Hi-ho, Soho!

I recently visited England in the company of my spouse—and the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who tagged along mostly for the food and drink, of which he consumed copious quantities virtually around the clock. Among the places at which we dined sumptuously was the Côte Brasserie, an establishment on Wardour Street in the section of London known as Soho.

The origin of the name Soho is, like so much in England, rather foggy.  It’s an area roughly bounded by Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street, and Regent Street.  It’s noted for its restaurants and racy night life—from the latter of which the Bard had to be firmly diverted.  The site was farmland until 1536, when King Henry VIII converted it into a royal park.  The name Soho first appears in the 17^th century.

Some authorities believe the word derives from an Anglo-French exclamatory cry by hare-hunters (like the fox-hunters’ “Yoicks” and “Tally-ho”) meaning “There goes the hare!”  Its use, says the Oxford English Dictionary, dates to 1307. Soho was also a rallying cry in 1685 for the army of the Duke of  Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgmoor, in which the rebel duke tried to seize the throne from King James II.  (He didn’t.)

Others think the ultimate derivation of the name is a shortening of “South Holborn.” Holborn, which comes from Old English holbourne (“holly bourne” or “deep brook”), referred to a stream that ran through the area.

New York has a similarly derived SoHo (the “H” is usually capitalized in the Big Apple), which is the area South of Houston Street.  Other catchy New York areas are abbreviated NoHo (which, of course, is North of Houston Street), TriBeCa (the Triangle Below Canal Street), and the Bard’s favorite—Dumbo, the area “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.”

In the few moments when he was not noshing on pork pies, steak-and-kidney pudding, toads-in-the-hole, bangers and mash, or pigs-in-a-blanket, washed down with pints of London Pride, the Bard doodled the following barely decipherable notes on the back of a serviette:

            “Now, sir, what will you have to start?”

            Inquired the waiter down in Soho.

            “I’d like to have a little tart,”

            The diner winked and chuckled, “Ho, ho!”

            The waiter brought a pastry cart,

            And the diner found the tart was no ho.

‘cq’ This!

Newspaper copyeditors traditionally work at a horseshoe-shaped desk, sitting around the outside, on what is called the “rim.”  Inside the U is the news editor, known as the “slot,” who doles out assignments to the editors around the rim.

In the days when copy was edited with a pencil instead of electronically, copyeditors developed a style of notation that typically involves unorthodox spellings.

When they wrote on a piece of copy "HTK," it meant "hed to kum”—or, in regular orthography, “headline to come” (later). A "dek" was the deck or sub-headline, and the "lede" (lead) the first "graf" (paragraph) of a news story. An update of a continuing story was called a “nu lede.”

These usages supposedly originated as purposeful misspellings of the editors' comments, so that linotype operators would know they were not part of the copy that was to be set in type.

One term of mysterious origin is "cq," a notation by a word or name with unusual spelling. It means essentially "this is correct—it has been double-checked, so don’t question it, even though it looks odd.” Some say it is from the Latin cadit quaestio meaning "the question is to be dropped." Others say it is a phonetic spelling of sic or "thus"—a notation used after a printed word or passage to mean “that is what is intended.”

Among radio operators "CQ" (ostensibly from the French pronunciation of the first syllables of "sécurité") indicates a general call for help, which was also interpreted to be a phonetic rendering of “seek you.”  But it's hard to make a connection between that usage and the editor's "cq."

At the paper where I worked, we also had to deal with the dreaded “B.O.M.”—initials for “business office must,” meaning a story that treated an advertiser in a favorable light and which the advertising department insisted on placing in the newspaper.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has done time on the rim, and has the slot man’s scars to prove it.

            The Copyeditor’s Dream

            Let me sit on the rim,

            My cup filled to the brim

            With coffee that’s pungent and hot.

            For a story I’ve red,

            I will write a nu hed

            And pass it right back to the slot.

            When he sees what I’ve done,           

            He’ll make over Page One

            With my ninety-point, eight-column banner,

            And when it hits the street,

            I’ll have the crowd at my feet

            And I’ll be the lord of the manor.

Note: Both the Bard and I will be taking next two weeks off. And I’m taking the names of those of you who are muttering that we should make our vacation permanent.  We hope to return, unscathed, to this space on July 4 with rousing Independence Day blog. Or not.

All Greek to Me

Do you have trouble remembering the nine Muses?  For that matter, do you have trouble recalling the difference between the Muses and the Graces?  And what about the Fates—and the Furies? 

A previous blog dealt with mnemonics—phrases like Every Good Boy Does Fine to help you remember musical notes, or HOMES for the five Great Lakes. Well, I’m here to provide you with similar memory-jogging devices for those mythological Greek personages.

There are nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who represent the arts and sciences.  They are: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy)

Now for a mnemonic (named for their mother, Mnemosyne) to help remember them: how about Caterpillars Capture Every Elephant Made Perfect Through Trade Unions?

But wouldn’t be more helpful if each word in the mnemonic not only had the initial letter, but maybe the first three letters, to jog your memory?  Okay, try this:

California’s Clinton Eradicates Euthanasia, Melting Political Terrors, Thawing Uranium.

There are three Graces, goddesses of joy, charm, and beauty. They are the daughters of the nymph Eurynome and Zeus—who apparently really got around. Their names are Aglaia (splendor, glory), Euphrosyne (merriment), and Thalia (feast).  And they should be easy to remember as Aglow, Euphoric, Thanks!

There are also three Fates, or Moirae (“apportioners”): Clotho (spinner of the thread of life), Lachesis (drawer of lots), Atropos (cutter of the thread of life). They were believed to appear after the birth of a child to determine the newborn’s destiny in life.  An easy mnemonic: Clothes Lachrymose, Atrocious!

Finally the Furies (Erinyes), sometimes known euphemistically as the Eumenides, or “kindly ones.”  Their origin was rather bloody: the Titan Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw his genitals into the sea (naughty boy). The Furies arose from the drops of blood, and the goddess of love, Aphrodite, from the sea foam. Well, maybe so.   You know the Furies as Alecto (relentless pursuit), Megaera (jealousy), Tsiphone (blood vengeance) You can easily remember them as Alexander’s Megahit T-shirts.

On second thought, it might be easier to memorize the names of the goddesses than to remember these mnemonics.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has never been inspired by any Muse, but despite all odds, he keeps plugging away:

                        Hickory, dickory,

                        Remember Terpsichore,

                        The Muse of the song and the dance.

                        And make this your motto:

                        It’s always Erato

                        Whose poetry speaks of romance.

                       

                        Boil, bake, or fry a pea

                        To rhyme with Calliope,

                        Whose poems are noisy and epic.

                        And don’t forget Thalia,

                        Whose works never fail ya

                        With comedy Johnny Depp-ic.

                       

                        And as for Melpomene,

                        She is my nominee

                        For tragical fear and pity,                       

                        And pitch-perfect Euterpe

                        Makes me chipper and chirpy

                        When she cranks out a musical ditty.           

                        Up on the chimney a

                        Grave Polyhymnia

                        Spouts poems both sacred and pious.

                        And it’s clear that Urania

                        Has some sort of mania

                        With an astronomical bias.

                        But my favorite Muse

                        From whom I take my cues

                        On the banks of Buffalo Bayou

                        Should be no special mystery,

                        She’s the great Muse of history,

                        Omniscient, omnipotent Clio.

It’s 30 for 30

A recent New York Times story about a shooting ended by stating that the case would be tried by “February 30.”  A few days later, the Times published this explanation:

“An article on Thursday…misstated the schedule set by a judge for a trial in the case. The trial is expected to begin ‘by February’, not ‘by February 30.’ The error occurred when an editor saw the symbol ‘-30-’ typed at the bottom of the reporter’s article and combined it with the last word, ‘February’. It is actually a notation that journalists have used through the years to denote the end of an article.”

A further explanation pointed out that the 30 symbol is no longer much used and many journalists have never even heard of it.  It’s a victim of the computer age, in which reporters transmit their entire stories intact, not “take by take,” on 8-1/2x11 sheets of copy paper, carried one at a time to the composing room, as in typewriter days.

No one seems sure how the use of 30 began.  The most common theory is that it was a sign-off code developed by telegraph operators, perhaps from the use of the symbol XXX, which would be 30 in Roman numerals. One version suggests that the first news story sent by telegraph consisted of 30 words. Another story, whose apocryphal nature seems self-evident, is that reporters signed 30 to demand an increase in pay to $30 a week.

It has also been suggested that 30 was a British mis-reading of 80, which resembles the Bengali symbol for “farewell” and was used on correspondence in India.  Yet another theory is about a telegraph operator who remained at his post during a breaking news story, until he keeled over dead—30 hours later.

The earliest citation of 30 is in Funk’s Standard Dictionary of 1895 (pre-Wagnall, apparently), which simply states that it is the printer or telegrapher’s symbol for the end of a dispatch.  No explanation is provided.

Other theories, of greater and lesser believability, include:

            - The hash mark (#) was the typical symbol of the end of a story, and to save time, many typists didn’t hit the shift bar, so 3 was printed instead, and a zero added just for looks.

            - When the Associated Press was founded, each member was entitled to receive 30 wire stories per day.  The 30 indicated that it was the last one.

            - Wire services customarily stopped transmitting at 30 minutes past the hour.

            - It refers to the 30 pieces of silver received by Judas Iscariot for the betrayal of Christ.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is not yet ready to sign 30 to his dispatches, although many readers hope that he is at least up to 29. 

            A news reporter named Bertie

            Wed a copyeditor called Gertie.

                        When the stork paid a call,

                        They decided “That’s all,”

            And that’s why they named the kid Thirty.
 

Try to Remember

After a recent blog on frequently confused words, one of the more literistic* customers wrote to say she uses a mnemonic to distinguish continuous from continual.  She remembers that the word ending in OUS means One Uninterrupted Sequence.  Mnemonics have been useful devices for millennia, to help the fevered brain recall hard-to-remember facts, especially lists of items.

You’re probably familiar with HOMES, which is supposed to remind you of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.  Of course, if you want to remember them in order of size, you’ll have to think of SHMEO, which is harder to do. 

It’s just about as difficult to come up with the name of that noted celebrity ROY G. BIV. But if you do, he will lead you effortlessly to the colors of the spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Our British cousins prefer a historical allusion to the defeat of Richard Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.  Whatever works.

Many of us remember Every Good Boy Does Fine for the notes on the lines of the treble staff.  In Britain, as we know from the play by Tom Stoppard and André Previn, it’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. And the bass clef lines tell us that those Good Boys Do Fine Always.

Biological taxonomy is embedded in the memory by Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach, which, to those in the know, can be rendered as Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

And for mathematicians who want to remember the first digits of pi (3.14159265…), there’s “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics…”  Just count the number of letters in each word.  That could go on forever.

Mnemonics get their name from the mythical Greek Titan Mnemosyne, the daughter of Gaia and Uranus, the mother of the Nine Muses—and the possessor of a prodigious memory.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou’s memory is not prodigious, but his appetite for the ludicrous is nothing short of miraculous, as you may easily discern from the following:            

           

            The fugitive

            Roy G. Biv

            Remarked one day in Greenwich,

            “Kids Prefer Cheese”

            (Roy paused to sneeze)

            “Over Fried Green Speenwich.”

*I have no more idea than you do what “literistic” means—but it’s part of the name of a New York agency that represents writers like Ruth Rendell, Dick Francis, and John Irving, so I figure it must have something to do with books.

OK by Me

You might think it unlikely that anyone could write a whole book about one word—especially one that sometimes isn’t even a proper word, but just two letters stuck together.  I refer, of course, to okay, a.k.a. O.K., OK, and even okeh. 

Allan Metcalf has done it—and come up with OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, a narrative of 224 pages all about this expression, which he calls a meme.  Meme is defined as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” That makes it sound like a disease, but okay—or OK, as Metcalf prefers.

Most language experts agree, more or less, on how the word, uh…meme, came to be.  It was in the 1830s when several simultaneous cultural and historical influences gave birth to OK.  First printed in The Boston Morning Post as a faddish joke, O.K. was meant as a facetious abbreviation of “oll korreck.”  It took its place alongside such other jocular misspellings as K.G. (“no go” as if spelled “know go”), K.Y. (“no use” or “know youse”), and N.C. (“’nuff ced”).

O.K. was used as a political taunt against President Andrew Jackson, whose opponents tried to paint him as an illiterate who used it to mean “all correct” because he couldn’t spell.  They also made jokes that O.K. meant Jackson was “Out of Kash,” “Out of Kredit,” “Out of Klothes,” and “Orfully Konfused.”

When Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Martin van Buren, ran for a second term in 1840, the Whigs plastered him with the O.K. designation, which had the added cachet of standing for “Old Kinderhook,” as Van Buren was sometimes called, after the New York village in which he was born.  A group of his supporters called themselves “The O.K. Club.”

With all this background, people began marking “OK” on documents or using the letters “OK” in telegrams to mean that all was well. Thus the expression entered the language and became much-used permanent fixture, not only in English but in many other languages that picked it up.

There is no shortage of other claims of how O.K. originated. 

The Choctaw language has a word spelled okeh that means “it is so.”  That’s the way President Woodrow Wilson spelled OK. A Tennessee historian claims that O.K. appears in a 1790 court record quoting Andrew Jackson who used it mean “acceptable.” Another historian traces its use to 1815 in a hand-written diary of travels by William Richardson. 

A raft of latter-day attempts to explain it include:

*Ohne Korrektur, a German phrase meaninag “without 
       correction”

*The Russian phrase ochen khorosho (“very well”)

*The initials of “Obediah Kelly,” placed on railroad bills of 
        lading

*The initials of “Otto Kaiser,” certifying factory products ready 
        for shipping

*A homophonic transliteration of the French au quai (“on the 
       dock”), a phrase supposedly used by sailors in the 
      American Revolution in making trysts 

*Ober Kommand (German “high command”)

*The initials of “open key,” a telegraph signal meaning “ready 
       to transmit”

*The Latin phrase  Omnis Korrecta, supposesdly used by 
      schoolmasters in marking papers

*“Outer keel,” a marking on the timbers used in ship-building

*Initials of “Orrin Kendall,” suppliers of high-quality biscuits in 
       the Civil War

*The Old English word hogfor, meaning “seaworthy” and 
      pronounced by Norwegian sailors as “hah gay”

*The numeral 0 followed by the letter K, meaning “zero killed” 
     in military dispatches

*The Scottish och aye (“yes”)

*The French O qu’oui (“ah, yes”)

*The initials of “Old Keokuk,” a Sac chief

*The Bantu word waw-kay (“yes, indeed”).

It’s easy to see, after all, how Metcalf was able to get a whole book out of just two letters.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has trouble getting a couplet out of all 26 letters, and after his week of rest, insists, “Och aye, waw kay, O qu’oui, I’m hah gay,” the meaning of which is clearer than his weekly offering in what passes for verse:

            I thought it would be okey-dokey

            The time I wound up in the pokey.

            My cellmate was another bloke; he

            Said that he was born in Skokie,

            But later he became an Okie.

            He had a cough and sounded croaky,

            Because our cell was hot and smoky.

            So I offered him a troche,

            And when he said such stuff was hokey,

            I tried to play it cool and low-key.

            He went to sleep, and when he woke, he

            Began to dance the hokey-pokey,

            Which made me think he must be cokey

            And maybe not so okey-dokey.

Double N, One L

The Assistant Director of Personnel at a large corporation noticed that his boss, the Director of Personnel, upon arriving at his desk each morning, unfailingly opened a drawer, took out a metal box, unlocked it, looked inside, smiled, then closed it and put it away. The Assistant Director longed to know what was in that box. Years later, the boss retired and the Assistant Director became the Director of Personnel.  He couldn’t wait to open that drawer, unlock the box, and look inside.  There he found a small slip of paper on which was written: “Two N’s, one L.”

There are many words in English, like personnel and personal, which look similar, but are spelled differently and mean different things. Guess what? They are often confused with each other.

Here’s a list of some of the most commonly confused, misspelled, and misused words. Like the man said, there is no royal road to geometry—nor to orthography.  Well, he didn’t mention orthography, but it’s equally true.  English being what it is, there is usually no way to differentiate between these similar-looking words, except to commit them to memory.  Do it.  Now.

Here are a few to get started on; you will no doubt think of many more on your own:

            Affect (v.) – cause a change in

            Effect (v.) – put into operation

                    Note: Effect can also be a noun, in which case 
                    it can mean the result of having been affected.  

            Altar (n.) – place of religious sacrifice

            Alter (v. ) – change 

            Census (n.) – a counting, usually of people

            Consensus (n.) – general agreement, usually of 
                   people

           

            Compliment (n.) – favorable comment

            Complement (n.) – the full number that makes 
                    something complete

           

            Confectionary (n.) – place where confectionery is 
                   made or sold

            Confectionery (n.) – sweet foods made in a 
                  confectionary

                  Note: Some dictionaries will tell you that these 
                  words are  interchangeable. Do not believe them.

            Continuous (adj.) - uninterrupted

            Continual (adj.) – recurring over time in rapid 
                     succession

            Council (n.) –  deliberative or advisory body           

            Counsel (n.) – advice or the adviser who gives it, 
                      specifically a lawyer 

            Consul (n.) – diplomatic or trade official in a foreign 
                      country

           

            Forego (v.) – come before

            Forgo (v.) – do without

            Foreword (n.) – part of a book preceding the main text

            Forward (adj.) – situated in an advance position; 
                    precocious

                            (v.) – promote

                            (n.) – player at the front of a team’s 
                                     formation

                            (adv.) – toward what is ahead

           

            Precede (v.) – come before

            Proceed (v.) – move along

            Prescription (n.) – order for medicine from the doctor

            Proscription (n.) – ban

            Secede (v.) – withdraw

            Succeed (v.) – do well

            Supersede (v.) – take the place of, especially if 
                  superior to

                  Note: Some dictionaries will tell you supercede is 
                  an acceptable spelling. Do not believe them.

                                   

            Stationary (adj.) – immobile

            Stationery (n.) – writing paper

            Weather (n.) – climatic (not climactic!) conditions

            Wether (n.) – castrated male sheep

            Whether (conj.) – indication of alternatives

There, now.  Don’t you feel better having learned all that?  The Bard of Buffalo Bayou certainly does; in fact he feels so much better that he decided to take a week off, write proscriptions on his stationary, forego confectionary, give council on the wether--and if at first he doesn’t secede, he’ll precede again. He is expected to return next week, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Did you celebrate May Day yesterday by festooning yourself in garlands of bright-colored flowers, gamboling friskily about a maypole, and crowning a nubile young woman as the Queen of the May? Probably not.  But that’s what some of your ancestors did, and what some people still do in many parts of the world. 

The celebration of May Day, as the beginning of the farming season, originated in Roman times with festivals in honor of Flora, the goddess of flowers.  The practice was taken up by various pagan cultures in Germany and Britain.  No one is sure what the maypole symbolized.  It might have represented spring growth. It could have been the tree of life.  Possibly it symbolized Yggdrasil, the center of the cosmos in Norse mythology. Or perhaps it was a portrayal of a giant phallus.  Take your choice.

May Day is not to be confused with mayday, an international signal of a life-threatening emergency, used by ships, aircraft, police, fire workers, medical personnel, and anybody else experiencing a disaster who wants to seek help from those within earshot.  The term was first used in 1923 by Frederick Stanley Mockford, a traffic controller at Croydon Airport near London.  Since much of the air traffic at Croydon came from France, he devised the word “mayday” from the French m’aidez, which means “Help me!” For maximum results, you’re supposed to say it three times without pause.

Mayday rhymes with heyday, which means the highest point of excitement, health, happiness, youth, or prosperity.  It probably stemmed from the German expression heida, which simply means “Hey, there!” and was an exclamation denoting frolicsomeness or surprise. 

One of the earliest uses of heyday on record is in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, published in 1602, when the Danish prince tells his mother: “…at your age, the heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble, and waits upon the judgment…” Cheeky kid.

When the Bard of Buffalo Bayou was asked to use both mayday and heyday in one of his poetic excrescences, this is what he produced:

            The livin’ was easy

            Back in my heyday,

            My lifestyle was breezy,

            I thought things were Grade-A.

            But now I get queasy

            When I approach payday,

            ‘Cause my take-home is cheesy,

            And I want to yell “mayday!”

Well Twained

Everyone knows, or at least believes, that Sam Clemens adopted the name Mark Twain because he heard Mississippi riverboat captains call out that phrase when measuring with a sounding line, indicating water depth of two fathoms, deep enough to be safe for boats.  More on that story later.  But what about the computer software protocol known as TWAIN?

The TWAIN technology regulates the way scanners and digital cameras communicate with personal computers. And what has it do with Mark Twain, or Shania Twain, or Lionel Twain?  Actually, nothing.  According to people who should know, TWAIN is an acronym of “Technology Without An Interesting Name.” 

Now what about that Mark Twain legend?  It’s true enough that riverboat captains used that phrase (twain comes from Old English twegen, meaning “two”).  But Twain gives credit to Captain Isaiah Sellers for having invented the name, which the captain used to sign short pieces of river news tidbits that he contributed to the New Orleans Picayune.

But wait!  Several authorities have questioned the whole business of the riverboat jargon and claim that mark twain refers to a running bar tab that Twain regularly incurred while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Whenever he invited a friend to join him for a drink, he would tell the bartender to “mark twain,” meaning put two drinks on his tab.

Twain dismissed this tale as twaddle.  He wrote:

“Mark Twain was the nom de plume of one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who… died in 1869 and as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor's remains. That is the history of the nom de plume I bear.”

The word twain was memorably used by Rudyard Kipling in “The Battle of East and West,” in which he wrote that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.”  In 1889 in Elmira, New York, the young Kipling interviewed Twain, who had no idea who his interviewer was. He found out later, when both of them received honorary degrees from Oxford University in 1907.

No one knows who the Bard of Buffalo Bayou is, either, and what’s more, no one cares.  Can you blame them?

            “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the  

                     twain shall meet,

            Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great 

                     Judgment Seat.”

            So Kipling wrote, but he might wish to take that 

                     statement back,

            For there’s one place the twain can meet—and that is 

                     on the twack.

 

Simply Perfect

I can’t remember the last time I read a really good article on the perfect tense. Can you?  Like the subjunctive mood, the perfect tense never gets treated with the respect it deserves.  It’s time to change that.

 

The perfect tense has to do with verbs that represent completed action. The perfect tense may be present (“I have texted”), past or pluperfect (“I had texted”), present continuous progressive (“I have been texting”), past continuous progressive (“I had been texting”), future (“I will have texted”), or future continuous progressive (“I will have been texting”).

Some people may have been sexting, but that’s another issue.

Compared to the simple past tense, the perfect usually represents an indefinite period over which an action took place, rather than a specific instance. The simple past would be “I texted yesterday.” The perfect tenses would express that past action over a less specific period of time. The present perfect, extending into the present time, would be “I have texted” (and intend to continue doing so in the future) and the past perfect, indicating an action prior to some other action would be “I had texted” (but then I started Tweeting instead).

The future perfect refers to an event that will happen before some other future event: “I will have texted” twenty-seven people before you can stop me.

Texting does not come easily to the Bard of Buffalo Bayou (but then not much else does, either):

     Each time I text,

     I soon grow vexed

     To find I’ve Xed

     Out what comes next.

Rock Pile

There are at least 200 genres and sub-genres of the musical form known as “rock.” Most of us know, or can figure out roughly, what is meant by such nomenclature as soft rock, folk rock, country rock, blues rock, jazz rock—and even, would you believe, symphonic rock.

But what on earth is meant by heavy metal, glam, punk, proto-punk, post-punk, alternative, emo, crunkcore, screamo, grunge, garage, goth, new wave, ethereal, neo-medieval, and  darkwave—all of which are separate and distinct musical genres?  I couldn’t hope to provide a comprehensive glossary of every form of rock—even if I had the space.  But today we’ll try to make sense out of a few of the more common—and bizarre—rock forms.   

One of the most common genres is heavy metal, which was an early 1960s term for addictive drugs, used by William S. Burroughs in some of his novels.  A 1968 song by Steppenwolf referred to “heavy metal thunder,” relating it to smoke, lightning, and racing with the wind. Heavy is used to mean “serious” or “profound”; metal probably refers to the steel or alloy often used for guitar strings, but has other possible explanations, such as a critic’s comment that listening to Jimi Hendrix was like “heavy metal falling from the sky.” Heavy metal is noted for loud amplification, emphasis on dense chords, a prominent bass line, an emphatic rhythmic beat, electronic distortion, and extended guitar solos.

Glam rock is any kind of rock music with supposed glamorous qualities of showmanship, such as elaborate costuming and makeup, glittery sets, and spectacular visuals involving light, smoke, fireworks, and other effects.  Psychedelic rock is a form of glam rock, emphasizing hallucinogenic images.

Punk rock is noted for the rawness of its musical qualities and angry political and social criticism. Its predecessor, proto-punk, is another name for so-called garage rock, which has a primitive, amateurish quality to it, as if recorded in someone’s garage (as it may have been). Garage rock has emotional lyrics, often speaking to high school angst, usually growled or screamed. Post-punk is musically experimental and complex. New wave is similar to punk, with emphasis on such elements as electronic and experimental sounds, the “mod” subculture, disco, and 1960s pop. Progressive rock is also related, with a supposed emphasis on artistic embellishments.

Alternative rock (alternative to what, one wonders?) is more a matter of attitude than a specific musical sound.  It is largely defined by a rejection of commercialism and mainstream culture. Alternative bands generally play in small clubs, record for independent labels, and spread their popularity through word of mouth. The New York Times in 1989 asserted that the genre is "guitar music first of all, with guitars that blast out power chords, pick out chiming riffs, buzz with fuzztone and squeal in feedback." Sounds may include the “dirty” (distorted) guitars of grunge and the gloomy qualities of gothic rock.

Crunkcore, also known as crunk punk and screamo-crunk, is a minimalist Southern hip-hop style, with techno breakdowns, barked vocals, and what has been described as “party-till-you-puke poetics,” whatever that may mean.

Finally, emo, which is short for emotion, is a form of rock noted for emphasizing melody, musicianship, and personal, often confessional, lyrics.

Now, we can rock around the clock!

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou prefers his heavy metal in the form of gold ingots, and he likes to kick back and listen to Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm, Jan Garber, the Idol of the Airlanes, and Guy Lombardo with the Royal Canadians, who play “the sweetest music this side of heaven.” 

            If you are a rock star,

            Then each and every groupie

            Will groove to your vibrations.

            But if you are a Bach star,

            Then you’ll be makin’ Whoopi

            Goldberg Variations.

           

Mencken’s Vocabulary

The indomitable Russell Baker, in a review of Prejudices, a collection of H. L. Mencken’s journalism, lists 17 words that sent him scurrying to Webster’s Unabridged, before he gave up for fear of wearing out the dictionary.  How many of these words, which seem to flow naturally from Mencken’s typewriter, would you have to look up?

            Confutation, Fantee, Usufructs, Punctilio,   

            Bedizenments, Laparatomy, Enharmonic, 

            Endoneurium, Corpora quadrigemina, 
            Hypertmetropic, Mariolatry, Haruspices, 
            Oedematous, Gerousia, Hunkerous,

            Socianism, Struthious

Mencken, who said he wrote just to find out what he was thinking, lacked a college education, but dipped extensively into American and British literature on his own. His writing is characterized by a florid use of long words, based on his belief that the joy of reading (as he said of Chaucer) comes out of the mere “burble of the words,” not their meaning.

To save you the trouble of looking up the seventeen words—many of which you won’t find in a standard desk dictionary—here’s a capsule definition of each:

Confutation – overwhelming rebuttal

Fantee – a tribe and language of the African Gold Coast

Usufructs – rights to use the property of another

Punctilio – a minute detail of a code of conduct  

Bedizenments – gaudy adornments

Laparatomy – abdominal incision

Enharmonic -  describing musical notes that are written 
       differently but sound the same, e.g. A-flat and G-sharp

Endoneurium – connective nerve tissue

Corpora quadrigemina – parts of the brain

Hypermetropic – farsighted 

Marioloatry – idolization of the Virgin Mary

Haruspices – Roman soothsayers

Oedematous – swollen by fluid accumulation

Gerousia – council of elders 

Hunkerous – opposed to progress 

Socinianism – a sixteenth-century Christian heresy

Struthious – pertaining to ostriches and similar birds

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou uses a number of words you would probably have to look up – but you wouldn’t find them, at least not in any self-respecting dictionary.

            Tending to use a very long word

            Is known as sesquipedalian.

            And when such a word is occasionally heard,

            Chances are it’s said by an alien.

Highly Irregular

Many—too many, if you ask me—verbs form their past tenses irregularly. Instead of adding –ed, like a nice, well-behaved regular verb with slicked-back hair, neatly pressed clothes, and shined shoes, these irregular verbs go their own unruly way, heedless of good manners, doing whatever they like, perversely forming highly improper past tenses and indecent past participles.

Why can’t the past tense of is be ised instead of was, were and been? Why not writed instead of wrote and written, or doed instead of did and done? Well, that’s not for me to say; I have no authority over these out-of-control verbs. I can only lament their reprehensible conduct.

Take sink, for example. Sink wasn’t happy with the idea of forming a past tense by adding –ed, like normal verbs, so instead of plain old sinked she insisted on sank as the past tense and sunk as the past participle. Now look what’s happened: people are getting tired of sank, so they just use sunk for anything in the past. Not only has the ship sunk—it sunk yesterday!

The same is true of some of sink’s pals, like sting and sling, and will soon be true of stink, shrink, sing and spring as well. Stang and slang have long since been replaced by stung and slung, and stunk, shrunk, sung, and sprung are sneaking in surreptitiously by way of the back door even as we speak, spoke, and have spoken.

For example, the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as Merriam-Webster's New International 2nd edition, list sprung as an alternate past tense to sprang, with no indication that it is sub-standard. Both of these reliable lexicons also list other vowel-shifting verbs such as sung and, yes, even sunk, as acceptable alternative past tenses.

Good old spank, though, follows the rules: spank, spanked, have spanked. Hurrah!

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is also irregular, at least on some occasions. He deals with it by trying to be a regular guy.

I have a gong

That I ring, and I rang, and I’ve rung,

I know a song

That I sing, and I sang, and I’ve sung,

So why is it wrong

If I bring, and I brang, and I’ve brung?

I sail a ship

That I sink, and I sank, and I’ve sunk.

I like a nip,

So I drink, and I drank, then I’m drunk.

I need a quip--

So I think, and I thank, and I’ve thunk.