PARVUM OPUS
Number 209
You've seen those little games that translate old plain English proverbs into longer Latin-based English words with lengthy syntax and challenge you to figure out the original. The 2007 Old Farmer's Almanac has some. One example:
Tolerate it with a
particle of NaCl. (Take it with a grain of salt.)
But one of them is just wrong:
Insufficient
instruction to an aged canine will not result in its ability to undertake fresh
stratagems. (You can't teach an old dog new tricks.)
The original saying means you can't do it at all, there is not sufficient instruction to teach an old dog. The word "insufficient" should have been omitted. But the original saying is false anyway, at least as a metaphor for human behavior, and for dogs too, as Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisperer) would undoubtedly agree. Now, as for old cats. . .
In The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form you'll find limericks on just about anything, including rhetoric. Now we have another place to research obscure words. Here are some that define and illustrate the key words:
Limerick #16046
By Janet McConnaughey
If you
verb any noun ("Let me text")
Or
reverse that ("You ouched those injects!"),
Anthimeria
rules.
'Twas
among Shakespeare's tools,
So grammarians shouldn't be vexed.
She added:
In his
wonderful strip, "Calvin and Hobbes," Bill Watterson had Calvin say,
"Verbing weirds language." Still, it dates back at least to Bill
Shakespeare:
~
"I'll unhair thy head." (Antony and Cleoptra, II, v)
~
"The thunder would not peace at my bidding". (King Lear, IV, vi.)
~ "It out-herods Herod, pray you avoid it" (Hamlet III, ii)
And here's bolo again!
Limerick #T78607
By Kakuzan
In
Basic (e.g. at Fort Ord)
When
targets went up on the board,
If you
were a bolo,
Your
numbers were so low
That
not even "marksman" was scored.
Bolo is an "Old Army" (pre-1941) expression of unclear origin; one dictionary suggests that the troops involved should have been issued knives instead of firearms. There's also a verb, e.g. in "All he ever did was bolo" to the chorus of "John Brown's Body."
Limerick #T96178
By Chris J. Strolin
A
bolo's a dangerous male,
Like
the kind you'd prefer kept in jail.
This
slang book I took out
Says
"Be On (the) Look Out,"
His
dastardly deeds to curtail.
The police acronym BOLO led to the college slang term bolo.
ACTS OF WHATEVER
I was wondering if the term "acts of God" as used in insurance policies is objectionable to atheists. As far as I can tell, the phrase is still used and is in fact a legal term. Perhaps atheists should open their own insurance company and change it to "acts of nature", in which they presumably believe. I wonder if anyone has objected to receiving an insurance settlement because there's no such thing as an act of God.
USE IT OR LOSE IT
Tim Bazzett passed along a Canadian article about research that says lifelong bilingualism seems to correlate with less incidence of Alzheimer's. But it's not just knowing language, it's daily use, which suggests to me that an active life may be the most important factor. Still, smoke 'em if you got 'em.
RE Chomsky's language theory:
I find the idea that we
are born with the rudiments of language structure appealing. But such rudiments
may go little if any further than <subject><verb><object>.
I've sometimes wondered where Latin got its declensions from, and such neat
ideas as the ablative absolute.
RE ending a sentence with a preposition:
What do you do about
the passive of compound verbs such as "see to"? As in "Anyone
who goes to a psychiatrist needs their head seeing to." (Yes, I know you
could say "examining".)
We would also say "seen to" or "examined".
RE ancipital, meaning "two edged":
Given that anceps means
two-headed, you could argue it's a misnomer anyway.
And he threw in a limerick for good measure:
There
was a young lady of Twickenham,
Whose
boots were too tight to walk quickenham,
After
walking a mile
She
sat down on a style
And
took off her boots and was sickenham.
(Perhaps it's worth mentioning that, when it's not referred to as Twikkers, the place is pronounced *Twick*-un-um.)
Also worth nothing that we spell it "stile" (steps that cross a fence or wall).
I just heard that Art Buchwald, the noted columnist, died. You can listen to a 1983 radio interview with him at Wired for Books. There are other online interviews, but Wired for books also carries other interviews with writers as well as readings.
COREX
I misunderstood what Dave DaBee wrote about "ancipital":
Sorry, I didn't mean to
suggest that the term ancipital edge was in "The Most Dangerous
Game". The story's title is the classic example of ancipital edge. Or so
Mrs. Deutsch said.
The title is a pun (double-edged) because it's about a hunter whose prey is human beings, which is a dangerous game to play; but it turns out that the prey ~ or game ~ is also dangerous. Which reminds me of an ancient joke, a pun on the same word: A hunter is surprised by a beautiful naked woman in the woods, who says, "I'm game!", so he shoots her. In this case, for those of you not accustomed to this idiom, "I'm game" means "I'm ready for anything".
A similar double play is in the title of the TV program, John Ratzenberger's Made in America, in which Ratzenberger travels the country visiting factories. The play on words comes in not so much in the show title alone, but in combination with the title of his book, We've Got It Made in America. He says,
I was raised with the idea that Americans were
inventors and problem solvers. The notion of a repairman coming to the house
was odd to us. If you couldn't fix it, then certainly one of the neighbors
possessed the skills and willingness. I've always had a high regard for people
who put their hands to something. A tool and die maker is an artist on par with
those who display their works in expensive art galleries. A painter can always
paint over a mistake. But when you work with tolerances of 1/1000th of an inch
on a spinning lathe, you can't afford to be careless.
It's
a good program, and it puts me in mind of my father and my grandparents, who
lived on farms and knew how to do all kinds of things. They made most of what
they used, from food to clothes to soap to barns.
There's a lot to be said for self-sufficiency, as Emerson ("Self-Reliance"), Thoreau (Walden), and Hank Williams, Jr. ("A Country Boy Can Survive") have explained. We all need a touch of it, and the nation needs a lot of it.
Quite a few years ago I enrolled in a graduate program at The University of Tulsa, where Germaine Greer had started a program of studies in women's literature, along with a literary journal, which is still going. She only lasted there three years, though; she was an excellent professor but didn't quite fit in. One day after her contract was un-renewed, I went shopping with her around Christmas time, and she was looking for a particular package of dough to make mincemeat pie (which she didn't realize that American kids wouldn't like). She couldn't find a ball of ready-made dough that she could roll out, she could only find mixes or already-rolled pie crusts, and was getting testy about it. I tried to jolly her along and say she could re-roll the dough into the shape she wanted, and Americans have had to learn to improvise, at which she snorted, or something very like it. This is the difference between the New and Old Worlds. (Regardless of the fact that she's from Australia, which is a new world too; she shook that dust off her feet long ago.)
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