panegyric

I like to learn something new when I'm reading. In a poem, that might be a new word. Such was the case in reading a poem titled A Short Panegyric. I never heard of a panegyric.  

It is a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something. In the poem, it is in praise of meat.

The word comes from early 17th century French panégyrique, via Latin from Greek panēgurikos ‘of public assembly’, from pan ‘all’ + aguris ‘agora, assembly’.

That prose poem in praise of returning to meat-eating after an absence is:

Now that the vegetarian nightmare is over and we are back to

our diet of meat and deep in the sway of our dark and beautiful

habits and able to speak with calm of having survived, let the

breeze of the future touch and retouch our large and hungering
bodies. Let us march to market to embrace the butcher and
put the year of the carrot, the month of the onion behind us,
let us worship the roast or the stew that takes its place once
again at the sacred center of the dining room table.

"A Short Panegyric" by Mark Strand, from Almost Invisible

Kemosabe and Tonto

Originally a radio drama, The Lone Ranger first aired in 1933 and ran through 1954. It featured the adventures of a mysterious masked man who traveled the West with his faithful Native American companion Tonto and his white horse Silver, righting wrongs.

It became a book series and then a very successful television series, which ran from 1949 to 1957.

Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger riding Silver and
Jay Silverheels as Tonto riding Scout, 1956

Kemosabe (Ke-mo sah-bee) is the term that was used by Tonto on the TV and radio programs in addressing his partner the Lone Ranger.

Native American writer Sherman Alexie, who is of Coeur D'Alene descent, has said that kemosabe means “idiot” in Apache. “They were calling each other 'idiot' all those years,” he told an interviewer in 1996, a few years after the publication of his story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

It’s more complicated and there is no conclusive evidence as to its true definition or its roots. Series creator Fran Striker himself never explained it. Most people interpreted it to mean “faithful friend or trusty scout,” and this is the most common interpretation. The Yale Book of Quotations cites a boys’ camp in Mullet Lake, Mich., named Ke Mo Sah Bee, and on separate occasions, Striker’s son and daughter each suggested this might be where the show got it from. 

To further complicate matters, "tonto" is a Spanish word that means stupid, foolish; idiot, or fool. Tonto's tribal identification is ambiguous. On the radio series, he was reportedly described as a Potawatomi though that tribe did not live in the southwest, where the show is set.

In the most recent film adaptation of the series, Johnny Depp is still Tonto and still says things like, “Justice is what I seek, kemosabe.”

Chauvinist

Image: Gerd Altmann

Nobody likes a chauvinist. Chauvinism is the unreasonable belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people. 

In English, the word has come to be used in some quarters as shorthand for male chauvinism. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary begins its first example of the use of the term chauvinism with "an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex. But it can also be described as a form of extreme patriotism and nationalism.

The word is said to be an eponym dating back to the 1840s. Nicholas Chauvin was a French soldier who glorified Napoleon and exhibited extreme ultra-nationalism, viewing the French as superior to all others. Then again, I also found that Nicholas Chauvin may never have actually existed. he may have been a fictional character, invented to inspire patriotism.

Until the 20th century, the term “male chauvinism” had not been used to describe sexism — as in men believing they are superior to women. This is the definition that stuck, and the “male” part of the term was eventually dropped.

Female chauvinism is the belief that women are superior to men. Feminist Betty Friedan observed that "...the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class is [...] female chauvinism." In the book Female Chauvinist Pigs, it is argued that many young women in the United States and beyond are replicating male chauvinism and older misogynist stereotypes.