Seeing Dots Before Your i's

Have you ever wondered why we put a dot over a lower-case i and j?  Well, if you haven’t you should have, and here’s the answer, even if you didn’t ask the question.

According to word maven David Crystal, the letter I was a consonant in the Semitic alphabet and a vowel in Greek; it was adopted by Latin with both consonant and vowel values.  The inscription over the cross of Christ illustrates the consonant value:  INRI are the initials of the words Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews). 

J was developed in the Middle Ages as a fancy calligraphic variant of I, but later came to replace I whenever a consonant value was required. The dot on the lower case i and j was originally a diacritical mark used by medieval scribes, similar to an acute accent, to distinguish the stroke of an i from the identical strokes of m, n, and u when they appeared adjacent to the i. 

So you’d better dot you i’s—and cross your t’s, too, while you’re at it.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou likes to fool around with letters of the alphabet, and he is lucky that he hasn’t been caught at it yet.             

            If i’s a little dotty,

         And t’s a little cross,

         It’s because the literati

         Forget who is the boss.

         For i or t alone,

         Counts little, they’ll admit,

         But it clearly can be shown

         That, together, they are it.

Junket Mail

One of the customers of this blog (a non-paying customer, of course) asked if I remembered Junket, a dessert of my long-ago youth that was occasionally served when gelatin products were not available, owing to the disturbance in Europe and the Pacific at the time.

Junket (a trademarked brand name) is still manufactured, believe it or not, in Little Falls, New York.  It is made with sweetened milk and rennet.  Rennet, from the Old English word rynet (“cause to run together”), is a digestive enzyme found in calves’ stomachs that curdles milk, producing a custard similar to the curds and whey of which Little Miss Muffet (but not I) was so fond. 

In the Middle Ages, junket (not trademarked at that time) was a food favored by the nobility that was made with cream, not milk, and flavored with rosewater and spices.

The word's etymology is related to the Norman jonquette, a mixture of milk, egg yolks, sugar, and caramel--mmmm. Originally, a jonquette (or jonket) was a basket of rushes, in which the cream preparation was typically made. It derives from the medieval Latin word juncata.

Junket later took on the meaning of a feast of any kind of tasty food. Jonathan Swift’s instructive Directions to Servants in 1731 advised: “Whatever good Bits you can pilfer in the Day, save them to junket with your Fellow-servants at Night, and take in the Butler, provided he will give you Drink.”

By amplification, junket is now used to mean a trip (usually paid for by someone else) during which rich food and hearty drink are enjoyed, most typically by dedicated public servants on fact-finding missions to Las Vegas, the Caribbean, and the Riviera. 

No one has offered the Bard of Buffalo Bayou any junkets—of whatever variety—lately, and if the following is any indication, it is unlikely that anyone ever will.

            I feel so cool and mellow.

            Each time that I eat Junket®™.

            It tastes a lot like Jell-O®™.

            Good gracious, who’d a-thunk it?

           

            But it’s proclaimed just like a tenet

            On each package that they sell it in

            That Junket®™’s made with rennet,

            And Jell-O®™’s made with gelatin.

Signor Ponzi and the Governor

The governor of Texas, who has put himself forward as the cowboy candidate for president, is campaigning on the platform that global warming is a fraud perpetrated by crazed scientists lusting for cash, evolution is a hare-brained theory on the agenda of godless (never mind the redundancy) atheists, capital punishment is a sacred institution even if an occasional unlucky innocent person is exterminated, and Social Security is a vicious Ponzi scheme.  I leave the merits, if any, of his opinions to more learned savants, including those of the idiot variety, and limit my comments to the meaning of “Ponzi scheme.”

First noted in general usage about 1957, a “Ponzi scheme” refers to an investment scam in which early investors are paid using the contributions of later ones, and so on, and so on.  It is similar to plans known as “pyramid clubs,” but unlike them, it implies specific criminal deception.

The term got its name from Carlo Ponzi, who was born in Italy, near Parma (where the ham and cheese come from), in 1882. Something of a ham himself, he also hoped to be a big cheese. He came to the United States in 1903 and worked in various cities as dishwasher, waiter, clerical assistant, translator, bank teller, smuggler, and embezzler, finally settling in Boston, where he got a bright idea.  In 1919 he established an outfit he called the Security Exchange Company (has a sort of familiar ring, doesn’t it?), which promised investors a 50% return in 90 days.  Where do I sign up?

The plan, which he marketed from Montreal to Florida, was immensely successful. Ponzi used the money of succeeding waves of investors to make the promised pay-offs to earlier investors (pocketing what he wanted along the way). Such schemes were nothing new; they’ve been around for centuries—one is even mentioned in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.  But Ponzi did it on a grander scale than ever before and at one point was taking in more than a million dollars a week—and in those days, a million dollars was real money. Theoretically this could have gone on for years, until the wealth of the entire planet was recycled and the final group of investors was left holding a great big empty bag.

But people caught on. Eventually Ponzi was charged with mail fraud and larceny.  He jumped bail and was arrested in New Orleans by a Texas deputy sheriff, acting outside his jurisdiction, brought to Texas, and extradited to Massachusetts. He served several years in prison, was then deported to Italy, and wound up in Brazil, where he died in poverty in 1949.  The wages of sin were the death of him.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou operates a kind of Ponzi scheme in verse, in which he takes thousands of words from unwitting writers, keeps a few for himself, and recycles the rest in supposed payoffs like these:

           

              Carlo Ponzi, the conman of Parma,

              Had skills that allowed him to charm a

              Whole host of investors,

              Who turned to protesters

              When they found he had very bad karma.

              Rick Perry, the Sage of Paint Creek,

              Declares that he really cain’t speak

              About Social Security,

              ‘Cause it’s full of impurity,

              And by gum, it simply ain’t chic.

                       

Labor Pains

With widespread homage to indolence, Americans like to celebrate Labor Day by lolling at the beach, lying in hammocks, and slurping beer on their verandahs. This annual observance was established nationally by President Grover Cleveland in 1894, following the killing of several workers by the U. S. military and U. S. marshals during what was known as the Pullman Strike against railways. 

Cleveland purposely avoided choosing May 1, the more common international workers day, lest it stir up memories of the Chicago Haymarket Riot of 1886, which occurred around that date. 

In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and other countries of the British Commonwealth, the May 1 observance is known as Labour Day.

The absence of a u in the American spelling can be traced to that old fussbudget Noah Webster, who wrote The American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. He saw no need of that useless u in words like labour, colour, neighbour, favour, honour, and flavour—so he got rid of it.

That pesky -our came into English from the snooty Normans, whose Frenchified spelling du jour was thought (by the Normans) to have an elegant je ne sais quoi, even though the original Latin words on which they were based got along just fine with a plain -or.  It was the 1755 dictionary of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a fussbudget of even higher standing than Webster, that perpetuated all those -our spellings.  Johnson even insisted on governour, horrour, tenour, and terrour, which are now thought to be in errour, even by the Brits.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou engages in as little labo(u)r as is humanly possible.  Certainly, very little of it was required to produce this scrawl:

             
            You work and work           

            Till you’re berserk,

            And then you reach retirement.

            Relax, you’re told,

            This age is gold,

            To rest is your requirement.

            “The best, you see,

            Is yet to be”—

            I wonder what that liar meant?

Semi-Prose

The winner of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is Sue Fondrie, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The contest, sponsored by the San Jose State University English Department, honors bad writing by asking entrants to submit the opening sentence of an imaginary novel.  It memorializes Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the 19th-century English author, whose novel Paul Clifford opens with this much-mocked sentence:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

The winning 2011 entry:

“Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”

Britain’s Guardian likes to find egregiously bad sentences from actual novels. A few it has come up with are:

Danielle Steel in Star: "She wore a dress the same color as her eyes her father brought her from San Francisco.”

Lindsey Davis, Shadows in Bronze: “By the end of the alley the fine hairs in my nostrils were starting to twitch.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Synthetic Men of Mars: “From Phundahl at their western extremity, east to Toonol, the Great Toonolian Marshes stretch across the dying planet for eighteen hundred earth miles like some unclean, venomous, Gargantuan reptile - an oozy marshland through which wind narrow watercourses connecting occasional bodies of open water, little lakes, the largest of which covers but a few acres.”

If you’d like to submit an entry for next year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest (the prize, according to the website, is a pittance), the email address is: srice@pacbell.net.  Entries are accepted 365 days a year.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou does not enter contests, inasmuch as he believes his writing is bad enough without anyone awarding him a prize for it.  Judge for yourself:

            I’ll bet my writing’s more egregious,

            Mawkish, crude, and sacrilegious

            Than anything that has been written

            Since the days of Bulwer-Lytton;

            Worse than any Harlequin romance

            By Barbara Cartland, Judith Krantz,

            Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel--

            Compared to them, I’ve no appeal.           

            I’m worse than Mary Higgins Clark

            Or any literary matriarch

            Like Stephenie Meyer and Anne Rice.

            With all their vicious vampire vice.

            Mickey Spillane and Louis L’Amour?

            I’m worse by far, and that’s for sure!

            Why, I am even lower down

            Than Sidney Sheldon and Dan Brown.

            Nora Roberts? I’d almost forgotten her—

            Not to worry, I’m much, much rottener.

                       

            So if all my prose and all my verse

            Are really bad and couldn’t be worse,

            And like those I’ve named, I’m booed and hissed,

            Why ain’t I on the best-seller list?

Look Out! Your Domain Is Imminent!

The Houston Chronicle recently reported that “[Governor Rick] Perry… signed imminent domain legislation because ‘ownership of personal property is crucial to our way of life.’”

What the Texas governor feels is threatening our sacred lifestyle is eminent (not imminent) domain, the right of the government to take private property for public purposes, by virtue of its sovereignty over lands within its jurisdiction. Of course the Gov may be worried that eminent domain is imminent, and he certainly wouldn’t want it to be immanent—that might be treacherous, er, treasonous.

It’s easy to confuse eminent with imminent and immanent, not to mention emanant, especially if you pronounce your vowels with a Texas twang, as the Gov usually does, especially when campaigning in the state for one or more offices.

Eminent, meaning “prominent,” comes from the Latin eminere, which means “to stand out, like a mountain.”  It suggests that the government’s domain, or area of jurisdiction, is superior to that of a private individual.  Imminent, meaning “ready to take place,” usually with the suggestion of threat, comes from a similar Latin root, imminere, meaning “to project, in a threatening manner, like a mountain.”

Neither eminent nor imminent should be confused with immanent (“indwelling, inherent,” from the Latin immanere (“to remain in place”), or with emanant (“issuing or flowing forth”) from the Latin emanare (“to flow”)

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, whose eminence and immanence may be in doubt, but whose imminence and emanance are both unquestioned, was inspired by the Governor’s views to make this typically insouciant observation:

            O, give me a home

            Where Republicans roam

            And there is no eminent domain.

            Where taxes are low,

            Just like I.Q.s, you know,

            And Rick Perry wins every campaign.

Riff and Raff

The New York Times Magazine now has a section called “Riff”—which apparently describes musings on whatever topic the writer of the day has in mind. Recent “riffs” have consisted of innocuous observations about attitudes toward celebrities and about the joys of reading Harry Potter books. But what’s a “riff”? 

One Times writer, Ben Ratliff, has noted an explosion of its use in that newspaper.  He found 57 instances of “riff” in 1990, 131 in 2000, and 221 in 2010. (Aren’t searchable texts wonderful?) 

As originally used, a riff is a “short, repeated phrase in jazz music.”  Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary believes it was first used around 1935 and had its origins as a shortened and altered version of the word refrain.

Today, a riff has broader applications—as a variation on a previous account, or as a succinct or witty comment, or, broadly speaking, a version of something, such as someone’s particular “take” on a topic under discussion. 

Riff is evidently not related to riffraff, meaning “the rabble or the mob.”  This word is a shortening of rifle et rafle, from the Old French riffler and raffler, both of which mean “to plunder”; hence rifle et rafle means every scrap of something, or “the sweepings, the refuse, the rubbish” and, by transference to human beings, “the rabble.” 

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has an elitist background—his second cousin once removed was the Count of Monty Crisco—and that may account for the Bard’s inordinate fear of the hoi polloi, as expressed in this ballad, which he is wont to sing as he accompanies himself on a kazoo:

            The riffraff will grab you,

            If you don’t watch out.

            Then, when they nab you,

            They’ll knock you about.

           

            They’ll slap you and slam you,

            And hit you with rocks,

            And then they will cram you

            Into a small box.

           

            Of course they will rob you—

            Every nickel and stitch,

            And then they’ll just fob you

            Off in a ditch.

            They’ll beat and desert you,

            They’re not at all sweet--

            But riffraff won’t hurt you

            Like the bankers on Wall Street!

Who Said "Uncle"?

During the recent acrimony between Republicans and Democrats in their struggle to pass debt ceiling legislation, one financial analyst observed: “I don’t think there’s anyone on Wall Street who doesn’t believe that the people who are being difficult on Capitol Hill are ultimately going to say uncle.” “Uncle,” as you must remember from your playground wrestling days, is an American expression used to indicate submission when you’re fighting. Some people suggest it was the Democrats who said uncle first—but the Republicans didn’t even realize it.

Be that as it may, wouldn’t you like to know whose uncle is being referred to? The Online Etymological Dictionary says the phrase was first used in 1918 and is of “uncertain signification.”

The intrepid Michael Quinion, in his blog “World Wide Words,” won’t settle for such shilly-shallying. He proposes, but cannot prove, that “uncle” is a corruption of an Irish word—anacol—that means “an act of protecting, deliverance, mercy, safety,” derived from the Old Irish aingid (“protects”).

Another theory, suggested by William and Mary Morris (they have a college in Virginia named for them, don’t they?), wants us to believe that “uncle” goes back to a Latin expression, patrue mi patruissime, meaning “uncle, my best of uncles,” used as a shout for help by ancient Roman youths who got into trouble. Hmmm…that sounds like one of those New Yorker Magazine “shouts we bet never got shouted.”

One other possibility ties the phrase to a joke that appeared in U. S. newspapers in the 1890s: A man was given a parrot by his nephew. He tried to get the parrot to say “Uncle,” but the parrot wouldn’t speak a word, so he angrily yelled “Say ‘Uncle,’ you beggar!” and then, throttling the bird’s neck, he threw him into a pen with ten prize fowls. Later, fearful he had killed the parrot, he returned to the pen and found nine dead fowls with their necks wrung. The parrot was standing on the tenth, twisting its neck, and screaming, “Say ‘Uncle,’ you beggar, say ‘Uncle’!” (When I read this joke, I thought the punch line had been omitted, but apparently, that is it.)

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, adopting his most avuncular style, has chosen to muse upon a variety of uncles:

My Uncle Sam

Is such a ham,

Decked out in red and white and blue.

I get a thrill,

And always will,

To hear him thunder, “I want you!”

Old Uncle Remus

And Nicodemus

Sat swapping tales, as was their habit.

Said Uncle Remus, “It would please us

If you told us about Jesus,

Then I will talk about Brer Rabbit.”

Do not pester

Uncle Fester

Or he might dynamite you,

Or, even worse,

Get out his hearse

And run you down to spite you.

Uncle Miltie

Pleaded guilty:

He killed ‘em on TV.

Now he’s gone,

But still lives on,

Alive on DVD.

I’ve often heard it said that Stanislavski,

When he directed Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,”

Liked to hum a few bars of Tchaikowsky

And “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Ya’.”

Hard-Boiled Eggcorns

In its account of the death of “Dr. Death” (Jack Kevorkian), CBS News online reported that his attending physician said that “he had a cancerous legion that was inoperable.”  I find it hard to believe that Dr. Kevorkian’s problem was, as the report states, several thousand Roman footsoldiers, whether or not they were malignant.

What the physician probably said was that he had a cancerous lesion, which is an “abnormal change in the structure of an organ.”  Somewhere along the way, somebody misunderstood the word.

Such mishearings of spoken words are known as eggcorns—a word that is attributed to Geoffrey Pullum, who coined it in 2003 in a blog about a woman who substituted the phrase egg corn for acorn.  Some commonly heard eggcorns are:

            Go at it hammer and thongs (tongs).

            That’s a mute (moot) point.

            What’s the windshield (wind chill) factor?”

            I need a drink to slack (slake) my thirst.

            It’s impolite to easedrop (eavesdrop).

            Americans living abroad are known as ex-patriots (expatriates).

My favorite eggcorn was a closed-caption TV report about “Firefighters who have to deal not just with the fire but also with people fleeing the fire and ejaculating on all the major highways.”

Eggcorns are related to malapropisms, a word derived from Sheridan’s character Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals.  She liked to use big words, which tended to be the wrong ones—illegible, say, for ineligible. Another type of mis-hearing is known as a mondegreen, which is the misunderstanding of a poem or song lyric.  Mondegreens were discussed extensively in my blog of December 25, 2009, which you can (and should without delay) read at:

http://wordsgoingwild.blogspot.com/search?q=mondegreen

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou tends to mis-hear almost everything that is said to him, especially requests to shut up, which he misunderstands to mean please continue.

            I fried an eggcorn for my lunch,

            And it was fairly tasty--but

            The moment I began to munch,

            I felt a pain down in my gut.

            The reason was (I have a hunch)

            The eggcorn really was a nut. 

      

Bedtime for Gonzo

The name of Hunter S. Thompson is rarely seen without being accompanied by the epithet “gonzo journalist.”  What makes a journalist (or anything else, for that matter) “gonzo”?

It essentially means a style of first-person journalism, in which colorful writing takes priority over factual reporting. It frequently includes humor, exaggeration, sarcasm, and profanity.

Copping out, in typical fashion, Webster’s Collegiate says the phrase originated in 1971, but its origin is “unknown.”  Unknown by Webster’s, perhaps, but others purport to have the inside skinny.

According to the Online Etymological Dictionary the term “gonzo” was first used around 1970 by Bill Cardoso, editor of the Boston Globe Sunday magazine.  Wikipedia further amplifies this to report that Cardoso used the term to describe an article entitled “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” by Thompson, which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly.

Cardoso explained its origin as South Boston Irish slang for the last man standing after an all-night drinking binge. He said it was a corruption of the French Canadian gonzeaux, which inexplicably means “shining path.”

Wikipedia says another speculation is that the word was inspired by a 1960 song called “Gonzo” by New Orleans blues pianist James Booker.  According to Booker’s biography, the title came from a drug-dealing character in a movie called The Pusher, inspired by a 1956 Evan Hunter novel of that title.

If you’re looking for a gonzo rhymester, look no further than the banks of Buffalo Bayou, where the Bard hangs out.

            I like my gonzo in Gor-gonzo-la,

            I like my coke in Coca-Cola,

            I’m retro as to LSD—

            Since DSL is fine with me.

            And as for stuff like snow and smack,

            To me, it’s all a crock of crack.

                       

The Whole Shebang

An online news site reported the following:

"’I do believe I can win’ a national election, Sarah Palin has declared to Newsweek. The latest teaser from Palin seems to indicate that she's about to go for the big shebang.”

Okay, what is this thing called a “shebang” that ex-Governor Palin is about to go for?  Well, no one quite seems to know, which may be just the thing for someone whose presidential aspirations are unclear.  Maybe she and Rick Perry could join forces and double their chances to acquire a shebang, whatever it is. 

The earliest citation of the word in print is in Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days, 1862: "Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes." Whitman uses shebang to describe some kind of primitive dwelling. (Just the place for Palin and Perry.)

The word turns up with wildly different meanings later on: a “vehicle” in 1872, a “saloon” in 1878, “any sort of house or office” in 1869. In Roughing It (1872), Mark Twain opted for the vehicle: "Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ride here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't let you pay a cent."

In the same year the Sedalia (Missouri) Daily Democrat used the word pretty close to its present meaning, that is “any complicated matter of concern”: "Well, the Democracy can flax [thrash or beat] the whole shebang, and we hope to see our party united."

Nowadays the word is almost always used in the phrase “the whole shebang,” synonymous with the “whole ball of wax,” “the whole enchilada,” “the whole kit and caboodle,” and “the whole nine yards.” 

As for shebang’s etymology, the Oxford English Dictionary (typically) cops out with "of obscure origin,” but other sources suggest a derivation from French charabanc, which is a bus-like wagon.  Others speculate that there might be a connection between shebang and the Irish shebeen, which is a place where liquor is sold without a license.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has opted not to go for the whole shebang, but he has a political observation that he cannot suppress:

            Palin, Paul, and Perry,

            And Bachmann, Trump, and Romney,

            My goodness, it is very

            Hard to pick a nominee!

           

            Huckabee and Cain,

            And Huntsman and Santorum,

            Now Gingrich may campaign--           

            Isn’t that a quorum?

           

            Strictly off the cuff,

            I count almost twenty!           

            Do we have enough?

            Oh, yes, we have Pawlenty!

The Little Oxford Comma

I have been fighting for years—since 1961, actually, when I sat on the rim of the copy desk at the old Houston Press—against those who wish to eradicate what is sometimes known as the Oxford (or Harvard) Comma.  This is the comma that comes before the “and” or “or” in a series of three or more items.  For example, The U. S. flag is red, white, and blue.   I do not like vodka, rum, cognac, or tequila.

It's known as the Oxford Comma because it was traditionally used by editors at the Oxford University Press. How Harvard nosed itself into the phrase I cannot say.  Some people call it the serial comma. 

In the United States, the serial comma is standard usage in most non-journalistic writing, but newspaper stylebooks, including the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times, mandate its omission.  British English usually does without the serial comma, except for some university presses and the recommendation of Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

Stylebooks notwithstanding, the Oxford Comma is often necessary to clarify meaning. For example, in a book dedication the author might write:

            To my parents, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Henry Kissinger.

Without the serial comma, it would appear that the author’s parents are Zsa Zsa and Henry, a situation that, while not inconceivable, is probably not what was meant.  With the serial comma, we find that the author is dedicating his book to three unrelated entities:

             To my parents, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Henry Kissinger.

Ironically, the inclusion of an Oxford comma can also cause its own ambiguity, as in this dedication:

            To my mother, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Henry Kissinger.

In this case, the comma could indicate an appositive rather than a series, meaning that the author’s mother is Zsa Zsa.  The best way around this kind of confusion is probably to rephrase:

            To my mother, and to Zsa Zsa Gabor and to Henry Kissinger.

In her inexplicably best-selling book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the British journalist Lynne Truss writes:  

"There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken."

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou can take the Oxford Comma or leave it alone, but mostly he takes it:

            McConnell, Cantor, Boehner and Obama

            Faced off one day across a great divide.

            From right to left, there was a panorama,           

            The gap between their views was very wide.

            The air was tense, and you could feel the drama,

            Until, at long last, Boehner upped and cried:

            “Wait! Wait! Insert an Oxford Comma,

            Or folks might think I'm on Obama’s side!”

Fixin' To

Most people think of the term fixing to (or, as it’s usually spoken, fixin’ tuh), meaning “just about to,” as a sub-standard expression common only among backwoods Texans and other unlettered types, such as hillbillies, rednecks, and crackers.  The phrase is generally used to express intent to complete an action in the near future: I’m fixing to watch “Gone With the Wind” or She’s fixing to go to Neiman-Marcus.

 

Actually, fixing to has a distinguished etymological history, dating at least to the 14^th century, when fix meant “to set one’s eye or mind on something,” as in I am fixed on winning the fair Rowena’s hand in matrimony (or words to that effect).  Such usage stemmed from the Latin fixus, meaning “immovable, settled, or established.” It’s the past participle of figere, which simply means “to fasten.”

 

The meaning of “getting ready” or “preparing” is strictly American and can be traced to the 18^th century. The Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from 1716: “He fixes for another expedition.”  In 1871 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, “He was fixin’ out for the voyage.” 

 

By 1854 the phrase shifted pretty much to its current meaning, as in the O.E.D.’s citation of “Aunt Lizy is just fixing to go to church.” In 1907 the Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republic proclaimed, “What a pretty night!  The moon is fixing to shine.” In 1910 Gertrude Atherton wrote, “I meet schoolgirls so painted up they look as they was fixin’ to be bad.”  A 1967 song by Country Joe and the Fish bemoaned, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is usually in a fix of some intricate and inexplicable nature, which he resolves through sublime flights of lyric poetry like the following.

            I’m fixing to fax further facts to the flacks

            For Fox flicks with their factional fiction,

            In a flexible fluxion of flax and of phlox

            As they flex all their fractional friction.

Perennial Ennials

Today marks the 235^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which, for both the mathematically and historically challenged, occurred in 1776.  This anniversary apparently does not have a high-fangled appellation like sesquicentennial or bicentennial.  Such Latinate sesquipedaliae are presumably thought to have a more celebratory sound than the prosaic “150^th or 200^th anniversary.”

Some folks have devised Latinate terms for most of the celebrations at 25-year intervals—other numbers need not apply for such special status.  Going from the notion that one hundred years is a “centennial” (from the Latin centum or “hundred” and annus or “year”), fifty years is a “semicentennial” (or, in another version, “quinquagenary”) and two hundred years is a “bicentennial.” 

That all seems straightforward enough, but the going gets tricky when you try to pin down some of the other anniversaries.  Sesquicentennial, for 150 years, is derived from the Latin sesqui, meaning “one and a half feet” (the same root as the word sesquipedalian).  If it’s 75 years, you’re supposed to call it a dodranscentennial, from the Latin de quadrans, which means “a whole unit of something less one-quarter.” By the same formula a 175-year celebration is a dodransbicentennial.

Quasquicentennial is a term for “125^th anniversary” supposedly coined by Robert Chapman, an editor for Funk and Wagnalls dictionary, in 1962.  It’s derived from the Latin quadrans (“quarter”) joined to centennial by the Latin conjunction que. It is not recorded precisely what happened in 1837 to provoke Mr. Chapman’s celebration.

Five hundred years is a quincentennial, and 250 is half of that, or a semiquincentennial. Disdaining the unfinished implications of semi, several universities (including Princeton) have called their 250^th anniversaries bicenquinquagenaries—a coined word that some Latin scholars insist really means 10,000 years—a milestone that even Oxford and Cambridge haven’t yet reached!

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou finds that most of his milestones are really millstones, but, like Sisyphus, he keeps rolling them up the hill.

            Sometimes I wonder just how many’ll

            Come to celebrate my centennial--

            ‘Twill be in 2037.

            My guests won’t care about the menu,

            No, their concern is for the venue:

            Will it be in hell or heaven?

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.