08 March 2021
Gin Blossoms
01 March 2021
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.
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.
22 February 2021
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."
18 February 2021
toady
Have you ever heard someone called a toady? It means someone who flatters excessive, probably in order to gain favor.
I always thought it was an odd word. Could it have any connection to a toad? That seemed unlikely.
Surprisingly, there is a connection to the amphibian. Back in the 17th-century in Europe, there were people known as toadeaters. They worked with magicians, showmen and charlatans. As an assistant, one of their jobs was to eat - or at least fake that they were eating - what the audience was told was a poisonous toad or frog. The entertainer (who might also have been selling cures) would then save the assistant by purging the poison from the toadeater.
These assistants who would do anything to make the charlatan look good became symbols of someone who was very subservient to another. A "toadeater" became the term for a sycophant or any obsequious underling. In the early 1800s, it was shortened to toady and by the middle of that century toady was also being used as a verb meaning "to engage in sycophancy."
26 January 2021
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Super Bowl LV (55) in 2021 will be played in Tampa, Florida.
We have already written about the Kansas City Chiefs here,
so today we add their opponent, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, and they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division.
They were an NFL expansion team in 1976, along with the Seattle Seahawks. In their first season, they played in the AFC West division and prior to the 1977 season, Tampa Bay switched conferences and divisions with Seattle, becoming a member of the NFC Central division. Then during the 2002 league realignment, the Buccaneers joined three former NFC West teams to form the NFC South.
The team name of "Buccaneers" was selected early in 1975. The name was said to be reminiscent of José Gaspar and the Buccaneers of the Caribbean. Gaspar (AKA Gasparilla) is an apocryphal Spanish pirate and the "Last of the Buccaneers." According to legend, he sailed and plundered across the Gulf of Mexico and the Spanish Main from his base in southwest Florida.
The term buccaneer was taken from the Spanish bucanero and derives from the Caribbean Arawak word buccan, a wooden frame on which Tainos and Caribs slowly roasted or smoked meat. From it derived the French word boucane and from that, the closely sounding boucanier was used to describe French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola. The English colonists anglicized the word as buccaneer.
The nickname "Bucs" quickly became popular (but not the variation of "Bay Bucs").
The team's original colors were green, orange, and white. Orange represented the Florida citrus industry. The green was quickly dropped as being too similar to the teal used by the Miami Dolphins and the greens used by the college Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M. Red was added as an accent color. Some people say it is a nod to the University of Tampa Spartans and loosely, to the Florida State Seminoles. The orange/red/white combination was now a composite of all major college teams in the state at the time.
Shortly after the franchise was awarded, in February 1975 the team name of "Buccaneers" was selected. The name was said to be reminiscent of José Gaspar and the Buccaneers of the Caribbean Sea, and the color orange representing the Florida citrus industry. Almost immediately, the nickname "Bucs" became popular, but the alternative "Bay Bucs" failed to gain traction.
History of the team logo - via Wikimedia |
A few months later, however, green was dropped from the color scheme. The artists' renditions were too similar to the teal used by the Miami Dolphins, as well as the green shades utilized by the Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M. While they desired to keep the primary color orange, which provided a popular visual link to the Gators, Hurricanes, and Rattlers, they sought to further distinguish themselves. The color red as an accent color was substituted, as a gesture to the former Tampa Spartans and loosely, to the Florida State Seminoles. The orange/red/white combination was now a composite of all major college teams in the state at the time.
There was a conscious effort to distinguish the team's branding from the other NFL "pirate" team, the Raiders. The Bucs would beat the Raiders by a score of 48–21 in Super Bowl XXXVII, nicknamed 'The Pirate Bowl'.
20 January 2021
Peace symbol
The V hand sign |
15 January 2021
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
11 January 2021
Unicorn (finance)
One of the Unicorn Tapestries, c. 1495–1505 (The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) Public Domain, Link |
When most people think of a UNICORN, they imagine the legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
But "unicorn" also refers to many other more modern usages. One of the nhe newest comes from the world of finance.
A unicorn is a term in the business world to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee. He chose the name because he was equating the mythical creature with a statistical rarity of such a successful ventures.
Since then, "decacorn" has come to mean those companies over $10 billion in value and "hectocorn" is used to describe a company valued over $100 billion.
When Lee originally coined the term, there were only 39 companies that were considered unicorns, but the rarity of unicorns has decreased as the number of them increases.
In 2018 alone, 16 U.S. companies became unicorns, resulting in 119 private companies worldwide valued at $1 billion or more. As of this writing, six out of the top ten most valuable unicorns are based in China.
Top ten largest unicorns overall.
- Ant Financial – China
- ByteDance – China
- DiDi – China
- SpaceX – USA
- Stripe – USA
- Lufax – China
- JUUL Labs – USA
- Cainiao – China
- Palantir Technologies – USA
- Kuaishou – China
05 January 2021
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys, Club Citta Kawasaki, Japan, Check Your Head tour, 1992 - via Wikimedia |
Such is the case with BEASTIE BOYS who, according to Michael Diamond, is an acronym with BEASTIE stands for Boys Entering Anarchistic Stages Towards Internal Excellence. Of course, that means the "boys" part is repeated.
21 December 2020
Is It Autumn or Fall?
It has felt like winter here in New Jersey for weeks although the winter solstice made it official today (December 21). As trees have lost their color and their leaves and then were hit with killing frosts and ice. As we enter winter, I asked myself today why the autumn season is sometimes called "fall." Is it just because leaves fall from trees?
The word autumn is derived from Latin autumnus, with connotations of the passing of the year. After the Greek era, the word continued to be used as the Old French word autompne (automne in modern French) or autumpne in Middle English,[18] and was later normalised to the original Latin.
There are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century, it was in common use. Before the 16th century, "harvest" was the term usually used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day (cf. Dutch herfst, German Herbst and Scots hairst).
A change occurred as the majority of people moved from working the land to living in towns. The harvest itself was removed from their daily life and came to refer more to the time of year rather than the activity of reaping crops.
The alternative word for the season,"fall," also has roots in old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear. Possibilities include the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall. They seem like good origins but these words mean "to fall from a height" and not seasons or times of the year.
The most likely explanation is that the term derived in 16th-century England as a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year".
With the peak of 17th century English emigration to the British colonies in North America, "fall" as a season was popularized though it was gradually becoming nearly obsolete in Britain.
17 December 2020
ZZ Top
Poster from a film about the band |
First is that they took their name from the names of other bluesmen. Gibbons noticed that some performers they admired used initials. Gibbons particularly liked B.B. King and Z. Z. Hill and thought of combining the two into "ZZ King."
A second popular story online is that they got their name by combining the names Zig Zag and Top, two well-known brands of "cigarette" rolling papers. This explanation is the only one that explains both parts of the name.
According to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 radio show, they chose the name because they wanted to be listed last alphabetically in names of bands and in record stores racks. I thought bands wanted to be listed first?
And a fourth origin story is that the ZZ is what you see in the boards of two classic American barn doors when they are closed. This seems unlikely - and the barns near me have X X on the doors.
ZZ Top - Greatest Hits
Tres Hombres
Rancho Texicano: The Very Best of ZZ Top
28 October 2020
pen and pencil
Montblanc Marc Newson Ballpoint Pen |
I would have guessed that "pen" and "pencil" would have the same origin story, but they do not.