A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1166

A.Word.A.Day

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AWADmail Issue 1166

A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Tidbits about Words and Language

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From: Peter Brooks (pbrooks1 nycap.rr.com)
Subject: Earwitness

The old saying goes, “Believe nothing that you hear, and only half of what you see!”

Peter Brooks, Saratoga Springs, New York

From: Helga Kleisny (helgakleisny gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--earwitness

In aviation accident reports, earwitness (Ohrenzeuge in German) is quite a common expression. (I am not familiar with other accident investigations.)

Helga Kleisny, Frankfurt, Germany

From: Kenneth Kirste (kkkirste sbcglobal.net)
Subject: Earwitness

The word earwitness made me think of the Watergate tapes that led to the resignation of President Nixon following the initiation of impeachment proceedings. During the televised Senate Watergate hearings (May-Nov 1973), the public’s only glimpse of the tapes was selected transcripts. The audio was not heard until clips were played at three trials in the 1970s and it wasn’t until 1988 that the first audio segments were released by the federal archives. Anyone who listened became a kind of earwitness to the obstruction of justice and other crimes uncovered by the Committee.

Coincidentally, your choice of this word was just over 51 years (Oct 20 1973) after the Attorney General who led the investigation, Archibald Cox, refused a direct order from the White House to stop seeking release of the tapes. In response, Nixon fired Cox, which inspired one of the best bumper stickers I’ve ever seen. It read: “Impeach the Coxsacker!”

Ken Kirste, Sunnyvale, California

From: Pascal Pagnoux (pascal.pagnoux gmail.com)
Subject: Eyewitnesses

You wrote: The humanist and philosopher Erasmus once said, “One eyewitness is of more value than ten earwitnesses.” While that may be valid, even eyewitness testimony can be unreliable. Something to keep in mind the next time we claim, “But I saw it with my own eyes!” (or heard it with my own ears).

Kurosawa put a big dent into that with his movie Rashomon with what was later called the Rashomon effect.

Pascal Pagnoux, Saint Gaudens, France

From: Bill Bradford (billbradford1 gmail.com)
Subject: Earwitness

Erasmus must not have been a birder. We often see birds poorly, or not at all, which can best be identified as to species by their calls or songs. Many bird lists on eBird include “heard only” species. These are more reliable identifications than guesses from poor sightings.

Bill Bradford, Portland, Oregon

From: Carla Hess (4uhane gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--earwitness

I was a nurse at a major medical center and was on the trauma team. That was when I lost all faith in the reliability of eyewitnesses. Often we would get conflicting information (who was driving, where the passengers were sitting, who self-extricated, etc.) from the police and the paramedics, both of whom had been present at the scene.

Carla Hess, Roseburg, Oregon

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From: Barbara Grunwald (bgrunwald227 gmail.com)
Subject: Consanguinity

Whenever I see the word consanguinity, I immediately think of Henry VIII, whose efforts to get out of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon included trying to use consanguinity as an excuse for divorce.

Barbara Grunwald, Clovis, California

From: Daphne Harwood (daphwood gmail.com)
Subject: consanguinity

I have a 3rd cousin 3 times removed whom I met quite coincidentally on a boat circumnavigating the Peloponnese of Greece. We have a common great-great-grandfather, a famous Boston anti-slavery advocate.

Daphne Harwood, Vancouver, Canada

From: Ann Smiley (salutsmiley gmail.com)
Subject: plebeian

Plebes are first-year (freshmen) undergraduates at the US Naval Academy. My father, USNA Class of 1951, told stories. The summer before they started classes that first year, they took an international cruise. It was my father’s first view of Vietnam, when the French influence was visible. He served almost thirty years in the USN Civil Engineering Corps (part of the Construction Battalions aka SeaBees), returning for two tours of duty during the Vietnam War.

Ann Smiley, Middleton, Wisconsin

From: Alexander Nix (revajnix yahoo.co.uk)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--plebeian

Pleb and plebian are still common insults in English vernacular as Plebgate famously attested Andrew Mitchell in £80,000 libel payout to plebgate PC. (BBC)

Alexander Nix, Cambridge, UK

From: G. William (Bill) Foster (gwfoster gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--plebeian

One of the finest uses of the word plebeian is in the following light verse, a complaint about poorly-lit restaurants:

What on earth could be more plebeian,
than to eat in a place that you could see in?

My father claimed it was written by Ogden Nash, though it’s unsourced.

G. William (Bill) Foster, Rep. US Congress - (IL-11), Naperville, Illinois

From: Kenneth Kirste (kkkirste sbcglobal.net)
Subject: Earwitness

Since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by the rhymes in lyrics. Your choice of “plebeian” cast me back almost 70 years to the 1955 hit by Julie London, “Cry Me a River”. In it, the songwriter Arthur Hamilton rhymes “plebeian” with “me and”:

Told me love was too plebeian.
Told me you were through with me and.

Much to my surprise, none of the other kids in my high school seemed to know the word, even though I’d learned it around the age of seven when my older sister pointed out that my second toe was longer than my big toe, which was a patrician toe in contrast to one where the big toe is the longest, which was known as a plebeian toe.

Ken Kirste, Sunnyvale, California

From: John Nugée (john nugee.org.uk)
Subject: Lesser-known counterparts

A most interesting subject this week. I once lived in a building which was totally overshadowed by a huge apartment block next to it. We said we undershadowed them.

John Nugée, London, UK

From: Richard Novick (richard.novick med.nyu.edu)
Subject: underdog

As a jilted Dodger fan, I have tried to love the Mets. One day, in a baseball conversation with my five-year-old grandson, I tried to defend the Mets by saying “I root for the underdog” to which he, coming from a family of Yankee fans replied, with a poorly disguised 5-year-old sneer, “I root for the overdog.”

Richard Novick, New York, New York

From: Brian Vandervoet (brianvandervoet yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--earwitness

Years ago, my four-year-old son suggested that instead of taking a shortcut, we should take the longcut.

Brian Vandervoet, Nogales, Arizona

From: Harry McPeak (mcpeak comcast.net)
Subject: Re: AWADmail Issue 1165

How sad that we forget not only our own heritage and oppression as descendants of immigrants but also when some of us in turn become oppressors of newer (or older, descendants of slaves) immigrants. I speak as an Irish-Catholic American whose forebears were oppressed, sometimes killed, for their ethnicity or religion or both, but who then became virulent antisemites and racist oppressors of both indigenous peoples and subsequent immigrants. It is distressing and humbling to have been on both ends of that terrible equation. It is saddening to hear an acquaintance say, “Yes, yes, all true enough but these people (meaning all Americans from south of our border, who in spite of all, still see our torch held high and wish to follow that dream as our ancestors did) are different, they’re not like us.” We stand on a precipice only a heartbeat away from our own Kristallnacht. There is no choice in this election if we wish the Republic to survive, being mindful of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “A republic, if you can keep it.” We must vote for Vice President Harris. I truly believe the survival of what we have left of the Republic depends on it.

Harry McPeak, Mendota Heights, Minnesota

From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: consanguinity and allopatric/diachronic

Trump has an inordinate affection for dictators, from Putin, to Kim, to Orbán, to Erdoğan. But he appears to hold in highest esteem, der Führer, Adolf Hitler. Trump, given his paternal Germanic roots, was hoping to find a familial connection. Never mind that Hitler was Austrian.

The young “gentleman naturalist”, Charles Darwin, is on his second HMS Beagle voyage to the Galapagos. The fact that over the millennia this small cluster of isolated Pacific islands has developed so many unique animal (and plant) species, from giant tortoises, penguins, fur seals, land and sea iguanas, for Darwin, spoke to the dual endemic allopatric and diachronic forces shaping the evolving speciation on these remote isles. The wide variety of finches, in particular, really captured his imagination, leading to his theory of natural selection and ultimately his theory of evolution (origins) of the species.

Alex McCrae, Van Nuys, California

Anagrams


This week’s theme: Lesser-known counterparts of words 1. Earwitness 2. Diachronic 3. Consanguinity 4. Plebeian 5. Allopatric	=	1. “I knew I heard that!” 2. Until new system changes 3. Specific blood relation 4. Low-rank person 5. Is present/occurs in two areas	=	1. S/he now can testify per tip s/he heard 2. Linguistic 3. Connection 4. Lower class, unkempt worker 5. Was born in isolated areas
		-Josiah Winslow, Franklin, Wisconsin (winslowjosiah gmail.com)		-Dharam Khalsa, Burlington, North Carolina (dharamkk2 gmail.com)

	=	1. Listener sworn to speak up and testify 2. Re changes which occur in time 3. Kin; clan 4. So lowbrow 5. Present in isolated areas	=	1. We hear crime 2. Historic 3. Kinship, inbred fellows not allowed 4. Peasant, not swanky gents 5. Occurs in separate countries
		-Robert Jordan, Lampang, Thailand (alfiesdad ymail.com)		-Julian Lofts, Auckland, New Zealand (jalofts xtra.co.nz)

Make your own anagrams and animations.

Limericks

earwitness

I never thought I would admit this,
But what I heard from an earwitness
Has given me pause.
So it’s Kamala, ‘cause
I’m now certain of Donald’s unfitness.
-Steve Cabito, Santa Rosa, CA (stevecabito gmail.com)

As an earwitness, I can attest
To the noise which will not let me rest.
Leaf blowers won’t cease
Disturbing the peace --
Get a rake; it’ll be for the best!
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

The earwitness from work took the stand,
Put up his right, manicured hand,
And testified to
Having heard me and you
Plot to sabotage what the boss planned!
-Bindy Bitterman, Chicago, Illinois (bindy eurekaevanston.com)

Said Donald, “God, you’re my earwitness:
Working out’s not for me -- I fear fitness.
And when pοrn stars I scrεw,
You forgive me, don’t you?
If you don’t, then it’s none of your business!”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

diachronic

From George Washington, who was iconic,
To a modern-day leader moronic:
I marvel at change
That strikes me as strange
When I’m taking a view diachronic.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

My health is for sure diachronic;
For energy, I take a tonic.
And my parts are replaced,
So now I’ve embraced
The fact that I’m partly bionic.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

With technology so diachronic,
The Second Amendment’s moronic.
The AR-15
Was back then unforeseen!
What they wrote is now far too laconic.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

consanguinity

“Until now we had not been aware
Consanguinity’s something we share.
And who would’ve guessed
A DNA test
Would reveal an ancestral affair?!”
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

No human can count to infinity;
With God you would need consanguinity.
You could ask for His help;
His reviews, though, on Yelp
Seem to say that he’s taciturn, isn’t He?
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

plebeian

She once had a boyfriend named Ian
But found that his tastes were plebeian.
The things he adored
Left her feeling quite bored,
So Ian she’s no longer seein’.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

Gee whiz, if you run outta money
They look down their nose at you funny.
Like “You’re just a plebeian;
It’s not worthwhile bein’
The gal on your arm, yeah, your honey!”
-Bindy Bitterman, Chicago, Illinois (bindy eurekaevanston.com)

Said Oog, “As the first human bein’,
Life in cave can be pretty plebeian.
Maybe grandkids be kings,
Lawyers, bankers and things,
But no money or power me seein’.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

allopatric

Where species unique can be found
And birds allopatric abound
Ornithologists go,
For it’s there, they well know,
The sights they might see will astound.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

“Me boyos are now allopatric;
They’ve left for New York,” said Fitzpatrick.
“The wee one’s a jockey;
His brother plays hockey!
But what’s it mean, scorin’ a “hat trick”?
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Puns

“No m-earwitness to the President’s crimes may testify at his trial,” ruled the Supreme Court.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Boo-boo saw Yogi steal the camper’s picnic basket, and served as a b-earwitness.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“I have lived and will diachronic liar, grifter, misogynist and racist,” Donald told the crowd in barely concealed dog whistles.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“I’m free!” the consanguinity-m of his gang members broke him out of prison.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“I’m pretty sup-plebeian a Pilates teacher,” explained Joe’s new girlfriend after their extraordinary lovemaking.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Everywhere he went in Ireland, Pat was greeted by a cheery “Allopatric.”
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“Your skin is all red and dry after a hard day banishin’ snakes. Try rubbin’ on some allopatric,” suggested his acolyte.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim. -James Reston, journalist (3 Nov 1909-1995)

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