The Phrontistery

The Phrontistery is a web site about words, worth a look. Here’s one entry:

Is W a vowel?

Not in English, not really. It's sometimes asserted that W, like Y, is sometimes a vowel, but unlike Y, W does not fulfill the role of a vowel in normal English words. However, in a very few loan-words from Welsh like 'cwm' and 'crwth', W acts like a vowel.

I beg to differ. I think it is a diphthong. I had to explain this to my Chinese student the other day, and explain how to physically form the sound. It seems to me to be a combination of vowel sounds: oo (whether as in wood or food) plus another vowel sound. Example: oo (as in good) + long a = way. (I know nothing about Welsh.) Same goes for Y. Remember memorizing the vowels in grade school: A E I O U and sometimes Y. But like W, Y is always a diphthong: ee + long a = yay. Y and W may be considered vowels at the ends of syllables or words.

Six-Word Memoir

Michelle Martin invites people to write six-word memoirs along the lines of Hemingway’s example, “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” It would be easy to substitute for baby shoes, wedding dress, ice skates, bikini, etc., or replace last clause as well, as in “For sale: ’57 Chevy, 124 miles.” It’s not as easy as it looks because you have to leave out so much that’s important. Martin’s examples seem to be all about her work. Jane Austen wasn’t trying to write a memoir when she wrote, “I write about love and money” (she continued, “What else is there to write about?”).

Copyeditors

Gene Weingarten has an article in The Washington Post about the value of copyeditors. Read it carefully.

Between Us

Thanks to Dave DaBee for the New York Times article about a flaw ~ gasp! ~ in Obama’s glassy, glossy rhetoric: He says things like “between you and I”. I’m not rigid about all grammar rules; I have discussed my lack of rigidity in this space regarding the split infinitive, the preposition ending a sentence, and some others. This happens to be one error that irritates me, and not just because it’s Obama’s. The NYT noted that even Shakespeare used this form; I say no one else is allowed to.

          Harry H. wrote:

I just ran across this on the internet while researching heat pumps; don't know how common this error is, but here it is anyway:

"Since heat pumps almost often run on electricity, you'll want to consider whether a gas furnace would be cheaper."

The writer meant “most often” or “almost always” and probably just made a careless slip; it’s probably not an error you’ll ever see again. See Copyeditors above.

Fatal

Fred foisted a book on me which I will have to read at least in part because it has an interesting chapter called “Our Poisoned Language”; the book is The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek. He quotes a saying of Confucius that we’ve seen before in a different translation: “If the language is incorrect … the people will have nowhere to put hand and foot.” Here is an example of incorrect language:

To Marx especially we also owe the substitution of the term “society” for the state or compulsory organization about which he is really talking, a circumlocution that suggests that we can deliberately regulate the actions of individuals by some gentler and kinder method of direction than coercion.

It always struck me that where the “people” were supposed to rise up and take over the means of production, after which the “state” would wither away, the “people” were always just a few who shared certain opinions. People with other opinions were not really the “people”. Of course “society” also suggests to some people that oppressive group that forces them to wear clothes and get jobs and so on. Also reminds me of a corporate presentation I went to years ago where the speaker explained the difference between tyrants and the IRS: tyrants use physical threats and force. How do you think the IRS persuades people to enter prison?

          Along these lines, the NY Times says that there’s a “perception gap” between us and them (and you know who us and them are) as to who are terrorists. This means there is no objective truth. Like those fights at school where one kid hits another, who defends himself and then gets in trouble for hitting. Maybe you’ve seen this at home among your kids, or maybe with your siblings when you were a kid. In the interest of “fairness” everybody gets blamed. But someone usually did start the trouble, and usually intentionally.

Swim Lane

A new way to say “above my pay grade”: “He’s getting way out of his swim lane.”

Fitna

Free speech update: Geert Wilders, who was kicked out of England, has been allowed in the U.S. and even allowed to speak and show his film Fitna. You can watch it too. Just because you can.

Names

Dave Barry has been reading my mind ~ from the past! In a 2003 column he mentioned the English village names of Biggleswade, Flitwick, and Leighton Buzzard. Not that we don’t have, uh, interesting place names in the U.S. Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, comes to mind.

          Here’s a short list of people’s names from my ancestral spring, West Virginia; these are Christian names, not family names:

Ruffner, Shade, Bryce, Creed Lamb, Oma, Dorcas, Clenton Lando, Verba May,
Ollie (Offutt, Jr.), Wavalene Gay, Maysel Marie

Dorcas is a Biblical name (I think it sounds Greek). Some of the others may be surnames used as first names. Some seem to be newly coined, like Wavalene and Maysel. Ollie Offutt, Jr. is the first and last name. I gleaned these names from Calhoun County obituaries, and assume they are names from past generations and thus no longer in fashion, or in use.

OEmission

A Kansas high school student caught an error on a state writing test that said “greenhouse gas omission” instead of “emission”. Aren’t we aiming for omission of greenhouse gases? I’d like to know how the question was worded.

More About Fonts

Lifehacker is a useful web site, with an article about the importance of clarity in fonts. Remember how everyone wanted to use every possible font in their documents when they first got word processors?

          And here’s another place to make your own font. The site I mentioned last week requires you to write letters in a template and then scan the page. Fontstruct has a different method: you use a grid to construct letters.

ICE

East Anglian paramedic Bob Brotchie came up with a useful idea to help paramedics locate your emergency contact person in case of, well, emergency: Program in the appropriate number under “ICE” (for “In Case of Emergency”) in your cell phone. Paramedics usually find a cell phone on people in accidents, for instance, but they don’t know who to call (though I did get a call once from someone who found my son’s phone in the Boston subway ~ my number was under “Mom”). If you have more than one person who might be an emergency contact, program in those numbers under ICE2, ICE3, etc.

          Speaking of useful, I once said to Fred that I wanted to be a useful person, and he said, “Don’t you mean helpful?” The idea, so I gathered, was that a person may help, but only an object is useful; we don’t make use of human beings. But the idea goes back to my childhood quandary about whether I wanted to be a cow or a cat. Cows lead peaceful lives, and are useful. Cats are only occasionally useful; they live for themselves and are beautiful. Now I would like to be some sort of hybrid.

Sign my petition to establish a Scottish-American History Month. You don’t have to be Scottish to sign!

FLASH! BAD LINK NOW GOOD FOR THE WISH BOOK:

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free to read online or download as a Word file.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

T-SHIRTS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

NEW: Star O’ The Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

I am here

Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

I eat dead things (doggy shirt and BBQ apron)

Plus kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

ALSO Scot Tartans T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

Your Fonts

You can design your own type font, maybe base it on your own handwriting or just make up something new, by going to www.yourfonts.com and following the directions. I’ve gone so far as to print out the template whereon to write my letters ~ you can write an entire alphabet or just your signature or the characters you want. This is not how real font designers create fonts, generally speaking, but you can come up with something unique. In fact you can probably create a font of figures, not just letters.

Real Communication At Last

Do take advantage of the White House’s new web site citizen access. Send your hopes, dreams, and requests for pork to http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

I’ve already sent two messages. The first was to Attorney General Eric Holder who called Americans cowards for not having a real dialogue about race. Sometimes it seems like we talk about nothing else, but I guess he’s not through complaining. I sent a friendly note telling him I’m not afraid to talk about it, if he has any questions. I could have referred him and you to a couple of really good articles about his accusation of cowardice ~ do you think he meant black citizens or white citizens or both? ~ but you can brood on your own sins.

The second note was to the White House in general, but really to President Obama thanking him for not tossing out free speech, since he said a few words against the “fairness” doctrine which would be aimed primarily at talk radio. You know, the one that would force NPR to give Rush Limbaugh equal time.

I’m eagerly awaiting personal responses.

That’s One Theory

We haven’t heard from Bill R. lately but last week he sent a passionate response to my plaintive query as to why a native speaker of English would say or write "the below information”. Bill wrote, “Because the native speaker of English has his head wedged so far that he needs a plexiglas bellybutton to see where he’s going?” Thanks, Bill, I think that explains it for me, at least.

YMML

I thought I’d invented a new e-mail abbreviation when I wrote YMML to Kathy Taylor (Beason News on Hur Herald), for “You Make Me Laugh” but it’s not new. However, she will MYL (make you laugh), talking about the waning appeal of cleaning up after babies, however cute they may be: "I can't even stand to clean up my own puke anymore." I hear you, Kathy.

Read the Labels

Lovely daughter-in-law Kate (now her legal name, starting with “Lovely”) noted on Facebook that the label on her frozen pizza said "use by" said date, not "eat by" or even "consume by”. A Facebook friend added, “Be worried if it also says ‘active ingredient’." How many ways can you use a pizza?

Kate also pounced on this fun Facebook quiz: Pick up the book nearest to you, go to page 56, and record the fifth sentence. Interesting to see what people come up with. And do you count a partial sentence that ends at the top of the page as the first sentence or do you move on to the first whole sentence? What about quotations ~ “He said, ‘Sit here’.” ~ is that one or two sentences? I guess one period means one sentence. And how do you measure the book closest to you? And what about online books?

How Computers Really Work

What with our new computer, new monitor, and new version of Word, we have new random sounds like crickets and small animals scurrying around inside the keyboard. Fred says poltermice.

How to Watch a Movie

Recently I watched the movie Troy on TV, wherein Hector asks, “How many battalions does the sun god command?” This of course paraphrases Stalin’s remark, “How many battalions does the Pope have?” Meaning, I suppose, that might makes right. Anyway, I was wondering why the scriptwriter would throw this in. Hector was heroic, but he lost. Are we supposed to identify Hector to Stalin, who did not die heroically even though he may not have “lost” in his lifetime? The Trojans had gods, as did all the Greeks. Was Hector really an atheist, unbeknownst to Homer? An odd Wiki-type blog called TVTropes has a convincing explanation: it’s just another instance of Hollywood’s relentless anti-religious stance, even when anachronistic and ahistorical.

TVTropes says, “Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations.” (Is this the same as a meme?) It’s hard to say what one can reasonably expect to be present in audiences’ minds today. Education and values have changed so drastically in the last few decades that not only can a writer not automatically assume the reader or listener to have some sort of religion, the reader or listener assumes that no character who can be considered a hero would really be so foolish as to believe in the sun god or any other god.

I also watched yet another new version of a Jane Austen book on PBS Masterpiece Classic, Sense and Sensibility. It seems like there was a different one out just last year. Anyway, this one is British, good scenery and acting, but Andrew Davies changed the dialogue quite a bit, which perhaps was the justification for making a new one, besides the fact that Austen seems to be like the new Shakespeare, everyone wants to act in an Austen story, like cover bands doing the Beatles. But they generally don’t rewrite Shakespeare; they may abbreviate the very long plays but why change the language? Cover bands usually don’t rewrite Beatles lyrics. That’s the whole point, and Austen’s language as well as her thinking is also the point. Changing the language changes the period and changes the thought.

Occasionally the rewrites were anachronistic, as when the dialogue was too self-consciously feminist in this S&S. But one bit that did fit the times definitely did not fit Austen: Davies added a duel to the story. Austen made a point of avoiding melodrama. In fact that was the theme of Sense and Sensibility: the Romantic period of “sensibility” or emotion if not actually emotionalism in the arts and in thinking of the early nineteenth century was contrasted with the earlier neoclassical rationalism of restraint in behavior based on reason more than emotion, and also on Christian and traditional Western principles. There were no duels in Austen’s books. In fact she ridiculed the idea in Pride and Prejudice via silly Mrs. Bennett. I am annoyed with Davies’ presumption in wanting to write a script based on his own feelings about Austen, as if he could improve on the inimitable Jane. He has adapted Shakespeare too and heaven knows what he did there; one story about him is called “Andrew Davies: Shakespeare, My Collaborator”.

Austen devoted another entire novel to this theme, Northanger Abbey, a satire on the Gothic horror novels so popular at the time. Austen enjoyed them herself, but she did not write them. When her protagonist gets carried away with lurid speculations, she is chastised:

Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?

Crimes occurred then as now, of course, but even if we don’t have duels anymore, perhaps we are now not only more cynical but have reverted to another Romantic era of sentiment rather than reason.

Sign my petition to establish a Scottish-American History Month. You don’t have to be Scottish to sign!

FLASH! BAD LINK NOW GOOD FOR THE WISH BOOK:

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free to read online or download as a Word file.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

T-SHIRTS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

NEW: Star O’ The Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

I am here

Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

I eat dead things (doggy shirt and BBQ apron)

Plus kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

Our Four Bears

Amused reader Shai Hasse wrote about Herb Hickman’s “four bears”:

I hope this was intentional punning and slight of word intended to see if we were paying attention....

Yep, it was intentional. How about “slight of word”? Could this be a clever play on “sleight of hand” (a trick)? The words sound the same but have different origins. You might say a typo slights (insults) the language.

Thank you for your fourbearance.

Kindling

I haven’t yet bought a Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book reader, but already they have a new version to be released February 24 that can also read to you, wonderful for people with failing vision but also good for driving. However, until the price drops or someone in South Korea comes up with a good knock-off, I’ll still be hitting the library.

Let’s hope the advent of electronic books will save millions from destruction. It seems there is an ongoing conflagration of children’s books published before 1985 because of microscopic traces of lead used in inks, now outlawed since last year by our ever-protective Congress. Even though no one has been literally poisoned by books, theoretically you could get in trouble for selling yours at a yard sale. Or, I’m thinking, child abuse. This is really bad for libraries, too. Do we need that much protection?

Tim Bazzett mentioned a favorite children’s writer, Roald Dahl, who wrote

Boy and Going Solo (both excellent) ~ and in the first one, about his childhood, gob-stoppers were mentioned as treats the kids loved back then in the 20s and 30s. … I recognized it immediately as what we called jaw-breakers when I was a kid. You had to suck on 'em for quite a long time before you got down to the gum center, and I think they did change colors as they got smaller. … Dahl was, of course, most famous for his many children's books, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but his memoirs are just really great. The second one deals with his time as a flier with the RAF during WWII. He was, like me, a very tall man, who had to cramp himself into the cockpit of his plane with his knees up around his chin. He survived a horrific crash in North Africa. Great book!

Scottish-American History Month

I’ve set up a petition to ask for the establishment of a Scottish-American History Month. My text reads:

We ask that the United States establish a Scottish-American History Month in light of the many inestimable contributions made to the building, defense, and culture of this nation by Scottish immigrants and their descendants. Nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Scottish origin, as was Betsy Ross. Eighteen prominent members of the Scottish colony of Darien, Georgia, settled in 1736, signed the first petition against the introduction of slavery into Georgia, which deferred slavery there for a decade. Half of our presidents have some Scottish ancestry, including Barack Obama. The history of Scottish-Americans is the history of the United States of America, and one month out of the year in celebration will allow that history to be better known and appreciated.

If you care to sign it ~ and why not? ~ go to PetitionOnline.

Media Mode

Years ago I noticed that many ads and illustrations for magazines articles, etc., were illustrated by this Trifecta of Inclusiveness: one white male and two other people who would be some combination of female and male and some other ethnicity. Could be a black woman and Asian man or vice versa, maybe someone who looks vaguely Latino though that could just be Black Irish, or some other combination, but never two white men in the same picture. In fact, some years ago I saw a magazine with two such drawings in the same issue, by different artists, illustrating two different articles. Nowadays, the white male makes fewer appearances, and sometimes disappears altogether, whether two or three people or even a larger group are supposed to be illustrating “Us”.

Unfairness Doctrine

Watch out for the Fairness Doctrine, which if re-enacted could curtail what you’re allowed to listen to. It applies only to radio, for historical reasons explained in PO 34. That means conservative talk radio. Don’t knock it if you haven’t listened to it. It’s not what you think and it’s not all the same. NPR ~ public radio ~ is, I believe, the only radio funded by government and private money, and how would you categorize its editorial stance? Totally neutral and non-partisan? Do you suppose NPR will be required to air opposing views if the FD passes? And who will define what’s neutral and what’s not?

My best Marxist friend once said to me, “I don’t read books. I don’t have to.” I don’t think she reads or hears anything but arguments she already agrees with, but she knows what she doesn’t like. I was much impressed and influenced by the simplicity and strength of her opinions when I was young. But as Mark Twain said, the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who can’t read, and I’ve gone ahead and read non-approved books. So read and listen while you’re allowed to.

You may know of Geert Wilders, who’s been banned in Britain (he’s a Dutch politician) for his anti-Muslim speech. Daniel Hannan of the UK Telegraph says Wilders may be a jerk but it’s dangerous business to stifle free speech.

Speaking of political speech, Charles Krauthammer reminded us that in the last two decades, the U.S. has spent considerable time and blood defending Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Native Speaker

I recently read this phrase: “the below information”. You know that sounds wrong. You can say  “the information below” because “below” is functioning as an adverb (where is the information), not an adjective (what information). Why would a native speaker of English say or write “the below information”?

Oh, My Dear

Did you know that Nether Wallop is a village in Hampshire, England, where BBC’s Miss Marple series with the late Joan Hickson (the only Miss Marple) was filmed? It’s actually one of a pair of Wallops, the other being Over Wallop. It looks like a lovely place.

            Edward Gorey had a real ear for inventing British village names. Unfortunately I don’t have any of his books to hand right now, but you can make a game of inventing them yourself: Little Feeling, The Drains, Numbles, North Draughts, Saint Druthers. I could go on indefinitely.

A Caste of Thousands

Food for thought from Dennis Miller: Could the FBI show about Elliot Ness, The Untouchables, have ever been filmed in India?

Honey, Would You Go My Bailout

Part of the proposed pork, or bailout, or highway robbery package, depending on your POV: Florida would like $4.5 million to construct an “eco park”. Is there something not quite right about spending a fortune to build an eco park? Couldn’t you just leave a piece of land alone for a lot cheaper? Florida could just keep everyone out of the Everglades.

            Tom Henry has a pretty good song called “I’m Looking for a Bailout” and if you buy it for $1 from iTunes, he’ll give half of it to help people who need it now.

You know, if the Pilgrims and Spaniards and French had had bailouts at home, we wouldn’t be here now. We’d be taking a vacation to Manhattan and buying acorn necklaces from the natives. Excuse me, indigenous peoples. You wouldn’t call them First Nations as they do in Canada because there would have been no subsequent nations. Perhaps you’re thinking, well, Columbus got a bailout from Queen Isabella. No, she wasn’t financing a sinking enterprise, she was investing.

Gotta bail now.

Sign my petition to establish a Scottish-American History Month.

FLASH! BAD LINK NOW GOOD FOR THE WISH BOOK:

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free to read online or download as a Word file.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Herbals

Herb H. wrote re “Wyeth dyeth”:

Wyeth dyeth or died:  If it were broadcast media it would always be "Wyeth dying . . . " Whether it's gerund or participle would have to depend on context, which may be why they don't provide any context.  If it's a participle, they could claim it's a form of verb ~ just an illiterate form.  I hope so. Under the premise that it COULD be a gerund, I usually am forced to wait for a verb, and I don't know how long to wait.

Participle is derived only from non-finite verbs.  Now, Native American languages do not have any non-finite verbs. (Wickipedia said so, under "participle" or something.) This suggests the possibility that use of non-finite verbs is a necessary precursor for the development of the wheel. 

Or, does the wheel lead to non-finite verbs? “Rolling! Cruising! Driven!” etc. I’m not used to the term “non-finite verb” but clearly it’s the opposite of the infinitive ~ no tense, number, or person. But while the infinitive has “to” in front of it, a non-finite verb can be the –ing form or a participle.

            I have written about the ungrammatical, pointless, irritating use of the –ing form in newscasts ~ “Wyeth dying last night” ~ apparently to emulate truncated newspaper headlines.

            Herb also analyzed further the unwheeled original nations of the western hemisphere.

I went ahead and queried the on-line Ojibwe dictionary with "wheel."  Mainly, I got detibised+jig.  That "detibised" looks kind of like "destabilized," leading me to suspect Ojibwe and their four bears had stability issues with anything that has wheels, and that may be the solution.  To something.

My Gob Is Stopped

Mike Sykes wrote more about the freezing the balls off brass monkeys, and sent this from Michael Quinion (“International English from a British Viewpoint”) about the term, but I’m including more of Quinion than Mike sent because it makes so much sense:
It’s rubbish. There’s no evidence that such brass plates existed. Although the boys bringing charges to the guns from the magazine were known as powder monkeys and there is evidence that a type of cannon was called a monkey in the mid seventeenth century, there’s no evidence that the word was ever applied to a plate under a pile of cannon shot. The whole story is full of logical holes: would they pile shot into a pyramid? (hugely unsafe on a rolling and pitching deck); why a brass plate? (too expensive, and unnecessary: they actually used wooden frames with holes in, called garlands, fixed to the sides of the ship); was the plate and pile together actually called a monkey? (no evidence, as I say); would cold weather cause such shrinkage as to cause balls to fall off? (highly improbable, as all the cannon balls would reduce in size equally and the differential movement between the brass plate and the iron balls would be only a fraction of a millimetre).

What the written evidence shows is that the term brass monkey was quite widely distributed in the US from about the middle of the nineteenth century and was applied in all sorts of situations, not just weather. For example: from The Story of Waitstill Baxter, by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1913): “The little feller, now, is smart’s a whip, an’ could talk the tail off a brass monkey”; and from The Ivory Trail, by Talbot Mundy (1919): “He has the gall of a brass monkey”. Even when weather was involved, it was often heat rather than cold that was meant, as in the oldest example known, from Herman Melville’s Omoo (1850): “It was so excessively hot in this still, brooding valley, shut out from the Trades, and only open toward the leeward side of the island, that labor in the sun was out of the question. To use a hyperbolical phrase of Shorty’s, ‘It was ’ot enough to melt the nose h’off a brass monkey.’ ”

It seems much more likely that the image here is of a real brass monkey, or more probably still a set of them. Do you remember those sculptured groups of three wise monkeys, “Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil”? Though the term three wise monkeys isn’t recorded earlier than the start of the twentieth century, the images themselves were known much earlier. It’s more than likely the term came from them, as an image of something solid and inert that could only be affected by extremes.

My dad, incidentally, brought a wood carving of the three wise monkeys from the Philippines, along with some intricate ivory carvings, including one of a skeletal starving beggar that used to sit in the dining room.

Mike also elaborated on “suck it and see” from the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms:
There's also a (Brit) forum entry somewhere that suggests it might have originated with a large, spherical hard sweets (candies to you) known as gob-stoppers which were often made so that they changed colour while being sucked. I suspect this is another example of folk etymythology.

The same thread suggested it could be misunderstood as having a sexual connotation, which had never really occurred to me.

…but which is a constant occurrence in the US.

            We also had a little more back and forth about the Auden poem but I will simply refer you to a link Mike sent to the complete poem with a peculiar sort of annotation wherein certain phrases are linked to what look like Web search results having nothing to do with the poem itself. Actually, the most famous line from this poem is “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.”

Acronymical

While looking up the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) in Dedham, Massachusetts, I ran across a similar museum in Seattle called OBAMA, the Official Bad Art Museum of Art. It’s hard to believe anyone in Seattle would make fun of you know who. I thought there must be an ordinance against it.

            Speaking of whom, at last I understand out what hope is, vis a vis the big O: a fat check. You know about the jumbo stimulus package. I just joined Facebook since my kids are there, and half of the pop-up ads are about getting a piece of the action, with photos either of Obama or of wads of cash:

Get Your Stimulus Check

I paid $2.99 and Obama gave me $12,000 in less than 30 days. Get yours today!

All those idealistic, hopeful, changeful people may now be able to get some major cash for things like a dog park, the arts, a Frisbee park, you name it. What used to be “Ask not what America can do for you” is now “Ask!” or in my case, “Oy! Don’t ask!”

            I heard someplace that a Chicago rep named Jan Schakowsky said that if she were to be bribed by corporate donations, she would be the victim. Then I guess we’re all victims of the guv now but I can’t be sure till I get my check.

Strophe, Antistrophe, Apostrophe, Catastrophe

Birmingham, England, is getting medieval on apostrophes, removing them from street signs and generally discouraging them because people haven’t learned how to use them anyway, they use too much ink or paint and take up too much space, and serve no function in names like Queen’s Heath, which hasn’t belonged to the Queen for a while. But did, say, St. Mary’s Road ever belong to Saint Mary, whoever she was? I’m sure we’d all feel much better if they dropped the “S” along with the apostrophe.

Petition

I’m working on setting up a petition to establish a Scottish-American History Month. If you’re Scottish or are interested in any way, get in touch.

Serendipity

Isaac Asimov said about serendipity: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny…’”

FLASH! BAD LINK NOW GOOD FOR THE WISH BOOK:

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free to read online or download as a Word file.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

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Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.