PARVUM OPUS

 

Number 195

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TRUE GRIT

 

And now for some good news: Grit newspaper has been published since 1882. My parents subscribed to it at one time when it was delivered weekly. It's changed its publication schedule and format more than once, but it's still all good news.

 

As founder Dietrick Lamade said, in one of his notes to his sons, “Wherever possible, suggest peace and good will toward men. Give our readers courage and strength for their daily tasks. … By such a course, we can do much to improve the minds and lives of the millions of people who read Grit, and bring them a higher realization of their duties in life.”

 

NEVSH

 

Paul Erdos (visualize an umlaut over the o) was an eccentric mathematician born in Hungary (Mental Floss, May-June 2006). While imprisoned in Siberia, his father had taught himself English from books, but had never heard English spoken. When he returned home in 1920, he taught his son Paul what he knew, but Paul's English was always unintelligible. For instance, he pronounced "news" as "nevsh" (the letter W is pronounced as a V in German and some other languages; for example, Volkswagen would be Folksvagen). Presumably he never relearned English pronunciation although he lived in the United States for some years.

 

TREES HOUSE

"This house is supported by two pine and one cedar tree."

 

I suppose this awkward sentence is correct ~ you couldn't say "by two pine and one cedar trees" ~ but should be reordered: "This house is supported by one cedar and two pine trees." Or it could be, "This house is supported by two pine trees and one cedar."

 

But maybe we need the ancient English plural form that's like the singular: 1 sheep, 2 sheep; 1 deer, 2 deer; 1 fish, 2 fish; 1 tree, 2 tree. My grandmother once said, "I raised 11 head of young'ns," meaning of course 11 heads of young'ns, but people always say 11 head of cattle, etc.

 

Or, I was thinking, maybe we could have 2 treen, like we have 2 children, and what do you know, that very obsolete plural actually existed (from Anglo-Saxon treowen). Treen also meant made of wood. Who would have thought! Well, I would and I did, but I'm still surprised.

 

IT JUST LOOKS WRONG

 

Dave DaBee asked:

 

Okay, so what's the lexicographer's label for a word that just plain looks WRONG even when you know it's spelled right? "Smoothes" just struck me, as I was writing / typesetting a data sheet. The first such thing I noticed, many years ago, was banana. It just plain looked *wrong.*

 

I don't know that there's a name for it. But why not ask Barbara Wallraff of The Atlantic Monthly? She occasionally asks readers to submit new coinages to fulfill unmet linguistic needs.

 

The verb smoothes confuses me sometimes because other than the final S it's pronounced the same as the related adjective, smooth, where as bath and bathe not only have different A sounds, but the TH sound is different in each word.

 

SOMEONE ELSE THINKS NOT

 

Herb H. entered this in the think not stakes:

 

Descartes went into a bar and ordered a beer and chugged it down.

"Would you like another?," asks the bartender.

"I think not," said Descartes, and POOF! He disappeared.

 

I've heard this one somewhere else recently ~ was it from Kate? Anyway, now I'm afraid to think not.

 

THE GOLD BUG

 

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story called "The Gold Bug" that involved a cryptographic clue, a cipher, with a detailed explanation of how it was solved. I was reminded of this by the new spate of spam I've been getting that appears to be ciphers, but is probably a garbled transmission of another language in another alphabet that doesn't translate well into English symbols. I do cryptograms in puzzle magazines, but only in English. I wonder if it would be possible to tease an English solution to one of these e-mails, which went like this:

 

‹àˆä—DŽq‚Æ�\‚µ‚Ü‚·�B

“Ë‘R‚̃��[ƒ‹‘—�M�A�\‚µ–󂲂´‚¢‚Ü‚¹‚ñ�B

ƒXƒ|ƒ“ƒT�[ƒTƒCƒg—l‚æ‚è“ñ�l‚Ì�—�«‚Ì�ЉîˆË—Š‚ðŽó‚¯‚Ü‚µ‚½‚Ì‚Å�A

‚²ˆÄ“à‚³‚¹‚Ä‚­‚¾‚³‚¢�B�B

ˆê�Ø—¿‹à–³‚µ‚Ì‚²�Љî‚Æ‚È‚è‚Ü‚·�B

ƒ��[ƒ‹‚Ì‘—Žó�M‚ðŠÜ‚ß�A‚ǂꂾ‚¯—˜—p‚µ‚Ä’¸‚¢‚Ä‚à–³—¿‚Å‚·�B

Š®‘S–³—¿‚Å‚Ì‚²�Љî‚Å‚·‚Ì‚Å‘�Šú’÷‚ß�Ø‚è‚Ì�ê�‡‚ª‚²‚´‚¢‚Ü‚·�B

‚Ü‚½�A’÷‚ß�Ø‚è‚Æ‚È‚Á‚½‚Æ‚«‚Í—\��‚È‚­�—�«‚Ì•Ï�X‚ð‚·‚é�ê�‡‚à‚²‚´‚¢‚Ü‚·‚ª�A

‚²—eŽÍ‚­‚¾‚³‚¢�B

ƒNƒŠƒbƒN�Ë�@

 

Would the dashes be punctuation or ciphers? Is @ a period? Every other line ends in A or B, preceded by a box, so that's probably punctuation. Most of my spam is about drugs and lotteries, so any repeated pattern might represent a drug name. Well, that's as far as I'm prepared to go.

 

YOUR OTHER LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT

 

Something I did not know before: Young, uneducated recruits in the Civil War sometimes hadn't even learned left from right. American Heritage magazine explains:

 

...the drill sergeants repeatedly found that among the raw recruits there were men so abysmally untaught that they did not know left from right, and hence could not step off on the left foot as all soldiers should. To teach these lads how to march, the sergeants would tie a wisp of hay to the left foot and a wisp of straw to the right; then, setting the men to march, they would chant, “Hay-foot, straw-foot, hay-foot, straw-foot” ~ and so on, until everybody had caught on. A common name for a green recruit in those days was “strawfoot.”

 

Fred pointed out that the sergeants couldn't do that today. Few recruits would know the difference between hay and straw. When I was a kid I asked my grandmother what the difference was and she looked at me like I was an idiot. Which I was, but for other reasons.

 

JUICE HARP

 

A Garfield cartoon referred to a "juice harp" which of course is a Jew's harp. According to Wikipedia, the "semitic reference is controversial." Why would it be controversial? True, it's not a Jewish instrument, and it's not the finest instrument in the world, but I don't believe that says anything about Jews per se. It turns out that juice harp is an alternate name, as is jaw's harp, but one that's been in use only since the 19th century. Is there an organization someplace of people who think this is some kind of ethnic slur, and who have mounted a campaign against it? How about the French horn and English horn?

 

HEARD ON THE RADIO

 

Governor Schwarzenegger was in disagreeance with the President [about the Mexican border fence].

 

Perhaps if Ahnold were native-born he would be in disagreement. Anyway, it sounded like Bush was in disagreeance with himself when he signed that bill. It's only the majority of voters who are in agreeance with it.

 

"...the ability to upbring your children."

 

The speaker invented this from "upbringing" which comes from "to bring up." But you know and I know that "upbring" isn't a word.

 

32 YEARS YOUNG

 

In his review of a book by Jeopardy winner Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, Ron Berthel of The Associated Press wrote that Jennings's "boyish face and casual but neat attire belie his 32 years." Frankly, I'm puzzled. What is it about being 32 that precludes a boyish face and casual but neat attire? How old do you suppose Berthel is? And I guess 32-year-olds don't wear casual clothes or neat clothes? But a better writer did the same thing. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "Early Success" (1937): "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven." I believe he regretted writing that later. But it shows the damage that can be caused by reading fine literature, especially at an early age (before one is faded). Of course it is possible to fade by 27. Compared to 17.

 

 

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SEARCH IT OUT

Proverbs 25:2

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

 

SOMETHING NEW! Check out the new "I Eat Dead Things" T-shirts for dogs and people, and the Protestant Work Ethic items in the Parvum Opus CafePress shop, plus a new Parvum Opus mouse pad! Now you can buy neat products with the Parvum Opus / KeithOps Catti logo at CafePress.com/parvumopus.

 

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

 

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