Whatever…

The New York Times, bastion of all the news that’s fit to print, and then some, opened a recent story with the sentence “Whatever happened to Ron Paul?”  Somewhere on the staff of that august publication there must be editors who know better. 

In that sentence, as in the classic movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, what  and ever should be two words.  What is an interrogative pronoun, requesting information about “the identity, nature, or value of an object or condition,” and ever is an adverbial modifier meaning “over a period of time.”

The same paper in another story indicated that Mitt Romney will do “whatever it takes” to win the Republican nomination.  Maybe so, but at least this time they got whatever right. In this case it is properly one word, a pronoun meaning “anything,” “everything,”  “no matter what,” or “other similar things.” For example: Whatever I say, you tell me to “shut up” or I enjoy Chardonnay, bock beer, single-malt whiskey, or whatever.

The one-word whatever can also be an adjective, meaning “of any kind” or an adverb meaning “in any case.”  For example: I’ll take whatever money you have or There is no point whatever in your resisting because I have a gun.

Contemporary usage of the one-word whatever, following a question and usually accompanied by a rolling of the eyes and/or a shrug of the shoulders, is adverbial in this sense, with an added connotation of “why are you bothering me with this?”

What ever became of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou?  Whatever.

            Mitt Romney on the Campaign Trail

           

            I’m not concerned about the poor,

            They have a safety net.           

            Ten thousand dollars says that you’re

            Not going to take my bet.

           

            I really like it when I’m able

            To fire the people who

            Repair my cars, install my cable,

            Or give me a shampoo.

            You’re out of work? Now, listen—shucks,

            I, too, am unemployed.

            Of course, two hundred million bucks

            Does help to fill the void.

           

            My income taxes cause me pains—

            Almost fifteen percent!

            I try to save my capital gains

            (But some of them I spent).

            I do get speakers’ fees and such

            At places I appear,

            But they don’t amount to much—

            Just half–a-mill last year.

           

            Corporations?  They are people,

            Just like me and you.

            Just wait—that Democratic Veep’ll

            Claim that isn’t true.

           

            My love of sports goes to extremes,

            I love to cheer and yell,

            I follow almost all the teams

            And know their owners well.

            How often do I wish again,

            That I could catch a flight

            To see those trees in Michigan—

            They’re just the perfect height.

            Home ownership? We need much more

            To make our nation thrive,

            Why, I myself own three or four—

            Or possibly it’s five.

           

            Obamacare’s abomination,

            I really do abhor it,

            With just one tiny reservation:

            In my state I was for it.

            For the price of gas we owe great thanks

            To Democrats who tax:

            It makes it hard to fill the tanks

            Of all my Cadillacs.

            On my lawn crew, I told their foreman,

            Hire no illegal alien.

            After all, I am a Mormon—

            And not Episcopalian.

            They say I’m like an Etch-a-Sketch,

            But, heck, that’s just plain nutty,

            When there’s a fact I have to stretch,

            I’m more like Silly Putty.

            As for that dog, atop my car

            To Canada—I swear,

            It really wasn’t all that far,

            And the dog just loves fresh air.

           

            You won’t find more, if you should delve

            Much deeper into Romney.

            Just vote for me in 2012,

            And I mean Anno Domini.    
    
   

Great Googamooga, Indeed!

The New York Times recently ran the following correction:
 
“A report last Wednesday in the Off the Menu column rendered incorrectly the name of a food and music festival planned for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in May. It is The Great GoogaMooga, not The Great Googa Mooga.”

Thank goodness The Times had the decency and the courage to admit its error and set everything right.  It is a newspaper of record, after all.  As I’m sure all educated people must be aware, “Googamooga” is one word, not two, although the festival planners’ idiosyncratic capitalization of the “M” must have thrown The Times copyeditors (if any) a curve.

For a more complete explanation of “Googamooga,” I am indebted to Howard Levy and his website 1960sailors.net.  According to him, “Googamooga" is probably derived from African-American musicians’ jive talk. The term was in use around 1954 by rock 'n' roll D.J. Douglas "Jocko" Henderson. It later appeared in the lyric of the Cadets' recording of "Stranded in the Jungle," by Ernestine Smith and James Johnson, as follows:

            When I woke up and my head started to clear,
            I had a strange feeling I was with cooking gear,
            I smelled something cookin’ and I looked to see
            That's when I found out they was a-cookin’ me!

        Great Googamooga, let me outta here!

When combined with the word "great"—as in "great googamooga!"—it is an exclamation of either shock and dismay or of extreme appreciation, similar to "wow!" or "goodness gracious!” according to David Fairweather, a jazz musician.

An article online by a syndicated blues D.J. from Boulder, Colorado, known only as "The Red Rooster," suggests that the term originated with a Philadelphia-Baltimore area D.J., Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert, Jr.  Red Rooster also cites “Googamooga” in a 1953 recording by the Magic Tones and later on the Temptations' 1970 hit, "Ball of Confusion."

Well, I’m certainly glad to have that cleared up, and I’m sure The Times will be as well.

In case you plan to go, The Great GoogaMooga Festival will take place in Brooklyn May 19 and 20.  Its website defines the phrase thus:

n. an amusement park of food & drink; adj. something wonderfully great; excl. "oh my goodness!" or "how bout that!"

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou viewed the brouhaha with a jaundiced eye (In fact, he is jaundiced all over) and was uncharacteristically terse: 

            I really do not give a damn

            About the Googamooga,

            Instead, I’ll take a kilogram           

            Of Caspian Beluga.

Be the Best, Boy

In movie credits, which often seemingly last as long as the feature itself, there’s usually a credit for a “Best Boy.”  If you already know all you want to know about that term, you may click right now to a more instructional web site, such as lindsaylohan.com.  But if you’d like to know more, stay tuned.

In movie parlance a best boy is the chief assistant of either the gaffer or the key grip.

The gaffer is the head lighting technician, and the origin of the term is obscure.  One source says it is because he operates a gaff, a long pole fitted with hardware so that it can move overhead lights into different positions.  Gaff dates to 1656 as the Occitan word gaf, which meant a spearhead. 

(Incidentally, Occitan, sometimes called langue d’oc, is a Romance language that was once spoken in southern France.  It is distinguished from French, or langue d’ oïl, by the word used to mean “yes”—oc in Occitan and oïl in Old French.)

Others, however, say gaffer has nothing to do with a gaff, but stems from that word’s usage to mean “an old man” (just as gammer can mean an old woman, as in the sixteenth-century farce Gammer Gurton’s Needle ), probably a contraction of grandfather or godfather. Gaffer was subsequently used to mean a foreman or overseer on a work site, and hence to mean the chief of the lighting crew.  Or so some believe.

A grip, in theatrical usage, is a stagehand, a word first used in the 1880s, based on the manner in which backstage workers had to “grasp” or “grip” big pieces of scenery to move them.  In the motion picture world, a grip is responsible for moving cameras into the proper position, with the use of equipment like dollies, tracks, booms, cranes, camera cars, helicopters, airplanes, and trailers. The head grip is known as the key grip.

The term best boy has been used in the film business since the 1930s, and there are several theories about its origin.  One is that it was first used in the English apprentice system to refer to a promising apprentice who was ready to be promoted to journeyman.  Another source suggests that in pre-craft union days, it was common for technicians to be shared between departments, and the gaffer might ask the key grip for the loan of his “best boy,” or vice versa.  Another theory holds that a best boy was originally a term used by the captain of a sailing ship for his most able crewmember.  Sailors on shore leave were often hired to rig theatrical equipment, and the term may have come into usage that way. 

Best boy is gender neutral, although the term best girl is sometimes used informally. 

The Best Bard of Buffalo Bayou needs no introduction and will get none:

            The best boy has got to get better,

            For the best boy is not very good.

            The best boy is not a go-getter

            And can’t do what the best best boys should.

            The best boy believes he’s the best man,

            And his best girl — she helps him rehearse.

            But he still cannot do what the rest can—

            And the best boy’s best girl is far worse.    

       

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.