August 2007 Archives
Collections and collectors: exonumia, cartophily, scriptophily,
deltiology, rariora (Wundercammer), ephemera,
phillumenist, philography (chirography)
Specific "collective" nouns: kindle, clowder, murmuration, warren, giggle, gaggle, skein
Collections of Writings: Festschrift, gazetteer, onomasticon, prosopography, florilegium,
sottise, sottisier, analects
(chrestomathy), anthology, corpus
Savory Collectives - E pluribus unum: smorgasbord, farrago, mishmash, olio, olla-podrida,
potpourri, salmagundi, hodgepodge
Collections and collectors
This
week we'll look at words of the many collecting hobbies folks have. As is our
tradition, we begin with a word that also fits last week's theme of AEIOU
words.
exonumia items, as tokens or medals, that resemble money but are not
intended to circulate as money
Some sources say that the term was coined (no pun intended) in 1960 by Russ
Rulau. OED's first citation is from 1962.
Now exonumia has taken
precedence over coins because it is more fun, Miss Stone says. "coins you
have to keep locked up in a safe deposit box."
Arcadia (CA) Tribune, Dec. 1, 1977
Who would have thought that there would be almost 2,000 items available [on
eBay] in the Exonumia subcategory? Not us. In fact, we didn't
even know what it was until we took a look and found the category full of
medals and tokens.
Neil J. Salkind and Bruce Frey, eBay Online Auction
cartophily the collection of trade cards
(sometimes defined as "the collection of cigarette cards," which is
the largest single category)
in the 30s cartophily was
second only to stamp collecting as a popular hobby
- Birmingham (AL) Post, Apr. 24, 2002
The bequest of over one million cigarette and other trade cards by Edward
Wharton-Tigar (1913-95) has given the [British] Museum the world's definitive
collection.
Edward Wharton-Tigar, the world's greatest cartophilist,
began collecting at the age of seven in 1920.
'Trade cards' comprise cards of
all types distributed by commercial organizations as inducements to the general
public to buy their wares. The largest single group of such cards was issued by
cigarette manufacturers, but almost every other trade was involved to some
degree.
- Marjori Caygill, The British Museum A-Z Companion
scriptophily the collecting by hobbyists of old stock certificates
and bonds of defunct companies, that have no intrinsic value other than their
aesthetic appeal or relative rarity
Several quotes today, explaining the market.
An 1870 certificate for original shares of the
Standard Oil Co., signed by John D. Rockefeller, was hammered down for $120,000.
A second, for the Pullman Palace Car Co., maker of the first sleeping cars for
trains, and bearing the signature of Andrew Carnegie
, fetched $70,000.
scripophily
is a relatively new pursuit
Those who indulge
in it find it an addictive combination of financial history, aesthetics, and
personal interests. Germans have long been the most avid collectors, and the
British are enthusiasts as well, but dealers and auctioneers report that
Americans are coming.
- International Herald Tribune, July 8, 2000
"
the trend is toward the elimination of the paper stock
certificate," says Kerstein. While the supply of new certificates reaching
the collector market is dwindling, the hobby of scripophily
continues to grow.
- thestreet.com, Sept. 18, 2006
There were many bubbles that came and went. The mining boom in the 1850's, the
railroad build out beginning in the 1830's, Oil Boom beginning in the 1870's,
[Wordcrafter: hereafter, I abbreviate] Telegraph 1850's, Automobile Industry at
the turn of the 20th century, Aviation around 1910 after the Wright Brothers,
Electric Power 1930's, Airline Wars and Takeovers 1970's, Cellular Telephones
mid 1980's, Banks 1930's, Saving's and Loans 1970's, Long Distance Telephone
Service 1990's, and most recently the Dot Com rags to riches to rags chapter.
Most of the companies, however, never made it and the certificates became
worthless pieces of paper ... until the hobby of Scripophily came
along! [sic; apostrophes as in the original]
- David Breskin, Supermodel
deltiology the collection of postcards
[from Greek for a small writing tablet]
I will never forget the first vintage
postcard I ever bought. It was at a Bangor-area flea market and showed the old
Bangor City Hall, one of many hundreds of landmarks from my hometown which are
not with us anymore. The date was 1972. I was a 20-year-old college student,
and my newfound hobby of deltiology was born. The card, by the
way, cost the princely sum of 25’.
Richard R. Shaw, Bangor in Vintage Postcards
This book is dedicated to my wife, Shirley L. Heckman, who wonders whether deltiology
is a hobby or a disease.
Marlin L. Heckman, Santa Barbara American Riviera Postcards
rariora rare collectors'-items
Fruits and flowers were presented and
illustrated in brand new linguistic and figurative terms as precious
collectors items forming part of sophisticated natural collections, almost the
rariora of modern vegetable `Wunderkammern'.
John Dixon Hunt, The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture
Bonus word:
Wundercammer a chamber or cabinet of wonders; spec. a place
exhibiting the collection of a connoisseur of curiosities, such as became
common from the late Renaissance onwards
ephemera items of short-lived interest or usefulness,
especially those that later acquire value to collectors
[Greek, 'things lasting only a day'. Think of such collectibles as ticket stubs
or programs from a World's Fair or other big event.]
We illustrate both the general use and the collectors' use.
But today's newspaper is lining tomorrow's
bird cage. It's ephemera.
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, The Cabinet of Curiosities
The Quigley Collection, recently donated, is over two thousand pieces of
Victorian ephemera, mostly having to do with soap.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
phillumenist a collector of matchbox or matchbook labels
Remember that scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "North by
Northwest" where Cary Grant, standing by the villain's second-floor
railing, writes a warning inside a matchbook's cover and then tosses it to the
living room below in hopes that Eva Marie Saint will spy it? I'll bet phillumenists
everywhere would love to add that little bit of ephemera to their
collections!
Labels and covers have borne manufacturers'
logos from their inceptions, but in 1894/5 an ad for Piso's cough medicine
appeared on a matchcover, creating advertising history. Since then, just about
every organization, business, political party, resort and cause has used the
medium of matchbook advertising to reach untold millions of consumers.
The rarest known cover is a single survivor
of 100 handprinted copies issued by the Mendelson Opera Company in 1896.
Presently owned by the Franklin Mint, its estimated value is in excess of
$25,000.
AuctionBytes.com, Oct. 24, 2004
philography the collecting of autographs, esp. those of famous
persons
Today's quotes concern autograph forgery.
But James Dean is one of those rare stars who
never go out of style. His enduring popularity and the scarcity of his
signature keep Dean at the top of many philographer's most wanted
lists. Because Dean's autograph is notoriously rare, it has frequently been
forged.
Joe Bills, James Dean Collectors Guide
In the spring of 1976 an unemployed grocery clerk in Rumford, Maine began
peppering the nation with forged signatures of celebrities. .. The forger,
Arthur Sutton, a perky young man, was not new to the game of the name. He had
been quietly turning out forgeries for three years and had honed his chirographic
skills to the point where not even Richard Nixon could tell his own signature
from Sutton's imitation. No wonder philographers eagerly bought
up every scratch out of Rumford. [Several pages later:] It is the forgeries and
fakes that give piquancy and excitement to the chase. Without them philography
would be a pretty dull pursuit.
Charles Hamilton, Great Forgers and Famous Fakes: The Manuscript Forgers
of America and How They Duped the Experts
Bonus word:
chirography handwriting; penmanship
A previous word-of-the-day; see here.
Specific "collective" nouns
Spinning
off from our collector-topic: You might speak of a certain collection of
animals as a herd of buffalo, a flock of starlings or other
birds, or a school of fish. You'd never refer to a flock of
buffalo, a school of birds, or a herd of fish.
My point? Many collective terms are used only for certain animals, not for all.
It's fun to invent new, specific collective terms. (For example, if
streetwalkers are trolling the avenue for customers, they might be called a flourish
of strumpets.)
This week we'll at some of the many that our language already has. Many such
"group words" (particularly for animals which were more familiar
centuries ago) are now almost forgotten, and perhaps were never were much
known. Some of them are just linguistic curiosities (I mean, how often will you
have occasion to refer to a cete of badgers or a nide of
pheasants?), but we'll try to focus on terms you could actually us, for things
you encounter in your day to day life.
kindle a group of kittens
[kindle (verb) of a female animal: to give birth to young]
I am convalescing. I have been sick with a
virus, a strange influenza that has left me as weak as a kindle of
kittens.
Kate Atkinson, Emotionally Weird
I put in a call to the local shelter.
But the shelter was full; there was a
great number of cats and many kittens waiting for adoption. "There's no
room at the inn," the manager said. "Yours is actually the... fourth
call this week from someone who has found a kindle of kittens
abandoned somewhere. I can't understand how people can be so cruel or why they
are so irresponsible in the first place."
Kaetheryn Walker, Homeopathic First Aid for Animals: Tales and Techniques
from a Country Practitioner
As
long as we were talking about kittens, what about cats?
clowder a group or cluster of cats
[cognate with cluster, clutter, clot, coagulate, and to some degree with
clatter but apparently not with coagulate]
Nothing but a few stray rats and ground
squirrels, and the half dozen stray cats that had taken up residence some days
before, following the quakes, a clowder of thin, wild beasts so
fearful they would run from a bird shadow swooping overhead.
Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Cat To The Dogs: A Joe Grey Mystery
a number of sooty tenements pressed four and five storeys upwards. A clowder
of scrawny cats was busy in a heap of fishbones
Ross King, Ex-Libris
murmuration a flock (of starlings)
OED is skeptical of whether purported words of this sort, found in old
word-lists, were truly "real" words at the time. It says of murmuration:
"One of many alleged group terms found in late Middle English glossarial
sources, but not otherwise substantiated. Revived and popularized in the 20th
cent."
The new owners watched as a
murmuration of starlings swooped and chattered in the fading sky
Eric Hodgins and William Steig, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
(1946; presumably the basis for the movie of the same title)
In
my college years, I once lived in a dorm whose ivy-covered walls were infested
with starlings. Anyone who's had to live near the constant noise of a starling
gathering-place will know how annoying these *#&! birds are.
warren a colony of rabbits (also, an overcrowded or maze-like
area)
My e-mail is kind of like a warren of
rabbits. When I return from an adventure, I find it has been
breeding.
San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2002
Deep in the heart of the Bell Institute, in the bowels of the laboratory, you
come to a warren of windowless rooms called, rather grandly, the
Institute of Cereal Technology.
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
giggle a group of girls or other silly females
[I would think of this as a metaphor, but OED accepts it as a word, originating
in 1942: "He had picked her out of the whole giggle of Society
dιbutantes."]
The scene was the White House flower garden,
crowded with a giggle of presidential secretaries
Time Magazine, Nov. 8, 1963
[in an impoverished rural area] A giggle of girls jostles to
glimpse the intimations of instant immortality provided by a visitor's digital
camera.
Times of India, Feb. 4, 2005
gaggle a flock (of geese); also derisively, a company (of
women)
[OED says, "One of the many artificial terms invented in the 15th c. as
distinctive collectives referring to particular animals or classes of persons;
but unlike most of the others, it seems to have been actually adopted in
use."]
[Some say a gaggle of geese is a flock awkward on the ground, but not
one in graceful flight. But contrast second quote. Also, in actual usage
"gaggle" is far more often used to mean "any disorderly
crowd", not necessarily geese.]
a gaggle of greedy
journalists, of whom I was one.
New Scientist, Dec. 25, 1999
A French pilot who has taught a gaggle of orphaned geese to
follow his microlight aircraft will be the star attraction at an air show this
weekend. French environmentalist Christian Moullec spent the past 10 years
training the geese to look on his aircraft as their parent. The gaggle
will fly at the Sywell air and music show in Northants to the sounds of a piano
concerto by Mozart.
BBC News, June 23, 2006
skein a flight of wild fowl
[from the main and earlier sense of "a quantity of thread or yarn, wound
to a certain length upon a reel"]
When a skein of geese flies
over my neighborhood, I celebrate that these symbols of wildness still grace my
city
Seattle Times, July 17, 2005
Collections of Writings
We've
had a theme of "Types of hobbyist collectors". We've had a theme of
"Specific Collective Nouns".
Think I'm done with "collecting"? Of course not. This week we'll talk
about various types of collected writings.
Festschrift a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar
[German, Fest 'celebration' + Schrift 'writing']
I wrote an introduction to a collection of
short stories by Budd Schulberg, too, and a long salutation for a Festschrift
presented to Erskine Caldwell on his eightieth birthday.
Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death
gazetteer a geographical index or dictionary
Indeed, gazetteers in America,
it was said, could not keep up with the "very frequent changes" in
the dividing of territories and naming of places "which are almost daily
taking place": it was a problem "peculiar to a new, progressive and
extensive country." In one generation Americans occupied more territory
than they had occupied during the entire 150 years of their colonial existence.
"We are a rapidly I was about to say fearfully growing country,"
said John C. Calhoun in 1816. "This is our pride and danger, our weakness
and our strength."
Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution
Apparently
the bible-scholars have a special word meaning "gazetteer" (see first
quote), although the dictionaries define it differently. And that word led me to
still another.
onomasticon 1. a list or collection of proper names 2. a
list or collection of specialized terms, as those used in a particular field or
subject area
Eusebius also prepared an Onomasticon,
or gazetteer of biblical sites, in which every place named in the
Bible is described.
Gerald Bray, Biblical Interpretation: Past & Present
She describes it as "both an onomasticon and a prosopography."
It is an onomasticon in as far as it is a collection of all the
recorded names used by the Jews of Palestine [in the period 330BCE-200CE] ....
It is a prosopography in as far as it collects not just the names
but also the people who bore the names. In this respect it bears the character
of a modern telephone book.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness
Testimony
prosopography a study that identifies and relates a group of
persons or characters within a particular historical or literary context
Today's
word has a lovely source. It comes to us from Latin florilegus,
gathering flowers.
florilegium (pl. florilegia) a collection of excerpts from
written texts, especially works of literature
None of Cicero's speeches were [sic] known
except indirectly; his philosophical works were familiar to medieval readers
only in the form of extracts in florilegia; and no one had
even suspected that a large body of Cicero's correspondence to his friends was
still extant.
Thomas M. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Of all the books I have delivered to the printer, none, I think, is as personal
as this unruly jumble, this florilegium, for the simple
reason that it is rich in reflections and interpolations.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Maker (Epilogue), as collected in Borges and A.
Coleman, Selected Poems by Jorge Luis Borges
sottise a silly remark or saying; a foolish action [from French]
sottisier a collection of sottises, esp. a list of written
stupidities
Any recorder . of these events must be
tempted to compile a vast sottisier of misjudgments made by his
compatriots and others in the West.
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment
Two
words today. The first fits this theme far too well to leave out. But since it
has been used as a word-of-the-day before, I just refer you to the previous
presentation of chrestomathy. As to today's second word:
analects selected miscellaneous written passages (often used as a title)
Or in more poetic language of OED: "literary gleanings; collections of
fragments or extracts". One smiles to note an older, obsolete meaning in
OED: "crumbs that fall from the table; pickings up, gleanings".
Anyhow, the above is what the dictionaries say. But the vast majority of the
actual usage is as a title -- mostly a specific title, The Analects of
Confucius The few times "analects" is used as a freestanding word
(even by such as author as Dos Passos), it seems to mean "short, pithy
statements, full of meaning, in the style of an oriental sage's maxim.
"Your enemies will destroy you while
you sit perorating about your high-minded ideals!" Chao interjected.
"Some of those who oppose me are men and women of principle," Liu Ang
said, without raising his voice. "When they see that they have been in
error, their opposition will subside."
"You mistake a knife fight
for an exchange of analects!" Chao countered.
"There are powerful men ..."
Robert Ludlum, The Ambler Warning
Dos Passos ... read Steinbeck's analects in the session when he
was called on, following an introduction in which he said, "While
[Steinbeck] was in what might be called his delirium, he wrote some analects
which he thought might be amusing to read:" ...
"The difference between a congress and
a dogfight is that a dogfight has rules."
"Confusion is the child of speech.
Silence has never produced misinformation."
"Force is the persuasion of
failure."
"... ideas have neither nationality or
race."
Stephen K. George, John Steinbeck: A Centennial Tribute
We
recently saw a word, florilegium, that comes from the Latin for
"flower gathering". Today's word comes from the Greek for
"flower gathering" (anthos flower + logia collecting).
How appropriate to illustrate it with a quote that refers to a garden. But not
the sort of garden you are expecting.
anthology a collection of literary pieces, such as poems, short
stories, plays
From Neil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating
the Secret Society of Pickup ArtistsΉ
I ordered books on body language, flirting, and sexual technique. I read anthologies
of women's sexual fantasies, like Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden, in
order to internalize the idea that women actually want sex as much as -- if not
more than men;² they just don't want to be pressured, lied to, or made to
feel like a slut.
ΉAny prude who thinks I hunted for a
salacious quote should note that this was the top hit in one of my standard
quote-sources.
²Query: Did the author create an interesting ambiguity by saying "than
men;" (rather than "than
men do;")?
P.S.: Have you ever before seen a sentence which, like the last one, has four
punctuation marks in a row?
corpus a large collection of writings of a particular kind or on a
particular subject; esp., the complete works of an author (also
other meanings)
[Latin, 'body'; plural is corpora or corpuses]
Buddha taught for forty-five years, and a
staggering corpus has come down to us in one form or another.
Huston Smith, The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions
Savory Collectives - E pluribus unum
Think
I'm done with "collections" yet? Think again.
Anyone who's dealt with leftovers knows that cookery is often the art of
combining whatever's available. (For example, we've seen mulligan stew a stew made with whatever's available.)
This week we'll look at creations from the kitchen whose names have come to
mean, more generally, a diverse collection.
smorgasbord 1. a buffet meal featuring a variety of dishes. 2.
a varied collection
[Swedish smφrgεs bread with butter (smφr butter); open sandwich +
bord table. Note: The word implies (though the dictionaries fail
to note this) a varied collection from which one can select.]
Our last illustrative quote concerned female sexual fantasies. Here's another
one.
But what held her attention most was the
high concentration of handsome men working in the bar. They were everywhere.
The bartenders the waiters, the bouncers
She'd never seen anything like this.
It was a testosterone smorgasbord. Elise leaned over to
whisper in her ear, "I think I might have died and gone to heaven. Have
you ever seen so many gorgeous men in your life?"
Sherrilyn Kenyon, Unleash the Night
Two
words that relate to food for animals, not for people.
farrago a confused mixture [Latin farrago mix of grains for
animal feed, from far corn]
Wordcrafter note: farrago seems to mostly used not just for any
mixture, but specifically for a jumble of arguments that is seemingly sensible
but in fact "elaborate nonsense".
The accepted position seemed to be that
religions were normally a mere farrago of nonsense, though our
own, by a fortunate exception, was exactly true.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
"Sir," I replied, turning to him, "what your motive can be in
reciting to me with a serious face this remarkable farrago,
I am utterly unable to guess, but you are surely yourself too intelligent to
suppose that anybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more
of this elaborate nonsense
"
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
mishmash a confused mixture
[reduplication of Yiddish mishn to mix, or of English mash 1.
mixed ground grain fed to livestock and fowl 2. a soft pulpy mixture or
mass]
The crowd is a mishmash of
tourists and NYU [New York University] students from Utah and gay guys--the
balding, married ones from the Islandand they all went shopping on Eighth
Street. It's not an attractive crowd.
Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, The Nanny Diaries
Crossword-puzzle
writers find this four-letter word useful!
olio 1. a highly seasoned stew of meat, vegetables, and
chickpeas 2. a miscellaneous mixture
[With the same two meanings is olla-podrida, from Spanish; literally rotten
pot.]
As I'm a person, I am in a very chaos to
think I should so forget myself: but I have such an olio of
affairs, really I know not what to do.
William Congreve, The Way of the World (Lady Wishfort speaking) in The
Oxford Anthology of English Literature
"There are several options for the evening," he said. "I called
Chick Jacoby, and we can get a table at Clarence's. Or we can go around the
corner and see the new Woody Allen movie. Or we can go to the Martin Lesky's
who are having a party with a lot of movie stars."
"A veritable olio,"
she replied.
Dominick Dunne People Like Us
Recall
that yesterday we saw olla-podrida, which literally is Spanish for rotten
pot.
The French borrowed this term, changing it to their words for
"rotten" and pot" (Such a change is called a loan translation.
French for "to rot" is pourrir, the same root as in putrescent.)
and from French the changed word passed into English. It originally meant
"different kinds of meat cooked together in a stew," but new meanings
evolved, as the originally meaning became extinct.
potpourri 1. a combination of incongruous things 2. a
miscellaneous anthology or collection (as of stories or music) 3. mixed
of dried flower petals and spices used to scent the air
The Talmud is a wonderful book, a great, big
potpourri of things: trivial questions, and difficult questions
for example, problems of teachers, and how to teach and then some trivia
again, and so on.
Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
(Adventures of a Curious Character)
Their mission statements become a potpourri of platitudes
Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, First Things
First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
Note: OED spells this as a hyphenated word, pot-pourri, but
most dictionaries use the no-hyphen spelling I've given, potpourri.
salmagundi 1. a miscellaneous collection or mixture 2.
original sense: a dish of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, onions with oil
and condiments
the Court has been "carpet
bombed" with a rash of legal memoranda, over two hundred exhibits, myriad
deposition, with separately filed excerpts and highlights from those same
depositions, and a salmagundi of other documents.
U.S. Dist. Court of Delaware, Moore Corp. v Wallace Computer Services,
Dec. 4, 1995, as quoted in Keith M. Moore, Risk Arbitrage: An Investor's
Guide
hodgepodge (N. Amer.) or hotchpotch a confused
mixture
[from Old French hochepot stew, soup (hocher to shake + pot
pot)]
A quote from todays paper:
July's crash, the deadliest in Brazilian
history, followed an accident in September last year that killed 154 people.
Sensing a collapse in the hodgepodge of public agencies charged
with overseeing air safety, [Brazils] mayors, judges and members of Congress
are stepping in to impose new aviation-security measures.