Adieu, adieu, until we meet again!

Ladies and germs, I relish to say that I am taking JOU 3101 - Reporting this semester at the University of Florida. I regret to say that this class will suspend my activities on this blog.

Reporting requires the completion of an outside story - that is, a story researched outside of class including the words of real people - every week during the semester. The class, professor Mike Foley concedes gleefully, is the hardest course in the College of Journalism and Communications.

I am also assistant director of UF Shakespeare in the Park (name change pending), which will present "Much Ado About Nothing" in the spring of 2010. I plan to give the show no less attention.

With that in mind, I am devoting the lion's share of my energies to my classes and obligations.

Please don't forget about me in the interim! I will return. Thank you, everyone, for reading.

As always, you may contact me - especially if you have tips for stories involving non-mutual friends! - at edwardmbowen@gmail.com. I also have a Facebook account - search for "Mead Bowen."

Peace and hugs,
Mead

For your viewing pleasure!

The Language Loft's first photo slideshow awaits! Click the play button below and check it out. Thanks again to everyone who made this project possible. If anyone has suggestions for the next slideshow's theme or, as always, for another figure of speech in need of research, leave a comment or send me an e-mail.



And another of my favorite uses of the word "idiom," just for kicks:



Have a pleasant day, all.

- Mead

Not AWOL...just working.

Hey loyal readers - just wanted to let you know that I haven't been posting for a very important reason. I'm working on a project for this blog - a slideshow of photographs depicting idioms acted out by real, live people!*

If you'd like to be part of this project and live in the Gainesville, Fla. area, feel free to e-mail me at edwardmbowen@gmail.com and we can set up a time to get you in a photo before Friday.

Thanks folks! I'll have this slideshow up and running on here by Friday at the latest.

- Mead



* - as opposed to fake, dead people**
** - poking fun at my own redundancies

When screened-in porches just won't do

For every cricket in existence, technology owns a bug itself. Tech support operators equal, if not exceed, the number of exterminators on the planet (ducks and bats and the like not included). Malfunctioning machines and insects are so numerous, and so akin - they buzz, hum, annoy and require monthly maintenance to prevent - that at times they just beg you to open the window and let them out.

With that in mind, the subject of today's blog proceeds accordingly:

the word "defenestrate."





Hehehehe...had you going there, didn't I?

The word "defenestrate" originated in the early 1600s* and comes from the root "fenestra," Latin for window. Parsed up into de/fenestrate, it means in this case out of/window - literally, "the act of throwing something, or especially someone, out of a window."

Probably the most famous defenestrations in history were the First and Second Defenestrations of Prague. Even if you were an attentive scholar, you probably thought there was only one famous Czech window-toss.**

Though it wasn't called a defenestration until its successor made history, the First Defenestration of Prague occurred on July 30, 1419. It began with the march of an armed congregation of Czech Hussites through the streets of Prague, protesting the imprisonment of several of their fellows. They marched to the New Town Hall, where the Catholic councilors refused to even make a prisoner exchange.

That's when an Anti-Hussite had the bright idea of throwing a rock*** at one of the protesters.

What goes up must come down. Several of the crowd stormed the New Town Hall and all seven of the councilors came down, through the window and onto the upright spears of the protesters below.

For the Protestants in 1618 who had heard of this former triumph, the preliminaries to the Second Defenestration must have seemed déjà vu. In 1617, Roman Catholic bigwigs ordered builders to abandon construction of several Protestant churches on allegedly Church-owned land. The Protestants claimed it belonged to the king and was, therefore, theirs upon which to build. They treated this development as the denial of a basic right, and feared the denial of other rights for Protestants was soon to follow.

After a few meetings, the riled non-Catholic nobility barged into the Bohemian Chancellery at Prague Castle. The crowd tried two despised governors, both staunchly Catholic and notorious persecutors of Protestants, for violating the Right of Freedom of Religion.****

Old habits die hard, and amid cheers and shattered glass, the convicted and their scribe plummeted 16 meters (that's 52.5 feet, folks) to the ground.


The governors and scribe fell not onto skull-cracking cobblestones, but - some said providentially, others said coincidentally - onto a large pile of manure, and thereby survived the drop unscathed.

Though punished capitally for such high-rise aristicide, Czech Protestants certainly knew how to make an exit.

Comic book fans might remember another notable defenestration, given the recent movie adaptation of the timeless series: Watchmen. While the movie's version isn't quite true to that of the book, it's nonetheless impressive.

Even more impressive: a reverse defenestration, courtesy of Chuck Norris.

So remember, kids, if you ever get kidnapped and held for questioning under pain of death by Czech hypernationalists who despise everything your c0untry stands for, there are worse ways to die. And luckily, it doesn't always work!*****


Information purloined from dictionary.com, New World Encyclopedia, OnlineConversion.com; picture purloined from Wikimedia Commons





* - though arguably if this part of the Old Testament is true, Jezebel might've been the first
** - Unless you count when the Scottish ambassador challenged the king to a cathedral caber-toss
*** - Or petrojected (petro = rock/ject = to throw) at one of the protesters!******
**** - And we're not taking a cue from the Czechs about punishment for First Amendment violators because...?
***** - Defenestration into a railroad spike factory Dumpster greatly diminishes the likelihood of survival
****** - seeing as I only wish this word existed, I do not endorse its use in Scrabble

"Give 'im a taste of the boatswain's rope-end, early in the morning!"

One of the prerequisites for sons of veterinarians is an appreciation for animals. I've owned cats all my life, and my parents adopted a rescue dog several years ago, with whom I promptly fell in love. The photo at the left is of me and said dog, Maggie.

Let's make it clear that I'm an equal-opportunity zoophile (ZU-oh-fyle; and not of the sexual kind, smartalecks) before I make an entry for this misunderstood idiom, because
1) I am neither a strict cat person nor a strict dog person
2) I dislike cruelty to animals as much as the next person
3) my father might disown me if he thought otherwise*

With that said, today's entry is a seafaring phrase (notice a pattern?) reviled for its presumed association to animal cruelty: enough room to swing a cat.

The "cat" in this phrase refers to a nasty whip known as a cat o' nine tails, used to punish lawbreaking sailors in the British Royal Navy until the 1800s. This flogging occurred on deck in full view, because below deck the ceilings were too low for the boatswain's (pronounced BO-sun's) mate to swing the whip.

Though other variations existed, the naval cat was made out of rope. Colonial-era rope was made of three thin ropes, each composed of three strands of cotton yarn - when unraveled at the end, nine separate strings would result, giving the whip its nine tails.**

The jury is out on whether they were usually knotted, but most accounts maintain they were. Each would cause intense pain when striping an insubordinate's back. If the crime was theft, the mate would employ the thieves' cat, each of its thongs knotted three times for additional pain (see right). Theft was an especially serious crime aboard a naval vessel.***

Several regulations about usage of the whip existed, but as we innovative humans often do, captains found ways to circumvent them. Though floggings exceeding 12 lashes were subject to court martial, captains often got away with as many as 72 without being caught. The mate put all of his strength into each blow, and if the captain decreed more lashes, another man would deliver the next set of 12 to ensure the punishment's severity.

The song "What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor" features a pseudonym for the cat, "the captain's daughter," seeing as in theory the cat was used only with his permission. Whether your version of the song says "give him a taste of the captain's daughter" or "put him in the bed with the captain's daughter," the singers are asking for a flogging.****

That the song requests this punishment doesn't surprise me. Punishment in British, colonial and piratical societies alike was public spectacle. People treated hangings and clapping a criminal in stocks as we might a free benefit concert or a fistfight in the schoolyard.

Nowadays, the use of the cat tends to be a private matter, as any BDSM devotee will discreetly***** tell you. Funny how what was once punishment, some of us today do voluntarily. Maybe some royal sailors deliberately violated the law? Who knows. What I do know is that where our contemporaries want to swing the cat, there's always [a] room [in which] to do it.



Information purloined from Captain Blood's Cove, Broadside, pride-unlimited.com, Pirates of the Caribbean: A Pyrate's Life, dictionary.reference.com; images purloined from Wikimedia Commons and my personal album



* - I may or may not have once fed Maggie a Jujube to point and laugh at her (and I'm kidding about that disownment part)
** - Any thoughts on why people have said cats have nine lives, besides surviving falls from great heights?
*** - one flaskful of liquor smuggled aboard could buy a lot of hardtack - we're talking, like, a 1:5 ratio here******
**** - if you were lucky, maybe even from the captain's daughter*******
***** - or vocally and in graphic detail
****** - What? It works as a deadly projectile if you don't have a rock...
******* - Before anybody gets excited about the further possibility for pirate pornography - yes, there is already a multimillion-dollar two-part series - bringing a woman or young boy aboard was punishable by death.

Mead's Online Guide to Using Insults and Escaping While Your Victim Consults a Dictionary

Certain words emerge to represent personalities that serve as fixtures in the community. Scapegoats and sin-eaters bear the guilt for everyone else's trangressions; the gossipmonger collects the tawdry activities of the neighborhood and serializes them; the voyeur enjoys the thrill of watching private moments through a windowpane.

Come to think of it, none of these are positive, are they?

Today's entry is no exception, I'm afraid: it covers one of my favorite words, "curmudgeon." A curmudgeon is defined by dictionary.com as "a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person."

Though the origin is unknown, I'm casting my vote with Walter William Skeat (1835 - 1912), author of several tracts on the English language. He maintained that curmudgeon is a combination of the English word "cur" (a mongrel dog, especially a worthless or unfriendly one) and one of two Lowland Scottish words: "mudgeon" (grimace) or "murgeon" (to mock; to grumble).

Strangely, in modern English dictionaries "murgeon" instead refers to grimace, whereas "mudgeon" isn't listed. "Ker" is also used in a variety of words as a prefix for greater emphasis in onomateopoeic words liked "kerplunk."* I do hope Sherlock Holmes can shed some light on this mystery.

Either way, the word literally translates to "an unfriendly, grimacing/grumbling mongrel dog." Better use this one sparingly, folks.**

Literary curmudgeons include A Christmas Carol's Ebenezer Scrooge, the Harry Potter series's Severus Snape, and To Kill a Mockingbird's morphine-addicted Mrs. Dubose.
Dr. Gregory House of the namesake show has also been labeled as such.

The curmudgeon who comes to my mind is the movie Steel Magnolias's Ousier Boudreaux (as if that it's pronounced "wheezer" isn't clue enough), the laughingstock of her friends with a kinder heart than she tends to show (farthest left in picture).

As literature and movies demonstrate, people are rarely curmudgeons for the sake of being curmudgeonly. Regret, pain or disillusionment gnaws at their roots, souring their moods. But Scrooge's heart thaws when faced with his own mortality, Mrs. Dubose sends a single white camelia to the Finch children as thanks for reading to her, and Ouiser's love for children shows in the smile she gives her friend's son.***

I don't know about House, because I don't watch "House," and if you need a reason why I don't watch "House," you're staring at it.

I suppose that makes me a curmudgeon, too?

I prefer to use the term "selectively cranky."



Information purloined from dictionary.com, the Oxford University Press Blog, and The Mavens' Word of the Day; image purloined from The International Movie Database



* - such as our word's comic-book cousin, KERBLUDGEON!
** - limit usage to your ancient in-laws who never really liked you, and who run about as fast as you can walk
*** - before he bursts into tears

When the saints go marching in

Do you ever have the wish that life was more like a play, or a video game, or a musical - someplace where a higher power can swoop in from above and rectify all of your problems?

Well, NOW YOU CAN - sorry, couldn't resist the temptation. I blame infomercials.

In any case, this blog will cover a literary device for which all literature buffs have the utmost contempt: the deus ex machina.

The Latin phrase (literally, God from the machine) is a translation from the original Greek, where it referred to the mechane, a device in ancient Greek theatre used to lower the actors playing the gods as if they were descending from Mt. Olympus. The gods functioned in the play as a means of resolving the plot or rescuing the protagonist from a particularly sticky situation, like some archaic Staples easy button.*
Let's not forget that divine intervention, however, doesn't lend a play any more substance.

Even ancient Greeks were critical of the mechane; in his play Thesmophoriazusae (Women Celebrating the Thesmophorae, the Thesmophorae being an annual fertility celebration held in honor of fertility goddess Demeter), Aristophanes makes fun of Euripides for overusing the convention. In the play, Euripides swoops in on the mechane in attempt to save his kinsman from harm when he is discovered spying for him at the females-only rite.**

Today, the deus ex machina refers to a device abhorred by every self-respecting literary buff - a tidy, but improbable and ultimately unsatisfying resolution.

My first encounter with the concept was a reading of Moliére's Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite (title character at right), where King Louis XIV sends an officer in the nick of time to arrest the impostor Tartuffe, to restore the house Tartuffe had swindled and blackmailed out of the family, and to announce the wedding of the play's young lovers - all the space of a few lines.

The convention is not something that disappeared with time and can today generally be chalked up to the laziness of the author. Modern versions include cavalry riding over the hill to the rescue, the villain's sudden death from cardiac arrest or - the particular brew of "God from the machine" that I love to hate - the protagonist waking to find it was all a bad dream.***

We call them cheat codes in video games for a reason.

In other news, a student's recent twist on the motorcycle made the list of search results, though I can't say any implications of divinity in its machinery look promising. And if the deus in question is the driver of the motorcycle, doesn't labeling a human "God" defy and defeat the purpose of godhood anyway?



Information purloined from The Phrase Finder, Statemaster.com; image purloined from idlemindproductions.com



* - "and Hephaestus heard the pleas of the bureaucrats, and paper clips rained from the heavens"
** - Subtext: crashing a goddess's charity function might kill you
*** - or a bad trip, if you fell down a rabbit hole

Puddle, puddle, po-puddle, banana-fana-fo-fuddle, me-my-mo-______

More blog entries forthcoming. Really need to get back on schedule with this thing.

Today's entry is on a versatile word applicable in the realms of the culinary, the artistic and the quotidian, or everyday - which, if improperly used, could do just what this word means: muddle.

The root of muddle is the Middle Dutch verb "moddelen," meaning "to muddy." Soil, besmirch, dirt-encrust - yes, these all are correct - but muddle's commonest meanings are "to mix up or confuse in a bungling manner" and "to mentally confuse."

My first encounter with the word came from playing a video game, Harvest Moon 64. I romanced the rancher girl on the game and, when she fell in love with the hat-clad studmuffin protagonist, the fiery redhead said:

"I like you. Does that muddle things up?"

My character said "no," to which she responded, "Well, then what are you waiting for?"

He went in the for the kiss and she promptly slapped him, saying, "Not that, stupid! The blue feather," the feather being the game's version of a wedding ring. I was left to ponder this exchange, and to discover my newfound word. See, video games aren't useless. They teach you vocabulary!*

Type "muddle" into an ad-sponsored dictionary and you'll get mojito recipes on the side. That's because muddling also refers to crushing or mashing ingredients into one another, a technique used in cooking and bartending. The process makes use of a spoon or, if you have one, a muddler (a rod with a flattened end) to crush the ingredients. The infamous mint julep requires a bartender to muddle mint and sugar inside the serving glass.

Image from Wikipedia

Too many mint juleps might muddle you - muddle also means "to confuse or stupefy with, or as if with, an intoxicating drink."**

If you check American online news with frequency, you might have noticed every politician, journalist and economic analyst using the phrase "muddle through." Though used about subjects ranging from U.S. policy in Afghanistan to the banking crises, the meaning is the same: "to achieve a certain degree of success but without much skill, polish, experience, or direction."

To just plain muddle is "to behave, proceed or think in a confused or aimless fashion, or with an air of improvisation."

Which, if either, is fitting, I'll leave for you to decide.

Psst! Here's a recipe for "The Genuine Cuban Mojito," courtesy of The Bodeguita del Medio in Cuba:

Ingredients

2 tsp sugar
Juice from 1/2 lime
2 mint sprigs
2 parts sparkling water
1 part rum
4 ice cubes

Add the ingredients to a glass, preferably a cylindrical one, in the order above, reserving the rum. Muddle in the glass. Add the rum, followed by the ice cubes. Enjoy!


Information purloined from dictionary.com; image purloined from Wikipedia



* - and that even if you're a self-made man who saves a farm from the brink of extinction and who courts his lady with all the propriety and gentility she is due, you will still be a thoughtless cad
** - in Soviet Russia, drinks muddle YOU!

The incantation continues...

Sorry for not posting - again - on my regularly scheduled days. I drove down to Maitland (near Orlando, for those for whom the name rings no bell), Fla., for the Fourth of July. My parents' house had no Internet access and my parents enlisted my help in Independence Day preparations. I'll write compensatory posts sometime this week.

Something you all might find interesting:

My girlfriend and I attempted to make a piña colada pancake last Wednesday. The recipe we used was for an oven pancake, meaning that the chef puts the pancake, pan and all, into the oven to cook it. As I was putting in the pan, I told myself that it would be hot when we finished it. Nonetheless, when my beloved removed it from the oven, she remarked on its appearance, and so I moseyed over, and with a reckless, "Really? Let me see," grabbed the scalding pan.

The resultant burn hurt so badly that I had to sit at home with my hand in ice water during my Political Science class. Once I looked at my hand, however, I noticed that the burn skipped over the lifeline.

When people seeing the burn-mark ask me about it, I say, "I guess it means I have a charmed life."

Hence, my blog entry.

The saying "a charmed life" comes again from our beloved playwright, William Shakespeare, in his infamous play Macbeth. The phrase occurs in line 16 of the play when Macbeth, complacent in the Weird Sisters' prediction that he shall not die at the hand of anyone born of a woman, taunts his opponent, Macduff (lines 12-17):

MACBETH

Thou losest labour:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant* air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
To one of woman born.

Or, translated for your convenience:

Your attempts are in vain;
It is as easy for you to wound the invincible air as it is for you to wound me.
Swing at the shields/helmets/necks of the vulnerable;
Magic charms protect me, and no one born of a woman shall kill me.

Perhaps Shakespeare was also progenitor of the loophole; Macduff reveals three lines later that C-section babies don't count, and takes Macbeth's smug pate as a trophy. One would think moving forests would be enough to make the man a skeptic.

The true lesson of this play is that no man or woman can escape destiny. The Weird Sisters definitely live up to their name here. Shakespeare knew his mythology, as I'm about to explain. Yes, ladies and gents, a 2-for-1 entry. And it's not even happy hour!**

In Anglo-Saxon mythology, the goddess of Fate, also known as "the Lord of every man," bears the name "Wyrd" - a word also used as a noun to refer to one's fate or destiny itself. Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde christens Fortune "executrice of wierdes" (executress of destinies; Book III, line 617), and writes in The Legend of Good Women of "The Wirdes, that we clepen [call] Destinee" (Book IX, line 19).

Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577), however, was Shakespeare's source material for Macbeth. Shakespeare adapted the scene and dialogue of Macbeth and Banquo's first meeting with the Weird Sisters straight from this text, in which they are the Norns, or Sister-Fates, of Norse mythology: Urthr, the Past; Verthandi, the Present; and Skuld, the Future.

We have since demoted the word "weird" to the shame of "fantastic, bizarre" or "suggestive of the supernatural." I don't imagine Lady (or the Ladies) Wyrd are pleased. If we aren't careful, they might call in a favor with their Greek sisters****, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, to gang up on us. Those shears can be vicious, and I don't imagine they're cleaned very often.


Information purloined from The Phrase Finder, Theatre Database and william-shakespeare.info



* - one of Shakespeare's brilliant additions to the English language. If you must split hairs, intrenchant really means "not to be gashed or marked with furrows (or trenches)"
** - unless, by the time you read this entry, it is between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.***
*** - unless, by the time you read this entry, you are in Ireland
**** - from the Mt. Olympus chapter of the Global Fateweaving Vocational Sorority

Eye of newt, toe of frog, and a spoonful of sugar to boot

We're a society obsessed with the curative and the instantaneous. Liquid diets promise Gina she'll shed those Thanksgiving 2006 pounds in days. Herb just can't seem to make it with the ladies - if only he had that new Mustang convertible he keeps seeing advertised on the sidebars of his model train webring at 3 a.m. And where would Adrian be without constant, mobile Internet access on her Blackberry to save her the agonizing three minutes of waiting in line at the bank?

In honor of such "contributions" to the commercial market and the illusion they created, today's entry covers the word "nostrum."

Merriam-Webster.com defines nostrum as "a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but usually without scientific proof of its effectiveness," or more generally, "a usually questionable remedy or scheme." The lack of FDA approval for a myriad of untested products makes the nostrum an omnipresent commodity in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Nostrum is also the neuter form of the Latin word "noster," meaning "our" or "our own" - in this case referring to a remedy brewed from a secret recipe all "our own." Its concoctors keep it under wraps for a reason - it often doesn't work, and the desperate will pay for even the hope of a cure. The word entered the English language to refer specifically to quack remedies peddled on the streets of 17th-century London as a plague cure.

America has a history of nostrums stretching back to British imports before the American Revolution and peaking in the 19th century, when charlatans sold such homemade, brand-named cure-alls as Duffy's Elixir,* Dalby's Carminative and Godfrey's Cordial. Most of these were little better than

Image via Wikipedia

alcohols sweetened with sugar, spices and opiates, and had no real curative effects.

Characteristic of the Manifest Destiny blend of quack remedies in particular is another American tradition - showmanship. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn features a scene of how such scams sometimes ran - a traveling salesman would blow into town, deliver his spiel with volume and verve, and then a shill, or conman masquerading as a customer, would proclaim the medicine's efficacy. Once the swindler sold his inventory, he and the shill would hit the road before the unwitting townsfolk discovered the scam.

Synonyms for nostrum in common usage include "magic bullet,"** "quack remedy," "catholicon" (another word for cure-all***), "patent medicine," "quick fix," and the ever-popular "snake oil" - which, according to an article by Cynthia Graber of Scientific American, might not be so devoid of benefit after all.****

Working mothers at that time did find a use for nostrums such as Godfrey's Cordial, even if they didn't do what they professed to do. Sweet, opiate-based solutions were so palatable to children that those drugged during working hours in their infancy would self-medicate once they had the motor skills to open the bottle. No childproof caps for Reconstruction America, no sirree.

Until next time, this is your language investigator signing off. Have a wonderful evening!

Information purloined from merriam-webster.com, medicinenet.com, historyhouse.com and scientificamerican.com



* - featured in the ancient PC game Oregon Trail 2! Ah, nostalgia.
** - Might need to call Consumer Report about that blender
*** - Subtext: Catholicism will cure your ED
**** - I didn't think there was anyone crazy enough to try to catch a snake, flay it, and press the oil from its skin to test it either

Why saints are few and far between

For many, life is a constant struggle between God and the Devil, the polar opposites lobbing people like grenades, launching the shrapnel of good or evil, respectively, into the moral fiber of those caught in the blast.

The language of theology, because of its pertinence to humanity, produces many idioms used on an everyday basis. A phrase rising in popularity (due in no small part to the Reeves-Pacino movie) is "the devil's advocate."

In common usage, a devil's advocate makes a case for an unpopular or opposing viewpoint either to subject it to analysis, or merely for the sake of argument. To play the devil's advocate may brighten a colorless conversation. It can also annoy pigheaded individuals with satisfying efficiency.

The expression's origin stems, of all places, from the Roman Catholic Church. Called God's Advocate (Advocatus Dei in Latin) until 1983, the Devil's Advocate (Advocatus Diaboli) presents the argument against a potential saint's candidacy for beatification (declaration of a dead person as blessed and thereby entitled to special religious honor) or canonization (placement in the canon of recognized saints). The office's formal title is Promoter of the Faith (Promotor Fidei).*

So why would the Church give Catholicism's champion and a spokesperson for God such a dishonorable title? The officeholder's argument against an aspiring saint includes all of the unflattering tidbits about his or her past.*

Pope Sixtus V: "Well, we can't have any Antonio off the street playing saint, now can we?"

While seemingly introduced by Pope Leo X in the early 15th century, Pope Sixtus V formally created the office in 1587. Pope John Paul II's 1979 revision of canonization procedures abolished the office,** in my opinion a bad move. Why do away with an avenue for valuable, logical discussion?

I think devilish advocacy is a wonderful idea - it helps avoid complacency and overconfidence, and challenges people to question the commonly accepted. If you're strong enough in your beliefs, whether they be religious, political or even methodological ("you've got your way, I've got mine"), they will bear the strain of scrutiny.

Finally, I'd like to give some mad props to the Devil. In phraseology, the Devil is a rock star. He's the subject of such common expressions as "give the Devil his due," "speak of the Devil," "between the Devil and the deep blue sea," "devil-may-care" and, my personal favorite, "the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose" (The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 3).

I don't imagine the Devil gets thanked often. Maybe you should try it. He might leave you be, for the time being.


Information purloined from http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Article675.html, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/160216/devils-advocate and http://www.william-shakespeare.info/quotes-quotations-play-merchant-of-venice.htm




* - The Papal Enquirer has him on speed-dial
** - I would do it if I were Pope. Saint Mead has a nice ring to it.***
*** - Could I be the patron saint of alcoholic beverages?

Fickle heart, fidgeting fingers

I figure that since I've been errant in my usual blogging, I'll compensate by posting a few additional blogs this weekend to act in the missing entries' stead. Today's blog covers the word "dithering." Commonly a British word, I first discovered it in one of my favorite novels, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman:

"Aziraphale was dithering. He'd been dithering for some twelve hours. His nerves, he would have said, were all over the place. He walked around the shop, picking up bits of paper and dropping them again, fiddling with pens. He ought to tell Crowley." (131)

As you might be able to tell, dictionary.reference.com defines dither as "to act irresolutely" or "to vacillate" and, specifically in Northern England, "to tremble with excitement or fear." You are likeliest to dither just before embarking on a daunting but not pressing task, including but not limited to

• meeting your sweetheart's family
• chewing through a fallen branch with a chainsaw
• bungee-jumping from a bridge

Also according to dictionary.reference.com, dither originates from the Middle English word "diddere," meaning "to tremble." Trembling disguised as pseudo-productivity, I might add!* Apparently people have been fidgeting before a fight and slopping their livestock's feeding trough for the third time before their wedding*** since the Middle Ages. Until my next entry today, ladies and germs. Au revoir, and don't fall victim to this aforementioned disease! Information purloined from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dithering and http://rosuto.paheal.net/Books/Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman - Good Omens.pdf * - Scary Stories audiobook + grueling 9 to 5 job = cushy 9 to 5 job *** - and unlike now, both battle and marriage in the Middle Ages were the linchpins of politics, sometimes even with the former fought over the latter!

Wordsmith is to pen as mason is to "_______"

Belated TGIF, demoiselles et messieurs. Chances are you know of the passing of the so-called King of Pop - on Thursday, Michael Jackson died after entering cardiac arrest early that morning. Experts are arguing over pretty much everything except that he's gone.

Don't get me wrong - I like MJ's music as much as the next guy, but when CNN's board of experts and slew of commenters went so far as to compare him to, insultingly, the President; ironically, to Santa; and appallingly, to a tragic figure born of the Bard, irritation is an understatement of my emotions.

Jackson's death is lamentable, true. But while to imply that pop's throne lies vacant is to shortchange the genre's other artists, to liken his death to that of the President or his influence to that of the linchpin of American Christmas tradition is to lay it on with a trowel.

Today's phrase, "to lay it on with a trowel," stems from one of Shakespeare's most beloved plays, As You Like It. It means, according to Gary Martin of The Phrase Finder, "to crudely labor a point, or to flatter in an overly generous manner." Here are the lines leading up to it and the phrase itself (lines 94-99):

LE BEAU: Fair princess, you have lost much good sport.
CELIA: Sport; of what color?*
LE BEAU: What color, madam? How shall I answer you?**
ROSALIND: As wit and fortune will.
TOUCHSTONE: Or as the destinies decree.
CELIA: Well said; that was laid on with a trowel.
LE BEAU: Nay, if I keep not my rank -
ROSALIND: Thou losest thy old smell.***

Ah, Billy Shakes - you clever rogue. He's playing on the double entendres of his words, as usual.

Bricklayer in Paoua, Central African Republic; photo
by Brice Blondel for the Humanitarian and Development
Partnership Team, Central African Republic

This phrase works on the idea that mortar will not bind bricks together properly if applied too thinly; yet, by the same token, a trowel is essentially a broad blade of steel (see left) used to heap on the mortar and to scrape away the excess. It is not a graceful tool. Bricklayers use trowels to smooth out the lumps in mortar applied to walls or floors in the final stages of production.

The difference between an edifice and a person, however, is that a person will feel every dollop plopped upon his or her face. Amateur brown-nosers and pick-up artists**** commit this sin with frequency, and while such glib speech might fool the flatteree, bystanders will know.

Ever meet someone with an inexhaustible stream of compliments - the company Yes Man? Tell him to put in two weeks' notice, because I know a mason who would be very interested in an apprentice...

Some women (or men) you know might lay their makeup on with a trowel. In that case, the person he or she vainly attempts to flatter is him/herself. Then again, Elizabethan makeup was little more than a mask and/or a literal facial peel anyway, so who's counting?

As another popular idiom goes, "flattery will get you nowhere." Sincerity and clarity, in common use before anyone ever needed to fake it, still reign supreme.

And if you're going to make a comparison, at least make an apt one!*****


Information purloined from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/224600.html and http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/sayingsl.htm



* - or "what kind?"
** - Of the light bulbs at your local hardware store, Le Beau's about a 10-watter; he thinks Celia actually means "what color?"
*** - pun on "rank," also meaning a stench
**** - seducing dupable women isn't an art if painters still get more sex than you
***** - such as the missing link and Joaquin Phoenix

The Perfect Solution to the Perfect Storm

Let me start off by saying I apologize for not posting an entry on Friday as I had promised. Someone cut open the plastic window on the back of my girlfriend's Jeep and stole all of her CDs; she and I spent most of the day jury-rigging her window back into place with every mechanic's panacea: duct tape.

At least the thief didn't make off with the car, though he had tried - the wiring beneath the steering wheel was exposed, and the housing around the steering column lay in the footwell on the passenger side.

Yes, I know it was a he.*


Today's entry features one of the words I just used: jury-rig.

To jury-rig something is to construct a quick, temporary solution to a problem out of necessity. It hearkens back - again - to the navy, where "jury" refers to anything used in place of the real thing in an emergency. It specifically refers to a jury-mast, or a temporary mast built to support the sails when the mainmast has collapsed, like the mainmast at the right.

The use of "jury" in this word is debatable, but the leading attribution is a shortening of the word "injury."

For your education: how to tie a jury-mast knot (or mainmast knot, or pitcher knot, depending on what the knot is holding). Here's a video version if you prefer.

A jury-mast knot.

Sailors tie the jury-mast knot around the jury-mast and use the loops at the side to anchor the mast to stays. Though little evidence exists that such a knot was used in the Age of Exploration, modern sailing texts recommend using this knot for securing the jury-mast.

Also for your education: you cannot jury-rig a courtroom.** You can, however, jurypack a courtroom, which is to stack a jury in such a way as to make a specific outcome likelier.

It is also not "jerry-rig," as some of you might have thought, and as the Brits during the World Wars deliberately used to denigrate the Germans.*** There is a similar-but-not-synonymous word, "jerrybuilt," which refers not to a quick fix but a deliberately shoddy job using slipshod workmanship or second-rate materials to turn a profit. It has its origins in 19th-century England, where it described home builders who followed such a questionable practice.

Curious about synonyms for jury-rig? My favorites include:

• stopgap, which I would have covered if I could actually find any information about its origin;
  
• substitute, though it doesn't mean a jury-rigged teacher;
  
• and finally, MacGyver, the original magician of makeshifts in all of his '80s glory.

I use MacGyver as a verb. I encourage you to do the same.




Information purloined from http://www.word-detective.com/back-g2.html

* - well, her tampons and lotion were still there...

** - unless you convert the loo into a hall of justice

*** - The British called their chamberpots "Jerries" after Jericho, the rough area of Oxford, and the German helmets resembled British chamberpots.****

**** - it's also subtler than "$&!@head"

Until Friday, comrades and comradesses

My apologies, loyal readers, but I shall not have the time to update this blog until Friday, when classes end for Summer A at the University of Florida. Ah, the rigors of academia...

Expect a full exposé on a word or phrase of my choosing on Friday. It will enrapture, I promise.

Until then,

- Mead

I'm on a boat, Mr. Samberg, but it doesn't seem to be moving

Ahoy, ye seekers of the silver tongue! Today's entry comes from nautical parlance, from whence a staggering number of everyday phrases arose. The Navy and Marines alone are responsible for quite a few common sayings, such as "FUBAR" and "bug juice." More from that ilk in later entries.

By the way, feel free to request the origins for a word or phrase tugging at the back of your mind. If you're wondering about it, chances are I'll find it worthy of an analysis, too.

The origins of today's phrase,"high and dry," are conspicuously nautical.

Though it isn't the widely-accepted definition, I suppose it could also refer to that one time you had no liquor in the house, so you huffed a lot of aerosol instead and sat in an oxygen-deprived haze for about an hour, whipped cream dripping from your nose.

Imagine you are on a vessel. Your captain has steered your ship into, unbeknownst to you and he, a tidal pool. You anchored at high tide and careened the hull, but as you prepare to embark the waters begin to recede. You weigh anchor, unfurl the sails; the captain points your ship toward the open sea, the water disappearing around you as you work. Soon the vast expanse around you is a carpet of brown, damp sand, and your ship sits on a coral bed, holes gouged into the timbers.

And the tide, my friend, has left you high and dry.

In the early days of ship navigation, "high and dry" referred to ships beached or completely above water without an immediate means of regaining the seas. "Dry" also implied that the ship had long been out of the water - no residual moisture left in its boards - and could expect to remain beached for a while.

I'm curious to know if dry could also mean the crew had exhausted the drinking water supplies aboard. Not every captain can be as lucky as Columbus when he found the mouth of the Orinoco River on his third voyage to the New World.*

In everyday usage, if someone is left high and dry, s/he means s/he has been stranded without hope or hope of recovery for at least a little while. Your designated driver might have committed this sin against you before if given a 75 percent or greater chance to score at a mutual friend's party.

Sorry, it's codified at #4 as part of Man Law. Inviolable. Practically sacred. And the consequences would be dire.

I hope this tidbit of naval lingo will serve you well. Anchors aweigh, lads and lasses, 'til we meet again!



Information purloined from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/high-and-dry.html


* - He also arrogantly thought that finding such a robust river meant he, no matter how many explorers and Native Americans had been there before him,** had discovered the Garden of Eden.

** - all his voyage really did was introduce syphilis to Europe.*** Don't believe me?

*** - Horny twits.

Laughing at Unfortunates

Before you say anything, this entry's title is also the title of a Monty Python sketch. I don't condone this act.

Unless you're my brother, who made me choke on bubble tea while laughing, and to whom in retaliation I did the same thing.

Today's entry means exactly the title of this post, or at least it can be one form of it. Schadenfreude (pronounced SHA-den-froid-uh, despite the nasty habit of truncating it in the U.S. to SHA-den-froid) means taking sadistic pleasure at someone else's misfortune.

Parsed into schaden and freude, a literal translation yields "harm-joy" ("harm" for schaden and "joy" for freude - remember, froid-uh).

Don't lie; you've felt it before. If you detested Bush, you relished when Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi hurled his shoes at the former president. When a piggish casanova's date throws champagne in his face, you might want to toss him another glass to wash it down.* What about when an arrogant skateboarder kisses a park bench groin-first? Maybe it would be nobler to check on him, but I have to admit that I might crow a bit first.

Keep in mind that the punishment, though it needn't fit the crime, must be deserved to in turn deserve schadenfreude. Why bad things happen to good people is a question better answered by Murphy's Law.

Schadenfreude is an unseen force patching the holes in law enforcement; the celebration of karmic backlash; a reason for treasuring the virtuous life. Another phrase for schadenfreude in commoner usage is "poetic justice."

Speaking of which, if anyone has a definition of what prosaic justice is, I would value your input. An article from National Review Online's Andrew C. McCarthy defines it as the "the even-handed administration of the law, day in and day out, without fear or favor."

Seeing as prosaic means "commonplace" and because sometimes justice is anything but, I think that definition hardly...does it justice.

Adieu, adieu - before I make any more terrible puns.




Information purloined from http://www.word-detective.com/010506.html


* - or an entire bottle**


** - possibly broken over his head

With mirth laughter let old wrinkles come.

Ladies and gents, hello, greetings, salutations and "how's your mom?"

It is a cross-cultural characteristic of humans that we love to laugh. Varying cultures have subtle nuances to forms of humor, however - some prefer sarcasm, others slapstick, still others practical jokes.

My friend in Native American studies at UCF told me European settlers slaughtered a group of Native Americans because, in the latter's culture, one of their most beloved jokes was to steal something from a friend and then wait for him to slink to the thief's house, tail between his legs, and to ask for it back.

The Europeans neither knew nor thought it was a joke, and met the "crime" with force.

Which, despite the subject, is not funny at all.

With different types of humor in mind, today's word refers to a device favored by many (especially British) comedians for how it defies expectations: the paraprosdokian.

Parsed into its Greek roots, it means "before" (para-) "expectation." The sentence's second part causes the listener or reader to reframe the first part of the second in a new, unexpected context.

One of my favorite examples:

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.

Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx

If a rhetorician or comedian should choose to be further fancier, the second part of a paraprosdokian can play on the double meaning of a word or phrase in the first part. This specific device is called a syllepsis.

Example here as well, this time from Cecily in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest:

" 'Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.' "

No wonder the lady-folk fawn all over Oscar. His words are honeyed silver.



I am not liable for any horribly botched attempts to impress women through the use of paraprosdokians, but if you should experience such misfortune, I would love to hear about it. I promise not to laugh at you.*



Information purloined from http://www.socyberty.com/Languages/In-Pursuit-of-the-Perfect-Paraprosdokian.177257 and http://literaryzone.com/?p=146

* - to your face

Welcome, ladies and germs, to my shiny, new blog

For all of the logo- and linguaphiles out there, I plan to regularly update with tidbits about language, idioms, wordplay, puns, etymology and hilarious mistranslations. Once my online class, RTV 3280: Interactive Media, ends, I would like to make my blog more variegated, but for now I will stick to a singular topic. I hope you'll come to like the cut of my blog's jib.

"Cut of your blog's jib?" you might ask. "Why, old boy, that's crazy talk!"And while I would in response ask why you insist on speaking like the Great Gatsby, I suppose I will indulge you just this once.*

The cut of one's jib emerged as a nautical phrase most likely in the Age of Exploration. The jib is any one of various triangular sails that adds additional power to the mainsail. It is at the bow of the ship, connected to the topmast, as in the picture at the left.
Every nation's shipbuilding style resulted in a different sail shape, and a ship's nationality could therefore be determined from the jib.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yacht_jib.svg)

In modern parlance, "I don't like the cut of his jib" is "I don't like the look of him." Though more humorous if so, it need not refer to just the subject's nose. Sir Walter Scott (yay Ivanhoe!) used the phrase idiomatically in his 1824 book St. Ronan's Well, a piece set mostly around a mineral spring. Bravo, Scott, for publishing a book in such an utterly boring setting.

Information purloined from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cut-of-your-jib.html

* - And every time hereafter