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.

catfishing , catfisting, and noodling

Catfishing is a type of deceptive activity where a person creates a sock puppet social networking presence, or fake identity on a social network account, usually targeting a specific victim for abuse, deception or fraud. (not to be confused with catfisting- see below)

Catfishing is often employed for romance scams on dating websites. Catfishing may be used for financial gain, to compromise a victim in some way, or simply as a form of trolling or wish fulfillment.

That sockpuppet online identity is used for purposes of deception. The term comes from a simple hand puppet made from a sock that is easily manipulated.

Although some sources state that the modern term originated from the 2010 American documentary Catfish, the term has actually been around in the English language for decades. It was used in Arthur Crudup's "My Momma Don't Allow Me" back in 1944.

But Catfish, the documentary film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, definitely made the term common in popular culture.

The film follows a young man, Nev, who is being filmed by his brother and friend while he tries to build a romantic relationship with a young woman. Nev is using Facebook.

The film led to an MTV reality TV series, Catfish: The TV Show that centered on the lives of others who have been caught up in online relationships.

The focus of the film is Yaniv (Nev) Schulman who helps other people investigate possible catfish attempts and the motives behind the people who use fake identities to build relationships with online users

One unlikely origin for the term catfish is that fishermen would put sea catfish in with their catch of cod to nip at their tails and keep them active during overseas transport in order that the cod be fresher.

In the popular media, the case of the University of Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o in 2013, and the Rolling Stone article about a University of Virginia rape that turned out to be a hoax may have been an example of catfishing.

Catfisting (more commonly called noodling) may also be part of the origin of the catfishing con usage. This quite literal practice is fishing for catfish by using one's bare hands. It is more popular in the southern United States where catfish are more popular for eating and more common.

You put your hand inside a discovered catfish hole and wait for the aggressive catfish to grab hold of it, and then you pull it out of the water. Yes, it can be dangerous. I suppose there is a kind of deception in this technique. Do catfish think they have just grabbed some odd hand and arm fish?

Halloween

A cemetery set for All Hallows Day, which is religious - but looks quite Halloween creepy.

Everyone knows Halloween, the holiday, but I'm surprised how few people know the origin of the word (also written as Hallowe'en) which dates to about 1745. It is of Christian origin, though Christian churches often consider the holiday to be not holy at all and more of a pagan celebration.

To hallow is "to make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate".The adjective form is hallowed, which appears in "The Lord's Prayer" ("hallowed be thy name"), means holy, consecrated, sacred, or revered.

The noun form hallow, as used in Hallowtide, is a synonym of the word saint. The noun is from the Old English adjective hālig, "holy." The Gothic word for "holy" is either hailags or weihaba, weihs.

In modern English usage, the noun "hallow" appears mostly in the compounds Hallowtide Hallowmas and Halloween. Hallowtide and Hallowmas are lesser known. Hallowtide is a liturgical season that includes the days of Halloween and Hallowmas.

And now, the many variations to further confuse us.

Halloween/Hallowe'en is a shortened form of "All Hallow Even(ing)," meaning "All Hallows' Eve" or "All Saints' Eve."

Hallowmas is the day after Halloween and it is shortened from "Hallows' Mass," and is also known as "All Hallows' Day" or "All Saints' Day."

So, the word "Hallowe'en" means "Saints' evening" and it comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve. In Scots, the word "eve" is "even" and this is contracted to e'en or een.

Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en evolved into Hallowe'en.

Hapless

When I was teaching in a middle school and asked students to define words, I often received useless definitions. Asked to define "hapless," someone would inevitably say "without hap"

Hapless could be defined as "having no luck." 

"Does hap mean luck?" a student might then ask.

My hapless (unfortunate) students did not want to dig down into words, which was why I eventually began to teach etymologies for words I thought would be interesting to dissect.

Hapless literally does mean "without hap," and "hap" is another word for fortune or luck. Hap derives from an Old Norse word for "good luck." That word is also the source of our happen and happy.

There are other English words that might be more likely used to describe those lacking good fortune: ill-starred, ill-fated, unlucky, and luckless. My young students would probably prefer "luckless" which clearly means without luck.

"No one knows what a hap is," they would tell me.

"But now YOU know," I would reply. "Next word: smug."

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.

Bad English

       

Bad English was an English/American band that was considered a "supergroup." They combined hard rock with some glam and a bit of metal.

The formed in 1987 and reunited Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain with singer John Waite and bassist Ricky Phillips who were his former bandmates in The Babys, along with Journey guitarist Neal Schon and drummer Deen Castronovo.

The band's name has nothing to do with poor language skills but comes from pool (billiards). The band was playing and when Waite missed a shot Cain said that he had "bad english" referring to the spin a player puts on the cue ball. The band decided to use the phrase.

         

Autumn and Fall

The words "autumn" and "fall" meaning the season that begins today in the Northern Hemisphere both originated in Britain, but one is more commonly used there while the other is more common in America. By the mid-1800s, "fall" was considered to be the  American season by lexicographers.

Autumn is the older word. It came into English in the 1300s from the Latin word autumnus.

At one time there was an intermediary season preceding our autumn that was called "harvest." It seems that autumn came into usage to distinguish between the time when one harvests crops and the actual crop harvest itself.

Writers, especially poets, wrote about the seasonal colors of this time and the phrase "the fall of the leaves" came into more common usage. That phrase was shortened sometime in the 1600s to "fall." This coincides with English moving across the ocean with explorers and settlers to the New World. But both words must have been used in the New World as they were in Britain because "fall" for the season doesn't appear until 1755 when Samuel Johnson added it to his Dictionary of the English Language.

Fall is still occasionally used in countries where British English is spoken, but more likely in phrases, like "spring and fall." American though I may be, I prefer autumn, since it is used to mark the Autumnal Equinox.

Pucks and Puckish

"Puckish" is an adjective that means impish or whimsical. We might describe someone as having "puckish humor."

the adjective has its origin with a character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck is "that merry wanderer of the night." He is a shape-shifter and mischief-maker. He answers to the king of the fairies.

By KCBalletMedia - Puck, CC BY 2.0, Link

William Shakespeare didn't totally invent the character who existed in Engish folklore. The traditional version of Puck was more malicious than the whimsical Shakespearean comedy character. The older Puck was more of an evil spirit or demon.

Back in Medieval England, this hobgoblin was known as the puke or pouke.  (No etymological connect to modern English "puke.") Those Medieval names go back to the Old Norse pūki, meaning "devil."

Shakespeare's much lighter Puck has stuck over the years and became the adjective that was appearing regularly in English texts in the 1800s.

We also have the hockey puck disk made of rubber that serves the same function in hockey as a ball does in ball games. This origin is more obscure. It may be related related to the verb to puck (poke) used in the game of hurling for striking or pushing the ball.

The shape of the sports puck is the origin for several other uses of the word.

A puck is also a graphics tablet accessory that is mouse-like and resembles the hockey puck and can detect absolute position and rotation.

The coffee grounds inside an espresso machine portafilter are also called a puck, because of its shape.

It is also sometimes used to describe a kind of a hard shaving soap that is used with a shaving brush and also resembles the hockey puck shape.

Velcro

Here's another generic trademark post. Did you realize that it was back in 1958 that Velcro was patented? It was invented by George de Mestral, an electrical engineer from Switzerland who applied for his first patent when he was 12 years old, for a model airplane.

While on a hunting trip, he hiked through patches of burdock, a thistly plant that spreads its spiny seeds by latching them onto anything or anyone passing by. Back home he was picking the burs off his dog’s coat and his own clothes and got curious about how they so effectively attached to surfaces.

a hook and loop fastener generically called velcro

Under a microscope, he saw that each bristle was a tiny hook that was able to catch in the loops of clothing. It took him 10 years to get his hook and loop working by being sewn to nylon. There were hundreds of loops per inch and the initial production was slow and inefficient.

That is the origin story for the product. The word's origin is the combination (a portmanteau) of the beginnings of two French words velour, meaning "velvet" and crochet meaning "hook."

Velcro BVBA is a privately held company that produces fasteners and other products. It is the original patentor of the hook-and-loop fastener. Like other companies, it is not thrilled that their original product has been attached to generic products that are called "velcro."

Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains (abbreviated as AIC) is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington. It was formed in 1987 by guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who later recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. They are associated with grunge music, although they also can be considered as heavy metal.

The band took its name from Staley's earlier group. That band was a glam metal band, Alice N' Chains. That band formed in 1986 had wanted to change their name to Alice in Chains, but there were concerns that the reference to female bondage would hurt the band, so they chose to spell it as Alice N' Chains. Staley's bandmates had also briefly considered the name Alice in Wonderland but settled on the version that could be interpreted as Alice IN Chains or Alice IN Chains in its pronunciation.

One humorous but unfounded origin rumor I found was that they were named after a lost episode from The Brady Bunch series which had a major character named Alice.

       

Pseudonyms: Rappers

I have written before about pseudonyms. The use of these "stage names" is a very common practice amongst music rappers.

Here are some of the better-known ones.

The origins are sometimes obvious, sometimes not obvious. For example, Eminem began rapping at age 14 with his friend Mike Ruby using the pseudonyms "Manix" for Ruby and "M&M" for Marshall Mathers III initials.  "M&M" evolved into "Eminem."

A less obvious origin is that of "50 Cent" adopted by Curtis James Jackson III. Jackson adopted the nickname "50 Cent" as a metaphor for change. The name was used earlier by Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn robber known as "50 Cent." Jackson said he chose it "because it says everything I want it to say. I'm the same kind of person 50 Cent was. I provide for myself by any means."

Andre 3000 ............... Andre Benjamin
Busta Rhymes ............... Trevor Smith
Cee-Lo .................. Thomas Calloway
Common .............. Lonnie Rashid Lynn
DMX ...................... Earl Simmons
Foxy Brown ............... Inga Marchand
The Game .................. Jayceon Taylor
Ghostface Killah ............. Dennis Coles
Grandmaster Flash .......... Joseph Saddler
Ice Cube .................. O’Shea Jackson
Ice-T ....................... Tracy Morrow
Ja Rule ...................... Jeffrey Atkins
Jay-Z ...................... Shawn Carter
KRS-One .....................Kris Parker
Lil’ Kim ....................Kimberly Jones
LL Cool J ............... James Todd Smith
Ludacris ............... Christopher Bridges
Mos Def .................... Dante Smith
Notorious BIG ......... Christopher Wallace
Snoop Dogg ...............Calvin Broadus
T.I......................Clifford Harris Jr.

Ad-lib

Ad-lib is one of the most common Latin phrases used in English. Ad-lib is the shortened version of "ad libitum" which is Latin for "at one's pleasure" or "as you desire." Sometimes it is translated as meaning "at liberty" simply because of that "lib" syllable, but that is not an accurate translation.

The most common use in drama when used to describe times in performance when a performer uses words not found in the text. (When the entire performance is spontaneous and unscripted it is called improvisation.) This occurs on the live stage, in films, on television and frequently in situations such as the conversations on talk-shows, news, podcasts etc.

Larry David's HBO series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, is often pointed to as an example of ad-lib drama. The show can also be said to use "retroscripting." The series also has created its own collection of words and phrases, as noted in the video shown here.

Less well known is its use as a direction in sheet music where "ad libitum" indicates that the performer or conductor has one of a variety of types of discretion with respect to a given passage.

Ad libitum is also used in psychology and biology to refer to the "free-feeding" weight of an animal when the animal eats as it wishes rather than its weight on a restricted diet.

Boilerplate

NASA engineers inspect and test a boilerplate Mercury space capsule.
Image: NASA on The Commons

You will sometimes hear material referred to as being "boilerplate."

In my own academic work, it is sometimes used to describe a general statement, such as a grading policy, used as a starting place that teachers can modify to their needs, or sometimes, it is used "as is."

I have also heard it used to describe standardized pieces of text for contracts, and as a portion of a computer program. As the illustration above shows, it can also be used to describe a non-textual object.

In newspaper publishing, before the days of digital printing. There was syndicated material supplied to smaller newspapers in a printing plate form. This was particularly true for weekly newspapers who could use these feature stories, editorials, etc. supplied by large publishing syndicates. Rather than having to set type for the story, it was delivered on metal plates with the type already in place. They were given the name "boiler plates" because they looked like the plating used in making steam boilers.

The word "boilerplate" was used to refer to the printed material on the plates as well as to the plates themselves. Boilerplate stories were often more considered "filler" than hard news, and so the the word acquired a negative connotation. Some modern dictionaries will list its meaning as including the sense of boilerplate being hackneyed, unoriginal or clichéd writing that expresses a generally accepted opinion or belief.

You will also still find it meaning the rolled steel used for making boilers. And a more specialized meaning, as used in climbing, is to describe smooth, overlapping and undercut slabs of rock.