Dressed to the Nines

If someone is described as being “dressed to the nines,” as being very well dressed and wearing your best clothes. But why "the nines?"

The idiom goes back to the 18th century when there were no off-the-shelf suits available. If you wanted a suit, you had it custom-made, especially for you. In those days, a suit included the waistcoat so it took nine yards of fabric to complete. back then being dressed to the nines basically meant you were wearing a suit.

Court suit and sword worn by Charles Dickens in 1870.
The design was strictly specified and the suit was made by Charles Smith and Sons.
This is the only known suit worn by Dickens to have survived. 

Spinal Tap

(L-R) Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean
in 1984's film This Is Spinal Tap

The band Spinal Tap was created by American comedians and musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer for the 1979 sketch comedy pilot "The T.V. Show". 

The name "Spinal Tap" was chosen as part of the band's fictional backstory, which was later expanded in the 1984 mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap.

In the film, the band members humorously explain that they went through several name changes before settling on Spinal Tap, including "The Originals" and "The New Originals," before becoming the Thamesmen and finally Spinal Tap. 

But how does "Spinal Tap" reflect their new heavy metal musical direction? 

A lumbar puncture is commonly known as a spinal tap. This medical procedure requires a needle to be inserted into the spinal canal, most commonly to collect cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for diagnostic testing. The main reason for a lumbar puncture is to help diagnose diseases of the central nervous system, including the brain and spine.

Spinal Tap (stylized as Spın̈al Tap, with a dotless letter i and a metal umlaut over the n) could be described as a fictional English heavy metal band, but they are actually a band and have recorded albums and done concerts, so are they still fictional? 

The three comedians are also musicians and wrote and performed original songs as the band: Michael McKean, as the lead singer and guitarist David St. Hubbins; Christopher Guest, as the guitarist Nigel Tufnel; and Harry Shearer, as the bassist Derek Smalls. 

They are characterized as "one of England's loudest bands"

The three added to the group David Kaff (as keyboard player "Viv Savage") and R.J. Parnell (as drummer "Mick Shrimpton"). Parnell had previously been in the band Atomic Rooster, while Kaff had been a member of Rare Bird. The quintet played their own instruments throughout the film.

In 1984, they did an episode of Saturday Night Live to promote their film. The character of Mick Shrimpton having died in the film, Parnell played his "twin brother" drummer Ric Shrimpton for these and later appearances. Kaff dropped out shortly after the SNL appearance.

Their new movie, This Is Spinal Tap 2, is a too-long-awaited sequel to the 1984 mockumentary classic. Directed by Rob Reiner, it brings back the original cast members. The story follows the band as they reunite for a final concert to honor their late manager, with cameos from famous musicians like Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Garth Brooks. What havethe band members have been up to over the past four decades?

starting off on the right foot

A friend posted on this new Year's Eve: "Just before midnight, lift your left foot off the ground so that your start the new year on the right foot." Mildly humorous, but it got me thinking about why we would even say such an idiom. 

The origin is uncertain. I found two possibilities.  One is simply that starting a journey correctly is important. Many cultures consider the right foot and right hand as more auspicious than the left. The opposite idion is "get off on the wrong foot." 

Goofy with his right foot forward

In my youthful surfing days, I was a "Goofy foot surfer" because I would place my right foot forward on the surfboard, with the left foot at the back: This stance is the opposite of regular foot surfing, where the surfer places their left foot forward. Being right'handed and right-foot dominant (as when I kick) when I ran sprints, I would put my stronger right leg in back to push off the starting blocks.

Another origin for the idiom is from dance. Starting a dance routine on the right foot is crucial to a smooth performance. Of course, in that usage "right" could also mean "correct."

Down to the Wire and Hands Down

Here are two sports idioms from the world of horse racing that have gone beyond the sport. Both contain "down."

When something goes "down to the wire" we mean it goes to the very end or last minute. "The election went down to the wire." The term comes from the length of wire that was once stretched across a racetrack at the finish line. Now, that finish is recorded electronically. The figurative use of the phrase goes back to about 1900.

Outside of horse racing, if someone said "Hands down this is the best pizza I have ever eaten." In that usage, it means unconditionally. It can also be used to mean something done with great ease.

In horse racing, when a jockey wins hands down, it means that the jockey is certain of victory, he or she dropstheir hands and relaxes the hold on the reins. The horse-racing phrase is first cited by OED in 1867, and the figurative usage is noted in 1913.

Toponyms and a Condom

Earlier I mentioned some offensive place names (almost always unintentional). Less vulgar but still not great for a place's public image is something like the French town of Condom. No matter what the origin of the name might be, English speakers will associate it with those birth control items.

Condom is an example of a toponym. Condom comes from the Gaulish words condate and magos combined into Condatomagos, which means "market or field, of the confluence".Condatómagos evolved into Condatóm and then into Conddóm. Condom was first recorded in Latin in the 10th century as Condomus or Condomium. It is where the river Gèle flows into the river Baïse.[

Although the French word for the contraceptive condom is préservatif, in 1995 the town's mayor, taking advantage of the incidental relationship between the town's name and the English word, opened a museum of contraceptives that operated until 2005.

Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of toponyms which are proper names of places,  including their origins, meanings, usage, and types.

Part 2 of this vocabulary lesson is to say that toponymy is a branch of onomastics, the study of proper names of all kinds.

The term toponymy comes from Ancient Greek tópos, 'place', and onoma, 'name'. The Oxford English Dictionary records toponymy (meaning "place name") first appearing in English in 1876. Since then, toponym has come to replace the term place-name in professional discourse among geographers.

Places With Offensive Names

Some places have names that are offensive or humorous in other languages.

A few examples are Rottenegg or Fucking (renamed to Fugging in 2021) in Austria, or Fjuckby in Sweden, since those names are easily associated with the expletive "fuck."

The town of Fucking is benign in German, but in English it's vulgar. Its earliest recorded use in England is within the 14th-century Bristol field name, Fucking Grove, although it is unclear whether the word was considered obscene at that time. 

December in Japan

 

Like many countries, Japan uses a 12-month calendar. The names used are very simple. January is literally "Month one" 一月, February is "Month two" 二月, and so on. However, before the Meiji Restoration (mid-1800s), an older 12-month system was common. These months’ names referenced the weather and the seasons, similar to how we name the Full Moons.

December is 師走. The kanji (I think that is the correct term for an ideogram) 師 can refer to a teacher, or a mentor, often in a religious sense. In this context, it means a monk. The second ideogram is 走 which means "running." So, this December literally means "monks running."   

But why? 

In December, monks are very busy preparing for the New Year's festival, so this last month of the year is "the month of running monks."

Chrismukkah

By Jonah Green - Flickr: Hanukkah bush, CC BY 2.0, Link

Chrismukkah is a pop-culture portmanteau neologism referring to the merging of the holidays of Christianity's Christmas and Judaism's Hanukkah. 

The term was popularized beginning in December 2003 by the TV drama The O.C., in which the character Seth Cohen creates the holiday to signify his upbringing in an interfaith household with a Jewish father and Protestant mother. 

The holiday can also be adopted by all-Jewish households that celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday.

The term first arose in the German-speaking countries among middle-class Jews in the 19th century. 

After World War II, Chrismukkah became particularly popular in the United States but is also celebrated in other countries.

For a deeper and more personal take on this, see my post today on Weekends in Paradelle. 

tempest in a teapot and variations

 

German artist Carl Guttenberg's 1778 engraving of an exploding teapot to represent the American Revolution. Father Time, on the right, flashes a magic lantern picture of an exploding teapot to America on the left and Britannia on the right, with British and American forces advancing towards each other.

Tempest in a teapot (American English), or storm in a teacup (British English), or tempest in a teacup, are all idioms meaning a small event that has been exaggerated out of proportion. There are also lesser-known or earlier variants, such as storm in a cream bowl, tempest in a glass of water, storm in a wash-hand basin, and storm in a glass of water. We find the French une tempête dans un verre d'eau (a storm in a glass of water) and Chinese: 茶杯裡的風波、;  茶壺裡的風暴 (winds and waves in a teacup; storm in a teapot)

The etymology appears to go way back to Cicero in the first century BC. In his De Legibus, he used a similar phrase in Latin, possibly the precursor to the modern expressions, Excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo ut dicitur Gratidius, which is translated as "For Gratidius raised a tempest in a ladle, as the saying is."

One of the earliest occurrences in print of the modern version is in 1815, where Britain's Lord Chancellor Thurlow, sometime during his tenure of 1783–1792, is quoted as referring to a popular uprising on the Isle of Man as a "tempest in a teapot."

Lord North, Prime Minister of Great Britain, is credited for popularizing this phrase as characterizing the outbreak of American colonists against the tax on tea. This was satirized in Carl Guttenberg's 1778 engraving of the Tea-Tax Tempest (shown above).

punk

cattail

I wrote elsewhere about something that was part of my New Jersey childhood autumns. We would gather cattails, dry them, light them, and blow out the flaming tip so there was a glowing and smoking tip. Some people said the smoke kept away mosquitoes and bugs, but honestly, we just liked the fire and smoke.

We called them punks, but until I wrote about that, I had no clue why that was the name we used for them. It may be a Jersey thing. There were also very small, manufactured punks that are still sold and are used as a lighter for fireworks and as an unscented incense stick. 

Doing a bit of etymological research, I found the more common usages of the word.

I suspect that today, the most common usage might be as an adjective describing a loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of the genre's followers with their colored spiked hair and clothing decorated with safety pins or zippers could be called punks.

Earlier in North America, to call someone a punk would be saying they were a worthless person. The word shows up in 1950s movies, TV, and books as being close to being a criminal or hoodlum.

Slightly less derogatory American usage would be using it to describe an inexperienced young person or novice.

As a verb, it can be used to mean being tricked or deceived.

In sports, it can mean to totally beat or defeat an opponent.

The word's origin is late 16th century. I found that in an archaic sense, it meant a prostitute. 

The closest I can find for my childhood usage is a North American, late 17th century (as noun) usage of uncertain origin, meaning a soft, crumbly wood that has been attacked by fungus, used as tinder to start a fire.

saved by the bell

Some Americans might know the phrase saved by the bell" as the name of a 1980s TV sitcom about high school kids. But we use this idiom to often mean that someone is saved by something unplanned that gets them free from a tough situation. It might be a bell that saves them - one to end a class so that they don't have to give their speech, or a phone call that frees them - but it can it could also be the person who summons you from a meeting that you didn't want to attend.

The the idiom originataes in sports. In boxing, to be saved from misfortune or unpleasantness and a possible loss by the sound of the bell signalling the end of the round. Even a boxer who is knocked to the canvas and must regain his feet before a count of ten or lose the fight can be saved by that end-of-round bell if it is rung before the count is finished. That gives him until the start of the next round to recover and resume fighting. 

ADHI dates this to the "mid-1900s" while the OED cites the first boxing use in 1932, and later figurative use in 1959.

ringers and dead ringers

 

If you say that someone is a  “Dead Ringer,” it means they have the exact likeness of someone else - like a twin.

Going back to 19th century U.S. in horse racing,  an owner might substitute a horse that was faster or slower than the original racing horse to con the bookies. That horse looked exactly like the substituted horse and was called a ringer. 

The term "ringer" may have originated from the British term of the same name, which means "substitute or exchange". 

But why "dead"? In the phrase "dead ringer", the word means "precise" or "exact", similar to the phrases "dead on", "dead center", and "dead heat". 

When I was younger, I had heard the more frightening folk etymology of a "dead ringer." This usage originated from a custom of providing a cord in coffins for someone who buried alive to ring a bell for help. However, this is a folk etymology and the phrase has nothing to do with death.

rutting

 

The term "rutting" is used to describe the mating season of deer and moose which occurs starting in mid-September because it refers to the aggressive and competitive behavior that males exhibit during this time.

"Rut" is a word that comes from the Old English "rot," which means "to copulate."

During the rut, male deer and moose become territorial and engage in fierce battles with other males to establish dominance and access to females. This behavior is often accompanied by loud vocalizations, such as bugling or grunting, and physical displays of strength.