à la mode

Traditional pie à la mode - vanilla ice cream on apple pie.

I had a recent argument with two colleagues about pie à la mode. We did not agree on whether or not the ice cream can be placed beside the pie, and we disagreed on whether or not flavors other than vanilla are acceptable. (FYI: I say yes to both of those.)

But we might also ask why is a dessert with ice cream called à la mode?

Therefore, I was delighted to see that the lofty Oxford Dictionary folks did a post on that last question.

The New York Times credits the spread of this term to Charles Watson Townsend. His 1936 obituary reported that after ordering ice cream with his pie at the Cambridge Hotel, in the village of Cambridge, New York, around 1896, a neighboring diner asked him what this wonder was called. “Pie à la mode,” Townsend replied. When Townsend subsequently requested this dessert at the famous Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City, the staff had no idea what it was. Townsend inquired why such a fashionable venue had never heard of pie à la mode. Bien sûr, the dessert found its way onto Delmonico’s menu and requests for it soon spread.

The French expression translates simply as "in a style or fashion" and, when it came to food, it referred to a traditional recipe for braised beef, which at one time was considered a new fashion.

Oxford says that there was also some evidence that John Gieriet of Switzerland had previously invented the dessert in 1885 while proprietor of the Hotel La Perl in Duluth, Minnesota, where he served the ice cream with warm blueberry pie.

vagina

The Online Etymology Dictionary defines vagina (n.) as the "sexual passage of the female from the vulva to the uterus."  But that is a modern medical use of the word. The word in Latin was not used in an anatomical sense in classical times.

Originally the word meant a "sheath, scabbard, covering; sheath of an ear of grain, hull, husk" (plural vaginae), from wag-ina- (cognates: Lithuanian vožiu "ro cover with a hollow thing"), from root wag- "to break, split, bite."  This probably was most commonly thought of as a sheath made from a split piece of wood to hold and protect a knife or sword blade.

As this illustration shows, both the sheath opening's shape and the sexual connotation of the sword entering the sheath probably led to the more modern anatomical usage.

Sheath for a sword showing a shape similar to the anatomical vagina

In the 1680s, medical Latin began to use the term in the anatomical sense that we know it today.

rubric

The word rubric has at least four applications:
a heading on a document.
a direction in a liturgical book as to how a church service should be conducted.
a statement of purpose or function

The application I see and use most often is an academic usage: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests.

The word rubric has origins in late Middle English rubrish which was the original way to refer to a heading, section of text. Earlier Old French rubriche had the same meaning and came from the Latin rubrica (terra, red clay or ink as in the red ocher/ochre color).

Medieval printers had few ways to give emphasis to text on headings and the first character of a paragraph. Illuminated manuscripts could be quite elaborate and beautiful, but fonts were not standardized and there was no italic or bold.  That left them to use color.

Ochre is a naturally occurring pigment from certain clay deposits containing iron oxides, used since prehistoric times to give color to dyes, paints and inks. Ochre colors are yellow, brown, red and purple. The most common in printing colored text was red ochre. In Latin, red ochre is rubrica and that is the origin of the word rubric as these red emphasized headings. (Scholars who penned manuscripts in red ink were known as rubricians.)

Take this a bit further in the many religious texts that were reproduced. Those texts, used by clergy, included a kind of "stage directions" for the clergy reading. These were printed in red while the text for the congregation was printed in black ink. This gave an additional meaning to the red rubric writing as instructional text.

As universities are created and books become more commonly used, scholars grading student papers would use red ink to leave instructions, suggestions and corrections on student papers. The practice has survived, although in some educational settings it is frowned on.

kill (body of water)

Looking across the Arthur Kill from Perth Amboy, NJ to Harbortown, NY

I was reading an article about my home area of New York / New Jersey and it alluded to a body of water known as the Arthur Kill. I've seen the term before and never really questioned it, knowing it as simply some kind of waterway.

A kill is similar to a creek. The word comes from the Middle Dutch kille, meaning "riverbed" or "water channel". It is logical then that we find the term used in areas of Dutch influence.

You will find it used to describe waterways in the Delaware and Hudson Valleys and other areas of the former New Netherland colony of Dutch America. Beside the Arthur Kill (separating NJ from NY's Staten Island), you find the Kill Van Kull, Dutch Kills and English Kills off Newtown Creek, Bronx Kill between the Bronx and Randalls Island.

It also shows up in names of rivers - the Wallkill River in New York and New Jersey and the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, and in Delaware the spooky-sounding Murderkill River, the Broadkill River, and a river made for a mystery story, the Whorekill River.

The word can't quite escape its English murder and death  association. For example, beside the Arthur Kill is a place known as the "Graveyard of Ships."

The Fresh Kills waterway goes to what was formerly the Fresh Kills landfill. Twenty years ago, it had the dubious honor of being the largest landfill in the world.

The term "kill" is also used in some geographic places and towns: the Catskill Mountains, the city of Peekskill, the town of Fishkill, New York, and the hamlet of Wynantskill, New York.

Arthur Kill area - NJ to the left

The Funny Bone

Ever hit your "funny bone"? It's not funny. It hurts.

And it's not a bone either.

What is known as the funny bone is actually a nerve - the ulnar nerve - that runs from your neck all the way to the hand. Commonly, people will whack their elbow on something and the pain will radiate along that path right down to your pinkie and ring finger.

Our nerves are shielded in most cases by bones, muscles and/or ligaments. That is true of the ulnar too EXCEPT at the point where it passes the elbow through a channel called the cubital tunnel. The only protection there is skin and fat, so it is quite vulnerable.

A decent bump there on the corner of some furniture hits the nerve against bone and sends some pain down the forearm and hand.

So, why call it a "funny bone"?

There seems to be a two-part answer. The ulnar nerve runs along a bone called the humerus (homonym for "humorous") and at one time it may have been believed that it was that bone that was reacting.

It might also be that "funny" was used in its non-humorous sense of "odd" as in having a funny feeling about something.