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