06 July 2016

Wang Chung



Wang Chung are an English new wave musical group formed in 1980. Their biggest U.S. hits were between 1983 and 1987: "Dance Hall Days" (1984), "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" (1986) and "Let's Go!" (1987).

Jeremy Ryder, known professionally as "Jack Hues" (vocalist/guitarist) and Nick Feldman (bassist) were the core of Wang Chung. Along with other musicians, they started as The Intellektuals.
That band lasted less than a year, and next was a new lineup called 57 Men. This incarnation lasted for a about a year and a half and after a few more musician changes they reformed as Huang Chung.

I could not find an origin story for that name change. I found no Chinese connections, but it means "yellow bell" in Chinese (黃鐘, pinyin: huáng zhōng). More on point, it is the first note in the Chinese classical music scale.

When they signed with Geffen Records, it was suggested that they change the spelling to a more phonetic Wang Chung to make it easier for English-speakers. Apparently, they were being called "Hung Chung."




At the moment of this posting, the www.wangchung.com website is down and out.

Wang Chung - Wikipedia

15 June 2016

Mum's the Word

A WWII poster using the phrase

“Seal up your lips, and give no words but mum.”  - Henry VI (1:2)

A friend used the expression “mum’s the word” and it made me wonder about its origin. I guessed that "mum" might be some British reference to mother, although the connection to being quiet was not there, other than -mother telling you to be quiet. In its usage, the phrase always seems to have a secretive association.

The expression dates from about 1700, but mum, which means “silence,” is much older. That goes back to around 1350 and the Middle English word momme for silence.

It might also be derived from the "mummer," a person who does pantomime and acts without saying anything.

There is a phonetically similar German word "stumm" (Old High German "stum", Latin "mutus") meaning "silent, mute".

We use the phrase as a request or warning to say nothing, often to not reveal a secret.




10 June 2016

mortarboard


I wrote earlier about why the graduation ceremony is called a commencement, but today I'm thinking about why that graduation cap is called (in the U.S. nyway) a mortarboard.

This is worn at colleges and by high school pupils during the presentation of their diplomas.

The square academic cap, graduate cap, cap, is called a mortarboard because of its similarity in appearance to the hawk used by bricklayers to hold mortar so that they can use a trowel to scoop it.

It is also called, outside the U.S. an Oxford cap. Think of the horizontal square (mortar)board as being fixed upon a skull-cap. We do call it in conjunction with an academic gown, a "cap and gown."

I also found this cap called a square, trencher, and corner-cap. The cap, gown and sometimes a hood, are now the customary uniform of a university graduate, in many parts of the world, following a British model.

Just this past week, I saw several news items about opposition to different color gowns for males and females that is sometimes part of the ceremony, especially in high schools. The issue of equality and transgender students has brought it to the point of controversy.

But the mortarboard remains the mortarboard.

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The mortarboard is generally believed by scholars[who?] to have developed from the biretta, a similar-looking hat worn by Roman Catholic clergy. The biretta itself may have been a development of the Roman pileus quadratus, a type of skullcap with superposed square and tump (meaning small mound). A reinvention of this type of cap is known as the Bishop Andrewes cap.[7]:22–23 The Italian biretta is a word derived from berretto, which is derived itself from the Latin birrus and the Greek pyrros, both meaning "red." The cone-shaped red (seldom in black) biretta, related to the ancient Etruscan tutulus and the Roman pileus, was used in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to identify humanists, students, artists, and learned and blooming youth in general. The shape and the colour conveyed meaning: Red was considered for a long time the royal power, whether because it was difficult to afford vestments of such solid and brilliant dye or because the high symbolic meaning of blood and life, thus the power over life and death.


In US graduation ceremonies, the side on which the tassel hangs can be important. Sometimes it is consistent among all students throughout the ceremony, in other cases it differs based on level of study with undergraduate students wearing the tassel on the right, and graduate student wearing them on the left. In some ceremonies, the student wears the tassel on one side until reception of the diploma; then it is switched to the other.

At the secondary school level, the tassel is usually either the school's primary colour or a mix of the school's colours with as many as three colors in a tassel. Sometimes a tassel of a distinctive colour, such as gold, is worn by those graduating with Latin Honours (i.e. cum laude) or on the "honour roll".

Universities in the United States might use tassels in black or the school's colors, usually for higher degrees.

For bachelor's degrees the tassel may be colored differently from the traditional black or school colors to represent the field (or one as closely related as possible) in which the wearer obtained his or her education. In 1896 most colleges and universities in the United States adopted a uniform code governing academic dress. The tassel may be adorned with a charm in the shape of the digits of the year.

Doctorate holders of some universities wear the mortarboard, although the round Tudor bonnet is more common in Britain. The 4, 6, or 8 cornered "tam" is gaining popularity in the US, and in general a soft square tam has some acceptance for women as a substitute for the hard 'square'.

30 May 2016

Snake Oil


Once upon a time there were bottles of snake oil. Now, it exists only in a figurative sense.

Historically, snake oil came to America via the Chinese laborers who were building the transcontinental railroad. For them, snake oil was a traditional folk liniment used to treat joint and muscle pain that actually had a connection to snakes (venom).

Rival American "medicine" salesmen used the term generically for things marketed as miraculous remedies whose ingredients were usually secret, and it was definitely a negative term.

Some of that snake oil and those other "medicines" were effective, though it might have been a placebo effect. But that's true of many modern quick cures too.

23 May 2016

Shoot the Moon


"Shoot the moon" is an English idiom. A hundred years ago, it was similar to the phrases "bolt the moon" or "a moonlight flit" or even the older "shove the moon" which are now obsolete. It meant to remove one’s household goods by "the light of the moon" in order to avoid paying the rent or to avoid one’s creditors. This British expression also applied to other stealthy departures or a related action to sneak, abscond, take flight without meeting one’s responsibilities.

Today, when someone says that someone will "shoot the moon" is to go for everything or nothing. It is similar to the phrases "to go for broke,""to go whole hog," and "to pull out all stops." In all cases, one would take a great risk.

The idiom suggests that there is as much of a chance of success as there is shooting (a bullet, arrow etc.) and hitting the Moon.

 the moon with a arrow or rifle bullet – set one’s sights high and trying for something that one wants badly, but for which realistically the probability of success is not good.

"Shoot the moon"comes from the card game ‘hearts.’ Hearts is a point-based game and most of the time the goal is to acquire the least number of hearts possible. But if you choose to risk shooting the moon and wins all the hearts and the queen of spades in the course of play, you can deliver a crushing blow to their opponents. However, if this move fails, you put yourself in an almost irrecoverable position.

I'm not a card player and I came upon the term through a 1982 movie Shoot the Moon starring Albert Finney and Diane Keaton.It's a good but depressing film about a marriage falling apart. The director, Alan Parker, is British and the film's writer, Bo Goldman, is American, so I'm not sure if the old British or modern definition applies to the film. The husband would like to skip out on his marriage. Is it about a time in the marriage when it's "all or nothing?"  Unclear to me.