God Bless That Sneeze

Image by Mojpe from Pixabay

In the year 600, Pope Gregory the Great declared “God bless you” to be the correct response to a sneeze. It was once thought that sneezing was an omen of death, since many dying people fell into sneezing fits. 

However, in the Hebrew Talmud sneezing was called “pleasure sent from God."

The Greeks and Romans believed that sneezing was a good omen since you were expelling bad air. They responded to sneezes with “Long may you live!” or “May you enjoy good health.” 

Pope Gregory introduced the response of “God bless you” when the plague was at its height in Europe, hoping that the quick prayer would protect the sneezer from sickness and death. As the plague spread across Europe, the new response spread with it and has survived to this day.

"Gesundheit" is another common response to a sneeze. It comes from German, where it literally means "health." It combines gesund ("healthy") and -heit ("-hood"). Wishing a person good health when they sneezed was traditionally believed to forestall the illness that a sneeze often portends.

walled gardens

There are literal walled gardens in the world. These gardens are surrounded by walls to keep out animals, unwanted human visitors and in some places, the walls shelter the garden from wind and frost. They can also be decorative and there may be smaller walls within the walled perimeter. 

A later development was the walled or gated community. One of the primary purposes of a gated community is to offer its residents safety. Some were built near areas that were considered unsafe. Besides having walls, a gated community increases safety by having membership, guards and by eliminating through traffic.

These days if you hear the term there is a good chance that it is a figurative walled garden that is a closed platform or closed technology ecosystem. Since we borrowed the term "ecosystem" from nature and have since created manmade ecosystems (or damaged others), it makes sense that we turn botanical garden ecosystems into technology ecosystems.

A good example of such an ecosystem is Apple’s hardware, software and services which work harmoniously together and do not work with other hardware, software and services. Apple users tend to remain, not always by choice, in their walled garden. This has also led to antitrust scrutiny (note the Epic vs. Apple case. Google, Facebook and others would like to keep you in their walled gardens.

Why a fount but not a font of wisdom?

I saw someone post on a blog about a teacher who had been for him a "font of wisdom" in his high school days. "Font" looked wrong to me. Was it supposed to be a "fount of wisdom?" 

I had to look it up. 

A "font" these days is most commonly used to refer to a typeface, such as a serif, sans serif, or Helvetica or Times New Roman. That origin comes from the late 16th century from French fonte, from fondre "to melt" in reference to the process of casting or founding the actual pieces of type once used in printing. 

This didn't seem to play any role in the wisdom expression. 

Font can also mean a structure in a church that contains water for baptism ceremonies. The water in a baptismal font is still, but the water in a fountain spurts with abundance. So, fount (a fountain shortening similar to mount for mountain) is more symbolically fitting for the sense of someone or something putting forth an abundance of knowledge or wisdom.

A fount of knowledge is used to something, but more likely someone, who contains all the answers or information.  

 Saying font for fount might also be considered a mondegreen - that's the topic another post.

Flea Markets

Montsoreau Flea Market, Loire Valley, France CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

My wife mentioned that with the weather warming up our local flea market would be reopening soon. This got my word-mind working on why you would want to name a shopping place after those pesky little parasites of the order Siphonaptera ("wingless bloodsucker") that infest dogs, clothing, and especially upholstery on old furniture that might be for sale. It seems like very poor marketing. My wife said she doubted that the etymology was that literal. 

A flea market is usually a street market that provides space for vendors to sell previously-owned (second-hand) merchandise. Being outdoors, they are often seasonal. The line sometimes blurs as these places move indoors or become year-round places. Sometimes "swap meet" or "casual market" is the label. I've seen flea markets mixed with farmer's markets where (hopefully) at least the produce is not second-hand! 

And what happens when a group of street vendors begins to gather in one place? Is that a flea market? Probably not, and especially not if they are selling new items as many street vendor do with t-shirts, art etc.

I still view a flea market as a place selling used goods, from collectibles (books, records, toys etc.), to antiques (from jewelry to furniture) and vintage clothing.

There is now a National Flea Market Association which almost seems antithetical to the whole casual concept.

Where did the "flea" part of the term come from? Certainly markets of a similar nature existed in the Middle East and Asia a very long time ago. But the fleas appellation? 

One American theory is that there was a "Fly Market" in the late 1700s in New York City, located at Maiden Lane near the East River in Manhattan. The location was originally a salt marsh and so flies, fleas and other annoying critters were part of it. That Fly Market was the city's principal market by the early 1800s. But no mention of fleas in the name.

Perhaps, the American term made its way over to Europe, but more likely is that the "flea" term came from France to America. This loan translation is known as a calque. For example, the French “cela va sans dire” is loaned to English as “it goes without saying.” [Sidebar: "It goes without saying" is an odd phrase since we almost always follow it by saying what doesn't need to be said: "It goes without saying that she has plenty of money."]

The accepted etymology for "flea market" is an English calque from the French "marché aux puces" ("market of the fleas"). The first reference to this term appeared in stories about a location in Paris in the 1860s which was actually called the "marché aux puces" because items sold there were previously used and worn and so could very easily have contained fleas.

A vintage travel gear seller at Marché Dauphine, Saint-Ouen, the home of Paris' flea market
by Jorge Royan,  CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Mad as a March Hare

The March Hare as illustrated by John Tenniel

March has arrived. In my neighborhood, it "came in like a lamb" so it supposedly it will go "out like a lion." Another proverb attached to this month is "Mad as a March hare."

I connect the phrase to Lewis Carroll's Alice stories but its usage predates his books.

This British English phrase has been connected to a kind of "spring fever" craziness and also Love being "in the air." It appeared in John Heywood's collection of proverbs published in 1546. 

In the excellent book, The Annotated Alice (my favorite edition), it is explained that it was a popular (and somewhat accurate) belief about rabbits/hares' behavior at the beginning of their breeding season. In Britain, it starts in February or March and runs until September. In the early days of that breeding season, males are "mad" and overly enthusiastic about getting on with things. Females sometimes have to repel those unwanted suitors with their forelegs. Apparently, this observation was once believed (incorrectly) to be two males fighting for breeding dominance.

The March Hare that Alice meets in Wonderland is sometimes confused with the Mad Hatter hare. The March Hare is called "Haigha" in Through the Looking-Glass and he is most remembered, especially from film versions, as part of tea party scene in Carroll's 1865 classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice, knowing that it is not the month of March, thinks that perhaps "The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad – at least not so mad as it was in March."

The Mad Hatter is a friend of the March Hare. 

Alice, March Hare & Mad Hatter at the tea party

I like Sir John Tenniel's illustrations best. He shows the hare with some straw on his head, which was a common way to depict madness in Victorian times.

The March Hare later appears at the trial for the Knave of Hearts. His final appearance is as "Haigha." Lewis Carroll says the name is pronounced to rhyme with "mayor", which would make it "hare." Haigha is the personal messenger to the White King in Through the Looking-Glass and oddly Alice doesn't seem to recognize him as being the March Hare from his earlier appearance in her dream.

That can happen when you go through a looking glass or down a rabbit hole into Wonderland.

jury rigging

an example of some jury-rigged plumbing

A plumber working at my house recently said that he could "jury rig something until I get the parts I need."  I know he meant that he could do a temporary fix, but then I wondered (as I often do here) about where the term originated.

It didn't seem to have any connection to the common use of jury as related to a courtroom trial. Is it about a lawyer trying to rig the member of a jury to work to his client's advantage? In fact, it doesn't have any connection to that use of jury.

Jury rigging (AKA "jerry rigging") is both a noun and a verb describing makeshift repairs made with only the tools and materials at hand. 

Its origin comes from the world of boats and ships, particularly sail-powered ones. After a dismasting, a replacement mast, often referred to as a jury mast and some sail, would be fashioned so that the craft could continue on its journey. That explains the "rigging" part as it is the system of ropes, cables, or chains employed to support a ship's masts and to control or set the yards and sails. 

But what about the "jury" part?

Using "jury" as an adjective, in the sense of makeshift or temporary, has been said to date from at least 1616. There are two parts to the origin of this usage. Part one is that this is a corruption of the French jour meaning "a day." Go back further to the Latin adjutare ("to aid") and the Old French ajurie ("help or relief").

So, my plumber (who likely did not know any French or Latin or has spent much time on ships) was saying that he could "give me some relief for the day."

Magical Phrases

If I asked you to say something "magical," what would you say?  Hocus pocus? Abracadabra? Open sesame? I heard all of those phrases as a child and used them in my make-believe childhood world. Do they hold any power? I doubt that they do, but they have a long history of use in "real" magical ceremonies and also in theatrical magic shows.

Let's look at the origins of those magical phrases.

Hocus-pocus is a generic term that may be derived from an ancient language and is currently used to refer to the actions of magicians, often as the stereotypical magic words spoken when bringing about some sort of change. It was once a common term for a magician, juggler, or other similar entertainers.

The earliest known English-language book on magic (known then as legerdemain "sleight of hand"), was published in 1635 as Hocus Pocus Junior: The Anatomie of Legerdemain.

"Hocus Pocus" also was the stage name of a well-known magician of that time, William Vincent, who may have been the author. He is recorded as having been granted a license to perform magic in England in 1619. 

But it is unlikely that Vincent invented the phrase and the origins of the term remain obscure. I found a bunch of conjectures. Some say it a garbled Latin religious phrase or some form of "dog" "pig" Latin. 

In searching other languages, we find in some Slavic languages, "pokus" means an "attempt" or an "experiment." There is a tenuous connection with alchemy going back to the court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552 – 1612). I  saw that hocus may mean "to cheat" in Latin or a distorted form of the word hoc meaning "this." Together they would give the sense of attempting to cheat.

Another theory (in the Oxford English Dictionary) has the origin from hax pax max Deus adimax, a pseudo-Latin phrase used as a magical formula by conjurors. A similar distortion theory is that it may be taken from the Catholic liturgy of the Eucharist, which contains the phrase “Hoc est enim corpus meum”  (meaning "This is my body") particularly the hoc est corpus portion. This is a mocking suggestion that a magician is changing something in the same way that the Catholic Eucharist changes water and wine through Transubstantiation.

The final suggested origin is that it comes from the Norse magician and "demon of the north" Ochus Bochus.

Image by Franck Barske from Pixabay

Abracadabra is an incantation used as a magic word in stage magic tricks, and historically was believed to have healing powers when inscribed on an amulet.

Abracadabra's origin is also unclear but its first occurrence is in the second-century works of Serenus Sammonicus. His book called Liber Medicinalis (sometimes known as De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) who was a physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla. In that book, he prescribes for malaria and other lethal diseases wearing an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle. It is found on Abraxas stones, which were worn as amulets. Subsequently, its use spread beyond the Gnostics.

Possible folk etymologies include from Hebrew meaning "I will create as I speak", or in Aramaic "I create like the word."  There are also some similar words in Latin and Greek such as abraxas. but according to the OED Online, "no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures."

The Greek abraxas is a possibly related word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides and appears in Gnostic texts such as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. It was engraved on certain antique gemstones, called on that account Abraxas stones, which were used as amulets or charms. (Their spelling on stones was "Abrasax" (Αβρασαξ) and the more modern "Abraxas" probably comes from a confusion made between the Greek letters sigma (Σ) and xi (Ξ) in the Latin transliteration. The seven letters may represent each of the seven classic planets.

In the English speaking world, abracadabra was frequently dismissed. The Puritan minister Increase Mather dismissed it as being powerless. Author Daniel Defoe wrote dismissively about Londoners who posted the word on their doorways to ward off sickness during the Great Plague of London.

Today the word is now commonly used simply as an incantation in the performance of theatrical magic.

"Open Sesame" is another common magical phrase that was found in the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" in Galland's version of One Thousand and One Nights. In the story, it opens the mouth of a cave in which forty thieves have hidden a treasure. 

In Antoine Galland's Les Mille et une nuits (1704–1717) it appears as "Sésame, ouvre-toi" which we translate as "Sesame, open yourself."

So, is this just a storybook phrase?

Sesame is connected to Babylonian magic practices which used sesame oil. The phrase probably derives from the sesame plant. Sesame seeds grow in a seed pod that splits open when it reaches maturity, and it is thought that it alludes to unlocking treasures.

But "sesame" is a reduplication of the Hebrew šem 'name', i.e. God or a kabbalistic word representing the Talmudic šem-šamáįm "name of heaven" so it also has religious and mystical connections. 

Though I do have a replica Professor Dumbledore elder  wand that I bought at Olivander's shop (Well, the one at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida), I haven't found that any of the Hogwart's spells or the magical phrases described above seem to do anything.

Maybe I need a different wand. Maybe I need to go to wizarding school. Or just stick to card tricks.

Crossposted at Weekends in Paradelle

Calling Dibs

Have you ever "called dibs" on something?

Let's say that a group of people decide to rent bicycles for a ride and one person says "I call dibs on the red one."

What does that mean and where did this odd expression originate?

This slang term has been in usage since the early 19th century.

"First dibs" is sometimes called to establish a claim on the first use or the ownership of the item claimed.  For example, who gets to try riding the new electric bicycle first? "I have first dibs on riding," calls out one person.

children's jacks set

The origin is disputed, but the most common origin story is that it comes from an old children's game called dibstones.

Dibstones is a child's game, similar to jacks and dice games. A dibstone is a pebble used in the game as a counter. The pebbles or the discarded knucklebones of sheep have been used since the late 17th century.

The game is from England but the slang usage seems to be American. While playing, you can place a stone at your place to indicate a point. Similar to the modern slang usage, this means you have claimed a point.

To "call dibs" today is to claim a temporary right to something or to reserve it.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Children's Games - Knucklebones

Jacks is also known as Knucklebones, Tali or Fivestones. The games have origin going back to ancient Greece and are mentioned by Sophocles and in the Ilyiad and Odyssey.

The games are usually played with five small objects (ten in the case of jacks). At one time the game pieces were literally knucklebones which are the astragalus bone in the ankle, or hock of sheep. The jacks are thrown up and caught along with a ball or other object.

Modern jacks have six points/knobs and are usually made of metal or plastic. The simplest throw consists of either tossing up one jack, or bouncing a ball, and picking up one or more jacks/pebbles/knucklebones from the ground while it is in the air.

The games have a whole series of throws with odd names such as "riding the elephant", "peas in the pod", "horses in the stable", and "frogs in the well".

sheep knucklebones used in the game

A variant on the previously mentioned games that is played by Israeli school-age children is known as kugelach or Chamesh Avanim ("five rocks"). Instead of jacks and a rubber ball, five die-sized metal cubes are used. The game cube is tossed in the air rather than bounced. There's also the Korean game Gonggi, another variant.

I was not able to find the origin and reason why the game or the game pieces are called "jacks."  Anyone know?

Murphy's Law

You probably have heard of Murphy's Law and it's likely that you have used the phrase or at least have encountered a situation where this adage (short statement expressing a general truth) or epigram (a brief saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way) was used or should have been used.

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

The origin of the phrase is totally unknown and it's likely that people were saying this is something close to it long before anyone attached a name to it. So the question here is whether there actually was a Murphy and if so why the name became attached to the adage?

According to one version, the origin stems from an attempt to use new measurement devices developed by Edward Murphy, an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems. The phrase was coined in adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform.

According to the book, A History of Murphy's Law by Nick Spark, this common bit of philosophy does have a military origin. But the "facts" still seem to be a bit hazy.

Murphy worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on high-speed rocket sled experiments and that's supposed to be where and when the coining of Murphy's law happened.

Reportedly, Murphy was not happy with the commonplace interpretation of his law which he saw as more serious. Murphy regarded his law as an important principle of defensive design - one should always assume worst-case scenarios.

Though Murphy may have been serious, the law that carries his name has been used in many less-than-serious situations.

         

Devil's Advocate

Detail of the Devil from Hans Memling's Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation (c. 1485)

Nowadays, the phrase "playing devil's advocate" describes a situation where someone, given a certain point of view, takes a position they do not necessarily agree with (or simply an alternative position from the accepted norm), for the sake of debate. For example, let's say that I believe that mankind is causing climate change, but for the sake of debate and opening up the conversation in a group of like-minded people I decide to be the devil's advocate and challenge some of the group's view.

Doing this can open up the thought further using valid reasoning that both disagree with the subject at hand and yet proves their own viewpoint as valid. This is one of the most popular present-day English idioms used to express the concept of arguing against something without actually being committed to that contrary view.

But being the devil’s advocate was a real job until late in the 20th century. When the Catholic church wanted to canonize a saint, an official acted as the devil’s advocate by questioning the candidate’s saintliness and arguing against their supposed miracles. If the potential saint could hold up to the intense criticism, the church knew they officially deserved the title. The advocatus diaboli (Latin for Devil's advocate) was this official position within the Catholic Church. Now more commonly referred to in the church as the Promoter of the Faith, this person is still part of the process that the Vatican has for declaring someone a saint (canonization).

Knowing that the devil is very good at arguing and very persuasive, this office was created by Pope Clement XI in 1708. The position was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983 as part of streamlining the whole canonization process.

Promotor Fidei (Promoter of the Faith) is still an official of the Roman Congregation of Rites at the Vatican but is sometimes commonly referred to, somewhat jokingly, as the devil's advocate. Presenting opposing views is still allowed. For instance, Christopher Hitchens was brought in to testify when Mother Teresa was being beatified in 2002.

Going South

The phrase "going south" to mean "becoming worse" is another one whose origin is not settled.

The most common origin attributes it to the standard orientation of maps. South is the downwards direction so things going south are going down. That would fit this type of usage: "Yesterday the stock market moved south, ending up on a loss for the day."

Another origin say that it was a euphemism used by some Native Americans for dying. "He was unconcerned that his health might go south."

This idiom always means that a situation becomes unfavorable, decreases, or takes a turn for the worse. "My luck went south."

Kick the Bucket, Buy the Farm and Bite the Dust

Most idioms don't make a lot of literal sense and so they often don't translate to other languages. In English, we have lots of ways of euphemistically say that someone has died. In this post, I'll consider three of them. Sometimes even the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary(OED) can't quite say definitively what the origin of a phrase might be. That's the case for the three in this post.

Why would we say that someone has "kicked the bucket" when they have died? One possible origin is that a person standing on a pail or bucket intending to commit suicide would put their head into the noose and then kick the bucket away.

Is that any more plausible than the archaic use of "bucket" as a beam from which a pig is hung by its feet prior to being slaughtered. To kick the bucket, was the term used to mean the pig's death throes.

Another origin that comes from the Catholic church is that at one time when a body had been laid out, a holy-water bucket was brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse. When mourners came to pray they could sprinkle the body with holy water. I don't see any kicking involved in that explanation.

My favorite "kick the bucket" movie moment still comes in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. 

To "buy the farm" meaning to die is an American expression going back to the WWII and the Air Force.  At the time the similar "buy the plot" (as in a cemetery plot) and buy the lot were also used, but the farm survived.

A military pilot with a hit plane would often attempt to crash land in a farmer's field. If the crash destroyed some crops, the government paid reimbursement to the farmer, but if it was a really bad crash that destroyed most of the crops or buildings, the government would "buy the farm."

Then again, there are older British slang expressions "buy it," "buy one" or "buy the packet" that are supposed to be references to something that one does not want to buy.

The earliest citation of the 'bite the dust" is from 1750 by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett , in his Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane: "We made two of them bite the dust, and the others betake themselves to flight."

I also found a reference to a much earlier phrase "lick the dust" that is supposed to appear in the Bible.

Samuel Butler's 19th-century translation of Homer's The Iliad contains "Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him." But this is not Homer but Butler's use of the phrase.

And these are not all the euphemistic phrases for death. But we won't get into others like "to punch your ticket" or "meet your maker."

Another source of some interesting origins is Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins by Michael Quinion

Let Them Eat Cake

Right off, Marie-Antoinette didn’t say "Let them eat cake." But someone did.

Marie-Antoinette, born in Vienna in 1755 was the 15th child of Maria Theresa, the Hapsburg empress, and Emperor Francis I.

Her mother betrothed her to Louis-Auguste, grandson of King Louis XV, when she was 10 years old in order to strengthen the alliance between her Hapsburg relatives and the French Bourbons. She meet her future husband the day before they were married when she was 14 and Louis was 15.

The marriage, not surprisingly, was not great for the first years. The young couple had never consummated their marriage after the wedding. Louis XVI and his queen made the marriage official after 7 years together and the first of their four children was born the following year.

They were happy but completely different. He was indecisive, an introvert who preferred to spend his free time alone, reading or metalworking. She was a real queen - a vivacious extrovert she loved parties, gambling, theater and a big spender on amusements.

She had a miniature farm built at Versailles, not to have produce but so that she and her ladies could pretend to be shepherdesses and milkmaids. She would have 300 new gowns a year, and she loved extreme hairstyles.

France was in debt, partly because it was supporting the American Revolution. The monarchy and nobility paid almost no taxes. (Sounds familiar.) Commoners who were hit hard by crop failures and food shortages paid the state's bills.

She became a symbol of what was wrong with the government and everything that was wrong with France. Marie-Antoinette made secret arrangements for her family to flee in 1791, but the plans failed when revolutionaries captured the royal family as they were escaping and they became prisoners of the Revolutionary government.

In 1792, France was declared a republic and the monarchy was abolished. Louis was executed. Marie-Antoinette was accused and convicted of treason and the sexual abuse of her son, and she was beheaded in October 1793.

Marie-Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.” That was penned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, years before Marie-Antoinette ever even came to France. He was describing a queen, but it was another foreign-born French queen, Marie-Therese of Spain, the wife of Louis XIV. But the attitude of that phrase did fit Marie-Antoinette.

The Cobra Effect

The "cobra effect" is the term used for when an attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse. This unintended consequence is often is used to describe environmental, economic and political solutions that work in reverse.

The term "cobra effect" originated when there was still British rule in India. The British government wanted to reduce the number of dangerous, venomous cobra snakes in Delhi. They offered a bounty for every dead cobra. So, people were killing them and collecting the bounty. At first, the idea worked. But some enterprising people began to breed cobras to collect more bounties. The government became aware of this abuse and ended the reward program. The cobra breeders had no use for the snakes and released their stock (though it's not clear why people didn't just kill them while they had them in captivity) and as a result, the wild cobra population further increased.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tried an incentive scheme in 2005 in an effort to greenhouse gases. If a company disposed of polluting gases it would be rewarded with carbon credits that could be converted into cash. The price for the credits was based on how much damage the pollutant was to the environment. The highest credit price went to HFC-23, a byproduct of a common coolant. As with the cobras, companies began to produce more and more of this coolant so that they could destroy more of the HFC-23 byproduct waste gas and get additional credits

This RadioLab program gives many other examples.

May Day, Mayday and SOS

Vulcan and Maia (1585) by Bartholomäus Spranger

First off, the month of May was named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the earlier Roman goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May.

The holiday called May Day falls on the first day of May and it is a chance to celebrate spring moving into summer. Included in the outdoor celebrations is dancing around a maypole. In Wales, this festival was connected to the May Queen (Creiddylad) and the maypole and its dance is a remnant of the old festivities.

May Day is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and today is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated less officially in other countries.

But May Day is not to be confused with the distress call mayday which is used primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organizations such as firefighters, police forces, and transportation organizations also use the term. This term came into English in the early 1900s. It derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me".

The call is always given three times in a row ("Mayday Mayday Mayday") to distinguish an actual Mayday call from a message about a Mayday call. (Making a false distress call in the United States is a federal crime.)

The Mayday call sign originated in 1923 with Frederick Stanley Mockford who was a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. He thought, especially because much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, that "mayday" from the French would be understood by both sides since it was taken from the French m'aider ('help me'), a shortened form of venez m'aider ('come and help me').

While ships can also  issue a mayday radio call, originally the Morse code "SOS" was the more common distress signal. "SOS" does not mean Save Our Souls or Save Our Ship as I was once told. It was adopted in 1905 by German ships for signifying distress. The British working with Marconi radio operators wanted to keep CQD (General Call Disaster though sometimes translated as Come Quick Disaster) as a distress signal.

It was first suggested to use SOE, but the small "E" dot in Morse code can easily be lost. The suggestion was then to use SOS, which was adopted at the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Convention in 1906 as the official international standard for distress calls. The first time the SOS signal was used in an emergency was on June 10, 1909 when the Cunard liner "SS Slavonia" wrecked off the Azores.

Cassandra Complex

Cassandra by 

Evelyn De Morgan - Wikimedia

The Cassandra complex is the name given to a phenomenon where people who predict bad news or warnings are ignored or outright dismissed.

For our origin story, we go back to Greek mythology. Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, the king who reigned over Troy when the Greeks attacked it.

Cassandra was so beautiful that she attracted the attention of the god Apollo, the son of Zeus. He gave her the gift of prophecy, but she refused his attentions. This made Apollo angry and, like all those ancient gods, he took revenge. He cursed Cassandra so that even though she could make truthful prophecies, no one would ever believe her.

In the Old Testament, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Amos were all prophets who tried to warn people of what they saw as wrong in their society. But people didn’t believe them, and they ended up being punished for their prophecies.

The term "Cassandra complex" entered the lexicon in 1949 when a French philosopher discussed the potential for someone to predict future events. This complex has found its way into usage in psychology, the circus, the corporate world, environmentalism and philosophy.

Psychologists use the term "Cassandra complex" to apply to people who suffer feel humiliated because they are never being listened to or believed when they try and explain themselves to other people.

Crank, cranky and crank it up

Sometimes word origins are not very complicated. Such is the case with the English word "crank" (noun) and "cranky" (adjective).

In our modern usage, cranky means describes someone who is irritable or ill tempered.

Etymologically, our use goes back to late 19th century Germany. The German word spelled krank meant to be sick or cross or out of sorts. English speakers anglicized the word and swapped the k for a c and added the -y to make the adjective.

What's the connection to crank meaning the lever used to make a rotary or oscillatory motion to a rotating shaft? None that I can find.

In the early days of automobiles and airplanes, you need to crank the engine to get it started. That handle or propeller turned the crankshaft of the engine and created the initial spark. Much later, when cars no longer needed that hand starting, people began to use the work in phrases such as "crank it up" to mean to kick up or increase something. "Crank up the volume" might still be used, though even that is less likely to mean turning a volume dial, but rather to click a volume icon.

Trojan Horse

In our time, a "Trojan Horse" has come metaphorically to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive wooden horse that led to the fall of the city of Troy

Homer and the Roman poet Virgil wrote about the fall of Troy and the horse, though they didn't explain why the Trojans fell for the trick.

In the Aeneid, Prince Aeneas tells us that his fellow Trojans went out of the city to examine the deserted Greek encampment and found this enormous wooden horse. Was it a gift? Was it something of value that they just didn't want to haul back home?  They did not know it was filled with Greek soldiers. The Trojans were split on what to do with the horse but, at the urging of Thymoetes, they brought the horse into the city.

In Virgil's Aeneid, Book II[7] (trans. A. S. Kline), he tells this:

After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,
opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,
build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas's divine art,
and weave planks of fir over its ribs:
they pretend it's a votive offering: this rumour spreads.
They secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot,
there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the huge
cavernous insides with armed warriors.

Our modern day version of a Trojan horse is usually a malicious computer program which tricks users into willingly running allowing it into their computer or device. This "Trojan horse" (or sometimes simply a "Trojan") is not like a computer virus or worm. Trojans generally do not attempt to inject themselves into other files or otherwise propagate themselves. And the worse part is that the victim allowed the attack to occur.

I suppose our modern Trojans are a form of social engineering, as was the Greek version in that the victims were duped. Today, it might come from opening an email attachment or link that looks friendly or tempts us with a gift or great offer.

Odds-and-ends

Today, we use the phrase "odds-and-ends" to refer to all kinds of miscellaneous or remnant items.

They can be physical objects. "Everyone has an odds-and-ends drawer full of things." 

It can also refer to something non-physical, such as in "I have some odds-and-ends [chores] to take care of this weekend."

an odds-and-ends drawer

The origin of the phrase goes back to the mid-sixteenth century when the idiom "odd ends" referred to the leftover scrap materials from making something, such as the fragments of cloth or lumber from a project.

Freudian slips

"Freudian slip" is the phrase used to describe a usually embarrassing slip of the tongue. They are beyond simply using the wrong word in that we interpret them to be revealing of our innermost thoughts or unconscious feelings.

If someone said that they were interested in "watching that new show on TV" but actually said that they were interested in "watching that new snow on TV," I don't think anyone would read any psychological meaning into it.

But in 1988, when then Vice-President, George H.W Bush gave a speech on live television and said “We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex… uh… setbacks” the audience did think there was something else going on.

The Freudian slip is named after the father of psychoanalysis and lover of symbols, Sigmund Freud. In his 1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, he described and analyzed many  seemingly trivial, bizarre, or nonsensical errors and slips patients had made. Freud believed that it was our unconscious mind that unlocked our behaviors and, like dreams, slips of the tongue revealed those hidden thoughts.

Freud referred to these slips as Fehlleistungen meaning "faulty actions", "faulty functions" or "misperformances" in German. The Greek term parapraxes from Greek παρά (para), meaning 'another' + πρᾶξις (praxis), meaning 'action') was a term created by Freud's English translator, as is the form "symptomatic action."

A lot of what Freud believed has fallen out of favor in psychology, and there are people who now believe that many cases of Freudian slips are really more indicators of the way language is formed in the brain rather than unconscious thoughts slipping out.

The Austrian linguist Rudolf Meringer, a contemporary of Freud, also collected verbal mistakes, and concluded that most slips of the tongue were from mixing up the letters, not the actual words.

When Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech about education and said  “Our national interest ought to be to encourage the breast - the best - and brightest,” was that his unconscious speaking or an example of a "forward error" when the "r" sound from forward in the sentence in "brightest" changed "best" to "breast"? Judge for yourself.