Is It Autumn or Fall?

Autumn by Dietmar Rabich (Derivative work: Sting), CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

It has felt like winter here in New Jersey for weeks although the winter solstice made it official today (December 21). As trees have lost their color and their leaves and then were hit with killing frosts and ice. As we enter winter, I asked myself today why the autumn season is sometimes called "fall." Is it just because leaves fall from trees?

The word autumn is derived from Latin autumnus, with connotations of the passing of the year. After the Greek era, the word continued to be used as the Old French word autompne (automne in modern French) or autumpne in Middle English,[18] and was later normalised to the original Latin. 

There are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century, it was in common use. Before the 16th century, "harvest" was the term usually used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day (cf. Dutch herfst, German Herbst and Scots hairst). 

A change occurred as the majority of people moved from working the land to living in towns. The harvest itself was removed from their daily life and came to refer more to the time of year rather than the activity of reaping crops.

The alternative word for the season,"fall," also has roots in old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear. Possibilities include the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall. They seem like good origins but these words mean "to fall from a height" and not seasons or times of the year. 

The most likely explanation is that the term derived in 16th-century England as a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year".

With the peak of 17th century English emigration to the British colonies in North America, "fall" as a season was popularized though it was gradually becoming nearly obsolete in Britain.

ZZ Top

Poster from a film about the band

ZZ Top is an American rock band from Houston, Texas, formed in 1969. The group consists of founder Billy Gibbons (guitar, lead vocals), Dusty Hill (bass, vocals), and Frank Beard (drums, percussion). 

They were initially a blues band but their style evolved into a more rock style while maintaining Gibbons' blues guitar and Hill and Beard's rhythm section. 

We have 4 possible origin stories of how ZZ TOP may have gotten their name.

First is that they took their name from the names of other bluesmen. Gibbons noticed that some performers they admired used initials. Gibbons particularly liked B.B. King and Z. Z. Hill and thought of combining the two into "ZZ King."

A second popular story online is that they got their name by combining the names Zig Zag and Top, two well-known brands of "cigarette" rolling papers. This explanation is the only one that explains both parts of the name.

   

According to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 radio show, they chose the name because they wanted to be listed last alphabetically in names of bands and in record stores racks. I thought bands wanted to be listed first?

And a fourth origin story is that the ZZ is what you see in the boards of two classic American barn doors when they are closed. This seems unlikely - and the barns near me have X X on the doors.


ZZ Top - Greatest Hits
Tres Hombres
Rancho Texicano: The Very Best of ZZ Top

The Complete Studio Albums (10CDs) 
Double Down Live DVD
Fandango!
ZZ Top's First Album
Rio Grande Mud
ZZ Top: Live from Texas [Blu-ray DVD] 
Afterburner
The Best of ZZ Top: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Guitar Styles and Techniques of Billy Gibbons (Signature Licks Guitar)

   

pen and pencil

Montblanc Marc Newson Ballpoint Pen

I would have guessed that "pen" and "pencil" would have the same origin story, but they do not.

PEN goes back to the late 13th century as penne and was a writing implement made from the hard, hollow stem at the base of a feather. In Old French pene was a quill pen or feather which goes back to the Latin penna "a feather, plume." 

You may also know penne as the type of pasta with cylinder-shaped pieces, their ends cut at a bias. Penne is the plural form of the Italian penna (meaning feather but also the writing pen) which also goes back to the Latin penna and is a cognate of the English word pen.

The sense and word was extended to any instrument of similar form used for writing by used a fluid ink. Pen-and-ink as an adjective meaning "made or done with a pen and ink" is attested from 1670s.

Sticks of pure graphite (AKA black lead) were used for marking things in England from the mid-16th century and later in the century the wooden enclosure for the graphite was added to protect the graphite and the hand of the writer.

The word "pencil" came from Old French pincel, from Latin penicillus meaning a "little tail." These early pencils were made as an artist's fine brush of camel hair which could make a fine line and could make letters. They were used art and also for writing before modern lead or chalk pencils. The stylus, a thin metal stick used for scratching in papyrus or wax tablets, was used by the Romans and for palm-leaf manuscripts.

Also during the 16th century, the word pencil was transferred from meaning a type of fine brush to a graphite writing implement. 

In the 19th century, the clay-graphite mix was developed and so was the mass-production. c. Hymen L. Lipman of Philadelphia obtained a patent for the pencil with an attached eraser in 1858. The pencil-sharpener as a mechanical device for putting the point on a lead pencil arrived in 1854.

By extension, the term "pen name" appears in the mid-1800s as being a fictitious name assumed by an author. Earlier, the French nom de plume had been used in English to mean the same thing.

Some other uses that are not in common usage today are "pen-gossip" meaning to gossip by correspondence; a "pencil-pusher" was a derogatory term used to describe a low-level office worker along with "pen-driver" for a clerk. The term "pencil neck" came into use briefly around 1973 to mean a weak person. 

Trivia

Trivial Pursuit game card

It is odd that "trivia" is information and data that are considered to be of "little value." It wasn't always that way.

In ancient Rome, the trivia (singular trivium) are grammar, logic, and rhetoric, which were considered to be the topics of basic education. They provided the foundation for the quadrivia of higher education.

So why was this information demoted? 

Romans used triviae to describe where one road split or forked into two roads (tri = three) + viae = roads) and became a term for a public place or a common place. (Trivia was also, in Roman mythology, the goddess who haunted crossroads, graveyards, and was the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft.)

Trivia meaning "trite, commonplace, unimportant, slight" occurs from the late 16th century, and appears in the works of Shakespeare. It may be that the lower levels of the educational curriculum were seen as less important than those of higher education.

Trivia as a kind of game or amusement began to appear in books and newspapers in the early 20th century and the board game Trivial Pursuit was released in 1982 and became popular. Trivia nights also became a popular pub game and competition.

The questions asked in that game and those competitions are often not what I would consider "trivial" or of little value. To know who was President Eisenhower's Vice-President is not on the same level as knowing what the name of Eisenhower's pet dog at the White House. (Richard Nixon and Heidi in case it comes up in a trivia game).

Much of what is considered trivial these days seems to me to be of some value, but with the overload of information presented to us, more and more of it is demoted to a place of lesser value.

Some "B" Band Name Origins

Here are some quick takes on some band name origins that start with the letter "B."

Some band names are very simple to explain. Such is the case with the band BON JOVI which is simply named after the New Jersey bandleader, Jon Bon Jovi - with the caveat that his real name is John Bongiovi, Jr., but the band name went with a name less likely to be mispronounced or misspelled. 

BLACK UHURU - Uhuru is Swahili for freedom, therefore "Black Freedom".

BLIND MELON's name has two origin stories. The term was slang for an out-of-work hippie type and supposedly member Shannon H's dad called him/them that. But the name also recalls a genuine old blues singer, Blind Lemon Jefferson, if you note that "Melon" is also an anagram for "Lemon."

The band BLINK 182 supposedly has no origin story or meaning but the band seems to encourage various origin stories. One such story is that the band started out as just Blink but was threatened by a lawsuit from an Irish band with the same name. They added the 182 and chose the number because that how many times the f-word is said in one of the member's favorite movies.

THE BLOODHOUND GANG - was a segment on the PBS kid's show 3-2-1 Contact! in the 1980's. In the show, three kids are amateur detectives, solving mysteries and fighting crime.

If the band BLOTTO's website is to be believed, the band started as the Star Spangled Washboard Band. They were a bluegrass band that did some novelty songs in their show. They had some hits including "I Get a Charge Out of You" and the medley "The Battle of New Orleans / Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor" toured and appeared in TV talk shows. 

When they disbanded, four members kept at it, added a bass player, a drummer and a female vocalist, and renamed their band Blotto. They say the name comes from the dog in the 1930's novel Nightlife of the Gods but "blotto" is also popular slang for being totally drunk.

BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'S seems like a logical name for this

Booker T. is the keyboardist and bandleader. I originally though the M.G. cmae from the once-polar sports car but it actually stands for "Memphis Group" which tells you something about the bands's origin.

Their 1962 hit, "Green Onions," has appeared in many TV shows and movies and still gets classic radio airplay.