Risqué Business

On this festive St. Patrick’s Day let’s lift a glass of green beer and pay tribute to the Irish origins of the verse form that everybody loves (except those who hate it)—the limerick!  Of course, it has something to do with the Irish county of Limerick but no one seems to know exactly what.  The name of the county itself probably derives from the phrase Loch Luimnigh, which means the “lake beside a barren spot of land.”  It was a pre-Viking settlement as early as 561 A.D.

The verse came somewhat later, in the eighteenth century, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, probably had its origin in “convivial” pub parties at which it was customary for guests, at the height of their conviviality, to compose salacious verses, raucously sung and ending in the line “Will you come up to Limerick?”  The first documented use of the word limerick to describe the verse was in the 1898 book Illustrated Limericks.

Although not known as such until later, the verse form was favored in the eighteenth century by a group known as the Maigue Poets, clustered around the River Maigue in County Limerick.  Based on a medieval English pattern, it has five lines in a rhyme scheme of AABBA, with three metrical feet in the first, second, and fifth lines, and two in the third and fourth.  One of the first examples was by a pub owner named Sean O’Tuama, who wrote:

            I sell the best brandy and sherry,

            To make all my customers merry,

                        But at times their finances

                        Run short as it chances,

            And then I feel very sad, very.

Although the limerick historically tends to be bawdy, the best known popularizer of the form in the nineteenth century, Edward Lear, wrote squeaky clean ones that you could read in (most) Sunday school classes.  This is one of Lear’s best:

            There was an Old Man who supposed

            That the street door was partially closed,

                        But some very large rats

                        Ate his coat and his hats

            While that futile old gentleman dozed.

The racy nature of the earlier and later limerick was characterized by Morris Bishop:

            The limerick is furtive and mean;

            You mus keep her in close quarantine,

                         Or she sneaks to the slums

                         And promptly becomes

             Disorderly, drunk, and obscene.  

Or, as another, unknown wag put it:

            The limerick yields laughs anatomical,

            In a form that is quite economical,

                        And the good ones I’ve seen

                        Are so seldom clean,

            And the clean ones are so seldom comical.

Incidentally, this and much more limerick lore can be found in my book that used be known as Words Gone Wild, but has been recently reissued and is now widely available under the alias Puns, Puzzles, and Word Play.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou dabbles in limericks, which he cloaks in meretriciously pseudo-literary garb in a vain attempt to mask their vile disreputability:

            Did you hear about poor Julius Caesar?

            He just can’t admit he’s a geezer;

                        Making to love to Calpurnia,

                        He developed a hernia

            Attempting some tricks that might please her.

            A Shakespearean actor named Seth

            Liked to do it till quite out of breath.

                        He had fun with Ophelia,

                        And the same with Cordelia,

            But was stymied by Lady Macbeth.

            In 1 Henry IV is recorded

            What Prince Hal and a comely young whore did,

                        They began in Act One,

                        By Act Five they were done—

            What occurred in between was quite sordid.

                                   

Better stop the Bard here before his disgusting utterances turn completely unprintable.

Great Granma!

The Cuban government has a new upscale housing project it’s calling Project Granma.  No, it's not a retirement home for grandmothers, but rather fancy apartments for certain loyal government officials. So what’s Granma got to do with it?

Granma, a variant spelling of Grandma, was the yacht that was used to carry 82 Cuban Revolutionists from Mexico to Cuba in 1956 to try to overthrow the Batista regime. A 60-foot cabin cruiser built to accommodate 12 people, it was named by the original American owner as a tribute to his grandmother. The yacht was bought from the Schuylkill Products Company by a Mexican gun dealer named Antonio “The Friend” del Conde, who was secretly acting for Fidel Castro.

Although the coup was not successful until a few years later, Granma has become an icon of the Cuban Revolution.  The official daily newspaper of the Cuban Communist Central Committee is also called Granma.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou did not have a grandma or grandpa since he was found as an infant hidden in some bulrushes wrapped in an old copy of Variety.  He has been “on” ever since, but it is not clear on what.

            When I’d snorkel and I’d scuba

            In the waters down by Cuba,

            I'd drop in on a bar quite near Havana,

            Where I’d sip a Cuba Libre

            Like a very thirsty zebra,

            And sometimes munch an overripe banana.

           

            One day I met a young barista,

            Who urged me to go see Batista,

            But the people had decided to rebel,           

            And in el jefe’s chair was Castro,

            So from way back on the last row,

            I stood and shouted out, “Hola, Fidel!”

            “Viva Marx!” the rebels shouted,

            And since I felt those Marxists doubted

            Me, I tried to act just like a gaucho.

            “Viva Marx!” I answered proudly,

            Then I added, very loudly:

            “Three cheers for Harpo, Chico, and for Groucho!” 

           

Btfsplk!

It’s easy these days to find people doing things that deserve a Bronx cheer—or, if you prefer, a raspberry. This rude sound, used to show displeasure, is made by blowing through lips that are slightly parted with the tongue loosely placed between them. It can properly be directed toward the craven politicians, overpaid CEOs, grasping bankers, callous pharmaceutical manufacturers, hypocritical clergymen, duplicitous sports figures, or self-indulgent show-biz stars of your choice.  And maybe a few others, for good measure.

A “raspberry” gets its name from the Cockney rhyming slang term “raspberry tart”—a polite way of saying “fart,” a physical occurrence whose sound resembles the rude noise made with the lips.  The term has been in use since 1890.  “Raspberry tart” becomes simply “raspberry” through the Cockney custom of using only the first part of a two-part rhyme to stand for the thing that is signified:  thus, plates of meat, shortened to “plates,” means feet; loaf of bread, or “loaf,” means “head”, and trouble and strife, or “trouble,” means “wife.”

The same noise has been called a “Bronx cheer” since 1929 and probably had its origin in the noises made by New York Yankees fans to show their displeasure at an unfavorable umpire’s ruling or a boneheaded play by one of the teams. Yankee Stadium is located in the Bronx. 

Raspberry, meaning the fruit, also has an interesting etymology.  Known since 1540 as a raspis berry, it is probably derived from its similarity in color to raspise, a sweet, rose-colored wine also known as vinum raspeys. It was made from pomace, a paste made by grinding grapes, and the file used to grind them was called a raspa. Others say the roughness of the fruit’s exterior gave it its name from its similarity to the rasp itself.

Older and therefore more well-informed readers may remember a character in the comic strip “Li’l Abner” named Joe Btfsplk.  Always pictured with a black cloud over his head, he was the epitome of hard luck. His creator, Al Capp, said his surname was pronounced just like the raspberry sound.

Raspberries have never been the favorite fruit of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou.  He has always been more partial to the grape in its liquid form.

            Never have I met a crude gent

            Cruder than the lewd Ted Nugent,

            And if his presence is a habit

            For the GOP’s Greg Abbott,

            Then it would appear that Greg

            Thinks he can pull the voters’ leg.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

In a recent blog I referred to words that were “obsolete and archaic.”  I really should have said “obsolete or archaic,” because a word cannot be both at the same time.  What’s the difference between the two terms?

Obsolete, from the Latin obsoletus (“worn out, gone out of use”) and obsolescere (“to wear out, grow old, decay”), refers to a word that is no longer in use (except in quoting historical material).  Most dictionaries use the date 1755 as the cutoff date, and if no instances of the word can be found in any writing since then, it is labeled obsolete. That happens to be the publication date of Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language.

A few obsolete words, which I daresay are not part of your vocabulary, are snoutfair (“an attractive person”), brabble (“argue loudly about something inconsequential”), slubberdegullion (“a slovenly person”), gobemouche (“a silly person”), roinish (“despicable”), and pudibund (“bashful”).

 

Archaic derives from French archaïque (“antiquated”), which had its origin in ancient Greek arkhaikos (“old-fashioned”), which ultimately came from the verb form arkhō (“I am first”).  Linguistically, an archaic word is one that is rare, but is still in use, even if only in specialized situations.

A few examples of archaic words, which you probably use sparingly, are avaunt (“begone”), ere (“before”), hark (“listen”), sooth (“truth”), and whilom (“formerly”). 

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou cannot decide whether he is archaic or obsolete, but there is no doubt that he is uncouth, unkempt, disheveled, unhousled, disappointed, and unaneled.  Despite these disadvantages, he soldiers on.

            Three words I met upon the street—

            Hither, and thither, and yon—

            Wanted to be obsolete,

            Just like a mastodon.

            But all their efforts were in vain,

            And those three are still prosaic,

            And like anon, anent, and fain,

            Content to be archaic.

Hockey on the Rocks

The United States men’s and women’s hockey teams have both played well in the winter Olympics--on ice, of course. The unadorned word hockey in North America and Europe generally refers to the sport played on an ice rink, but it was originally played on a grassy field, and the grassy version, or field hockey, is still the national sport of India and Pakistan. The icy variety is Canada’s favorite pastime. 

The origin of the word hockey is uncertain, with the first known usage in English occurring in 1527, when a manuscript referred to “the horlinge of the litill balle with hockie stickes of staves.”  (No prizes for spelling in those days.)  The next appearance of the word in print is not until two and a half centuries later.  Was no one playing the game during that time, or did people just not want to talk about it?

In any event, the origin of the word is probably the French hoquet, meaning a “shepherd’s staff or crook,” alluding to the stick used in hockey, which is crooked. Hoquet derives from Old French hoc (“hook”), which migrated to Old English as hōc.

Hockey ought not to be confused with hooky, which appears almost exclusively in the phrase play hooky and means to absent oneself from school without permission. The phrase probably derives from a nineteenth-century slang expression, hook it, meaning to “clear out.”  As for the origin of hook it, your guess is as good as mine or Webster’s.

You could of course play hooky to play hockey.  But that would be hokey.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has been playing hooky (certainly not hockey) all his life, and this is all he has to show for it:

            A jailer, a judge, and a jockey

            Decided they’d like to play hockey,

                        And to save a few bucks,

                        In place of real pucks

            They used extra large pieces of gnocchi.

Relataively Speaking

Some useful words that I’ve never known about just showed up in a Facebook post.  They’re obsolete and archaic terms for family members that define their relationships much more precisely than modern English does.  You no longer have to stop and figure out how you’re related to Cousin Elmer or Aunt Elmira.  Think how useful these descriptions can be when you’re seating family members for Thanksgiving dinner or deciding whom to leave out of your will.  

Patruel is a child of a paternal uncle or aunt, or a child of your own brother. Instead the loosey-goosey terms “cousin” and “niece” or “nephew,” you can say “patruel” and be much more specific. It is from the Latin word patruus, “father’s brother,” and the Oxford English Dictionary has a citation of its use in 1603. 

You can also stipulate which kind of uncle or aunt you mean. Avuncle is a maternal uncle, the brother of your mother.  We have the word avuncular in modern English, which means “like an uncle (of any kind),” but its origin is the Latin avunculus, literally “little grandfather.” Avunculus, of course, is the root of uncle, which came to English through the French oncle.

If you don’t like avuncle, eam is an Old English word that means the same— maternal uncle.  It stemmed from Old High German oheim via the Dutch oom.

A maternal aunt can be referred to as the Old English modrige, from Pro-Germanic mōdrijō.

Old English also had words for paternal uncle (fædera) and aunt (fadu), which are derived from Proto-Germanic fadurjô via Old High Gereman fataro.


 The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is nobody’s uncle and nobody’s aunt.  He’d like to think he was also nobody’s fool—but that’s hard to prove.  

 

     There once was a very sick uncle,
     With a badly infected carbuncle.
                The doc, at his appointment,
                Said, “Here’s two tubes of ointment—
     If the goo doesn’t cure you, the gunk’ll.

Pantoum of the Opera

You may have missed a recent interview with Daniel Radcliffe (né Harry Potter) in which he confessed that he secretly indulges in pantoum. No, it’s not an illicit drug or a kinky bedroom antic. It’s a verse form, and budding poet Radcliffe is an avid practitioner.

The pantoum is derived from a Malay form of verse called a pantun berkait, which means a series of interwoven quatrains.  It’s similar to a villanelle, which also has lines that repeat throughout the poem. In a pantoum, the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. In the final stanza, the second line is the third line of the first stanza, and the final line of the poem is the same as the first line of the first stanza.  Got that?

If the poet is on his toes—and young Radcliffe, being a wizard, is bound to be—the meaning of the words changes slightly when they are repeated.  There’s a subtle shade of new meaning or different punctuation or a different context in which the word is used.

The usual rhyme scheme is ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, and so on.

Pantoums appeared  in Europe in the early 19^th century.  Introduced by Victor Hugo, the form was taken up by French poets, as in Charles Baudelaire’s “Harmonie du soir” (although it varies slightly from true pantoum form).

A well-known popular example of the pantoum is the lyric by Oscar Hammerstein II of “I Am Going to Like It Here” from Flower Drum Song:

I'm going to like it here.
There is something about the place,
An encouraging atmosphere,
Like a smile on a friendly face.

There is something about the place,
So caressing and warm it is.
Like a smile on a friendly face,
Like a port in a storm it is.

So caressing and warm it is.
All the people are so sincere.
Like a port in a storm it is.
I am going to like here.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has never heard of a pantoum, but he is a great fan of Harry Potter, whose wizardry he tries to emulate on days that he’s sober.  Evidently, from the following, today is not one of them:

                        There once was a dashing young wizard

                        Who was chilled to the bone in a blizzard.

                                    His body was numb,

                                    Except for his thumb  

                        And certain parts of his gizzard.

A Flair to Remember

I recently encountered this bit of vivid writing in a music review: “A pianist of flashy, almost rococo, technique, he executed the complicated cadenza with great flare.”  Hmmm. Among his spectacular qualities, he also seems to be a pyromaniac.

The flare with which he attacked all those black and white keys is “a fire or blaze of light used to signal or illuminate.”  The noun was first used around 1580, but its etymological origin is unknown.

As a verb flare has two meanings.  One is to “burst out in flame or violent emotion,” like a tea party member when Obamacare is mentioned.  The other is to “open and spread outward,” like the nostrils of a tea party member when Obamacare is mentioned.  In the latter sense it may spring from the Dutch word vlederen, to “flutter.”

What the reviewer probably meant was flair, meaning “style, or a uniquely attractive quality.”  A much more recent word in English, from around 1880, it derives from Old French flairier, which, rather surprisingly, means, “to give off an odor” and has its root in the Latin fragrare. 

Many critics urge that a flare be applied to every scrap of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou’s hen-scratchings, which, unfortunately, are not quite illegible enough to be ignored while they are still intact.

                                                I.
            A man hailed a taxi with flair,

            Said he had to get to the fair.
                        But the taxi broke down
                        On the way out of town,
            And the fare hailed a new cab with flare.
                            
                                                II.
            That cabbie called his wife to declare
            “I’ll be late home, ‘cause I have a fare.”
                        When he got home, she shot him,
                        Then explained why she got him:
            “I thought he said ‘an affair’.”

                                                  III.
            A tough guy who swaggered with flair
            Pinned a red rose in his hair.
                        Dressed in high heels and pearls
                        Just like one of the girls—
           Now his picture’s in Vanity Fair.

 

Tilting with Wend Mills

Before the 15^th century, you might “go” somewhere or you might just as easily “wend” there.  Both words mean to “move on a course, or to pass from one point to another.”  Nowadays, you hardly ever see “wend,” except in the phrase “wend your way.” 

Both words had German origins, “go” from gehen, which made its way into Middle English as gan, and “wend” from wenten (“turn or go”), which became wendan in Old English.   The past tense of “go” was gaed, and the past tense of “wend” was went.  Sometime in the 15^th century, “go” became the dominant verb, and “wend” passed into disuse—except for its past tense, went, which survived as a very irregular past tense for “go”—and in the phrase “wend one’s way,” that is “clear a path through a passage that is twisted or strewn with obstacles.”

The verb wend should not be confused with the noun Wend, which refers to a person of Slavic descent in Germanic areas. It comes from Old English Winedas, derived from German (Wenden), Swedish (Vendere), Polish (Wendowie), and Old Norse (Vindr). The largest settlement of Wends in the United States came in the 1850s and mostly wound up in Lee County, Texas, in an unincorporated town known as Serbin.  Also known as Sorbians, the Wends are Lutherans who are now affiliated with the Missouri Synod.

Some people say the Wends are the same as the Vends, but others maintain that Vends were a Latvian tribe with a Finnic language who moved into Wendish territory in the twelfth century and became absorbed into the Wends.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has been wending his way through life for many decades, not always completely successfully.

            Vends

            Wended;

            Wends

            Reprehended.

                       

            Vends

            Descended;

            Wends

            Defended.

            Wends

            Contended

            Vends

            Misapprehended.

           

            Wends

            Befriended

            Vends

            And blended.

           

            Wends

            Ascended;

            Vends

            Ended.

Call the Cops!

Everyone probably knows that a British policeman is known as a bobby because the 1829 Metropolitan Police Act that created the police force was introduced by Home Secretary Robert Peel.  For the same reasons cops in Britain and Ireland were sometimes called peelers.

But why are they called cops?  The word is a shortened form of copper, dating from around 1704, which derives from a northern British dialect word cop, meaning “seize or catch,” from the French caper (“take or seize”), ultimately from the Latin capere (“take”). 

As logical as this etymology is, some people prefer a more exotic version of the origin of copper. They say it refers to the helmets, uniform buttons, badges, or truncheons used by police and made of copper.  Yet another specious explanation stems from the color of early police cars in the western United States, and still another from the acronym “Constable On Patrol.” 

To which one can only say “Cheese it”—a thieves’ slang phrase of unknown origin, dating to 1812 or earlier, meaning “depart quickly.”  It is mostly heard when the police arrive in a 1940s crime movie and someone in the act of committing an offense says, “Cheese it—the cops!”

Cheesy (especially the stinky kind) is undoubtedly the word that best describes the sour curds produced by the Bard of Buffalo Bayou—to wit:  

            Next time you’re in a jam and need crime-stoppers,

            And you don’t want to simply call the coppers,

            Expand and sharpen your vocabulary,

            Learn all the names of the constabulary:

            When you’re required to nab a crook or mobster,

            Then call a Flatfoot, Smokey Bear, or Lobster,

            The Fuzz, the Pigs, the Brass, the Doughnut Squad,

            Or Johnny Law, Town Clown, or Mister Plod.

            And when a crime’s committed by a baddie,

            Hail a Muldoon, Blue Meanie, or a Paddy,

            A Mork, an Asphalt Cowboy, or a Swine,

            An Ossifer, the Man, the Thin Blue Line,

            The Mounties, Brownies, Barneys, Boys in Blue,

            A Muppet, Rozzer, Bizzie, Bull, Gumshoe,

            A Stick Man, String Top, Roach, Bluecoat, or Dick—

            One of these is sure to do the trick.

            If not, there’s Scuffers, Five-Os, Ducks and Geese—

            Or maybe you could simply yell, “Police!” 

But Sirioiusly…

 If you use an iPhone, you are probably familiar with the irritating, know-it-all, robotic voice known as Siri, who purports to be a fount of infinite knowledge about locations, retail establishments, lodgings, biographical facts, historical events, and, well, pretty much anything you want to ask.  The last time I asked Siri something, she replied, “I am not accepting any questions at this time.” I guess even robots get holidays.

It turns out that Siri is not a robot at all, but a voice actor named Susan Bennett, who lives in Atlanta. She recorded many hours of text that included all conceivable combinations of words and sounds, which are then “sampled” by the tiny computer inside an iPhone to produce the desired response. 

Siri is a Norwegian name, which means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory.” (And I always thought that was Nike.)  It is supposedly the name that Siri’s inventor also intended for his first child.

In Britain, iPhone users hear a male guide called Daniel, who is voiced by an actor named Jon Briggs.  In Australia, there is another female, named Karen, who speaks “Strine,” and is voiced by Karen Jacobsen, an Australian-born New Yorker who also sings, entertains, writes songs, gives inspirational speeches, and, for all I know, may juggle plates. She’s a busy gal, also providing voices for several GPS devices.

Why Daniel was chosen as the British name isn’t obvious. It’s Hebrew and means “God is my judge.” Karen is a Danish name, short for Katherine, which was originally Greek and means “pure”—but the chances are, the name was picked because it happened to be the name of the voice actor.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou prefers to get the scanty facts he requires from old volumes with cracked bindings and yellowing pages that line the shelves of his decaying bookcase. 

            I’m weary of Siri, that smart-ass young oracle,

            I wish that she would sail off in a coracle,

            Instead of pronouncing her words allegorical

            In a voice that is pompous and too oratorical.

            As for Daniel, his name is clearly historical

            But maybe it’s just a bit metaphorical.

            Whom should I choose?  The question’s rhetorical—

            I’m going with Karen—and that’s categorical.