Just wanted to drop a note and let you know how much I enjoy your issues of
wit and knowledge. If I were not a college student (considering a major in English), living on
disability, I would certainly send a donation. But for now, I hope a note
of appreciation can suffice.
Never know, I might someday (soon?) be the next JR Rowlings - (with better
We understand that not
everyone can (or even wants to!) "thank" us with monetary
donations. We appreciate your note and wish you luck with college and
any future career you choose!
From Roger Whitehead:
In Curmudgeons' Corner Guestmudgeon John Archdeacon experiences
Not that being there makes it correct, but
disconcertion is in the OED. I expect you have a copy/set, so I shan't weary you by quoting the entry.
While trawling the Web the other day, I landed on the Web site of an American
training association for machine tool users that offered "credentialing" of
Re Gene Fellner's question on
Wisteria/Wistaria. It was originally Wistaria, after its discoverer Casper Wistar (1761-1818), professor of anatomy at the
University of Pennsylvania, where there is an institute named after him (see
http://www.wistar.upenn.edu/about_wistar/archives.html). International conventions in the naming of plants dictated the change to "-eria", says
Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners.
Re Dan Schechner's scattered shower, it's not unusual to hear British sports
commentators describe an injured player as "regrouping". I keep looking for
severed limbs crawling towards each other, as in all the best (worst) horror
Indeed, disconcertion is in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary,
for any new readers), but the word hasn't appeared in print since 1881.
Additionally, disconfident is in the OED but it hasn't been used for
a very long time, either. As you say, being in the OED does not make a
word correct (or the best choice, anyhow).
From Dan Schechner:
Thanks for using my first submission concerning a scattered shower. I had no
idea that you were a meteorologist!
Years ago in a business meeting, I heard a marketing director solicit suggestions
for a program that would incent the employees of his bank. My dictionary presents
incentive as an adjective and a noun, but the use of this awkward pseudo-verb
appears to have no justification. As a lover of language, I was incensed.
For years I've been saying that if the plural of index is indices, then the plural of
Kleenex should be Kleenices. As a matter of fact, one of my math teachers knew
that vertices was the correct plural form of vertex (though
vertexes is acceptable), yet he thought the singular form was vertice! Go figure.
Yep, Melanie was the
outstanding meteorology graduate in her class! (And no, she wasn't
the ONLY meteorology graduate in her class, but she was the first female
to get a BS in that field from her university! Previously only a BA
had been offered.)
love Kleenices and will have to use that when we can!
I read your response to Gene Fellner in Issue 167 regarding the origin of
ferengi. Having been a farang many times in Thailand made me curious to further explore the origin of this word. I found a great discussion of the path this word has taken in many languages at the following link,
. Originally an Arabic word for
"Franks", "land of the Franks", "Europe" etc., it came to mean "foreigner" and the word travelled with Arabic traders to many other cultures throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
And while my thoughts were transported to the beaches of Thailand (while sitting by the water on the island of Montreal), I thought some of your readers who've been to Thailand might be interested in some connections between English and Thai. Although not an Indo-European language, the Thai language has borrowed many words from Sanskrit and Pali, predominantly through the spread of Buddhism. It's similar to the borrowings many European languages have made from Latin, although a closer analogy is probably Greek with its heavy scientific and ecclesiastical influence.
From the Indo-European root
*bher(e)gh meaning "fort or town on a height, hence
strong" we have many cities with names ending in berg, burgh, or bury, e.g.
Pittsburgh (or Pittsburg in Texas and California), Canterbury and
Hamburg (hence hamburger). In India we have Jaipur,
Udaipur, etc., and in Thailand we have Thon Buri, Saraburi etc.
The Thai word for "queen" is
rachinee (in a roughly romanized spelling). This comes from the Sanskrit word for queen,
rajni, the feminine form of raj, connected to rajah and
maharajah (ultimately connected with the IE root *reg). It's then a fairly transparent connection with
rex, feminine regina (as in E.R. for
"Elizabeth Regina" on British stamps). The raj shows up in various place names in Thailand, e.g.
Rajdamri Road and Ratchaburi.
The word for the Thai currency,
Baht, also means "foot". Baht comes from the Sanskrit/Pali
pada which is related to the Latin pedis as in pedal and
Although there are many more Thai-English connections, I'll finish with a few poetic examples. These Sanskrit/Pali loanwords are used more frequently in poetic language, while the daily spoken language would use native Thai words in their place. The connections should be easy.
Nasik, "a nose"; waja or waji, "a
voice"; swaht, "sweetness"; and madhu,
"honey" (English mead).
That's all for now. Keep up the wonderfully stimulating work.
Excellent! There's also Singapore
(Sanskrit singha-pur-, "city of the lion" ).
From Gil Ross:
As for probability of precipitation,
it could mean the fraction of the area
covered by rain, but in normal meteorological usage Melanie is wrong. It doesn't - or it shouldn't. If it refers to your current location, it really
should mean the probability during the defined period or rain falling on you - presuming, of course, you are outside. If it is expressed for an area
rather than location it means that the probability is reasonably constant for any location within the area. Any following words should help define the
forecast better, like later in the period, prolonged period, and - scattered
However the phrases complained of are indeed not well used. Scattered shower
probably(!) means an isolated shower. Unfortunately it is only too true that when a forecaster is performing under pressure words take on a life of their
own. My favourite is mixing "changeable" and "unchanging" to become "unchangeable" which is an entirely correct but useless forecast!
Melanie replies: Actually, in normal
meteorological usage (by university-educated meteorologists) in the U.S., a 20%
chance of rain does mean that 20% of the forecast area is supposed to
get rain. Whether it does or not reflects only on the forecasters'
accuracy. I am guessing that you are not from the U.S. based on some U.K.
spellings and terms you used (favourite, changeable with regard
to weather), and U.S. meteorologists do have some different definitions from
those used by other countries' meteorologists. There is a distinct
difference in meaning between scattered showers and isolated
showers. Anyone east of the Rockies in the U.S. will probably be familiar with
that difference. Isolated showers are produced when conditions favorable
for rain clouds occur in very few locations (usually isolated
storms are caused by diurnal heating), while scattered showers may be produced
by diurnal heating that has some other process helping it along (a weak frontal
boundary or dry line, etc.). More widespread rain occurs when large
systems (cold front or warm front, occluded front, hurricane, etc.) are
In the U.S. these days, many
broadcast "weather people" have degrees in meteorology or have at
least taken several courses in that field. They probably still parrot
the National Weather Service forecasts for the most part, however, and
they do, still, say some peculiar things every now and again!
From Greg Umberson:
I've seen a lot of spurious etymologies circulating on the 'net. I didn't know if you had seen this one, sent to me by a friend. I suspect he actually believed it and, knowing I like word histories, thought he would pass it along.
For your entertainment...
Ever wonder where the word SH*T comes from? Well, here it is:
Certain types of manure used to be transported (as everything was years
ago) by ship.
In dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water
(at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation
began again, of which a byproduct is methane gas.
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could
(and did) happen. Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern,
Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was discovered
what was happening. After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped
with the term "S.H.I.T" on them which meant to the sailors to "Ship High In
In other words, high enough off the lower decks so that any water that
came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.
Bet you didn't know the history of that word.
Neither did I. I always thought it was a golf term.
We know NETYMOLOGY (spurious etymology propagated
by e-mail) when we see it, and here's a prime example. The etymology
of sh*t is known and we discuss it here,
as mentioned last week. We wanted to print the entire, original
netymology for future reference. Check our FAQ
where we debunk other netymologies. (We received the
"entire" (we assume) s.h.i.t. netymology from other readers, as well).
Also, a reminder: very few words in English come
from acronyms, especially words as old as sh*t. (We are
self-censoring in order to prevent being branded "evil" by all
of the internet rating software out there...)
How did the Indo-European root
*bhad which means "good" morph into English bad which means
"not good" then get transformed into street slang bad meaning
Isn't the English language a mess? (I mean a good
Well, first, *bhad
did not give English bad. Instead, bad first turns up
in the written record as Middle English badde at the end of the
13th century but appears infrequently until the end of the 14th
century. One scholar has suggested that it derives from Old English będdel
"hermaphrodite", with będling meaning
"effeminate fellow, womanish man". The loss of the final l
was a common occurrence in Old English, so that we ended up with badde.
The OED's etymologists feel that such a history would account for bad's
absence from the written record until the 13th century, by which time its
meaning had changed quite a bit. Another scholar, with whom the OED
etymologists do not agree so heartily, suggests that bad derives
from Old English gebęded "forced, oppressed" and changed
in meaning to "taken by force, enslaved, captive" and then
"miserable, wretched, despicable, worthless".
slang meaning of "good" or "cool" is also
representative of a relatively common occurrence in English, where a
word's meaning changes so much over time that it eventually becomes
opposite of what it was originally.
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