Sun Dogs

Sun dogs seen at sunset and close-up of one

This summer I encountered my first "sun dogs." I didn't know the name for this atmospheric phenomenon at the time. It wasn't a rainbow, but rather two circular "prisms" with a halo around them to the right and left of the setting sun.

My photos here don't do it justice. I posted them online and someone clued me in to the name.

These pairs of bright spots on either horizontal side on the Sun, often co-occurring with a luminous ring/halo are called sun dogs (or sundogs, mock suns or phantom suns) but are known to scientists as parhelia (singular parhelion).

They are one kind of halo created by light interacting with ice crystals in the atmosphere. Despite that ice requirement, they can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright. Sun dogs are best seen and are most conspicuous when the Sun is close to the horizon.

In searching online for the origin of this term, I found, as if often the case, that even The Oxford English Dictionary states it as being "of obscure origin."  "Parahelion" if from Greek parēlion, meaning "beside the sun"; from para, meaning "beside", and helios, meaning "sun."

Here are some possible etymologies of the usage as noted in Wikipedia:

1. "false suns which sometimes attend or dog the true when seen through the mist." (defined in Abram Palmer's 1882 book with a very long title,  Folk-etymology: A Dictionary of Verbal Corruptions Or Words Perverted in Form Or Meaning, by False Derivation Or Mistaken Analogy
2. In Scandinavia, a sun-dog is a light spot near the sun, and water-dogs are the light watery clouds; dog here is no doubt the same word as dag, dew or mist as "a little dag of rain."
3. Alternatively, Jonas Persson suggested that out of Norse mythology and archaic names (Danish: solhunde (sun dog), Norwegian: solhund (sun dog), Swedish: solvarg (sun wolf)) in the Scandinavian languages, constellations of two wolves hunting the Sun and the Moon, one after and one before, may be a possible origin for the term.
4. In the Anglo-Cornish dialect of Cornwall, United Kingdom, sun dogs are known as weather dogs and are seen as a warning of foul weather. (The weather was fine after I saw my sun dogs.)  It is also known as a lagas in the sky which comes from the Cornish language term for the sun dog lagas awel meaning weather's eye (lagas - eye, awel - weather/wind). This is in turn related to the Anglo-Cornish term cock's eye for a halo round the sun or the moon, also a token of bad weather.

Book Titles

Authors often spend a lot of time trying to come up with a title for their writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald is a good example. Although he finally settled on The Great Gatsby, his notes and letters show that he had considered: Gatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; The World's Fair; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg; On the Road to West Egg; Under the Red, White, and Blue; Gold-Hatted Gatsby; and The High-Bouncing Lover.  Just before its publication, he said  “The title is only fair, rather bad than good."

I figure there are other stories of titles and came across a few to start that topic on this blog.

Baudelaire used the title Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) but its origin is not some clever allusion. Stuck without a title, he opened the naming to some friends while out a a cafe and Fleurs du Mal. An early example of crowdsourcing?

Now, to find some interesting title origin stories. Got one? Please leave a comment or email me.

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

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.

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'.