cisgender

I had to look up the word "cisgender" today when I saw it used in an article: "No cisgendered male can express opinions about that topic."

Cisgender (which is sometimes abbreviated to "cis") is a term to describe people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth.

The Latin-derived prefix cis-, means "on this side of" and can be considered the opposite of trans-, which means "on the other side of."

For example, you can say transatlantic to mean on the other side of that ocean, as in a "transatlantic ship crossing," or say "cisatlantic" to mean on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite my ignorance of the word, it has been around for awhile. German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch used the neologism cissexual (zissexuell in German) in his 1991 article "Die Transsexuellen und unser nosomorpher Blick" ("Transsexuals and our nosomorphic view") as the origin of the term.

Cisgender is a word that applies to the vast majority of people who are not transgender. Is there a need for such a word? The best parallel in our language would be homosexual and heterosexual.

You can go deeper into the sociology of this in gender studies and I suspect the word will be in wider usage in the future. There are already derivatives of the terms cisgender and cissexual include "cis male" for "male assigned male at birth", "cis female" for "female assigned female at birth" (analogously cis man and cis woman) and also cissexism and cissexual. A related adjective is "gender-normative" because "cisgendered" is used instead of the more popular "gender normative" to refer to people who "do not identify with a gender diverse experience, without enforcing existence of a normative gender expression *."

I also didn't realize that back in 2014 Facebook began offering "custom" gender options, allowing users to identify with one or more gender-related terms from a selected list, including cis, cisgender, and others.

Pseudonyms: Fictional Superheroes

Pseudonyms are frequently used with fictional characters in films, on TV, in books and in comic books..

Clint Eastwood and Calvin Klein are names applied to fictional Marty McFly in Back To The Future .

As a Seinfeld fan, I know that Art Vandelay is a pseudonym used by George Costanza.

On TV's Breaking Bad, Heisenberg is the pseudonym taken by Walter White, and in the series prequel, Better Call Saul, Saul Goodman is the name taken by James "Jimmy" McGill.

On TV's long running series Doctor Who, the protagonist is known simply as The Doctor.

Do you remember The Shadow (Lamont Cranston) from the classic radio series?

TV Trivia: Who took the pseudonyms Regina Phalange and Ken Adams?  It was Phoebe Buffay and Joey Tribbiani on Friends.

Do you know Lord Voldemort's "real" name? Tom Marvolo Riddle is the character's name in the Harry Potter Series.

If you read the James Bond novels or watch the films, you might know that M is Sir Miles Messervy and Q is the code name for Major Boothroyd.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is actually the character Sir Percy Blakeney.

In The Three Musketeers we meet Athos (Armand de Sillègue d'Athos d'Autevielle, Le Comte de La Fère) and d'Artagnan (Charles de Batz-Castelmore), Porthos (Isaac de Porthau, Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds) and Aramis (Henri d'Aramitz, le Chevalier d'Herblay).

Zorro is the name taken by Don Diego de la Vega.

Mr. Underhill is a name used by Frodo Baggins) in the Lord Of The Rings series.

         

Comic book characters, especially superheroes, almost always have pseudonyms.

1. The Hulk (Dr. Robert Bruce Banner) - Marvel Comics
2. Spider-Man (Peter Benjamin Parker) - Marvel Comics
3. Black Cat (Felicia Hardy) - Marvel Comics
4. Wolverine (Logan, James Howlett) - Marvel Comics
5. Captain America (Steven Grant "Steve" Rogers) - Marvel Comics
6. Superman (Kal-El / Clark Kent) - DC Comics
7. Wonder Woman (Princess Diana of Themyscira / Diana Prince) - DC comics
8. Batman (Bruce Wayne) - DC Comics
9. Catwoman (Selina Kyle) - DC Comics and as Patience Phillips in the 2004 film
10. Rorschach (Walter Joseph Kovacs) - Watchmen (Alan Moore graphic novel)
11. Doctor Octopus (Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius) - Marvel Comics
12. The Penguin (Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot) - DC Comics
13. The Riddler (Dr. Edward Nigma) - DC Comics
14. Huntress (Helena Wayne) - DC Comics
15. Huntress (Helena Bertinelli) - DC Comics
16. Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) - DC Comics
17. Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) - DC Comics
18. The Flash (Jay Garrick) - DC Comics
19. The Flash (Barry Allen) - DC Comics
20. The Flash (Wally West) - DC Comics
21. The Flash (Bart Allen) - DC Comics

Obelism

Obelism is the practice of annotating manuscripts with marks set in the margins. Modern obelisms are used by editors when proofreading a manuscript or typescript.

One example is the "stet." Stet is is Latin for "Let it stand," and it is used by editors or authors to mean "disregard the previous mark." Another obelism is "dele" for delete.

The word "obelus/obelos" and the symbol comes from ὀβελός, the Ancient Greek word for a sharpened stick, spit, or pointed pillar. This is the same root as that of the word "obelisk."

An obelos was placed by editors on the margins of manuscripts going all the way back to the ancient writings of Homer. They would indicate lines that were doubtfully Homer's.

Three basic variants of dotted obelos glyphs

Tsunami

The word tsunami unfortunately turns up in the news regularly as this devastating effect of earthquakes is not uncommon. It is particularly common particularly in the Pacific Islands and coasts. An earthquake far out in the ocean is capable of creating enough vibration to displace massive amounts of seawater and send deadly waves at islands and coastlines.

It should not be surprising that the term comes from the Pacific islands of Japanese. Two words are combined:  TSU  (pronounced sue) which means "harbor" and NAMI (nah me) which means "wave." The word distinguishes other words to describe waves as a very large one that enter a normally safe harbor.

Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura) 
The waves in this work are sometimes mistakenly referred to as tsunami (津波),
but they are more accurately called okinami (沖波), great off-shore waves.

Boston Red Sox

The name Red Sox was chosen by owner John I. Taylor after the 1907 season. It is a reference to the red socks (hose) in the team's uniform which began in 1908.

There is a tradition of using sox and stockings as part of a team's name. Using "Sox" for a team name had previously been done for the Chicago White Sox, but it was not official at first. Newspapers wanted a shorter, headline-friendly form of Stockings which was part of the official team name.

The team name "Red Sox" had actually been used as early as 1888 by a "colored" or Negro League team from Norfolk, Virginia.

The current Red Sox team is sometimes shortened to "Bosox" or "BoSox", a combination of "Boston" and "Sox" which is similar to the "ChiSox" in Chicago or the minor league "PawSox" of Pawtucket. Sportswriters sometimes refer to the Red Sox as the Crimson Hose and the Olde Towne Team.

Boston was not the first to be a "Red Stockings" team. The Cincinnati Red Stockings were members of the pioneering National Association of Base Ball Players and wore white knickers and red stockings. That team folded after the 1870 season and when a new team was wanted in Boston a few players and the "Red Stockings" nickname were brought there. This was a nickname and not a club names or registered trademark.

The Boston Red Stockings won four championships in the five seasons of the new National Association, the first professional league. In 1876, a new Cincinnati club joined the National League and they took back the "Red Stockings" nickname. The Boston team was referred to as the "Red Caps."

In 1901, the competing American League established a club in Boston that wore dark blue stockings and had no official nickname. They were referred to by fans and newspapers as simply "Boston", "Bostonians," "the Bostons," the "Americans," "Boston Americans" or as the "American Leaguers."

Confusingly, in the 1908 season the AL team shirts featured a red stocking across the front labeled "BOSTON" along with red stockings and white caps, and the NL team also wore red stockings and red caps with an old-English "B."

The Nationals reverted to their red trim and took on the nickname of Braves when James E. Gaffney, became club president in 1912. Gaffney was part of the Tammany Hall political organization which was named after an American Indian chief and used an Indian image as its symbol, hence the "Braves." That nickname has persisted - despite controversy about its stereotyping of Native Americans - and the name followed the team when they moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and then to Atlanta in 1966.

We find the current "RED SOX" appearing in 1912 with the opening of Fenway Park.

The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division and have won nine eight World Series championships, most recently this year in their defeat of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Part of the Boston Red Sox story is their long championship drought nicknamed the "Curse of the Bambino" because it was said to have started when the team traded Babe Ruth to the rival New York Yankees. There was an 86-year wait before the team got its sixth World Championship in 2004. The team still has an intense rivalry with the Yankees.

Red Sox fan merchandise