, funky (and the back-formation noun funk) referred to an honest, earthy, back-to-basics sound. The word later evolved to mean “groovy, mellow, deeply felt, sexy, rhythmic, syncopated, danceable,” always with a strong carnal quality.  By the 1950s, the term was being applied more broadly to jazz music, especially soul and rhythm-and-blues.

Time Magazine in 1954 referred to “funky, authentic, swinging blues, down to earth, smelling of earth.” Funky evolved further in the 1960s when it acquired the broad sense of “stylish, authentic, eccentric, or excellent.”

So there you have King Tut—groovy, mellow, sexy, stylish, and probably, after all these thousands of years, smelling pretty bad, as well.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has emerged from his funk—more of a puce funk than a blue one—to deposit these words in a funky little pile:

            What ever became of the great Guy Lombardo?

            By now he’d be older by far than Don Pardo.

            His music was sweet,

            Just like cream of wheat,

            And earned him pots full of big-buck, super-star 
                        dough.

            But now the hot music we hear is called crunk,

            Not too long ago we all knew it as funk,

            It may be progressing,

            But not with my blessing--

               I’m afraid it’s becoming electronic junk.

Dear Abbey

As you may be aware, PBS has a huge hit on its hands with the BBC costume drama Downton Abbey.  So far the series (which will continue next fall) has centered on the vicissitudes of the Crawley clan—the Earl of Grantham and his family—and their servants.  Owing to the British law of primogeniture, the Crawley daughters cannot inherit the title, the estate, or the fortune of the Earl’s American wife. 

The action takes place between 1912 and 1920—and a number of language mavens have taken pains to point out numerous linguistic anachronisms in the script. I am indebted to an astute customer of this blog for this account by Ben Yagoda in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He writes:

“The rumblings started last fall in an article in The Telegraph, complaining that Downton characters used such not-yet-coined words and expressions as get shafted, fed up, and boyfriend.

The peripatetic and formidable language commentator Ben Zimmer picked up the ball and added a few more offenders to the list, including I’m just sayin’ (to defuse a comment), step on it, floozy, contact  (as a verb), uppity, when push comes to shove, [and] I couldn’t care less.”

A third Ben—Schmidt—ran the entire script of Downton Abbey through Google’s Ngram data base, which could find no period references to fingerprint (as a verb), moral high ground, heaven’s name, or many other phrases.

But hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute!

In the first place, some of the objectionable citations are not anachronisms at all. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary attests uppity in 1880 (the word appeared in Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus in 1881). Another useful source, the Online Etymological Dictionary, assures that floozy (“a disreputable woman”) can be traced to 1890s slang; boyfriend (“a woman’s paramour”) was used in 1909;  contact was in use as a verb meaning “to put in a position next to” as early as 1834; and fingerprint was a verb by 1905.

But more important than quibbling over the earliest citations of these words, there is a fatal flaw in any argument that a word or phrase is anachronistic: there is no way to prove with certainty when a locution entered the language.  It might have been used for quite a while before it saw print--and even the print evidence is inconclusive as to a word’s earliest appearance, since that represents only publications that have survived the ravages of time and been found by a researcher.

Yagoda concedes that the whole question of anachronisms is really irrelevant in a dramatic context. He puts the issue to rest by pointing out:

“But does it really matter? That is, in 1591, Shakespeare had his character Richard III [1452-1485] say, “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”… The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the word [discontent] was coined in–what do you know?–1591 by a certain playwright from Stratford-on-Avon.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Downton Abbey, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou has furnished this quick summary:

            The Earl of Grantham and his American wife

            Have a great big house and a happy life,

            But no male heir, and that’s a glitch,

            ‘Cause daughters can’t inherit (ain’t that a bitch!).

           

            Lady Mary (that’s daughter number one)

            Is set to marry the heir presumptive’s son,

            But he sets sail on the good ship Titanic,

            You can guess what happened—now there is panic!

           

            One night Lady Mary finds a Turk in her bed

            And somehow or other, he winds up dead.

            That’s all hushed up (but we’ll hear of it later),

            And a new heir, Matthew, arrives with his mater.

           

            He and Lady Mary don’t hit it off,

            So she takes up with a newspaper toff,

            While Matthew gets engaged to lovely Lavinia,

            Who’s pretty as a rose and sweet as a zinnia.

            Then Matthew’s paralyzed but cured by a miracle,

            If this weren’t so serious, you’d find it satirical.

            Meanwhile, in the quarters down below,

            The servants have their own imbroglio.

            The valet Bates (Grantham’s wartime aide)

            Has a really mean wife, but wants to marry a maid.

            The wife threatened Bates (and someone overheard her),

            And the upshot is Bates is charged with murder.

           

            Alas, he’s convicted and winds up in prison,

            And meanwhile, other complications have arisen:

            Lady’s maid O’Brien and footman Thomas

            Plot evil deeds that add to the dramas.

            Lady Sybil decides that she will go for

            Branson, the left-wing Irish chauffeur,

            The newspaper toff says he’ll tell all about the Turk

            If Lady Mary will not marry him—the jerk!

            Lots of folks get sick with Spanish flu,

            And one kicks the bucket—but I won’t say who.           

            And then, when everyone has been put through the     

                       wringer,

            Maggie Smith drops in with another one-line zinger.

           

            There’s a good bit more that I can’t explain,

            So tune in next year and see Shirley MacLaine,

            Who’s sure to make each of us a fan again

            Of every Downton Abbey shenanigan.

           

Severely Severe

Mitt Romney, trying hard to attract far right-wing voters, has garnered severe criticism in his use of language for having said he was a “severely conservative governor” of Massachusetts. Many learned people find fault with this use of the word severely (never mind the word conservative).

Calling Romney “self-destructive,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman archly maintained the most frequent meanings of severe are “disabled, depressed, ill, limited, and injured.” Another supercilious columnist said Romney spoke of conservatism “as though it were a disease.” (Hmm, maybe he's on to something.)

But Romney’s getting a bum rap, at least on this point.  Despite the fact that the phrase “severely conservative” does sound a bit peculiar, it actually makes perfect sense. Look at the dictionaries.

Webster's New International (2^nd edition) likes “serious in feeling or manner, sedate, grave, austere” as severe’s first definition.  Nothing odd about that for a conservative, is there?

Webster’s more up-to-date Collegiate Dictionary (11^th edition) gives the primary meaning as “strict in judgment, discipline, or government,” followed by “stringent,” “restrictive,” “scrupulously exacting,” “establishing exacting standards of accuracy and integrity in intellectual processes,” “sober,” and “restrained.” So far, so good.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first meaning as “rigorous in condemnation or punishment,” followed by “strict in matters of conduct,” “austere with oneself,” “shunning laxity or self-pleasure.”

Much further down the list in all the lexicons is the meaning that Romney’s critics would like to ascribe to his turn of phrase—“harsh, inflicting physical discomfort or pain, attended with a maximum of distress.”

Roget’s Thesaurus gives as synonyms for severe: “uncompromising, unyielding, obdurate, arbitrary, iron-handed, and arrogant.”

So admit it: Romney is  “severely” conservative (or at least he wants to be so regarded by the GOP base).  If you want to criticize him, I’ll give you a list of more substantive issues than his alleged misuse of that word.

Whether the Bard of Buffalo Bayou is severe or not depends on whether he gets up on the conservative or liberal side of his bed. You be the judge:

            Show me a man who is strong and severe,

            Obdurate, arrogant, grave, and austere,

            Show me a man who is stringent and rigorous,

            Vital and vigilant, virile and vigorous,

            Show me a man who is strict and restrictive,

            Sober, exact—and a little vindictive.

            Show me a man who is harsh and sedate,

            Looking unpleasant from something he ate,

            Show me that man, hard as rock, ossified—

            And I’ll bet he’ll be on the conservative side.

Lead, Follow, or Quote Correctly

Republican Candidate Mitt Romney tried to invoke the memory of a Revolutionary patriot when he declared in Florida: “In another era of American crisis, Thomas Paine is reported to have said, 'Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Mr. President, you were elected to lead. You chose to follow, and now, it's time for you to get out of the way.”

Fighting words in these times that try men’s souls!—but it would help if the quote were based in reality.  Tom Paine, that old trouble-making Deist, never said any such thing. Romney at least said Paine “is reported to have said” it—which is technically correct. If you Google the quote, you’ll find it credited to Paine at many sites, such as BrainyQuote, ThinkExist, and QuoteDB. Tch, tch.

An on-line search of all of Paine’s published works does not reveal these words, or anything approximating them. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations has no such citation. Of course, Paine might have uttered the words in passing to his barber or his bootblack, but such an event is not recorded.

Moreover, the terseness and rude bluntness of the phrase does not have the cadences typical of most eighteenth-century prose, including Paine’s.  If he had wished to utter such a thought, Paine would probably have written something like: “I implore you to provide sorely needed generalship against our tyrannous enemies, or to follow steadfastly those brave patriots already in the fore, or, failing either of those alternatives, to remove yourself as an obstacle in the path of progress.” 

No one can really pin down the origin of this popular saying. “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way” is the title of a 1981 biography of media mogul Ted Turner, who “is reported” to have the saying mounted on his desk. Maybe Turner thought of it. 

General George S. Patton also “is reported” to have said, "We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way."  The no-nonsense Patton is also noted for such quotes as “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country; he won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

A deficient leader and an unreliable follower, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou is content to stay out of the way, until he has something to say, which happens more often than is necessary.

           

            Twelve Republicans, God’s gift from heaven,

            Trump tripped up, then there were eleven.

            Eleven Republicans, with a Presidential yen,

            Johnson non-started, then there were ten.

            Ten Republicans in the candidate line,

            Roemer went nowhere, then there were nine.

           

            Nine Republicans eager to debate,

            Pawlenty had plenty, then there were eight.           

            Eight Republicans tried to rise like leaven,

            Cain wasn’t able, then there were seven.

            Seven Republicans remained in the mix,

            Bachmann fell back, then there were six.

            Six Republicans, hoping to stay alive,

            Huntsman missed his shot, then there were five.

            Five Republicans, playing hard to score,

             “Oops!” Perry fumbled, and now there are four.

            Four Republicans, which will it be?

            Is Santorum next, to leave only three?

            Three Republicans, still quite a few,

            Paul may move on, leaving only two.

            Two Republicans, which one will run?

            Gingrich or Romney, there can be only one.

            One Republican, when all is said and done.

            But Obama’s in the way—so then there’ll be none.

                        

Taxi!

G. K. Chesterton, in a book published in 1908, mentions a “taximeter cab.” This is a shortened form of “taximeter cabriolet,” which refers to a two-wheeled, one-horse carriage available for hire and equipped with a taximeter, a machine that would automatically measure the distance traveled and cleverly calculate the fare. (The tip is up to you.) This form of transport was introduced in London only a year earlier, in 1907, and is the source of the modern taxicab or just plain taxi.

Taximeter is a word derived from the French taximètre and the German Taxameter. Taxa is Middle Latin for “tax” or “charge,” and meter is from the Greek metron (“measure”).

The taximeter was invented in 1891 by a German engineer, Wilhelm Bruhn. Cabbies were not uniformly pleased with a device that limited what they could charge passengers to a sum they sometimes regarded as inaccurate and always as insufficient.  To show their feelings, several high-spirited drivers tossed Bruhn into the Spree River in Berlin.  Apparently he was able to emerge from it safely, but after that he undoubtedly walked a lot rather than hailing cabs.

As early as 1911 the verb taxi was used, for an airplane, to mean “moving slowly under its own power.” Webster, the OED, and the Online Etymological Dictionary all demurely decline to speculate about how the word came to be used in that way, but presumably it was a reference to the short-term movement of planes between runway and gate, analogous to the short trips made by a taxicab.

Similarly, A taxi-dancer, a term first used about 1930, is a person (usually female) available for short-term hire as a partner in a dance-hall.  One such was immortalized in the 1930 Rodgers and Hart song “Ten Cents A Dance” (“All that you need is a ticket, / Come on, big boy, ten cents a dance.”)

The taxi squad of a football team, which dates to 1960, is reputedly so called because Arthur B. “Mickey” McBride, owner of the Cleveland Browns, would hire his reserve players to work at his taxicab company in order to keep them on the payroll.  Thus taxi squad came to mean injured or otherwise inactive players.

A Tijuana taxi is truckers’ and CBers’ slang for a police car with flashing lights or other prominent markings.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou once applied for work as a taxi-dancer and wound up parking cars.  He gave that up for driving iambs and dactyls around, but, as you will note, usually off the meter.

            I hailed a taxi

            In Cotopaxi,

            And my ride was quite deplorable.

            I failed to veto

            A trip to Quito,

            Which was not Ecuadorable.

           

            I gave a shout:

            “Just let me out!

            Your driving’s out of order!”

            But we just went faster,

            And I sensed disaster

            As we headed for the border.

           

            I plied the driver,

            With a ten and a fiver,

            And then with rums and brandies,

            But he pushed the pedal

            Right to the metal,

            And we drove up into the Andes.

           

            It was then I knew

            We were in Peru,

            A useless piece of trivia,

            For the crazy cabbie

            Was turning crabby

            As we crossed into Bolivia.

           

            At that moment, alas,

            We ran out of gas

            And sank in Lake Titicaca.

            The rest of my journey

            Was made on a gurney,

            On the back of an ancient alpaca.

What About Bob?

A few weeks ago this blog dealt with various meanings of the word jack.  If, for some unaccountable reason, you missed “You Don’t Know Jack,” you’ll find it by clicking: http://wordsgoingwild.blogspot.com/search?q=jack.

Now comes bob, claiming to be an equally versatile word, and demanding equal space.  Actually I have already dealt with a couple of bobs—bobsled and the British phrase Bob’s your uncle—in an earlier blog.  If you missed that, too, try: 
http://wordsgoingwild.blogspot.com/2010/02/and-bobs-your-uncle.html 

But that only scrapes the top of the bob-barrel.  There are many more bob-words that cry out for explanations.

As a noun and a verb, bob has a number of meanings, most of them derived from the 14^th-century Middle English word bobbe, meaning a “bunch or a cluster” of something.  From that usage, by the 1570s bob came to mean a horse’s tail cut short, into a knot. It developed into a verb meaning “to cut short” and hence the “bobbed” short-hair style popular with women in the 1920s.  From that hairstyle came bobby pin, which was used to keep the bobbed hair in place.

It wasn’t long until bobby socks, a new style of hosiery that came to just above the ankles, were named because they were “bobbed,” or shortened, when compared to knee socks. First usage of bobby socks is attested in 1927, and bobby-soxer, meaning a teen-age girl (probably swooning over Frankie Sinatra) in 1944.

From the meaning of “cut short,” we have also derived bobtail, meaning an animal (or vehicle) with its tail shortened either naturally or artificially.  A bobcat is one such animal with a stubby tail.

Other bob usages have nothing to do with that meaning.

The British policeman is known as a bobby owing to the introduction of the Metropolitan Police Act in 1829 by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel.  For the same reason British cops were also known as peelers. First appearance of bobby in the constabulary sense is traced to 1844.

The Brits also used bob to refer to a shilling (or several of them), before they got all uppity and adopted decimal currency, doing away with the shilling altogether.  This usage dates to the late 1700s and probably from the word bawbee, which was 17^th-century slang for a half-penny.  That word stemmed from the French bas billon, meaning debased copper money. In the 18th century a “bobstick” was a shilling’s worth of gin.

Finally, Yessirreebob, is an American expression meaning “Sure!” or, if you’re Sarah Palin, “You betcha!”  Yessirree, in which the “ree” is added as an intensifer to “Yes, sir,” has been used at least since 1846. The earliest known example of the exclamation Yessirreebob was in 1876, and the bob is probably a euphemism for “God,” similar to “gosh” in phrases such as “Oh my gosh!”

Just in case you’re wondering, I have excluded from consideration that fencing material made of twisted metal strands with sharp points that is known in some parts of the country as bobwar. 

The Bob of Buffalo Bayou has known a number of Bobs in his lifetime, which has been an inexplicably long one, given his profusion of deleterious habits.  He honors a few of these Bobs in these deathless lines:
            
            Dylan is willin’
            And Crosby was crowin’.
            Crane was insane,
            And Cummings was goin’.

            Marley was gnarly,
            And Newhart a true heart.
            Feller was stellar,
            But Lemon was too tart.

            Fosse was bossy,
            And Hoskins too hesitant.
            Schieffer is briefer,
            And Dole ran for President.

            Guccione was phony,
            Geldof economical,
            Hope was no dope,
            Like Elliot, quite comical.

            Costas loves pastas,
            And Kane gave us Batman.
            Wills gave us thrills,
            And Denver? You know that man.

            Linder won’t hinder
            Great music from Gaudio.
            Barker seems starker, 
            And Burns needs no audio.

            Weinstein’s no Einstein,
            And Keeshan was moody.
            Woodward’s are good words,
            As for Smith: “Howdy Doody!”

Braintasers

Everyone knows, I expect, that the word laser is an acronym of “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.”  I had always thought that taser—you know, the supposedly non-lethal electric device police use to subdue obstreperous little old ladies—was formed from something similar.

But no!  It turns out taser has nothing to do with laser, except that it rhymes with it. Taser is actually a trademarked name for a device that fires electrified darts that will incapacitate rowdy human targets long enough for them to be handcuffed and trundled off to wherever it is they trundle trouble-makers off to.

The taser was invented by Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, and he named it after a favorite adventure novel called Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, by Victor Appleton (a pseudonym for several writers in the Stratemeyer Syndicate), published in 1911.  Cover added a gratuitous middle initial to come up with the acronym Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle, or taser. 

Those of you who had the decency to fork over $22.95 for my book Words Gone Wild (now available at amazon.com for as little as $2.63) will know all about Tom Swift and the resulting Tom Swifty—wordplay derived from the (not quite accurate) observation that Tom’s statements were always qualified by adverbs, as in “I wouldn’t call a constable,” Tom said quietly.

The idea of a Tom Swifty (and its relative, the croaker, which uses verbs instead of adverbs) is to make the most outlandish pun possible.  A few notorious examples, some, but not all, of which can be found in the aforementioned book, are:

“Your honor, you’re crazy,” Tom said judgmentally.

“I haven’t had any tooth decay yet,” Tom said precariously.

“I love Brazilian dances,” Tom said somberly.

“I also like Cuban dances,” Tom rumbled.

“I love the French Riviera,” Tom said nicely.

“I especially like the film festival on the Riviera,” Tom said cannily.

“The umpire called me out,” Tom said baselessly.

“Elvis is dead,” Tom said expressly.

“My radio works perfectly now,” Tom said ecstatically.

“I work in the prison cocktail bar,” Tom contended.

Well, enough of that.  Let’s move on now to more sublime topics, for which we can always count (but not much) on the Bard of Buffalo Bayou: 

                       There once was a guy named Tom Swift,

                        Whose 9-to-5 shift got short shrift.

                        By noon he would lift

                        Several pints—get my drift?—

                        To show he was Swift getting squiffed.

Name That President!

Could the names of Presidential candidates hold any clues as to their suitability for office?  Probably not.

For example, the Bush family name is Anglo-Saxon and refers simply to a person who lives by a bush, probably meaning a wine merchant, since the image of a bush adorned the customary sign for a vintner. Clinton is Old English for a “fenced settlement,” derived from the town of Glympton in Oxfordshire.  And Reagan is Irish, meaning son of Riag (“king”), or “little king.”

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to probe the onomastics of current Presidential politics.

Take Romney.  Please.  I mean take the name “Romney.” Its origin is a bit obscure. Some sources say it’s Norman and first showed up in the 11^th century in a village in Kent over which Robert de Romenel presided. Others say it’s of Welsh origin and means “a winding river.”  And yet another learned scholar opines that it’s Anglo-Saxon, derived from rum, meaning “spacious” and ea, “river”—i.e. “Big River.”

Santorum is from the Latin word sanctus, meaning “saint,” of which sanctorum is the plural genitive, which would mean “of the saints.” Other Italian names like Santorini and Santorello stem from the same root.

Paul, as in Ron, derives from the Roman family name Paulus, which means "small" or "humble" in Latin; an English cognate is the word few.

As for Gingrich, it’s of Swiss Mennonite provenance, originally Günderich, meaning “power battle,” or words to that effect. Gunderic was also a 5^th century Vandal chieftain.

At the back of the GOP heap, Perry has several possible origins.  It could be a derivative of the Latin peregrine, meaning “wanderer,” “traveler,” or “stranger.”  It might also originate in the Anglo-Saxon pyrige, or “pear tree,” meaning a person who lived near such a tree. Perry may also have sprung from the Welsh ap Herry, meaning “son of Harry or Henry.” And yet another possibility is the Norman French perrieur, or “quarryman.”  You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Bachmann could be German, Catalan, Polish, Hebrew, or English in origin and what it means depends on the language.  In German it would be either “baker” or “person who lives by a stream.” The latter is also its English meaning. In Catalan, it would mean “a dark or shady person.” In Hebrew it derives from ben chayim, or “son of life.” And in Polish it’s somebody who comes from Sebaste, a town in Turkey.

Finally, Huntsman is more or less what it sounds like—an English name meaning either a man who hunts, or the servant of such a hunter.  The candidate will probably opt for the former.

Oh—and what about our sitting President?  Obama is derived from the Dohluo language spoken by the Luo ethnic group in Kenya.  Bam means “bent” or “slightly curved” or “crooked,” and O- means “he.”  Many Kenyan names begin with O- (just like in Ireland).  The best guess of most linguists is that the name Obama originated with one of the President’s ancestors who was bow-legged.

Bow-legged or not, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou hobbles lickety-split down Dactyl Drive to Anapest Avenue, laying waste to sundry poetic monuments in his path.

            Will long-running Romney

            Be the GOP nom’nee?

            Or will it be Gingrich,

            That guy who is bling-rich?

            Maybe Santorum

            Will find folks are for ‘im.

            Or possibly Paul

            Will win it all.

            I do believe Perry

            Is unlikely—very.

            It sure won’t be Huntsman,

            Although he’s no dunce, man.

            And as for Bachmann,

            Ach! Mann!

            Oh, yes—poor old Cain

            Found running was vain,

            The same as Pawlenty

            Who quite early had plenty.

           

            Best stick with Obama,

            Or the Dalai Lama.

Just for Laughs

Last year I posted a blog about the funniest words in the English language—you remember: absquatulate, callipygian, gazump, gongoozle, snollygoster, and a few more.  I’m going to start the New Year with another list, which I suppose you’d have to call the second funniest words in English, since they didn’t make the first cut.

I like abibliophobia, which comes from the Greek words for “without,” “books,” and “fear.”  And it means just what you might think: a dread of running out of reading material.  Frankly, I think anyone who suffers from that is engaging in batrachomyomachy, which is Greek again and means a battle between frogs and mice, in reference to an ancient Greek parody of The Iliad.   If you used the word today (which is highly unlikely) it would probably mean something like making a molehill out of a mountain.  And speaking of frogs, if you’re ranivorous, you like to eat them. 

Crapulence does not stem from the rude word you might think it does—but it might be related nonetheless.  It stems from the Latin crapulus (“intoxicated”) and it means discomfort caused by too much drinking or eating.  That’s an ailment unlikely to beset a gaberlunzie, which is a wandering beggar, as if you didn’t already know, and, like so many weird words, is Scottish. Another word that isn’t what it sounds like is turdiform, which means having the shape of a lark—not a word you can find many uses for in this larkadaiscal age.

To round out our funnies for today, there’s gobemouche a French word (literally a “fly-swallower’) for a highly gullible person; slangwhanger, a user of abusive slang words; and wabbit, which besides being Elmer Fudd’s word for that wascally Bugs, also means exhausted, and, naturally, originated with those widiculous Scots.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has reached out for some funny words—and when he reaches, it’s really a stretch, as you can see.

            A snollygoster with a snickersnee

            Was lollygagging and gongoozling.

            A cockalorum with a bumbershoot

            Thought the snool was just bamboozling.

            The panjandrum whacked him on the sinciput,

            Which gave him eructating collywobbles,

            And made the jackanapes remugient,

            Prolonging all their sudorific squabbles.