avenue, street, lane

An avenue does not have to be intended for vehicles,
such as this avenue at Alexandra Park, London

Avenue and street are such common words that you might think their meaning and origin would be obvious. 

An avenue is defined as a broad road in a town or city, typically having trees at regular intervals along its sides. "The beautiful tree-lined avenues that lead to the city park."

In the early 17th century, the word comes from the French, feminine past participle of avenir ‘arrive, approach’, from Latin advenire, from ad- ‘towards’ + venire ‘come’. 

Though it is not always the case now, once an avenue led to something in particular. Today, most people would probably define an avenue as "a big street."

Avenue can also be more figurative and mean a way of approaching a problem or making progress toward something, which clearly is similar to the literal roadway. "the scientists are exploring three promising avenues of research into a cure for the disease."

In prehistoric archaeology, an avenue is a long, parallel-sided strip of land, measuring up to about 30m in width, open at either end, with edges marked by stone or timber alignments and/or a low earth bank and ditch. These avenues are thought to have been ceremonial or processional paths and to be of early Bronze Age date. They seem to have been used to indicate the intended route of approach to a particular monument. Examples in Britain include Stonehenge Avenue, and Beckhampton Avenue and West Kennet Avenue at Avebury. An example in Ireland is the avenue going up the Hill of Tara.

A street is defined as a public road in a city or town, typically with houses and buildings on one or both sides.

The Old English strǣt, of West Germanic origin, from late Latin strāta (via) ‘paved (way)’, the feminine past participle of sternere ‘lay down’.

You have probably been on a smaller street that was called a "lane." A lane is defined as part of a roadway that is designated to be used by a single line of vehicles to control and guide drivers and reduce traffic conflicts. Most public roads - streets and avenues - have at least two lanes, one for traffic in each direction, sometimes separated by lane markings. 

besides being a quaint little roadway, a lane can also be designated for a special purpose, such as for bicycles, buses or emergency vehicles.

Image: CC0, Link

Masochism and Sadism

A female dominant with a male submissive at her feet,
 from Dresseuses d'Hommes (1931) by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet

These two words are eponyms. 

Masochism means to derive satisfaction from another’s pain. Chevalier Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was a 19-century Austrian journalist and writer. In 1869 he persuaded his mistress to serve as a slave for him for 6 months. 

He then used the experience to write the novella Venus in Furs. The novella described the degradation of the main character. 

It was so influential that in 1886, esteemed Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing coined the term ‘masochism’ to depict satisfaction from another’s pain.============

Sadism, or more properly sadomasochism, is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation.

Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. The terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving and receiving pain.

The abbreviation S&M is commonly used for Sadomasochism (or Sadism & Masochism), although the initialisms S-M, SM, or S/M are also used, particularly by practitioners. Sadomasochism is not considered a clinical paraphilia unless such practices lead to clinically significant distress or impairment for a diagnosis. Similarly, sexual sadism within the context of mutual consent, generally known under the heading BDSM, is distinguished from non-consensual acts of sexual violence or aggression.

The term "sadism" has its origin in the name of the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), who not only practiced sexual sadism but also wrote novels about these practices, of which the best known is Justine. 

 

A Horatio Alger Story

I have always heard the phrase "a Horatio Alger story" and took it to mean that this Horatio person had a rags-to-riches success story. The phrase is not in very common usage today and it turns out that my definition is not completely accurate to its origin.

There was a real Horatio Alger Jr. who was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1832. He was the oldest of five kids, and he was nearsighted and asthmatic. He was accepted to Harvard when he was 16, and he said, "No period of my life has been one of such unmixed happiness as the four years which have been spent within college walls." 

He studied under Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was named Class Poet, and wrote essays, poetry, and short sketches. After graduation, he didn't enjoy much publishing success, so he made his living by taking a series of temporary teaching jobs.

He moved to New York City and began working with homeless and delinquent boys, establishing boarding houses and securing homes and public assistance for them. It was during this time that he started writing dime novels for boys. It was his fourth book Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks (1868) that finally made him a literary success.

The book followed a formula that he would return to often - a young boy, living in poverty, manages to find success and happiness by working hard and never giving up. The books created a kind of American concept that if you worked hard, and lived virtuously, and had a combination of "pluck and luck," you could go from the gutter to the mansion.

The popularity of the books - and maybe that idea - decreased as the century turned. He revised his style, making the stories more violent and gritty, but they had peaked.

He died in near-poverty in 1899. So his story is more of a riches-to-rags story. 

wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger

Baby Names Update

 

Photo via Pixabay

BabyCenter parents share their baby's name, so the website doesn't predict the top names but just gives a live look at trends. If you are reading this in the second half of 2023 or later, the 2023 list I mention here is probably different by year's end.

Olivia and Liam were the most popular baby names of 2021 and 2022. In fact, the top five baby girl names all remained the same in 2021 and 2022. Here's an oddity - look at how many girls' names end in "a." 

The top five boy names from 2021 to 2022 were the same though the order shifted, no new names broke into the top of the list.

BabyCenter is kind of unique as they track names in real-time so the list is always being updated. We are halfway into 2023 and it looks like Liam who has held that top spot for boys since 2019 has dropped and Oliver and Noah are battling it out for the top. 

BabyCenter is a digital parenting resource and this year's list changes as parents share what names they’ve chosen for their newest additions.

Check your name or the name of your kids by their birth year. My name was in the top 20 the year I was born and doesn't even appear on lists now. Such is the popularity of names.

Baby Names and the Movies

A Note from Ken

When I wrote this post in 2010, it was about popular baby names at that time and particularly the effect of the Twilight movie series on baby names. What I didn't expect was how popular the post would be over the years - and that it would create another "Twilight effect."

When a post gets a lot of hits/visits, it moves up in my site's rankings and also in the way search engines rank pages. That attracts visitors and it also attracts spammers. (Hello India!) This post (in its original  2010 form) got more spam comments than any other post. It is not the most popular post here but it is the most popular with spammers who want to leave a comment with links to their sites or services. I took down the post for a few weeks and made some changes to the post and title in 2021but it still had the "twilight spam effect."

It's back and we;ll see what happens this time.

“Anything can influence baby names, from pop culture to literature to music and celebrities,” says Jennifer Moss, author of The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book and founder of Babynames.com.

Looking back at the top baby names in 2009 shows that Moms and Dads were looking to popular vampire books and the first family for baby names. Fame can be fleeting - Miley (Cyrus) and Jonas (as in the brothers) took a stock market dive at the end of 2009.

            

Isabella was the top baby name for girls, Jacob for boys. Isabella’s climb to the top in 2009 ended Emma’s one-year reign. Jacob is on an 11-year run at the top. The surname of the Twilight movie series vampire Edward Cullen became the fastest-rising baby boy name in 2009.

Barack didn’t crack the top 1,000 for boys in 2010, but a version of President Obama's daughter’s name, Malia, was the fastest riser for girls. Maliyah moved up 342 spots, to No. 296, while Malia came in at No. 192, rising 153 spots.

Updating to now, we find these are the top U.S. names currently as supplied by the Social Security Administration from when parents were getting their baby a SS number so they could create all their official paperwork.

Here are some other sources if you are looking for baby names. 

• The Baby Name Wizard
• The Complete Book of Baby Names
• 100,000 + Baby Names: Fascinating Lists, Naming Trends, Key to Gender-Neutral Names
• Baby Names Made Easy: The Complete Reverse-Dictionary of Baby Names
• Beyond Ava & Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby
• Best Exotic Baby Names: New, Historical, Ancient, Mystical

Adages, aphorisms, proverbs and bywords

An adage is a short, memorable, usually philosophical saying. These kinds of saying go by any number of other names, and though there are probably distinctions, they seem pretty similar to me. For example, aphorisms, proverbs and bywords are close synonyms.

I did find that an adage that describes a general moral rule is usually called a "maxim". An aphorism seems to be more of an expression that seems "deep" and may not be widely used. But, one that is witty or ironic seems to get the tag "epigram".

Many adages are ancient and if they have been overused, they may be referred to nowadays as a "cliché", "truism", or "old saw."

Some more modern adages get labeled as "laws" or "principles," such as Murphy's Law.

The word "aphorisms" comes from a book by that name by Hippocrates that is a series of propositions concerning the symptoms and diagnosis of disease and the art of healing and medicine. The first line is "Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience deceptive, judgment difficult."

I found many lists of adages online that are very common, such as "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" and "Don't burn your bridges."

Erasmus, the compiler - by Hans Holbein

I was surprised to find how many adages come to us from the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, commonly known as simply Erasmus. He didn't create these. He compiled them. He published several volumes with the final edition of Adagia (1536)  having more than 4,000. Most of them are annotated Greek and Latin proverbs that he compiled.

Here's a sampler of ones (translated to English) that you are likely to recognize:

More haste, less speed
The blind leading the blind
A rolling stone gathers no moss
One man's meat is another man's poison
Necessity is the mother of invention
One step at a time
To be in the same boat
To lead one by the nose
A rare bird
Even a child can see it
To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
To walk on tiptoe
One to one
Out of tune
A point in time
I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
To call a spade a spade
Hatched from the same egg
Up to both ears (Up to his eyeballs)
As though in a mirror
Think before you start
What's done cannot be undone
Many parasangs ahead (Miles ahead)
We cannot all do everything
Many hands make light work
A living corpse
Where there's life, there's hope
To cut to the quick
Time reveals all things
Golden handcuffs
Crocodile tears
To lift a finger
You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
To walk the tightrope
Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
With a fair wind
To dangle the bait
Kill two birds with one stone
To swallow the hook
The bowels of the earth
Happy in one's own skin
Hanging by a thread
The dog is worthy of his dinner
To weigh anchor
To grind one's teeth
Nowhere near the mark
To throw cold water on
Complete the circle
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
No sooner said than done
Neither with bad things nor without them (Women: can't live with 'em, can't live
without 'em)
Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
Like teaching an old man a new language (Can't teach an old dog new tricks)
A necessary evil
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip
To squeeze water out of a stone
To leave no stone unturned
Let the cobbler stick to his last (Stick to your knitting)

God helps those who help themselves

The grass is greener over the fence
The cart before the horse
Dog in the manger
One swallow doesn't make a summer
His heart was in his boots
To sleep on it
To break the ice
Ship-shape
To die of laughing
To have an iron in the fire
To look a gift horse in the mouth
Neither fish nor flesh
Like father, like son

This appeared earlier on Weekends in Paradelle.

Shrapnel

Shrapnel is commonly the word given to pieces of a bullet, bomb or other explosives after they detonate.

The correct term for these pieces is "fragmentation"; "shards" or "splinters" can be used for non-preformed fragments. Though these pieces are often incorrectly referred to as "shrapnel", particularly by non-military media sources, you have no doubt heard the term used. 

Henry Shrapnel is not a person I admire. He spent decades devising ways to develop bombs and shells that caused the most damage when they exploded. The original "shrapnel shell" was named for Major General Henry Shrapnel of the British Royal Artillery. It predates the modern-day high-explosive shell and operates by an entirely different process. 

A shrapnel shell consists of a shell casing filled with steel or lead balls suspended in a resin matrix, with a small explosive charge at the base of the shell. When the projectile is fired, it travels a pre-set distance along a ballistic trajectory, then the fuse ignites a relatively weak secondary charge (often black powder or cordite) in the base of the shell. This charge fractures the matrix holding the balls in place and expels the nose of the shell to open a path for the balls, which are then propelled out of the front of the shell without rupturing the casing (which falls to earth relatively unharmed and can be retrieved and reused). These balls continue onward to the target, spreading out in a cone-shaped pattern at ground level, with most of their energy coming from the original velocity of the shell itself rather than the lesser force of the secondary charge that freed them from the shell. Since the cone of impact is relatively small, no more than 10 to 15 times the diameter of the shell, true shrapnel shells needed to be carefully sighted and judiciously used in order to maximize their impact on the enemy.

wikimedia.org, Public Domain, Link