This week we'll put aside the rarefied and look at some words of emphatic action.

pullulate – 1. to breed rapidly or abundantly. 2. to teem; swarm: a lagoon that pullulated with tropical fish.

quote:

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Bruce Tattersall, a London barrister who was president of the debating club while Mr [Robin] Cook was secretary, said yesterday: "I don't understand why he has chosen to live in Merchiston which is positively pullulating with students."
- The Telegraph, Sept. 11, 2003, concerning Mr. Cook's efforts to prevent students, presumably rowdy, from moving into the flat (apartment) above his own

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nettle - to goad or provoke,as by constant criticism; also, to annoy, disturb, esp. by minor irritations

quote:

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But Clark would rather nettle and belittle the gentle (and more realistic) Lewis.
-- Ed Cullen, reviewing a performance of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys in The Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Advocate, Sept. 10, 2003

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So, I guess rabbits are "pullulators."

Perhaps Mr. Tattersall was making oblique reference to that aspect of student life as well.

jugulate – to cut the throat of;
also, to check or suppress (disease) by extreme measures

The latter meaning would seem to cry out for metaphorical usage, but I have found only one example, hardly from the mainstream press.

quote:

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The various programmes implemented to jugulate the [1996 employment] crisis ended with the results mentioned in the following table.
-- Official website of the Government of The Republic of Benin.

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I assume that jugulate traces back to the jugular vein.

I've not heard of the latter definition used in medicine, though surely I could have missed it along the way.

truckle - to act servilely or submissively to another

Today's quote points out how the selection of a word, from alternatives, is an editorial coloring.

quote:

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... the practice of what some call assassination, others, targeted killings. The difference between the two terms triggered a vigorous exchange in Great Britain a month ago. What is the correct term to designate what the Israelis have been doing — reaching out to the West Bank for figures it judges guilty of terrorism or terrorism planning, and killing them?

The term "assassination" is displeasing, and friends of Israel in England objected to its use by the BBC. The encounter came when a correspondent of the Independent newspaper, charged that the BBC had truckled to Israeli criticism, altering the use of the word assassination to "targeted killings."
-- William F. Buckley, Jr., Words and War, National Review, Oct. 16, 2001

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Is there a word for words with close-sounding but misleading not-quite-cognates? The French speak of "faux-amis," false friends, which seduce you into thinking you know the translation but you're wrong. ("L'ananas" suggests bananas, for example, but it's really pineapple. Banana is "la banane.")

The concept came to mind because of truckle/truculent; the paradigm may be meretricious/merit, which are practically opposites.

Hab, I don't know of any word for "faux amis," but your post prompted a look at some etymologies, and they turn out to be fascinating.

Though merit and meritricious are near-opposites in meaning, they come from the same source, Latin merere "to deserve; to earn". I believe Jerry has already discussed this. My recall is that a meritrix was a woman who earned her living by the meritricious practice of selling her body.

Truckle comes from a word for a "small wheel," leading to "truckle bed" (a low bed, on wheels) and then, since such a bed was for servants to sleep on, to the verb "to truckle" for subservience.

Truculent, truck (in the sense of the vehicle) and truck (in the sense of to deal with or "have truck with") come from three completely different roots, none the same as "to truckle".

I'd wondered if "to truckle under" and "to knuckle under", similar in meaning, could have a common source. Not so. "Knuckle" originally meant any joint in the body, particularly the knee, and "to knuckle under" was to "bend the knee" to one's superior.

"I assume that jugulate traces back to the jugular vein."
A reader notes: Not exactly. Latin "jugulum" = 'throat'. "Jugular" is the English form of the derived adjective. "Jugulate" comes from a derived verb, "jugulare", with the same meaning.

So the two English words came from two separate, but related, Latin words.

deracinate -
1. to pull out by the roots [from Latin racine = "root"]
2. to displace from one's native or accustomed environment

Like jugulate, the first meaning of deracinate invites metaphorical use.

quote:

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Och, and the girls whose poor hearts you deracinate,
Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate
Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate, —
Murder’s the word for you, Barney McGee!
Bold when they're sunny and smooth when they're showery, —
Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery!
Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery!
How would they silence you, Barney machree?
Naught can your gab alley, learned as Rabelais
(You in his abbey lay once on a spree).
Here’s to the smile of you
(Oh, but the guile of you!)
And a long while of you, Barney McGee!
-- Richard Hovey (1864-1900), Barney McGee (extract)

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wordnerd thus spaketh:

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Truckle comes from a word for a "small wheel," leading to "truckle bed" (a low bed, on wheels) and then, since such a bed was for servants to sleep on, to the verb "to truckle" for subservience.

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Isn't that also called a 'trundle bed'? I've only heard 'truckling' once, and then in ABEV or ebonics or whatever the heck you wanna call it. 'Truckling' was used in a very similar way to 'trifling'.

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"I assume that jugulate traces back to the jugular vein."
A reader notes: Not exactly. Latin "jugulum" = 'throat'. "Jugular" is the English form of the derived adjective. "Jugulate" comes from a derived verb, "jugulare", with the same meaning.

So the two English words came from two separate, but related, Latin words.

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Where does 'juggling' and 'juggler' fit in? I'm assuming they aren't related [to 'jugular'] , but sometimes.....strange things happen!

Nice question, WB. Found something interesting upon checking.

Juggler is unrelated; it comes to use, through French, from Latin joculari "to joke". My source doesn't explain c changed to g, from joculari to juggler, but it does give the c in all the french words in the chain of derivation.

I am confused by the reader's comment that "jugulate" isn't related to "jugular vein". If the Latin "jugulum" means "throat", and "jugulate" means to "cut the throat of", I would surely think they are both related to the "jugular vein", which is located on the side of the throat.

Squeezing in the last two words for this week, plus a bonus:

flummox – to confuse, perplex, bewilder

Bonus word: gumshoe – (slang) a detective

quote:

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[V]irtually all the file-sharing services are now considering a revamp of their system that would flummox industry gumshoes. ... "We’re going to win," says Grokster CEO Wayne Russo. "The technology always wins."
– Newsweek, Sept. 22, 2003, on the recording industry suing 261 who had used Internet file-sharing services to download tunes

The discovery of only three comet-sized objects in the Solar System's shadowy Kuiper belt has flummoxed astronomers over the origins of short-period comets. ... recurring comets with short runs such as Halley's comet were believed to come from the Kuiper belt. ... If the Kuiper Belt doesn't contain enough objects to explain the comets we see, then where do they come from?
– New Scientist, Sept. 3, 2003

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periclitate – to endanger

quote:

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Globalization, which periclitates human rights and fundamental freedoms, is the crossroad on which human rights education is to have its birth and being.
– Human Rights Education: The Promise of the Third Millenium? by Upendra Baxi, former Vice Chancellor of Delhi University; President of the Indian Society of International Law.

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quote:

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Originally posted by wordnerd:
_Truckle_ comes from a word for a "small wheel," leading to "truckle bed" (a low bed, on wheels) and then, since such a bed was for servants to sleep on, to the verb "to truckle" for subservience.

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Speaking of truckle beds (and how often does that happen), I stumbled upon an interesting (to me, anyway) bit of trivia involving said bed. Everyone, I assume, knows the rhyme:

There was a little girl who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead,
And when she was good, she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

(And yes "forehead / horrid" isn't exactly a perfect rhyme, but don't get me started!)

Did you know that the girl in question had a name? Or that this children's poem had two more verses. She does and it does:

One day she went upstairs, while her parents, unawares,
In the kitchen down below were at their meals,
And she stood upon her head, on her little truckle bed,
And she then began hurraying with her heels.

Her mother heard the noise, and thought it was the boys,
A-playing at a combat in the attic,
But when she climbed the stair and saw Jemima there,
She took and she did spank her most emphatic!


Now... I've never heard "hurraying" used this way but you can assume, more or less, that it means raising hell and screwing up the wallpaper. And you might comment on the fact that the mother apparently felt it was OK for the boys (as in "...will be boys") to be boisterous but, sadly, poor Jemima was thrashed for the same behavior, living as she did in pre-PC and otherwise unenlightened days.

But! BUT!! And this is a big BUT, (which reminds me, the J-Lo marriage is off; you heard about that, right?) can you tell me JUST WHO WROTE this little ditty???

Now, obviously anyone can google up the answer but, once again, allow me to request "Grey Matter Only." I'd be very surprised if anyone actually knows the answer but, frankly, that's probably just ego on my part. I mean, if I didn't know it, certainly you shouldn't either but god knows I've been wrong along similar lines before. BUT! Assuming you don't know, care to give a guess? The answer, I think, will surprise you.

It was in a book of poetry that I loved as a kid, CJ. See PM, and I'll leave it for the others.

And you know Mae West's variant: "When I'm good I'm very very good, but when I'm bad I'm better."

Two points for Hic for his correct answer. Doesn't that strike you a strange? (The answer, I mean. Not that you got it.)


Another variation on that same theme is the very wise observation regarding sex:

"When it's good, it's great. But when it's bad, well, it's still pretty good!"

Well, only one person (Hic) guessed via private topic and he (she? Why the gender anonymity?) got it right.

The author of "There was a little girl who had a little curl" etc was none other than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, more famous for "The Village Blacksmith," "Paul Revere's Ride" and others.

First Place was to have been a lifetime's supply of the winner's favorite beer but since no other entries were received, Hic's outa luck. "First Place" and "Only Place" are not synonymous. (A damn shame, too...)

O.M.G.

CJ? Did you live in my house when I was a child? Seriously, you're my imaginary friend from back then, right?

The Goops thing and now this. I'm eyeing you suspiciously. And if you can guess my imaginary friend's name from when I was little--I'll buy RE and Budweiser and J.Lo's pink diamond.

So there.

(but my mom did used to always tell me that poem when I was a little one)

And yes, I did mean, I will purchase RE outright.

I've enjoyed the Goops almost forever but, outside of this board, I have never encountered another soul who had even heard of them. Ditto Guy Wetmore Carryl, double dactyls, and probably a half dozen other examples that don't readily come to mind at the moment. Very erudite board, this.


Regarding the imaginary friend thing -- I have long since forgotten who wrote this but I do recall enjoying some comic, maybe 20 years ago, presenting the following:

1st person - "When you were a child, did you ever have an imaginary friend?"
Comic - "When I was seven (long pause for dramatic effect) I was an imaginary friend!"

Might have been on "Taxi" or "Barney Miller" or one of those shows from that era. Was your imaginary friend named Danny Haystacks? Yeah, that was me.


Did your mother recite the entire poem to you or just the best-known first verse? I stumbled upon verses two and three only recently while doing research on an only semi-related topic. The fact that she's named "Jemima" just slays me.


Along similar lines, the horse who played Mr. Ed in the TV show of that same name was actually named "Bamboo Harvester." No, really. He was. (I just thought you needed to know that...)

quote:

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Originally posted by C J Strolin:
Well, only one person (Hic) guessed via private topic and he (she? Why the gender anonymity?) got it right.

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"Guessed?" he replies. (Yes, "he.")

I was at first surprised that CJ was surprised to find Longfellow was the author. But then I realized: his surprise is that Longfellow would write in a light vein, not that he would write about children. For example, The Children's Hour is lovely.

quote:

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Originally posted by C J Strolin:
Along similar lines, the horse who played Mr. Ed in the TV show of that same name was actually named "Bamboo Harvester." No, really. He was. (I just thought you needed to know that...)

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Don't be ridiculous. Why would anyone name a zebra "Bamboo Harvster" ?

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

OK, there went a perfectly good hour and a half googling up "Mr. Ed," a show I was never overly fond of even when it was first on in the 1960's.

Long story short, my faith in Snopes.com has been badly shaken. I've read their story (def. Story, noun, fictionalized account) and I cannot bring myself to believe it. Does Snopes ever indulge in practical joking?

Reasons for my disbelief:

1.) All, and I do mean ALL, of the websites and other references I checked list "Bamboo Harvester" as Mr. Ed's real name.

2.) The Snopes article lists "The Famous Mr. Ed: The Unbridled Truth About America's Favorite Talking Horse" as a source but when I googled it up, the site was mysteriously unavailable.

3.) The Snopes article says that a zebra, when shown on a black-and-white TV, appears gray. This strikes me as being patently ridiculous. I'm almost positive I can recall zebras on "Wild Kingdom" and similar shows from my pre-color TV childhood.

4.) To back up this claim, they show a photo of a zebra as seen on a color monitor as compared with a horse as seen on a black-and-white monitor and they are obviously not the same animal. Show the same shot of the zebra on both monitors and then maybe I'll consider this as evidence.

5.) They state that during the 1960's when NFL games were broadcast in black-and-white, "...football games were too often disrupted when players ran into the referees, whose black-and-white striped uniform tops made them almost invisible to onlookers." If the premise is that black-and-white stripes don't televise well, how would that cause the players on the field to crash into the refs??!!

6.) The Johnny Cash anecdote seemed similarly bogus.

7.) They said that when CBS changed to become an all-color network, this prompted studio heads to move "Mr. Ed"'s time slot to allow further shows to be broadcast in time periods still using black-and-white. I was an avid TV watcher in those days and distinctly remember that no one made a complete switchover to c