More Porpentine

Evidently I am not the first person to be amused by the idea of "Porpentine."  Wordnik offers a variety of links.   Evelyn Waugh has "ears flattened back and porpentine hair," which is elegant.     There's a Douglas Adams.  A certain Richard Chenevix Trench unearths the alternate spelling "purpentine,"--that's with a "p" at the beginning, although  < auto-correct insists on renaming with a "t," as the distilled resin of a pine tree.  "Porpentine"  seems to be the web name of a live journal, now defunct.

But the champ appears to be--one could have guessed--P. G. Wodehouse, awash in Shakespeare quotations, often as misremembered by Bertie Wooster.   Bertie says "Do you recall telling me once about someone who told somebody he could tell him something that would make him think a bit? Knitted socks and porcupines entered into it, I remember."  Jeeves responds, "I   think you may be referring to the ghost of the father of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, sir" (whereupon he quotes the whole bit).  And Bertie: "That’s right. Locks, of course, not socks. Odd that he should have said porpentine when he meant porcupine. Slip of the tongue, no doubt, as so often happens with ghosts."

So How Right You Are, Jeeves,  at 116.  I'm not a good enough Jeeves student to know but evidently there are a couple of running jokes here--the "porpentine" bit and also Bertie's formidable capacity to get quotations not entirely wrong.  But  for valuable prizes, can you identify this one:

Aye aksd teh Pipchunk, adn hym haz ah fren, teh heggiipiggul, huz gotz ah cuzin en Jermanii, diz fien, beeg, ….adn ennywai, teh porpentine sez dat hym gnu ah gnome, wut maeks teh majekal birfdai baux prezzies,…

Wordnik credits these guys, although I can't pin it down and they don't seem to have a search function.

Hey, I'm working This Side of the Street:  And as I wind up this post, I find that Ian Chadwick has been all over the topic, just this week.

End of Western Civilization as We Know It

"Straitjacket" get 774,000 Wiki hits.  "Straightjacket" gets 3,310,000, apparently including all of "straitjacket."

Defenestrators

Close friends of Underbelly will know that my doppelganger frequentlyregularly deploys the figure of the defenestrator for purposes of illustration and edification in the classroom.  It's a serviceable example for the teaching of depreciation, of tax shields, of economic rents, whatever.    They may therefore be pleased to learn that Michael Quinion in his newsletter on language has served up an ample backgrounder on "defenestrate," offering a political and also a linguistic history.

I like to ask students if they have ever heard of defenestration before I bring it up. Most have not; surprisingly, a few have--perhaps often those of Czech background-- it is for the Czechs, as Quinion explains, that defenestration provides the founding political narrative (although he might have gone further; way I understand it, the Czechs identify two, sometimes even three or more, defenestrations as part of their national story; cf. link).

The history I sort of knew.  Quinion presses the envelope, however, with his account of the linguistic evolution (Quinion doesn't like people to excerpt him, so go here for the full account).  Quinion does say that he hasn't noticed its modern jokey sense in dictionaries yet.   Grievous oversight, I'd say, though it may be too late.  My guess is that defenestration in the modern sense has already been supplanted by its not-exact synonym thrown under the bus.  Or, as you might say, defenestrated.

Hips and Haws

Back at the end of the year, Michael Gilleland did a diverting post about hips and haws.   Turns out he has done several on the same topic, although it appears there is at least one more he had not picked up on.

And this blessed gift of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor.

--George Eliot, Adam Bede Book I, Chapter 3.

Can This Be Right? Calls and Puts

It says here:

Well, I am not somebody that I am going to simply stand and watch a bunch of uninformed people putting my religion under the carpet.

I leave the first half of the sentence to those with superior analytical skills. I'm trying to sort out "putting my religion under the carpet."  Can this be right?  You (the boss) call someone (the employee) on  the carpet--you give him a royal chewing-out.  If you put something under the carpet, you end up with a cute little coming squiggly thing, like in a Disney movie. Of course you can sweep something under the rug, but I suspect that what really concerned the speaker is that they were trying to throw something under the bus, 

I Learned Somthing, Maybe

The Bourbons, so Talleyrand is said to have said, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  I've heard that one most of my adult life.  But just now for the first time I saw it in print in French:

Rien appris,
Rien oublié

Hey!--my thought was--it rhymes!  Ah, but wait--note the acute accent over that final e, almost invisible to Anglophones.  It seems to change the pronunciation.  

Or does it?  Would a Francophone slur this into a rhyme, so as to enhance the joke, or leave it subtly unrhymed as it seems to be?

Who're You Callin' a Myrmidon?

Michael Quinion has a crisp and informative discussion up this morning on the meaning of " Myrmidon" --once just a warlike people of Thessaly, but as Michael says:

The word has existed in English since medieval times but over time has become progressively less reputable. For Shakespeare, myrmidons were faithful followers, the members of a bodyguard or retinue. A century later they had become hired ruffians or mercenaries. By the nineteenth century they had sunk somewhat lower to be opportunistic supporters of some person or organisation. Today a myrmidon is often an unscrupulous subordinate.

I think I can help on that one. I think we muddle "myrmidon" in our mind with "minion," as in "flunky"--perhaps to the cost of both.  Michael quotes a text example about "the myrmidons at the Fed" who could, I suppose, be fierce warrriors, but he also reports a sighting of "the myrmidons" of Rupert Murdoch who are, I suspect, just minions.

I suppose the situation is not simplified by the fact that the Greek myrmidons were (quoting Michael) "renowned for their mindless loyalty to Achilles." Word Detective caught the distinction:

"Minion," meaning an obsequious follower or sycophant (or what used to be called a "yes-man"), was not always a derogatory term. From the Old French word "mignot," meaning "dainty," came the modern French "mignon" ("darling"), which also gave us "filet mignon," an especially tender beefsteak. Translated into English as "minion," the term first meant a hanger-on at a noble's court, but gradually broadened to include nearly anyone in a servile or subordinate position. "Myrmidons" were, in Greek mythology, the Thessalian warriors who, commanded by Achilles, fought in the Trojan War. The term has since come to mean a loyal follower who unquestioningly executes orders. "Myrmidon," which carries fearful overtones of ruthlessness and blind obedience, is a harsher term than "minion," which implies simply gutless servility.

A while back I was doing a book with a my friend Michael, a partner at a white-shoe law firm.  We came up against some tiresome chore that neither of us wanted to carry out.  "Don't you have minions?"  I asked.  "Even our minions," he replied, "have minions."  If and when Michael acts as a loyal hired guy, I wonder what his adversaries would say of him.

Joel Gives me my Word of the Day

YMMV.

Overspoke, Underthought?

The Wichita Bureau believes he has spotted a neologism: "overspoke."  Patrick Gavin establishes the context:

[Tucker Carlson] took to Fox News's "Hannity" Monday night and clarified his remarks, saying that he "overspoke" and was "too emotional" at the time (while still maintaining that he was "disgusted" by Vick's actions.)

"This is what happens when you get too emotional," said Carlson. "Anybody who takes the time to look into how he mistreated these dogs and personally tortured them to death gets upset." (Carlson is a big supporter of local animal causes in Washington).

"I overspoke. I'm uncomfortable with the death penalty under any circumstances."

  Probably.could be linked with "make sure brain is in gear before mouth is in motion," but perhaps better just filed under "remember who your donors are."

Second Thought:  Wichita probably caught an important media breakthrough here, but there is an unassailable rule re first sightings: somebody already got there before you.  Here's a defense/advocacy of "overspoke" from some months back: link.  Actually, a dictionary search identifies many older instances, but in the (rather different) sense of "to use too many words."   Of this use, Onelook says "This definition is from the 1913 Webster's Dictionary and may be outdated."

Densification

Underbelly's Wichita bureau puzzles over the word "densification" (in a report on biofuels).

"Denisification."  Is it a Palinism?  No, apparently not; a bit of web research indicates it has a respectable  prehistory (trans.: 740,000 Google hits).   On the other hand, language is a supple thing; I suppose one should feel free to make arch comments about the increasing densification of the American electorate.  Or should tht be "flabbification?"  Or can one be densified and flabbified at the same time?

My former wife (the other Mrs. B?) who was a bit of a word freak, used to argue that "flabbergasted" meant  that you were full of flabbergas.  I don't think she had any respectable authority for that one, but I always kinda wanted her to be right anyway.

My Word for the Day: Clong

Clong, n. A rush of @#$! to the heart after hearing unexpected bad news.
"I almost clonged when the judge asked the question about perfection when no financing statement had been filed."

Attributed to the late Bob Shutan, bankruptcy lawyer extraordinaire, by a former student.* Google "Define Clong," and you get nothing helpful, though Dictionary.com does say "clong" is "the imperfect of cling."

*Who says it should be "v." But language is a living thing.

My Word for the Day: Badinage

...which I first learned as a snotty 15-year-old and have misspelled as "bandinage" from then until five minute ago when I saw the dread red line under my misspelling.

"I need a nickel to call a friend."
"Here's a dime, call all of them."

bandinage badinage, circa 1952

My Word for the Day: Serein

Stolen from Patrick:

One of my new friends, the reader who inspired this little celebration, has just sent me the newest book on my shelves – The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World by Adam Jacot de Boinod. I particularly like serein, French for “the rain that falls from a cloudless sky.”

My Word for the Day: Horcrux

I never saw (or read) Harry Potter so I had to look this one up:

Dick Cheney has 5th heart attack. only two horcruxes remain.

(But shouldn't it be horcruces?) Anyway, thanks, Margaret.

My Word for the Day: Nooks

A headline in the New York Times says:

New York's Nooks are a Challenge to Census Takers

Oh, Nooks. Turns out they are talking about "nook" as the companion of "cranny," though extended here to include a 900-apartment, 40-story tower block (Ma-ma mia...). Silly me. I thought they meant Nooks:

Nooks is something great, or a cool black person, who really does not have to be completely black but just dark in skin. Who acts him self, doesn't follow trends or anything. Nooks is pronoucned like Books but with an N and not like Nukes.

That's Urban Dictionary definition #4. Query, does the census overlook them also?

My Prefix of the Day: Hella

A UC Davis grad student wants to establish "hella" as the prefix for 10^27. He has created a Facebook page and as of a moment ago, it had 13,363 fans (apparently none is also a friend of mine; I wonder what that proves).*

Austin Sendak, a grad student in physics, is the creator of the Facebook page whose full name is "The Official Petition to Establish "Hella-" as the SI Prefix for 10^27." One's first thought is: Facebook. Right. Language has always been a product of social networking. Not only does it grow in the community: you can't stop if if you try. Anyone who attempts to pin it down will find that (as T.S. Eliot wrote):

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

On the other hand, there's the little matter of "SI." That would be (perWiki) "a set of unit prefixes" "standardized by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures." This would suggest a degree of codification, on the order of the French Academy. Anyway, Sendek has a nuclear backup. He says that if the SI standard-makers turn him down, he'll try to get it included among computational terms at Google

===
*Apparently this is only the latest move in a fairly complex social-networking game, which, like so many social-networking games, appears unintelligible to the outsider. The California Aggie, the UC-Davis student newspaper, surfaces the word as part of a "Southern versus Northern California slang rivalry," but then adds that "'Hella,' the popular NorCal slang word meaning 'a lot' or 'very' is commonly used among Northern and Southern Californians..." without further clarifyig what, if anything, the rivalry is about.