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Jan 5, 2004

This week's theme
Earls who became words (or places that became words)

This week's words
orrery
cadogan
Oxfordian
derby
yarborough

Photo: Kaptain Kobold

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Or take British politician John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792). This inveterate gambler preferred to eat at the gaming table rather than interrupt his 24-hour-long betting game. No doubt people ate slices of bread with a filling before then, but the notoriety of this Earl resulted in his name getting attached to this repast.

A bit of earl trivia. Count is another word for an earl -- that's where we got the word county from (but not country). The wife or widow of an earl is called a countess. (Should the latter be called a countless?) And who is the most famous earl of all? A fictional character: Count Dracula.

This week we'll see other words that are coined after earls. You'll notice that these words could be called toponyms (words coined after place names) or eponyms (words coined from people's names).

orrery

orrery (OR-uh-ree) noun

A mechanical model of the solar system that represents the relative motions of the planets around the sun.

[After Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), who was given one of those models by John Rowley, a London instrument-maker. They were invented by George Graham c. 1700.]

"The lamp at the center of the orrery demonstrates the way the sun lends light to the planets."
James Fenton; Sheridan the Revolutionary; The New York Review of Books; Feb 4, 1999.

"Even the nation's attic couldn't contain a 650-yard-long model of the solar system, so the Smithsonian Institution has put it outdoors, on the National Mall. 'Voyage: A Journey Through Our Solar System,' a new permanent installation, represents the solar system at one 10-billionth its actual size. ...
"The stations within this giant orrery also feature porcelain information plaques with high-resolution, full-color images of the planets."
Eric P Nash; A Smithsonian Spin Through the Cosmos; The New York Times; Feb 10, 2002.

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