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

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.

Trivial Pursuit game cards

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.

Meliorism

I discovered "meliorism" via Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day podcast. It's a word that I think we need right now as we are in the second half of what may well be a full pandemic year.

Meliorism (MEE-lee-uh-riz-um) is the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment. 

It is not pessimism and not optimism but some place in between though closer to the optimistic side.

"An old truism holds that the pessimist sees the glass as half-empty 

while the optimist sees it as half-full. But active and engaged people 

don't bother to measure the contents of their cups. They savor what they've got, 

drink it down, then go looking for a refill. One name for this approach is meliorism. 

Meliorists want to make things better—to ameliorate them."

 — Andrew Fiala, The Fresno (California) Bee, 10 Nov. 2017 

Somehow I missed this word, though it's not new. British novelist George Eliot believed she had coined meliorist back in 1877 when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 'meliorist' except myself." But the podcast sais that there is evidence that meliorist had been around decades before Ms. Eliot used it.

It probably comes from the Latin melior, meaning "better" with a nod the English melior descendant, meliorate, a synonym of ameliorate which means "to make better or more tolerable" which was introduced to English in the 1500s.

Meliorism is a word for 2021 when I would love to believe that the world will improve and that we can aid its betterment. 

Jefferson Airplane

Jefferson Airplane photographed by Herb Greene at the Matrix club, San Francisco, in 1966. 

Top row from left: Jack Casady, Grace Slick, Marty Balin; 

bottom row from left: Jorma Kaukonen, Paul Kantner, Spencer Dryden. 

A cropped version of this photo was used for the front cover of Surrealistic Pillow.  Link

Paul Kantner put together the original Jefferson Airplane and one member he recruited his college friend, blues guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. Kaukonen is given credit for the band's name because he has said that, "I had this friend [Steve Talbot] in Berkeley who came up with funny names for people. His name for me was Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane [for blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson]. When the guys were looking for band names and nobody could come up with something, I remember saying, 'You want a silly band name? I got a silly band name for you!'"

So the name has no real meaning. But it survived the reincarnation of the band as Jefferson Starship, but not the final version that was simply Starship.

Something that used the band's name as a direct reference is the practice of making a quick roach clip for a marijuana joint by splitting a matchstick into a “V” formation allowing the user to smoke the very end of a joint without burning their fingers. That makeshift clip became known (at least on the West Coast) as a Jefferson Airplane.

Jefferson Airplane is the eighth and final studio album by the band. It was released on Epic Records in 1989. Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady all returned for the album and supporting tour, though Spencer Dryden did not participate. The album and accompanying tour would mark the last time Jefferson Airplane would perform together until their 1996 induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Jefferson Airplane evolved into Jefferson Starship in January 1974. Between 1974 and 1984, they released eight gold or platinum-selling studio albums and had nine top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. 1975's Red Octopus marked the official return of Marty Balin. The Balin penned single "Miracles” peaked at #3 on the chart, and along with the single “Play on Love” helped to propel the album to eventual multiple-platinum status and topping the Billboard 200 chart. It would be the biggest selling album of the band's career. 

Starship was initially a continuation of Jefferson Starship, but because of a different musical direction and loss of personnel, a lawsuit settlement led to a name change that required dropping the "Jefferson" in the name. Their 1985 pop album Knee Deep in the Hoopla had two number-one hits -"We Built This City" and "Sara."

MAIN ALBUMS of the Original Band Lineup

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (1966)

Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

After Bathing at Baxter's (1967)

Crown of Creation (1968)

Volunteers (1969)

Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969)