Today's Word

Yesterday's Word

Archives

FAQ

AWADmail Issue 449

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

Origins of Bunga Bunga
BBC News
WebCite

In Defense of Strunk and White
Boston Globe
WebCite

I first encountered it in 1975, used sarcastically by my great-great-grandfather (Warren Delano II, FDR's grandfather) in an 1842 letter describing British war atrocities in China. I still recall coming upon the word while working through the original densely handwritten letter in the reading room of the Franklin Roosevelt Library, and having to seek out the dictionary, as I did not know the word "gasconade". The attitude evinced by WDII in this letter -- and in other correspondence -- foreshadows FDR's own wariness over British aims.

Reminded me immediately of the Disney Beauty and the Beast antagonist, Gaston. If pop culture bends the language, maybe Gastonade might be the mot du jour.

Though the most famous son of Gascony, D'Artagnan, was very much a braggart, though he was generally quite capable of backing it up.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a series of stories about Brigadier Gerard, a boastful cavalry officer in Napoleon's army who came from Gascony.

I live in St. Louis, Missouri, a town with French origins and many French place names. Gasconade is the name of a prominent street in the south part of the city, and it is nice to know the origin of the name -- especially, now, when someone tells me they live there. What my brain will hear is that they live on the "street of extravagant boasting". I'll have to watch out for their claims!

I've just read the definition and origins of the word milliner. Given that the word refers to a maker of women's hats, the fact that a "man milliner" is a derogatory term referring to "someone who busies himself with trifling occupations" is downright sexist and obnoxious! Of course, a haberdasher is one who is busy pursuing more noble ventures! Argh!

Interesting that a maker of women's hats should strike Mr. Southey, even in 1796, as so "injurious" to the world -- worse than a maker of armaments, a pirate, or a slave trader, for example. If only we had a world where people got exercised about whether ladies' hats would be pried from their cold, dead hands!

There appears to be an interesting version of this word used in the 1941 Frank Capra movie Meet John Doe. The film, starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, is emotionally devastating and incredibly cynical, but ultimately uplifting morality tale involving the misuse of the power of the press, the fluid and fickle nature of human mob mentality, manufactured fake fame, backroom politics and, if you take the film in a broader scope, the subtext of the shallowness and infectious nature of religion. It's all quite a bunch of heavy thematic material from the director of everybody's favorite holiday movie, "It's A Wonderful Life"!

In "Meet John Doe", character actor Walter Brennan plays Gary Cooper's hobo sidekick. When Gary is suddenly propelled from nothingness to the most popular man in the United States, Walter Brennan warns him against becoming -- as he pronounces it -- a "hee' lot". As Walter explains in a wonderfully scripted and performed sequence, he is happy being just a nobody and a hobo. Because -- once a person gets a little money, the person becomes a slave to the money and all the responsibilities, headaches, problems, and misery money can bring with it. You then will become -- a "heelot"! (video clip)

There is a town in South Carolina named Spartanburg. Believe it or not, there was a time in this country when asceticism and toughness were admired and practiced.

The stunning green color that accumulates over time on copper and bronze comes from air and water -- I know those are key contributing factors. When I studied sculpture, and we cast in bronze, I recall asking my professor if I could create a green patina like the Statue of Liberty's. He smiled, and said I surely could, if I had some chemical combination I cannot now recall -- and then he said the easiest thing to use for that distinctive color was, and I quote, "a big bucket of horse piss". One lesson I have never forgotten, even with trying.

Funny, I always see the patina as a green-blue-grey blend, and assumed the last syllable in "verdigris" -- gris translates to grey in French -- suggested as much.

Maya Bar Hillel pointed us to an article by Robert Samuelson which he claims to have written using only one-syllable words until the final word "syllable". I am sorry to burst Mr. Samuelson's bubble, but if you go to p. two of his article, the very top line reads:

"Can we bring the dead rule back to life by what it tells us about the mean growth rate?"

The shame is that he could have used "of" to substitute for "about".

For some reason, Samuelson used the word "again" near the end of that treatise, and he clearly did not need to! Thus, he failed at his aim, but I cannot understand why he did that!

Al Reynolds (in AWADmail 448) wondered if any of your readers know of any place names with more than 13 letters where none appears more than once.

Well, there goes an hour of my life. I just couldn't resist mining the geonames.org data for the answer to that question.

The following long isogrammic names showed up:

If you include non-repeating hyphens, spaces, etc. in the count:
17 VOLNEY-SMITH PARK
17 WHITES PLAYGROUND
16 HAWKESBURY POINT (Australia)
16 LIGHTBOURN'S CAY (Bahamas)
16 SPRINGBOK FLACHE (a plain in Namibia)
16 WILDSBACHER KOPF (a mountain in Germany)

15 letter isogrammic place names with no punctuation:
15 DJUPBACKSHOLMEN SE
15 GUMPOLDSKIRCHEN AT
15 HOGLYCKSFJARDEN SE
15 HONDEBLAFSPRUIT ZA
15 KIVHOLMSFJARDEN FI
15 MADRITSCHENGUPF AT
15 MALITSCHKENDORF DE
15 STRICHWANDKOGEL AT

I've posted the list of all isogrammic places with more than 13 letters here along with Google Maps links to all of them.