pathos, ethos, logos

In the fourth century B.C., the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle posited three modes of persuasion that we still employ. Aristotle’s “rhetorical triangle” is ethos, pathos, and logos. It appears in many forms of persuasion - from political speeches to advertising.

We use the word "pathos" when referring to something (experience, art) that evokes compassion, pity, or perhaps a kind of sympathetic pity. It comes from the Greek word páthos meaning "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition.” Related words include empathy (the ability to share someone else’s feelings) pathetic (which can be an insult but in its original usage was more about things that move us to pity), sympathy and apathy (when feelings are absent). 

In the persuasive ad market, pathos can be a positive emotion (Look how happy this family is using our product!) to a negative response (Are you in pain? Try our product for relief). Have you seen commercials to donate to help children with life-threatening diseases or to save abandoned pets? Pathos. 

The ethos approach is used to convince an audience by offering reliability, honesty, and credibility. In advertising, this usually means a respected authority figure or celebrity giving a product or brand a testimonial or endorsement. That is why many doctors or doctor-like figures are used to endorse health products.

The word comes from Latin and earlier from Greek ēthos "nature, disposition’, customs." That last meaning may seem off, but ethos can also mean the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community, as in "the liberal ethos of the 1960s has been lost."

Logos appeals to logic and reason by using statistics, facts, figures and scientific reasoning. Aristotle liked the rationality of this approach. 

But the Gospel of John identifies the Christian Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos), and identifies Jesus Christ as the incarnate Logos - though there is none of the facts, figures or science in that early use of the term.

Logos also comes from Ancient Greek meaning literally ''I say.'' The word is frequently translated as some variation of logic or reasoning. Originally, it referred to the actual content of a speech and how it was organized. 

Logos should not be confused with logo, which is most commonly used to describe a symbol or other design adopted by an organization to identify itself. That word is an abbreviation of logogram or logotype and appeared in English in the 1930s. There is also the computer language LOGO written in all caps.

junket

The word "junket" was Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day recently and it is an interesting origin story. I associate the word with two things:. Now, I think of it as a promotional trip paid for by someone else (such as a press junket for a film by actors). As a child, I thought of it only as a dessert that my mother used to make. 

Junket goes back a long way. A long time ago a basket made of rushes (marsh plants used in weaving and basketwork) comes from the Latin word for "rush" which is juncus. It was used in English as a borrowed word in several forms finally becoming "junket." The word was used in English to name not just the plant and the baskets made from the plant, but also a type of cream cheese made in rush baskets. 

Going back to the 15th century, you can find the word associated with desserts ranging from curds and cream to sweet confections including the one my mom made that is still available.  

By the 16th century, junket had come to mean "banquet" or "feast" as well. 

Perhaps, some of those junket events came to include the journey to them and so the word broadened its usage to apply to pleasure outings or trips, whether or not the food was a part of it.

Grandfather Clock

I'm sure you have seen a "grandfather clock." maybe your grandfather had one. My grandparents had a logically named mantle clock on their mantle. So why did this tall piece of furniture clock take on the name "grandfather?"

A grandfather clock (also known as a longcase clock, tall-case clock, grandfather's clock, or floor clock) is a tall, freestanding, weight-driven pendulum clock with the pendulum held inside the tower or waist of the case.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin of the name is a popular 1876 song "My Grandfather's Clock" which gave the common name "grandfather clock" being applied to the longcase clock. 

The song was composed by American songwriter Henry Clay Work who saw one in The George Hotel in Piercebridge, England. He was told that when the first owner of the clock died, the clock became inaccurate. When the second owner died, the clock stopped working altogether. The odd story inspired him to write the song.

Grandfather clocks are tall. Possibly as tall or taller than your grandfather. They are usually at least 1.9 meters (6 feet - 3 inches). Later, there were made clocks referred to as "grandmother" and "granddaughter" clocks, which are shorter in height.

blurb

I was recently asked to write a blurb for a friend's soon-to-be-published book. It's an odd word "blurb" and so I had to investigate its origin.

These brief expressions of praise and enticing descriptions of what's inside a book often appear on the book's cover or dust jacket. 

The word was coined in 1907 by the American humorist Frank Gelett Burgess in mocking the excessive praise printed on book jackets. He used "blurb" on a dummy dust jacket of his book Are You a Bromide? *. A picture of a woman there was named “Miss Belinda Blurb” and her quote was “YES, this is a ‘BLURB’!”  Another blurb on the jacket was "... when you've READ this masterpiece, you'll know what a BOOK is...."

Burgess did not invent the practice of putting that praise on a cover, but his joking word for it has become the accepted term for it still today.

* Bonus: a bromide here means a boring or platitudinous person  - the word comes from chemistry.  

More at merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-history-blurb-publishing

Nautical terms part one

 

Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

As with my earlier posts on terms that come from the world of printing, such is the case with nautical terms that entered the language in some form. I gained some inspiration for this post from an essay by Hester Blum about her brief voyage on a 19th-century whaling ship.

"Think of all the idioms for competency that come from seafaring: knowing the ropes, crackerjack, all told, first rate, flying colors. There are plenty of nautical expressions for incompetency, too: deadwood, over a barrel, run afoul, scraping the bottom of the barrel. My expertise in the language and literature of sailing does not necessarily translate to manual or experiential fluency, nor did I expect it to."

Some of these terms have fallen out of fashion. As a child, I would hear adults tell us kids to "pipe down" meaning to get quiet. Aboard a ship, the boatswain's pipe, or whistle, is used to summon a crew, relay orders and dismiss them. To dismiss a crew, the boatswain piped and the command "pipe down" is given. After dismissal, things were quiet and the command became associated with quieting down or making less noise.

Boatswain's whistle, pipe, or bosun's pipe

The phrase “know the ropes” comes from sailing where ropes, or lines, are important to navigating and steering the ship. One who knows the ropes has experience in sailing.

"Crackerjack" isn't just a snack food that appeared in the 1890s. In the late 19th-century crack and jack were merged into a new word. Cracker is an elongation of crack which is an adjective meaning "expert" or "superior" that dates from the 18th century, as in "He is a crack shot with a rifle." Even earlier, "crack" was a noun meaning "something superior" and a verb meaning "to boast." 

"Jack" has been used for "man" since the mid-1500s. We find it in the expression "jack-of-all-trades" and in nautical terms as "Jack Tar" to mean a sailor. (The "tar" comes from the coating on ropes.) Crackerjack entered English as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," and then was used as an adjective. 

"All told" is an idiom we don't hear very much these days. It means with everything or everyone taken into account. "All told there will be 75 people attending." It was once used on board ships to indicate all were present.

"First-rate" has its origin in the rating "A1" which was used to mean "having the highest qualifications" in reference to commercial ships. Lloyd's of London used this rating system. Shipping was very important in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Lloyd's rating system became known beyond shipping to mean "of the finest quality" or "first-rate."

The term "flying colors," as in "she passed the test with flying colors" and "showing your true colors" to mean to reveal one's character (usually used in a negative way) both come from a sailing practice. At one time, ships hoisted their national flags ("fly their colors") before commencing battle, BUT some ships would carry flags from many countries and hoist "false flags" to confuse or mislead their enemies rather than show their "true colors."

canard

I heard a TV newscaster say that there is a group of Republicans who "have bought into Trump’s canard that the election was stolen from him." I have heard that word before and assumed it meant a hoax. My wife, a French speaker, said that the word canard in French means "duck." What's the connection?

She looked in one of her dictionaries and found a 16th-century French expression - vendre des canards à moitié. It literally means "to half-sell ducks" but this was possibly a proverb meaning "to fool" or "to cheat." The origin story isn't known but may have come from someone trying to cheat a customer in the sale of a duck at a market. Can you pass off half a duck as a whole duck and so half-sell it? We don't know. 

English speakers adopted this hoax or fabrication meaning of canard in the mid-1800s. 

There is also an aeronautical use of canard which has nothing to do with a hoax. In aeronautics, a canard is an arrangement wherein a small forewing or foreplane is placed forward of the main wing of a fixed-wing aircraft or a weapon. 

XB-70 Valkyrie experimental bomber

The term "canard" may be used to describe the aircraft itself, the wing configuration, or the foreplane. You find canard wings used in guided missiles and smart bombs.

This use of "canard" arose from the appearance of an aircraft called the Santos-Dumont 14-bis of 1906, which was thought to look like a duck with its neck stretched out in flight.

1906 Santos-Dumont 14-bis  CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Printing Part 2: hot off the press, stereotype, typecast, make a good impression

Earlier I had an earlier post about some words and phrases that come from the world of printing and this is part two. Most of the words and phrases are quite old and printing processes have changed a lot, but some of these are still in common usage. I picked up this information from the book Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History. 

When you hear that something is "hot off the press" you know it's something new and up to date, but at one time it was something literally hot. In printing, it's not the paper or the press that is hot in temperature, it is the metal type itself. The Linotype machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler allowed compositors to type on a keyboard what they wanted to print and as they did so the machine would cast the type right there out of molten metal (mostly lead). 

This process really sped up the older typesetting process of arranging "cold" pieces of type letter by letter.

The etymology of the company name Linotype is supposed to have come from the owner of the New York Tribune who excitedly said, “You have done it; you have produced a line o’ type.”

Take the idea of creating thousands of exact printed copies from a single original setting of type further and you get the modern meaning. The term "stereotype" is still widely used to mean when it is assumed that every person from a single group is the exact same. "He is a stereotypical jock."

When an actor is chosen for a role because she fits a certain profile, she has been typecast. “Type” and “cast” are both printing words. Molten metal is poured into a mold in a process known as casting. An actor who "fits the mold" of a role is said to be typecast. "She is often typecast as the suburban mom."

When you meet someone for the first time, like on a date or in a job interview, you want to "make a good impression." The Latin word imprimere means “to press into or upon.” American printers would make a first printing or first edition but in British English a print run was an “impression.”

Fare Well and Farewell

You have probably said "Farewell" to someone as they left for somewhere else. Maybe, they were heading to their home a few blocks away. Maybe, they were about to board a plane or boat for a more distant journey. 

The modern "farewell" originates in Middle English farewel, an expression, possibly further derived from Old English far wel. The verb fare means to travel or journey. Wishing someone "Fare well!" was a kind of blessing to travel safely and well.

Today's "farewell" can often just mean "goodbye" but in its earliest usage (first evidence of the word dates back to 1325–75) it was used to wish someone the best on a significant journey ahead.

Fare thee well, sailor!

Fare Thee Well was a series of concerts with most of the surviving members
 of the Grateful Dead to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band.

epiphanies

 

Epiphany (also known as Theophany in Eastern Christian traditions) is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally (but not solely) the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child, and thus Jesus Christ's physical manifestation to the Gentiles. It is sometimes called Three Kings' Day, and in some traditions celebrated as Little Christmas. For Catholics, the Feast of Epiphany is celebrated on January 6. In the Greek New Testament manuscripts, epiphaneia refers also to Christ's second coming.

Though my family celebrated this holiday, the meaning that I am more likely to invoke during the year comes from my study of literature.

Epiphany in literature refers generally to a visionary moment when a character has a sudden insight or realization that changes their understanding of themselves or their comprehension of the world. 

James Joyce first borrowed the religious term "Epiphany" and adopted it into a profane literary context in Stephen Hero which was an early version of his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In that manuscript, Stephen Daedalus defines epiphany as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself."

Epiphanies in common usage are any moments of revelation, oftentimes not literary or religious at all. "As he was reviewing his portfolio, he suddenly had an epiphany about investing."

The word "epiphany" descends from the ancient Greek ἐπῐφᾰ́νειᾰ (epipháneia), meaning a "manifestation or appearance." You can break it down into the Greek words "pha" (to shine), "phanein" (to show, to cause to shine), and "epiphanein" (to manifest, to bring to light).

The pre-Christian Greeks used the word to describe the visible manifestation of a god or goddess to mortal eyes, which is a form of theophany. Early Christians adopted the term to describe the manifestation of the newborn Jesus to the Magi.

android, automaton, gynoid, fembot

 

Actroid - by Gnsin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial beings. Typically, they are made from a flesh-like material to resemble a real person. Though the word and idea come from science fiction in print and on screens, advances in robot technology now allow the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots.

The word "android" has been used to refer to robotic humanoids regardless of apparent gender, but the Greek prefix "andr-" refers to man in the masculine sense. The word has a long usage history.

• The OED has the earliest use (as "Androides") to Ephraim Chambers' 1728 Cyclopaedia, in reference to an automaton that St. Albertus Magnus allegedly created.
• The late 1700s: androides are elaborate mechanical devices resembling humans performing human activities which were displayed in exhibit halls.
• "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons which are machines that do human actions and may or may not resemble a human. The word "automaton" is the Latinization of the Ancient Greek αὐτόματον, automaton, (neuter) meaning "acting of one's own will." The word was first used by Homer to describe automatic door opening, or automatic movement of wheeled tripods
• A distinction between mechanical robots and fleshy androids was popularized by Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future stories (1940–1944).
• Karel Čapek's robots in the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921) introduced the word robot to the world. But "robot" has come to primarily refer to mechanical devices which also may look like humans or animals but can also be just a humanlike arm or hand that performs a task, such as assembling a vehicle. "Robotess" is the oldest female-specific term and was used by Rossum, though it was not used widely beyond his play.

The term "droid" was popularized by George Lucas in the original Star Wars film. Though it is simply an abridgment of "android", it has been used by Lucas and others to mean any robot, including distinctly non-human form machines like R2-D2. 

Another shortening, "andy", appears in Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (adapted to the screen as Blade Runner) and was a pejorative term for an android.

Newest in this line of terms is "gynoid" which actually is anything that resembles or pertains to the female human form. The term gynoid was first used by Isaac Asimov in a 1979 editorial, as a theoretical female equivalent of the word android.

But other terms have been used for feminine robots exist. The portmanteau "fembot" (feminine robot) was popularized by the television series The Bionic Woman in 1976 and used in the Austin Powers films and others to suggest a sexualized gynoid. 

An unfortunate, though not unexpected, progression in gynoids in fiction and now in actuality are that they are "eroticized." Sensitivity sensors in their breasts and genitals to facilitate sexual response comes from male desires for custom-made passive women and is compared to life-size sex dolls. 

The HBO series Westworld is a very updated version of the 1973 film, written and directed by Michael Crichton, about adult guests visiting an interactive amusement park containing lifelike androids. The androids and gynoids in the extended TV series are used for far greater violent and sexual pleasures than the original film. 

     

From Printing: ditto, mind your p's and q's, out of sorts

I am a big reader and I also love books and the bookmaking process. I came upon a book this past week called Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History. The printing press and the democratization of knowledge through books changed the world.

One of the things in this book that I liked is how some common words and phrases come from the process of making books.

Here are a few I've found. I'm sure I'll add some more in the future.

I have used the word "ditto" and heard it used. Going back to schools 50 years ago, you might have recalled what we called a ditto machine that teachers used to make copies of handouts. In printing, ditto is shorthand to mean to repeat something that’s already been said. Its origin is the Italian word detto, the past participle of “to say.” 

The word came into wider usage with that early 20th-century duplicating machine which was produced by DITTO, Inc. And their simple logo was a single set of quotation marks " which is still used to mean "ditto" or same as above.

An 18th-century type case, with tools for typesetting

A phrase that I don't hear as much today as I did as a child is to "mind your p's and q's." When I was in seventh grade, I took a printing class and we actually learned to set type and use a printing press. (Yes, I must be old!)  This phrase when said by a teacher or parent meant to be on your best behavior or to pay close attention. But if my print shop teacher had said it in the printing context it would apply to setting type. In that process, you put each letter in backward, so that when the inked type is pressed into paper, the mirror image reads the right way forward. That meant that compositors had to be especially careful when it came to letters that look like mirror images of each other. In older type cases, each letter was kept in a segregated section to be picked out by the compositor setting the type. The lowercase p’s and q’s were nastily put right next to each other. If the placement had been different, maybe the phrases that would have emerged would have been “mind your b’s and d’s.” 

Related to those type cases, the capital letters were usually on the top rows and so were referred to as uppercase letters. 

Also from this typesetting area is the phrase "out of sorts." In common usage, it means to be feeling a bit off, perhaps unwell, or just grumpy. For printers and typesetting compositors it meant you were literally out of sorts. A sort is an individually cast piece of type. If you run out of out of type in the middle of a job, it would certainly make you feel out of sorts figuratively and literaaly.

Mystery

 

The mystery of the locked room
Photo: PxHere

Today, I think the first association people have with "mystery" is as a fiction genre in books and movies. In its earlier usages, it was more "mystical."

In Middle English, it had more of a sense of a mystic presence and was associated with hidden religious symbolism - "the "mysteries of the faith." The even earlier Old French form, mistere, or Latin mysterium came from the Greek mustērion.

That earlier religious meaning survives both in the sense of a mystery being something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. In its earliest usage, the secret rites of Greek and Roman pagan religions, or of any ancient or tribal religion, were mysteries known only to accepted initiates. This survives in "secret" societies such as the Masons.

Sometimes the practices or the skills of an activity that seem to be unknowable to most people are regarded as mysteries. Neuroscience and lots of technologies are mysteries to most people. Do you actually know how a movie "magically" appears on your TV screen or how your smartphone works?

When I was a youngster and getting some Catholic education, there were the mysteries of the faith that could only be understood through divine revelations. Otherwise, they were regarded as beyond human understanding.

The word is now used for many hidden or unsolved things, from the mysteries of the universe to a puzzle, riddle, or unsolved problem. These things are not unknowable, just unknown to some or unknown at this time. When you read that someone's financial records are "shrouded in mystery," at least that someone knows the answer to the mystery.

Indian Summer, gossamer and Goose Summer

Image by Peter Rufi  Public Domain, Link

Recently, I saw this warm period of summerish weather in late October that I'm experiencing referred to as a "Goose Summer." It's a term I never heard before. "Indian Summer" is the more common expression in my experience. So, I went looking online.

The trail leads back to the word "gossamer" which means extremely light, delicate, or sometimes tenuous. You might refer to clouds as being gossamer if they are thin and light. The wings of angels or dragonflies might be seen as gossamer. 

The Goose Summer goes back to Middle English. A period of mild weather in late autumn or early winter was sometimes called a gossomer, which literally means "goose summer." My first thought was that it was because this was when geese were flying to warmer climates, but perhaps that's more of an American occurrence. The explanation I found was that October and November were the months when people felt that geese were at their best for eating. 

The word gossomer was also used in Middle English for filmy cobwebs floating through the air in calm, clear weather. The thought is that they resembled the down of a goose. 

The term "Indian Summer" is an American expression to describe a spell of warm, hazy autumn weather that feels more like summer than fall. The origin isn't known. One thought is that that kind of weather allowed Native American Indians to continue hunting before winter. 

A more specific definition is that it is a warm, tranquil spell of weather after a frost or period of abnormally cold weather - a kind of reprieve from early winter. The term originated in the United States and came into use in about 1778.

If "Indian Summer" seems inappropriate or politically incorrect, an earlier term in America for such weather was "second summer" and I found online other possibilities including badger summer and quince summer. 

A Ballcock Is Not an Obscenity

As I wrote in a short poem, this mechanism that is often found as part of toilet sounds obscene. It's not. At least it wasn't meant to be when it was invented by a priest.

A ballcock (also known as a balltap or float valve) is a mechanism or machine for filling water tanks, such as those found in flush toilets, while avoiding overflow. 

The modern ballcock was invented by José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, a Mexican priest and scientist, who described the device in 1790 in the Gaceta de Literatura Méxicana. The ballcock device was patented in 1797 for use in steam engines by Edmund Cartwright.

It consists of a valve (11) connected to a hollow sealed float (1) by means of a lever (3) mounted near the top of the tank. The float is often ball-shaped, hence the name ballcock. The valve is connected to the incoming water supply, and is opened and closed by the lever which has the float mounted on the end. When the water level rises, the float rises with it; once it rises to a pre-set level, the mechanism forces the lever to close the valve and shut off the water flow.

Cock valves (also known as plug valves, stop cocks, or quarter-turn valves) are devices that allow the user to restrict or permit flow through a pipe from an external point. Their use can be dated all the way into antiquity, and they are one of the simplest means of controlling fluid flow.

The word cock has many meanings beyond being a slang term for a penis. Going back to the 1500s, we find the term used as a noun and verb referring to a part of a gun and the action of putting into position the hammer by pulling back to the catch before firing.

A later usage is the term "to go off half-cocked" which figuratively means to speak or act too hastily. That usage alludes to the literal situation when firearms fire unexpectedly when supposedly secure. A weapon that is half-cocked has the cock lifted to the first catch, at which position the trigger does not act.

In 1770, "half-cocked" was noted as a synonym for "drunk." 

British pub sign - Public Domain

The male of the domestic fowl is called a cock (and more politely and euphemistically as a "rooster') and they have been associated since ancient times with male vigor. Cock is short for cockerel and a cockerel might be introduced to a group of hens (roost) to encourage egg laying. It is then called a rooster. Rooster is more common in American English and cockerel (cock) is British English. The connection to a human male penis is unclear. Ironically, the fowl known as the cock has no penis.

The  (the Latin word is penis). There are examples of efforts to avoid the older usages of "cock." As with "rooster," haystack replaced haycock, and weathervane replaced weather-cock. Author Louisa May Alcott's father was born Alcox, but changed his name.

The word is still used in other expletives such as cock-teaser and cock-sucker which appeared in print as far back as 1891. 

A cocker spaniel was a dog breed trained to start woodcocks in the hunt. 

"Cock of the walk" is a phrase used to describe an overbearing fellow, probably alluding to the "proud" walk of the rooster.  

"Cock-and-bull" is used to label a fictitious story or exaggerated lie. It was first recorded in the 1620s and might be an allusion to the talking animals of Aesop's fables. French has parallel expression coq-à-l'âne.

A "cock-lobster is a male lobster and goes back to 1757.

williwaw

There are a good number of words and names that we just don’t know an origin. One example is the odd word "williwaw."

Williwaw is used to describe a sudden violent gust of cold land air, most common along mountainous coasts of high latitudes. It is also used more generally to mean a sudden violent wind, and figuratively for a violent commotion.

We know that the word was first used by 19th-century British writers who may have picked it up from British sailors and seal hunters. But I also found an origin being Native American origin or invented or adopted by European sailors and fishermen who encountered the fierce winds off North America’s northwest coast and in the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America.

The word is still used today when unsuspecting sailors or pilots encounter these winds that seem to come out of nowhere. 

Beachcombing

Nuva Hiva French Polynesia Marquesas Islands

I wrote a poem called "Beachcombing" after I had read, much to my surprise, that the first appearance of the word “beachcombers” in print was in Herman Melville’s memoir Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas in 1847. 

Melville used the term to describe a population of Europeans who lived in South Pacific islands, “combing” the beach and nearby waters for flotsam, jetsam, or anything else they could use or trade. We use the term in the same way today - though for less serious beachcombing for things like seashells.

That book was a follow-up to the commercial and critical success of his first book, Typee. It continued his tales of South Sea adventure-romances. Omoo is named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island.

Omoo is about the events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel. It is based on Melville’s personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. They did recruiting among the natives for sailors. They dealt with deserters and even mutiny.

Melville's first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century and the exotic locales in Polynesia made the books popular. The two books found much greater success and sales than the later books, including his masterpiece, Moby-Dick.

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life was Melville's first book, published in the early part of 1846. Melville was 26 years old. It is itself a minor classic of the travel and adventure genre. From it, Melville became known as the "man who lived among the cannibals."

It is about his time on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands. Melville "supplemented" the story with some "imaginative reconstruction" and research from other books, as he did in most of his non-fiction and fiction. "Typee" comes from the valley of Taipivai, once known as Taipei. It was his most popular work during his lifetime.

I am not suggesting that Melville made up his adventures. Many of the events in the book were corroborated by Melville's fellow castaway, Richard Tobias Greene ("Toby") and an affidavit from the ship's captain corroborated that both of them did desert ship on the island in the summer of 1842.

The research is described by Melville as a way to supplement his lack of knowledge beyond his first-hnd experiences about the island culture and language.

Astroturfing

Astroturf is something that most people associate with the artificial grass (turf) that is often used on sports fields. But astroturfing - the verb - is something quite different. 

Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization. It is when a message that is political, advertising, religious, or part of public relations is made to appear as though it originates from and is supported by "grassroots" participants. It is an attempt - a deceptive one - to give messages or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection(s). 

The original AstroTurf is a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to resemble natural grass. Astroturfingplays off the "grassroots" idea that the message wants to seem "true" or "natural" rather than "fake" or "artificial."

An example of the practice came in response to the passage of tobacco control legislation in the U.S. Tobacco companies including Philip Morris, Burson-Marsteller and others created the National Smokers Alliance (NSA) in 1993 which was an aggressive public relations campaign that ran until 1999 and attempted to inflate the amount of grassroots support for smoker's rights that existed. 

In 2010, the Federal Trade Commission settled a complaint with Reverb Communications, which was using interns to post favorable product reviews in Apple's iTunes store for their clients.

Slang for Money

Slang words used to mean money have been around for a very long time and there are too many to cover in any detail here, but here are some of my favorites. 

The term that caught my attention recently that I couldn't figure out is cheddar. As slang for money, the term seemed new to me, but it is not new. At the end of WWII, welfare recipients received parcels of cheese as part of their benefits. The practice continued into the 1970s and the giving out of government surplus cheese was connected by recipients with the money they received.

Another food term is bacon. as in “bringing home the bacon.” One origin story places the phrase in the 1100s in Great Dunmow, England. According to local legend, the church in town would award a side of bacon (called a “flitch") to any man who could honestly say that he had not argued with his wife for a year and a day. Any such man would “bring home the bacon" and be considered a role model.

Another story is from the 1500s coming from country fairs and greased pig competitions. If you were the one who could catch that slippery pig, you got to keep it and so you got to “bring home the bacon."

And then some sources say it is much more modern dating back only to the early 20th century. At the time, bacon was used to refer not only to the strips we know today but to all pork, in general. The word "bacon" comes from old German and French words for “back," since the best cuts of pork come from the back and sides of the animal. 

Green as slang for money is a reference to the color of American money. An older term was greenback which was used to refer to American currency printed in the Civil War. The front of the bill was printed in black while the back was printed in green.

The slang term C note references that "C" equals 100 in the Roman numeral system and stands for the Latin word centum, which means “a hundred.” The Latin also gave us "cent" for one-hundredth of a dollar. A C note is a $100 bill.

Have you heard that "it's all about the Benjamins?" This slang term is also a substitute for $100 and alludes to the appearance of founding father Benjamin Franklin on the one-hundred-dollar bill. I haven't really heard anyone refer to a "Hamilton" for $10 or a "Jackson" to mean a $20 bill.

A very common slang term for dollars is bucks which we believe originated from early American colonists who would often trade deerskins, or buckskin, as a form of money.

Cha-ching (or Ka-ching) to mean money is a word that imitates the sound, as with an onomatopoeia, of an old-fashioned cash register completing a sale. I have heard it used to mean money but more often used as an interjection when money is made. "I made a bet and -  cha-ching - I got 75 bucks!"

And there are a long list of ones that still have no clear origin story. For example, moola (or moolah) is an old term for money, but nobody seems to really know where it originated. Merriam-Webster says the word was first used to mean money in 1936.

Here are others: "cabbage", "clam", "milk", "dosh", "dough", "shillings", "frogskins", "notes", "ducats", "loot", "bones", "bar", "coin", "folding stuff", "honk", "lolly", "lucre"/"filthy "Lucre", "moola/moolah", "mazuma", "paper", "scratch", "readies", "rhino."

Of course, slang varies by geography and money slang in India. Though I might only hear the term dosh used in the UK, I could probably hear dough or bread used to mean money in London or New York. 

synergy

SYNERGY is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

It appears in English in the mid-19th century with origins from Greek sunergos  "working together" from sun- ‘together’ + ergon ‘work’.

In Christian theology, synergism is the idea that salvation involves some form of cooperation between divine grace and human freedom.

The words synergy and synergetic have been used in the field of physiology to mean the correlation or concourse of action between different organs in health; and, according to some, in disease.

The word appeared in 1896 from Henri Mazel in social psychology in his La synergie sociale, in which he argued that Darwinian theory failed to account for "social synergy" or "social love", a collective evolutionary drive. The highest civilizations were the work not only of the elite but of the masses too; those masses must be led, however, because the crowd, a feminine and unconscious force, cannot distinguish between good and evil.

In technology and media, it is applied to the compression of transmission, access and use of information. Synergy can also be defined as the combination of human strengths and computer strengths, such as advanced chess. Computers can process data much more quickly than humans, but lack the ability to respond meaningfully to arbitrary stimuli.

In media economics, synergy is the promotion and sale of a product (and all its versions) throughout the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate. For example, when a movie also has a soundtrack, toys, and video games. Walt Disney is given credit for pioneering "synergistic marketing" techniques in the 1930s by granting dozens of firms the right to use his Mickey Mouse character in products and ads, and continued to market Disney media through licensing arrangements. 

Coleslaw

My wife made coleslaw this past weekend for a barbecue and I asked some guests why it is called coleslaw. No one knew. One person said it's cold slaw and it means cold salad. Wrong and right.

coleslaw Wikimedia CC BY 3.0, Link

Coleslaw is the correct spelling for the cabbage-based side salad often served alongside barbecue. It is sometimes mistaken as "cold slaw" as it is usually served cold. The word derives from the Dutch koolsla, with cole referring to cole crops such as cabbage.

purple cabbage slaw, Wikimedia CC BY 3.0, Link

Coleslaw's origin can be traced back as far as the ancient Romans, who served a dish of cabbage, vinegar, eggs and spices. The version Americans generally eat today comes from the Dutch who founded New York state. They grew cabbage around the Hudson River that they used in a shredded cabbage salad they called koosla. Kooll means cabbage and sla is salad