Spam Scams

In this holiday season, it’s time to consider some of the qualities of spam—not SPAM(R), that gelatinous pork product that I earnestly hope did not find its way to your Thanksgiving table—but the unwanted email variety. 

Expert spammers have devised many ways of trying to outwit spam detectors designed to intercept spam and consign it to a cyberdungeon.  Marketing expert Herschel Gordon suggests a number of ploys, most important of which is avoiding a giveaway word like “free” in the subject line. Instead, he says, try “no charge” or “it’s on us.”

 

Other words that may trigger spam filters and that should be avoided in the subject line are complimentary, sale, discount, loan, fun, buy, own, approved, saving, win—and, of course—those old email standbys, Viagra and Cialis—which is why they show up so often as V#%G@A and C#+L*S.

 

Another method to fool the filters is to generate random text to accompany the ad copy, so that no two messages are exactly alike, even though millions may be sent. At first, these random sentences seem like pure gibberish, but occasionally they rise to the level of poetry, albeit with a Dada-ist tinge.  Try reciting the actual examples printed below, which are from a recent spam letter, reproduced verbatim, but rearranged as free verse. 

 

Oh, by the way--full disclosure: one stanza below is not spam gibberish but an excerpt from a well-known twentieth-century poem.  Can you spot the real poetry amidst the fake?

 

A narrative renders a pardon,

A pot thinks!

An electronic bump humbles through worship,

The coal smells any token,

The country colors over the degenerate frown,

The cube dips the obstructed race.

 

Another troop jokes?

Should the constraining guide bend the incident?

Does the army laugh?

The sickening addict rots near an operator.


Another ownership sauces the sermon,


A translator butters the chance,

The influential arcade chooses the radical temperature,

Around the spit gossips a believable sun.

When will the crossing material consent above the undergraduate?

The zero adjective progresses.




The god decays inside the authentic sophisticate,

The holder attends within our snobbery.


The marriage turns!

Our mountain stills the geology,

The ancient bicycles above the spotted ditch.

The heaven chalks?

The tribe talks?




The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare,
Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light;
Dew-haze blurs, in the grass, pale ankles moving.
Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf under the apple trees,
Choros nympharum, goat-foot, with the pale foot alternate;
Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows,
A black cock crows in the sea-foam.

 

Below the dictator decides an abysmal highway,

Before the pun boils an asserted convict.

How will the gulf wet a slogan?

 

The abandoned mark sugars an independence,

The wrecked sophisticate despairs against the risen biography,

The baking stereotype bays,

The uncle truncates a cable,


The sect coughs beside the geographical shadow.


Why won't the radical revolt?

 

The jaded Bard of Buffalo Bayou is unimpressed by these poems—both the faux and the real—having effortlessly written tons of equally incomprehensible gobbledygook himself.  To wit:

           Whenever I feel a little bit bibberish,

            I drink some wine and write some gibberish.

            That’s why you’ll find a Babel of nonsense

            On the pages of my table of contents.

            But I am not a stellar spammer,

            Or one well-versed in mellerdrammer.

            When I write, I jot tomfoolery—

            Just dribbles of my dot-com droolery.

 

Oh, yes, in case you’re interested: the seven lines beginning “The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare” are from Ezra Pound’s Canto IV. 

 

Don’t Bogart Me

In a post-election op-ed column in The New York Times, Maureen Dowd wrote: “Last time, Obama lifted up the base with his message of hope and change; this time the base lifted up Obama, with the hope he will change….They want Barry to stop bogarting the change.”

That last phrase—“bogarting the change”—struck me as not only infelicitous, but also unintelligible.  What on earth did she mean by “bogarting”? It must be a typographical error, I thought.  Wrong again!

Unbeknownst to me, bogart is a verb that has been in use since the 1960s, and it means to “use or consume more than one’s share.” Its origin is a bit complicated.

In many of his films, the actor Humphrey Bogart was pictured smoking a cigarette, which he kept constantly dangling from his mouth, without removing it, even while talking.  In the marijuana culture of the 1960s, it was considered bad form to keep a joint in one’s mouth rather than taking a quick hit and then passing it around.  From the image of Bogie’s soggy ciggie, hogging a joint became known as “bogarting.”  This usage was reinforced by a 1968 song, “Don’t Bogart Me,” recorded by the Fraternity of Man, which was used in the 1969 film Easy Rider.  Part of the lyric goes:
            “Don’t bogart that joint, my friend,

            Pass it over to me.” 

Bogie is not the only movie star whose name has become an eponym, referring to actions or items. Others include:

* John Wayne, whose name is a verb meaning to “act with great force and little deliberation, in a consciously heroic manner,” e.g., ”He John Wayned the door” (i.e. he kicked it in).

* Shirley Temple, a non-alcoholic drink made with ginger ale, orange juice, grenadine, and a maraschino cherry, at one time commonly served to little girls when their parents were having cocktails.

* Roy Rogers, a similar non-alcoholic drink typically for little boys, in which cola replaces ginger ale.

* Mae West, an inflatable life jacket (from its resemblance to the star’s buxomness).

* Marilyn Monroe, after whom (for similar reasons to the Mae West jacket) small, highly rounded sediment mounds in certain tidal flats are named “monroes.”

* Tom Cruise, a verb that can mean either to “become overly excited” (from an episode on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show in which Cruise jumped on a couch to express his love for Katie Holmes) or to “pretend to know more about a subject than one actually does.”

Speaking of folks who pretend to know more than they do, we can’t overlook the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who is at the head of that class.  Here is his latest pretension:

            Young Tim’s a timid little eponym,

            Who always fears someone will step on him.

            His brother, Tom, is just a homonym—

            The two of them intone a common hymn

            And pray that Tom becomes a synonym,

            So there’d be nothing folks could pin on him.

            And Tim? He prays to be a toponym,

            And then, he thinks, there’d be no stoppin’ him.

Perfect Hominy

In his spoofy song “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,” the spiffy Tom Lehrer sings:

            Yes, for paradise the Southland is my nominee.
            Jes' give me a ham hock and a grit of hominy.

Hominy is not a food you’re likely to find on the menu at tonier establishments, or even just plain tony ones. And if you think about how it’s made, you might not even want to eat it, delicious as it is.  Hominy is kernels of corn that have been soaked in a caustic solution, such as lye—yes, lye!—to soften them, and then washed to remove their hulls. 

Hominy originated among American Indians sometime before the seventeenth century. Webster’s Second International Dictionary cites its origin as the Virginia Algonquin word rockahamen, meaning “parched corn ground small.” The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that it comes from a “much-corrupted” version of the American Indian word Appunmineash, which also means “parched corn.”

In 1629, Captain John Smith wrote of the Virginia colony: “Their servants commonly feed on Milke Homini, which is bruized Indian corn pounded, and boiled thicke, and milke for the sauce.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has been boiled thick more times than he can remember—but that’s another story.  This one is bad enough:

            Okra, tomatoes, and mashed sweet potatoes,

            Served with a side of salt pork,

            Turnips and greens, and ham hock and beans—

            You won’t find all that in New York.

            Fresh peaches with pits, pigs turning on spits,

            These are the foods that I flaunt.

            You say that you want some hominy grits—

            Well, hominy do you want?

Red State Blues

Tuesday—yikes, that’s tomorrow!—is Election Day.  That evening, TV viewers will be anxiously watching maps of the United States brightly colored red and blue. As everyone will know, red will indicate the states carried by Republicans and blue the states going Democratic. Given the historical association of red with liberal causes and blue with more conservative parties, one might think the map-makers are color-blind.

           

The etymologies of the words red and blue are of little help in sorting out today’s symbolism.  Red is derived from the Sanskrit rudhirá, which means “blood.”  From this meaning, the color red came to be associated with violence, revolution, lust, anger, fire, guilt, sex, sin, love, courage, and sacrifice.

Blue traveled a circuitous etymological path, from proto-Indo-European bhel (“light-colored, yellow, burnt”), Old Norse bla (“livid, or black-and-blue”), Old French blo (“pale, discolored, gray”), North Icelandic blama¶ur (“swarthy black”), Middle High German bla (“yellow’), and Germanic blau (originally, “black”).  Apparently blue could denote any color you wanted, as long as it wasn’t red. Even today some languages have no word to distinguish blue from green.

The symbolic meaning of blue has varied as widely as its etymology. It has been associated with happiness, optimism, peace, serenity, and loyalty.  Goethe thought blue was cold, gloomy, and melancholy (as opposed to red’s gravity, dignity, and grace). In politics blue somewhat arbitrarily came to stand for conservative opposition to both liberalism (red) and anarchy (black).

           

But why do red and blue mean what they do today in American politics?  Blame it on the election of 2000.

TV networks had first used colors on electronic election maps in 1976, when NBC pioneered with a map showing Gerald Ford in blue and Jimmy Carter in red. In 1984, NBC News showed Ronald Reagan’s landslide of 44 states as a “sea of blue.”  Apparently not wanting to be thought a copycat, CBS used the opposite colors—red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. At ABC blue and yellow were the choices.

During this period the three major networks informally agreed on a uniform red-blue scheme that would alternate every four years, being assigned according to who were the incumbents (blue) and who were the challengers (red).

By 2000 all the broadcast and cable networks used this system, and it was the incumbent Democrats’ turn to be blue.  Because of the prolonged controversy over the election, coverage dragged on for weeks, and commentators began to refer to a state as “red” or “blue,” according to which party had carried it.  From that time on, the red-state, blue-state dichotomy became ingrained in American political dialogue.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is also ingrained—but it’s better not to ask in what.  Today, like most days, he has the blues.

            Oh, Lord, I got those Lone Star, Red State Blues,

            Surrounded by a crowd with wing-nut views,

            Politicians like Rick Perry,

            Who think their job’s hereditary,

            As long as they’re more right-wing than Ted Cruz.

            Oh, Lord, I got those Lone Star, Red State Blues,

            I’m in a land where folks believe Fox News,

            And the ghost of Molly Ivins

            Is the one thing that enlivens

            All the Democrats who know they’re bound to lose.

            When I’m resting in my arbor, Oh

            How I dream of old Ralph Yarborough,

            I’d bring back Barbara Jordan, if I only could.

            Ann Richards, Henry Gonzalez,

            They were really hot tamales—

            And right now even Lyndon Johnson’s looking good!

            O, Lord, I got those Lone Star, Red State Blues,

            A feeling that goes right down to my shoes,

            ‘Twould be a feat herculean

            If Texas turned cerulean,

            Yes, Lord, I got those Lone Star, Red State Blues.

Fiddle-Faddle

An eminent drama critic for one of the nation’s most distinguished daily newspapers (well, perhaps I stretch a point or two) recently suggested that an overblown touring production of that overwritten musical Jekyll & Hyde might have benefited from the “soft-peddling” of certain lurid elements.  It is natural to assume that he meant “soft-pedaling,” the usual idiomatic phrase, derived from the left-hand pedal on most pianos, which mutes the sound, meaning to “underplay or de-emphasize.”

On mature reflection, however, I am willing to admit that “soft-peddling” might be equally apt, implying a “soft-sell” rather than a “hard-sell” approach.

Whichever the critic intended, pedal and peddle are often confused in contemporary usage.   Just for the record: pedal, from the Latin pedalis, is a “lever or treadle, usually pressed by the foot, to activate a mechanism on a musical instrument or other mechanical device (such as a bicycle).” The word first appeared in print in the seventeenth century.

Peddle is an older word—fourteenth or fifteenth century—and is a back-formation from peddler, which derives from the Middle English pedder, meaning a “person who travels about with wares to sell.” A ped is a “pack or basket.”

Piddle, meaning either to “act in a trifling way, dawdle, dally, or toy” or, informally,  to “urinate,” probably is a corruption of peddle, dating from the eighteenth century.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is a piddler of great renown, and one can view the results of his piddling hereinbelow:

           

            Never piddle in a puddle,

            Or try to treadle while astraddle,

            And don’t coddle as you cuddle

            And canoodle in your saddle.

            In a huddle never doodle

            With a poodle who can waddle,

            Do not diddle with a noodle.

            And don’t dawdle as you toddle.

           

            In the middle of a muddle

            Please don’t meddle with a paddle,           

            Never addle as you fuddle—

            Just hit the pedal and skedaddle!

           

God Save the Queen’s English

Recent articles in both The New York Times and the BBC Magazine commented on the increasing invasion of Britishisms (or “Briticisms,” as they used to be known) into American English. Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic regarded the phenomenon as the Yanks’ attempt to sound sophisticated. 

The articles didn’t point out that the cross-pollination works both ways.  In recent years, on visits to the United Kingdom, I’ve been startled to encounter cookies where biscuits once were served (chocolate-chip, at that!), bags of potato chips rather than crisps, sidewalks instead of pavements, elevators replacing lifts, and periods at the ends of sentences where full stops used to sit. Whether that makes the Brits sound sophisticated I couldn’t say.

On the other hand, here’s a quick primer of some words that used to be strictly British but have inched their way into the American vocabulary:

Bum – “buttocks,” used since the fourteenth century where Americans would say butt. Bum, from the Middle English bom, is thought to be onomatopœic, analagous to other similar words meaning a “protuberance or swelling,” such as bump, bud, and burr.  Butt is the older term, from the late thirteenth century, derived from buttock, which came from buttoc, meaning the “end of a small piece of land.”

Cheeky – “insolent, impudent, or audacious,” in use since 1840, probably from the same anatomical notion that gave rise to jaw or mouth off, alluding to insolent speech. Cheeky monkey is an especially evocative characterization of a saucy young person.

Chuffed – “elated, very pleased,” from the now obsolete chuff (“swollen with fat”), which was last used in that sense in the sixteenth century. If you read the Inspector Lynley mystery novels by Elizabeth George (who is, oddly enough, an American), you’ll encounter this word a lot.

Dodgy – “risky, dangerous, suspicious,” first used around 1860 and probably derived from the verb dodge, meaning “evade.”

Gobsmacked – “flabbergasted, struck dumb with amazement,” attested only since the 1980s, and probably derived from gob meaning “mouth” and smack meaning “hit.”

Knickers – “undergarment for women, i.e. panties,” most often seen in the idiom “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” meaning “calm down.” Not to be confused with the old-fashioned American word that meant knee-breeches, knickers derives from knickerbockers, so-called from their resemblance to the trousers worn by Dutch settlers in New York as depicted in the George Cruikshank illustrations of Washington Irving’s History of New York, published in 1831, written under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Loo – slang for “lavatory or toilet,” in use since the 1920s, probably derived from French lieu d'aisance, "lavatory," literally "place of ease," a euphemism picked up by British servicemen in France during World War I. Others say it may be a pun on Waterloo, based on water closet.

Shag – a vulgarism meaning to “copulate with,” dating to 1788, probably from the obsolete verb shag (late fourteenth century) meaning “shake or waggle.”

Suss – “come to understand, figure out, " in use since 1966, a slang shortening of the police jargon usage of the verb suspect.

Wonky – “shaky or unsteady,” first noted in 1919, and of unknown origin, possibly from the German prefix wankel-, which has a similar sense, or from surviving dialectal words based on Old English wancol  ("shaky, tottering").

Britishisms used by the Bard of Buffalo Bayou are pretty much limited to “another pint of bitter” and “where’s the loo?”  Nontheless, he has tried his hand at a little transatlantic debauchery, which we all hope will do nothing to imperil the Special Relationship.

            Don’t be perplexed by pedagogy,                       

            And sit around just feeling stodgy,

                        Listen, chum,

                        Get off your bum,

            Go out and do a deed that’s dodgy.

            When you are weary, wan, and wonky,

            And feel as dumb as some old donkey,

                        Don’t be non-plussed,

                        You’ll get it sussed--           

             Just hang out in a honky-tonky.

            When your lamplight fades and flickers,

            And you’re lapping up a load of liquors,

                        Don’t feel rebuffed,

                        You can be chuffed,

            Just knock the knots out of your knickers.

                       

            If you are growing old and creaky,

            And find your plumbing’s rather leaky,

                        Here’s what to do:

                        Step in the loo,

            And come out chipper, chic, and cheeky.

            If you are drooping and you’re dragging,

            And your libido’s lame and lagging,

                        Don’t be gobsmacked,

                        It’s time to act--

            ‘Cause sure as shooting, you’re shy some shagging.

Caught Knapping

Remember that old song “The Happy Wanderer,” sometimes known as “Valderi, valdera”?  The lyric oozed pastoral charm:

           

            I love to go a-wandering

            Along the mountain track,

            And as I go, I love to sing,

            My knapsack on my back.

I’ve always wondered what a knap was and why the wanderer had one (or more) in his sack.

Nowadays, there are no knaps, but when the word knapsack came into use (the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1603), it stemmed from the Low German knappsack, which derived from knappen meaning “to make a snapping noise,” which was interpreted to mean “to eat.”  Sack is also Low German and—guess what—means “sack.” So the knapsack presumably was where the happy hiker carried food on which he could chomp away, no doubt making a snapping noise as he smacked his lips.

The knapsack’s cousin, the backpack, is pretty much the same thing, except it’s usually mounted on a metal frame.  Its use was first noted in 1914.

The cheeky Urban Dictionary tells us that the versatile backpack can also mean a form of hip-hop music that is socially conscious, a person who constantly hovers too close to his or her mate or dancing partner, a person with muscles on his back, a nerd who contributes nothing to a gathering but a sour disposition, a manager who oversupervises, or a few other interesting things that I would blush to mention.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has been known to blush on rare occasions, when discovered in flagrante delicto.  Here is one of the more flagrant of his delicta:

           

            I love to go a-wandering

            Along the Vegas Strip,

            And as I go, I tightly cling

            To one lone poker chip.

            That one chip is all that’s left

            Of all the cash I had,

            And now I’m broke and so bereft,

            I hope Steve Wynn is glad.

            But losing all my hard-earned cash

            Was not so bad a thing

            As when I broke out in a rash

            To hear Wayne Newton sing.

Let’s Do Lunch

Hungry, anyone? The New York Public Library currently has a fascinating exhibit about the history of lunch in New York.  It includes the background of the power lunch, the 3-cent school lunch, and such iconic emblems as the sidewalk cart, the Automat, the deli, the diner, the hot dog, the soft pretzel, and hot pastrami.  It also devotes a panel to the origin of the word lunch, which, as it turns out, is rather complicated.

The word can be found in English literature as early as 1591, but with a different meaning than it has today.  A Spanish dictionary of that year lists lunch as the meaning of the Spanish lunja, literally a “loin” or “a hunk of ham or bacon.”

Etymologists believe that the modern meaning of lunch derived from luncheon, which appears in print eleven years earlier, in 1580, with a similar meaning, in this case a “hunk of cheese.”  Luncheon is believed to have its root in nuncheon, a corruption of nonechenche, from the Latin nonus (“noon”) and Old English scenc (“to pour out” or “to drink”). 

Other wordsmiths point to the German non lunchentach, meaning a noon drink of ale, usually with bread.

By 1660 luncheon was used to mean any noontime meal, probably consisting of bread and cheese or other light fare. The shorter form of lunch developed later and was regarded as vulgar.

In his 1755 Dictionary of English Language, Samuel Johnson defines lunch as “As much food as one’s hand can hold.”  He suggests it comes from the word clutch or clunch, although he also includes a possible derivation from the Spanish louja [sic].

In its present sense of a meal at midday, lighter and less formal than an evening dinner, the first usage of lunch found by the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1829, although the Online Etymological Dictionary finds lunch as both verb and noun, meaning “a light meal” or “to partake” of it, as early as William Davies’ 1786 play The Mode, in which this racy dialogue appears:

            MRS. PRATTLE: I always to be sure, makes a point to keep up the dignity of the family I lives in.  Would you take a more solid refreshment?—Have you lunch’d, Mr. Bribe?”

            MR. BRIBE: Lunch’d O dear! Permit me, my dear Mrs. Prattle, to refresh my sponge, upon the honey dew that clings to your ravishing pouters. O!  Mrs. Prattle, this shall be my lunch. (He kisses her).

With such usage it should come as no surprise that lunch was still regarded as a vulgarism as late as the 1820s.  Brunch, by the way, a portmanteau word combining breakfast and lunch, wasn’t used until 1896.

All the Bard of Buffalo Bayou knows about lunch is that there is no such thing as a free one, although he keeps looking.

            Last week I had this great hunch

            (Goodness knows)

            I knew how I could get a free lunch

            (So it goes).

                        Having eaten my fill,

                        I just tore up the bill!

            But the waiter then gave me a punch

            (In the nose).

Little Epergne, Who Made Thee?

Bill Bryson, the prolific Anglo-American author who writes about everything under the sun and sells lots of books doing it, has a problem with epergne. The word, which denotes an elaborate, tiered centerpiece typically holding several dishes or vases, certainly looks French.  But Bryson says the word doesn’t exist in the French language and no one knows its origin. In At Home: A Short History of Private Life, he writes, “For a century or so, no table of discernment was without its epergne, but why it was called an epergne no one remotely knows. It just seems to have popped into being from nowhere.”

But words don’t pop out of nowhere, do they?

Certainly, it’s not unusual for a word’s origin to be uncertain.  Roughly half the words I look up in the Oxford English Dictionary offer only weaselly, wishy-washy, namby-pamby etymologies.  In Bryson’s defense of its non-French origin, epergne does not have an acute accent on the first e, as you might expect, as in étagère. And the pronunciation is invariably given as EE-PURN (or sometimes A-PURN), but never with the second syllable rendered as anything resembling PAIRN-YA, as a French word might be pronounced.

On the other hand, a lot of French transplants, like epaulet, lose their accents crossing the Channel.  And don’t forget the Brits have always been impatient with foreign pronunciations—some of them even insisting the Belgian town of Ypres is called “Wipers.”

But where did epergne come from, then?

The O.E.D. is willing to admit that it is perhaps….just perhaps…a corruption of the French épargne, which means “saving” or “economy.”  It’s a leap from that meaning to a table centerpiece, but Wikipedia’s language expert suggests that diners were able to help themselves to finger foods like fruit, nuts, sweetmeats, pickles, etc., from the epergne, and were thus  “saved” the trouble of passing their plates. Hmmmm.

If an epergne revolves, it might be called a “lazy Susan,” an Americanism from 1906, for which none of the discreetly prudent dictionaries I have seen wishes to venture an etymology.

In French, incidentally, an epergne is known as a surtout, which also means “above all” or “especially.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou likes to fill his epergne with gummy bears and jelly babies to provide a wholesome snack as he puts pen to parchment to regale his dwindling coterie of fans with semi-verses like this one:

            The hoity-toity epergne,

            It may not surprise you to lergne,

            Has ergned the disdagne

            Of folks who are plagne,

            And really just don’t give a dergne.

“Just Call Me Mr. President”

The Presidential elections loom.  I urge all of you to be sure and vote, provided that your political views align with my own.  You know who you are.

If you are one of those benighted souls who plan to vote for the other side—and I know who you are—permit me to remind you what a glorious day November 6 would be for a long ride in a remote part of the country, far from jangling phones and crowded polling places.  Go early, to enjoy the sunrise, and stay till midnight.  

Those of you who are still considering the two nominees will want to know something about their names—other than what they are, I mean.  Earlier this year I provided you with the underlying meaning of the surnames of all the candidates at that time: seven Republican contenders and the sitting Democratic President.  See “Name That President!,” January 9, 2012 at: http://wordsgoingwild.blogspot.com/search?q=Romney%2C+Obama

Now, we have the opportunity of looking at the first names of the last two candidates standing: Mitt and Barack.

As for Romney, it’s probably well known by now that his first name isn’t really Mitt.  It’s Willard, a name he was given in honor of his parents’ good friend J. Willard Marriott, the hotel mogul. Usually pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, Willard is of Old English origin and means “strong desire.”

Mitt is a shortened form of Milton, after Romney’s cousin Milton “Mitt” Romney, onetime quarterback for the Chicago Bears. Milton is also Old English and can mean either a “town by a mill” or a “middle town.”

The President's first name, Barack, is Swahili and has its origins in Arabic. The original root of the name (B-R-K) means "blessed." The root word is used in many other phrases to denote blessings and to describe people who are blessed:

• Mabruk! = "Congratulations!"
• Barakallah feek = "May God bless you"
• Barakah = blessings from God (feminine version of the name)

In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found throughout the Bible. It first occurs in Genesis 1:22: “And God blessed (ḇāreḵə) them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.”

Obama's middle name is Hussein, which was his grandfather's first name. The name, of Arabic origin, means "good" or "handsome one."

Armed with this information, you cannot fail to make the right choice when marking your ballot. And may blessings rain upon you, handsome one.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has already voted (early and often), but he’s keeping mum about his choice.  Warren G. Harding would be my guess.   Elections notwithstanding, the Bard emerged from his lair down in the doldrums just long enough to leave this little calling card:

            Well, fiddle-dee-diddle,

            Mitt’s town’s in the middle

            Or perhaps it’s just by a mill.

            He has strong desire,

            No doubt, to acquire

            A job as the king of the hill.

            But wait, I have heard

            From a talkative bird,

            Who just flew in through the transom,

            That Barack is blessed,

            And the bird, when pressed,

            Added the fact that he’s handsome.

My Miniscule Momento

Each time I hear someone boast of having a treasured momento, I react with nearly as much violence as when I hear or read of something miniscule. These two “M” words—memento, meaning “souvenir” (or some other keepsake), and minuscule, meaning “very small”—are misspelled and mispronounced more often than not.  Why?

In the case of the former, I suppose it’s because of confusion in generally muddled minds with the word momentous, meaning “of great importance.”  The words, as you might expect, if you gave it any thought, come from two entirely different roots.

Memento is the imperative form of the Latin verb memenisse (“to remember”), and as a noun it referred originally to a prayer in the Roman Catholic Mass beginning “Memento, Domine, famulorum famularumque,” or “Remember, O Lord, your servants.”  Later memento came to mean a “reminder”—especially of the fact that we are all going to die, in the phrase memento mori (“remember to die”).  Nowadays, people probably would prefer their mementoes not to do that for them.

Momentous, on the other hand, is from the word moment, meaning “importance,” which is rooted in the Latini momentum (“movement”).  An event of moment meant something (like a Presidential election or a Lady Gaga concert, say) with the power to move one with force or excitement. 

As for minuscule, it derives from the Latin minusculus (“rather small”), a diminutive of minus (“less”), which, in turn, derives from minor (“smaller”).  Originally minuscule was used to refer to a medieval style of writing and subsequently to lower-case letters.

The prefix mini-, seen in many words such as minimum, minicar, minibus, minicomputer, and miniskirt (but not in minuscule!), also comes ultimately from the Latin minor—but by a different route, through minimus, meaning “the least or smallest.”

To confuse matters even further, miniature, which now means “small replica,” comes from an entirely different root—miniare, which means to “paint with the color vermilion.”  It referred originally to paintings colored red in medieval illuminated manuscripts.  Such paintings were necessarily small, so miniature  evolved to mean anything smallish.

Well, I trust you’ll be able to sleep nights now that we’ve settled that.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has no trouble sleeping nights, or days, for that matter.  He claims it’s because of his clear conscience; others insist he has just passed out from too much booze.  You be the judge:

            If you find in your mailbox a story

            With goings-on ghastly and gory,

                        Dealing with death

                        And someone’s last breath—

            Well, that’s a memento mori.                       

            Thanks, but no thanks, I get quivery

            Just thinking of that special delivery,

                        You tell the Grim Reaper

                        I won’t answer his beeper—

            I prefer a memento vivere.