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.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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
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
Monday, June 8, 2009
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
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
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