September
2005 Archives
Horticulture words: umbrage (umbrageous); sprigging; allelopathy;
espalier; tilth; cultivar (monoculture); geophyte (bulb, basal plate; corm;
turnicate, imbricate; tuber; rhizome); (alchemy, sport,
witches broom, topophysis)
Words of Railroading: deadhead; jerkwater; intermodal; wye; brownie
points; featherbedding; dead man's switch/handle
Bible Eponyms: jorum; Samson (hansom); jumping Jehosaphat;
adamite; Methuselah; Solomonic; doubting Thomas
Horticulture words
Yesterday we looked at Dolores Umbridge, a
character in the Harry Potter books, and we defined the word umbrage.
But the definition did match the woman's character. So too, 'Dolores' means 'sorrows',
the Dolores character is not sad in temperament. Why then did author Rowling
choose that name for her character?
The mystery is solved when we note that umbrage has another meaning,
which is very apt for the woman, and which brings us to our new theme: 'words
of horticulture'.
umbrage (adj. umbrageous) shadow or shade; or something
that provides it (also, a vague indication, a hint)
[from the Latin for shade. The same source gives us our term umbrella,
which originally meant a sunshade, not a rain-protection.]
So one could say that Dolores Umbridge means "sorrowful
darkness". And indeed, this woman is "sadly in the dark" about
major, life-threatening events.
A raven sat upon a
tree,
And not a word he spoke, for
His beak contained a piece of Brie.
Or, maybe, it was Roquefort:
Well make it any kind you please --
At all events it was a cheese.
Beneath the tree's umbrageous limb
A hungry fox sat smiling;
He saw the raven watching him,
And spoke in words beguiling.
"J'admire," said he, "ton beau plumage."
(The which was simply persiflage.)
Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven
(We quoted this verse in March 2003 for the word persiflage.)
sprigging planting
sprigs of grass in shallow furrows, to make a lawn
[This word is not yet in any major dictionary, but is in reasonably frequent
use.]
You can make a lawn by laying sod, by seeding, or by plugging. Sodding
(basically moving an existing lawn to a new location) is fast but expensive.
Seeding is cheap but take time and continued effort; furthermore, some hybrid
grasses do not grow "true" from seed. A compromise is to plant plugs
of grass at intervals, and letting them knit together over time. Or you can
plant smaller sprigs which produces a lawn faster than does plugging.
The Grove Hill
Town Council agreed Monday night to kick in an extra $6,200 to ensure that the
new ballfield at
Jim Cox, Grove Hill Council kicks in extra $6,200 to sod ballfield, avoid sprigging
grass for surface, The Thomasville (AL) Times, Apr. 7, 2004
allelopathy the release, by a plant, of chemicals that inhibit the growth
of other plants nearby
[Coined 1937, in German, by Molisch; came into English two decades later]
Researchers are studying allelopathy as an alternative to pesticides.
Strongly-allelopathic plants include the black walnut, rhododendron, sunflower
and sorghum. A more familiar example, known to anyone has casually observed
pine trees, is that very little will grows where pines have shed their needles.
Pine needles
contain acidic substances that discourage growth of other species. This is
evident when pine needles are allowed to accumulate on the soil surface. In
some areas, pine needles are sold for mulch.
growth of weedy species is
reduced in mulched beds.
Wendell Horne, Allelopathy ensures plants survival,
Bryan Eagle (
"Crops have been bred and engineered to defend against insects, nematodes,
and diseases," says [researcher] Stephen Duke. "But almost nothing
has been done to help crops fend off weeds. If major crops could be made to
produce natural herbicides, use of synthetic pesticides would be significantly
reduced."
the ultimate goal: introducing allelopathic
traits to crops. "Allelopathy as a means of weed control has
fascinated scientists since the early 20th century," he says.
Luis Pons, Sorghum needs its space, too: how it guards itself may be key
in crops' battle against weeds, Agricultural Research, May, 2005 (edited)
Bonus word: I quote board, where one of our members defined a term very
well
espalier A tree or shrub that is trained to
grow in a flat plane against a wall, often in a symmetrical pattern; also, a
trellis or other framework on which an ornamental shrub or fruit tree is
trained to grow flat
[pronounced either i-SPAL-yer or i-SPAL-yay]
[French, from Ital. spalliera,
shoulder support, from spalla, shoulder, from L.Latin spatula,
shoulder blade, from Latin.]
Nice photo at http://www.jefffettyironwork.com/portfolio/galleries/sculpture%20out/espalier.htm
Another reader notes: Apparently the practical reason is to be able to
grow more fruit in a limited space, though they are pretty, too.
tilth the physical
condition of particular soil (less commonly: tilled ground)
Our first two quotes illustrate the two senses; our last explains what is
involved in "physical condition".
Many growers also
practice flail chopping, in which the straw residue in the field is machine
chopped and
plowed into the soil for improved tilth.
Omie Drawhorn, Silverton (OR) Appeal Tribune, Aug. 17, 2005
Life progressed at the pace of a cart-horse in those days
. A man could plough
an acre a day, walking eleven miles, one foot in furrow, one on tilth.
You could tell a ploughman, apparently, by his wobbly gait.
Sue Gaisford, The Independent (London), May 26, 1996
Sand hardly binds at all; clay binds so strongly that it's close to impenetrable
when dry. In contrast, soil with good tilth holds together but
still leaves plenty of "pore space" that permits water, air, [and]
roots to travel with ease. [It] hangs on to moisture and nutrients, yet it lets
excess water drain through it, preventing waterlogged conditions and allowing
adequate space for soil air. It doesn't pack into hardpan when wet, and it
doesn't blow away when dry. You can squeeze a handful into a ball, but when you
open your hand, the ball crumbles without difficulty.
Burpee (Guide): The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener (quote abridged)
cultivar a plant
variety produced in cultivation by selective breeding (the selection may be
unintentional)
But see reader note at end of this theme
Bonus word: monoculture the cultivation of only a single crop in a
particular area
Our examples, which tell tales of marijuana, potatoes and tulips, come from
Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
(edited).
Most of the
hybridizing needed to adapt cannabis to indoor
conditions was done in the early 1980s by amateurs. Cultivars
[that] performed especially well indoors were further bred and selected. By the
end of the decade there were hybrids yielding flowers bag as fists on dwarf
plants no higher than your knee. It was no longer unusual to find
concentrations of THC as high as 15 percent. The plant had adapted more
brilliantly to its strange new environment than anyone could have expected.
a potato that thrives on one side of a ridge
at one altitude will languish in another plot only a few steps away. No monoculture
could succeed under such circumstances, so the Incas developed a method of
farming that is monoculture's exact opposite. Instead of betting the farm on a
single cultivar, the Andean farmer made a great many bets,
at least one for every ecological niche. Instead of attempting to change the
environment to suit a single optimal spud, the Incas developed a different spud
for every environment.
It's no surprise that the tulip was the first
flower to have its cultivars individually named and named for
individuals. (The word tulip comes from the Turkish word for
"turban.")
Many plants, like the onion, die off each
winter above the ground but store food underground to regrow the next year.
Though laymen call any such underground structure a bulb, botanists distinguish
four types: bulb, corm, tuber and rhizome, collectively called geophytes.
Geophyte literally means 'earth-plant'. Dictionaries list geophyte
as the plant, but in usage the term can also refer to the underground bulb,
etc. from which the plant grows. Credit for coining geophyte is
variously given to Christen Raunkiζr or to F. W. C. Areschoug. As to the types
of geophytes:
A bulb grows its stem up from a single central area, and its
roots down from basal plate at the bottom. (Hence it must be
planted right-side up.) So does a corm -- but a true bulb,
such as an onion, contains layers (which are modified leaves), with embryonic
flower already present at the center. It will produce new bulblets, and the
original bulb will survive and regrow year after year. another year. A corm,
in contrast, does not have that internal structure of leaves-and-flower. And
though a corm will produce another generation of corm, the original corm does
not survive.
Many bulbs, like the onion,
have a papery protective cove, called the tunic. Bulbs
with a tunic are called turnicate bulbs; bulbs without that
protection, called imbricate bulbs, require more care from the
gardener,
As examples: the onion, tulip,
daffodil and lily grow from bulbs; the gladiolus and crocus from corms.
A potato grows from a tuber, which is simply a swollen
root or stem. The tuber has no special layers (contrast bulb) or basal
plate (contrast bulb and corm). A tuber can send up multiple stems.
So can a rhizome, which
unlike any of the others grows horizontally beneath the surface. Thus you can
propagate a rhizome simply by cutting it into sections. (But don't try that
with an onion bulb!) A rhizome simply grows and extends, without developing new
"baby rhizomes". The bearded iris plant is an example.
Readers' notes:
Alchemy apparently
comes from the Greek word khymeia, the juices or infusions of plants.
cultivar a plant variety produced in cultivation by selective breeding
(the selection may be unintentional)
Hovever, not all cultivars are produced by
selective breeding. Sports, witches brooms, and topophysis are the source of
many cultivars.
A sport is a spontaneous mutation in a branch resulting in a
phenotypic difference. The sport is vegetatively reproduced, usually by
grafting but sometimes by cuttings, to see if it produces a plant worth
attention.
A witches
broom is cluster of short, dense branches, usually the result of insect or
disease. It is often vegetatively reproduced as above, often resulting in a
dwarf plant. Sometimes viable seeds produced within a witches broom yield new
plants.
Topophysis
is the growth response of a plant part depending on its orientation or position
on the plant. For example, a plant taken from a cutting of a vertical stem
generally results in a vertical plant, while a cutting taken from a horizontal
branch (2nd order branch) may result in a plant that grows horizontally.
Today we move from our horticulture theme to
a new theme of "railroad words". Fortuitously, we can begin with a
word that has meanings that fit each theme.
deadhead (horticulture) to remove the blooms after flowering, so that
the plant will devote its energy to developing of new flowers, rather than to
producing seeds
deadhead (railroads and other carriers) to move a train not to paying
business, but simply to get it to where it needs to be for later work. (Also
applies to moving of crews; a related noun-meaning of deadhead is
"a non-paying passenger". The term is also used in trucking.)
Consider, for example, a railroad bringing seasonal crops to marked. At peak
season, it may need many boxcars to bring the crops from farm to city and not
have enough freight to fill those cars on the way back to the farm.
A trucking company
can collect a fuel charge only when hauling the customer's merchandise, Hyde
said. But 12 to 15 percent of a truck's mileage is "deadhead,"
when it's empty traveling from the last unloading point to picking up another
cargo.
Kevin Bouffard, The Lakland (FL) Ledger, Sep. 5, 2005
If you're itching to recall the halcyon days of rail travel, there are private
cars available for hire. But prices start at around $3,000 a day. You'll save a
substantial amount if you fly to where the car is based rather than having it
come to you. That cuts down on the owner's costs to position the car. If you're
traveling one way, expect to pay for the empty car to deadhead
home.
Larry Armstrong, Ride Like A Railroad Baron, Business Week, May 10,
2004
A reader notes: deadhead (popular culture) a term for
itinerant fans of the band The Grateful Dead.
jerkwater (contemptuous)
1. (of a place) remote, small, and insignificant, esp. "jerkwater town
2. contemptibly trivial: jerkwater ideas
This is probably the source of the noun jerk,
as in, "He's a stupid jerk."
I could care less
about some operation you guys ran in some jerkwater, third-world
country ten years ago.
Vince Flynn, Term Limits
"I never heard of him," said Captain Willie. "Well, you
will," said the man called Doctor. "And so will everyone in this
stinking jerkwater little town if I have to grub it out by the
roots."
Ernest Hemingway, The Tradesman's Return
Etymology: From
conditions where a train, to replenish water for its steam engine, would stop
to 'jerk' buckets of water from a stream or creek. Sources seem to conflict as
to whether the original concept was:
�.
a dinky locomotive (needing
frequent refilling),
�.
a two-bit railroad company
(unsupplied with water tanks),
�.
a worthless town too tiny to
have a water tank.
intermodal involving
the transfer of goods between two different modes of transport
When you're on the highway, notice that the large boxy container behind a
semi-truck is not part of the truck. It's detachable, designed so that it can sit on a railroad flatcar for efficient long-haul transport
to or near the destination city. There it is lifted off and hooked behind a truck cab, to be trucked to the exact
destination.Ή
To thus lift and transfer large quantities of large containers, heavy with
goods, a railroad needs massive intermodal facilities. Similarly, a port city
will have intermodal facilities to transload between rail and ship, or truck
and ship.
These various
modes (rail, truck, ship, air) all grew up as independent and competitive
businesses and with lots of mom-and-pop enterprises at various levels. Intermodal
transportation can be confounding. Most of these modes were not invented or
originally designed, to connect directly to one another.
The combined company would have become a single transport network capable of
shifting goods via intermodal modes between ship, rail, road and
air. It would have placed the data flow under one roof. Why is this worth
watching? Because, thanks to growing costs, increasing complexity and a glut of
players, you'll soon be seeing more combinations like this throughout the
world.
Robert Malone, Forbes, Aug. 23 and 30, 2005
Ή In these
pictures the wheels needed for trucking are not part of the container; they are
a separate unit to be attached after the rail portion of the shipment is
complete. But alternatively, the item shipped by rail may include those
wheels.
The dictionaries are weak on the etymologies
of several of our railroad words. Today's word is the most obvious case.
wye U.S. Railways. An arrangement of three sections of track in
the shape of a concave-sided triangle or Y, freq. used for turning
locomotives. (OED definition)
[Schematic here. Imagine that a locomotive, facing east, enters from
the west along the main line, then curves down the left branch of the wye to
the base, then backs up the east branch. By this process it ends up back on the
main line but is now facing west.]
OED's first cite is dated 1950. But a simple search of U.S. Supreme Court cases
reveals this 1927 cite:
Drummond owned
much land
on St. Andrews Bay. Steele desired to extend the railway from
Panama City to the Bay. Drummond was willing to co-operate with him
to
enhance the value of his lands. Drummond agreed to
pay the cost of clearing and
grading the whole line, furnish and lay all ties, build necessary trestles and
culverts, lay the rails, and put in a wye.
Steele v. Drummond, 275 U.S. 199 (1927)
brownie points favor in another's eyes, esp. due to ones sycophantic
behavior
Dear Abby; What
would your reaction be if a young woman who worked for your husband named her
baby after him? Well, that's my problem, and I'm still upset about it. What do
you think this foolish girl had in mind? Was she trying to make Brownie
points with her boss?
"Dear Abby" syndicated column, Feb. 16, 1977
I believe brownie points is a
railroad term, though other sources give non-railroad etymologies. Consider
this problem that railroads, as the first large companies, would face: how can
a railroad assure that its many supervisors will be consistent in how they
handle disciplinary matters?
Around 1875 one George R. Brown, Superintendent of New York's Fall Brook
Railway, devised a system. This is not merely local history, for many railroads
adopted this "Brown System," thus spreading both the concept and the
name. The system is still in use today. Under it each offense is worth a
certain number of "demerit marks" to be noted in an employee's
record, the employee to be fired if he accumulated certain number in within a
period of time.
As you can imagine, rank and file railroad men were not fond of Brown-System
demerit points. They derisively called them brownies. Thus we have a
well-documented use of brownie as a pejorative (but not obscene) term
for measuring merit by counting points.
I suggest this is source of the term "brownie points". In this I am a
minority. OED has a different theory; AHD and Quinion have still another.
featherbedding the practice of forcing the employer (by union rule, etc.) to
hire more workers than needed (or to limit his workers' production).
[From the term railroaders gave to the practice. More generally, featherbed
to have provide a cushy job or like economic advantages]
So the prospect
for Germany, as most voters clearly intended, is for a continuation of the
status quo. They want their generous welfare state and feather-bedded
employment arrangements. They have not yet experienced the kind of frightening
economic crisis that persuaded the British in the 1970s to undergo the cold
shower of Thatcherism.
John O'Sullivan, German vote throws U.S. for a loss, Chicago Sun
Times, Sept. 20, 2005
dead man's switch a device that will take a specific action unless a human
operator overrides it.
[For example, in your home, open both an ordinary door and a screen door. The
ordinary door will stay open until you shut it. But a screen door is typically
made so as to shut itself if you walk away. To keep it open, you must hold
it open.]
A dead man's switch (or dead man's device, knob, pedal, treadle) is
typically used as a safety device, to stop a machine if the operator becomes
incapacitated. Most typically, to stop a train, as in the example from London
five years ago.
A Tube train with
more than 100 terrified passengers on board rolled backwards in a tunnel for
over half a mile after the driver apparently fell asleep at the controls. The
"dead man's switch", a spring-loaded lever which is a
safeguard if the driver is taken ill at the controls, would have stopped the
train automatically if released, but the handle was kept in the "on"
position. Scores of new Tube trains will have to be modified after the
revelation that
if an unconscious driver slumps forward against the handle it
could remain in such a position which prevents the brakes from being applied.
Dick Murray, London Evening Standard, July 10 and 13, 2000 (two reports,
combined)
"Then I think we'd better have better have a look at that lawn mower when
they fish it up," the sheriff said. "Those things have a deadman
switch on 'em. No way it could just keep going without his foot on the
pedal ..." "Unless it was tampered with," Dad finished. They
both looked grim and headed off in the direction of the bluff.
Donna Andrews, Murder With Peacocks
British readers note that the usual phrase there is 'dead man's handle'.
jorum an unusually
capacious bowl or goblet (Charles E. Funk)
[Believed to be derived from this bible passage: Then Toi sent Joram his son
unto king David, to salute him
And Joram brought with him vessels of silver,
and vessels of gold, and vessels of brass. II Samuel 8:10]
Charles Dickens was apparently fond of this word. He used it in five novels (Oliver
Twist, Great Expectations, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Pickwick Papers, The Old
Curiosity Shop), and in lesser works.
As to what you say
in your letter about introspection & scruples, you must remember how much
bigger than itself a think becomes by being put in writing. A very small dose
of self-examination, so small as to be quite wholesome, looks a positive jorum
in a letter.
C.S. Lewis, family letter
The amiable creature beguiled the watches of the night by brewing jorums
of a fearful beverage, which he called coffee, and insisted on sharing with me
; coming in with a great bowl of something like mud soup.
Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches
Recently, an editoriallist sadly commented
that we have lost the farmility with the bible that had made it part of our
normal conversational culture. Nowadays, if you should allude to a biblical
passage, you cannot expert your hearer to understand the allusion.
That has inspired our new theme on "biblical eponyns". Perhaps we can
do our small bit to counteract that trend the editorialist noted. I quote below
about a quarter of the editorial.
Do we need to know
what it says in the Bible? Are we somehow illiterate if we don't? Up until,
say, 100 years ago, biblical literacy would have been practically mandatory. If
you didn't know
you would have been excluded from the culture. It might be
said that a civilization consists, at its core, of these easily transmitted
packages of implication. They are one of the mechanisms by which cultures can
be both efficient and rich.
But I would guess that biblical literacy is a thing of the past. The lingua
franca of modern, English-speaking people is not dense with scriptural allusion
[or] reference to classical civilizations. If you dropped the names of Nestor,
Agamemnon or Pericles, you would, I think, draw a near total blank from even
educated listeners. The references we make today are not to these ancient
sources of meaning. The references we make today tend to come from more recent
worlds: Jefferson and Lincoln, Nelson and Churchill; Madonna not the Madonna,
Britney not Brutus.
Does it matter that we have tended to drop the old referential structures? This
is not necessarily a disaster.
But it is at least a shame, the fading of an
aspect of our civilization that has enriched it. Without the set of archetypes
and fount of wisdom in the Bible, our lives would be thinner and poorer.
Adam Nicolson, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 23, 2005
Samson a man of
great physical strength.
[After the biblical strong-man whose tale is told in Judges xiii-xvi.]
Since the definition reads in the meter of a limerick, it seems appropriate to
use a limerick (non-original) as our illustrative quote.
A comely young
woman Ransom
Was ravished three times in a hansom.
When she cried out for more,
A voice from the floor
Said, "Lady, I'm Simpson, not Samson."
As a bonus, that verse gives us
another eponym:
hansom a two-wheeled horse-drawn cab, with the driver seated behind
[after Joseph A. Hansom (1803-82), English architect, who designed it
about 1834]
jumping Jehosaphat used as a mild expletive ( Amer.Eng.), with an old-fashioned
and countrified feel
[Several parts of the bible tell of the story of Jehosaphat, king of Judah,
whose name has several different spellings. See 1 Kings ch.22; 2 Kings ch.3,
and 2 Chronicles ch.1722.]
So I went to a
dentist. So help me, I had forgotten what he would see when he looked into my
mouth. He blinked, moved his mirror around, and said, "Great jumping
Jehosaphat! Who was your dentist?"
Robert A. Heinlein, The Door into Summer
The interjection Jehosaphat, first
recorded in 1857, was probably a euphemism for Jehovah. (This would be
like many other oaths that take, but coyly alter, a holy name. Thus oh God!
and Jesus! become the oaths egad! and jeez!) Jumping had
been added to other oaths, as in Jumping Geraniums!, Jumping Jellybeans!,
Jumping Juleps!, Jumping Jupiter!, and Jumping Jiminy Cricket!
(Notice that Jiminy Cricket plays off the initials of Jesus Christ.)
Within a decade the verbal Jehosaphat was sometimes one who jumped
(Mayne Reid, 1866: By the jumpin Geehosofat).
But at the time other forms were used as well, including an alliterative one.
(George Washington Harris 1867: by the jinglin' Jehosephat), and the
prevailing form seems to have been simply Jehosephat! or Great
Jehosephat!, without jumping. No one has explained why jumping
Jehosaphat ultimately prevailed.
Your wordcrafter may have discovered why. Recall that newspapers constantly need
brief "filler" items to fill up the short games between articles.
Here's one from the 1880s:
A Yankee came
running down to a pier just as a steamer was starting. The boat moved off some
four or five yards as he took a jump, and, coming down on the back of his head
on deck, he lay stunned for two or three minutes. When he came to the boat had
gone the best part of a quarter of a mile, and, raising his head and looking to
the shore, the Yankee said: Great Jehosaphat, what a jump!"
Oddly, I've found this anecdote told,
word-for-word, in two papers, in Alabama (Vernon Clipper, 9/24/1880) and
Illinois (Decatur Daily Review, 8/1/1881). Since those papers they are far
apart geographically, neither is likely to have gotten it from the other.
Rather, one would guess that they each got it from the same source, a source
that was providing "filler" for those two papers, and for others. If
that's the case if we find the same anecdote in other old papers as they are
brought on line it would explain why the concept of jumping Jehosaphat
spread in the public mind.
Sorry to be long-winded, but this follow-up
will bring you a grin.
The earlier writers often treat Jehosapaht! as the sort of oath that a
country bumpkin or a rube would use. That is, a character using that word is
often portrayed as the butt of a joke, or as an illiterate. For example:
● Butts of jokes: the above 1880/81 steamboat story, and this
further tale:
She was obliged to lift her dress as she crossed Main Street, as the street was
muddy and she had on striped stockings. They were yellow stripes and green, and
looked like a lot of crawling snakes; and a prominent citizen gazed on them in
horror as he remarked, "Jehosaphat, I never had 'em that bad
before," and right there he registered a vow that he would join the
[temperance] movement. Fred. H. Hart, Sazerac Lying Club (1878)
● Illiterate characters: the above 1867 and 1866 quotes, expanded:
By the jumpin Geehosofat, what a gurl she air sure
enuf!
Sut said carelessly, "Oh, nuffin but his note, I speck. Say yu thar mister
a-b ab, is the fool-killer in the parts yu cum frum, duin his juty, ur is he
ded? I thot so, by the jinglin Jehosephat." The old
gentleman turned to me and asked in a confidential whisper, "Is not that
person slightly deranged?" "Oh, no, not at all," [I replied,]
"he is only troubled at times with violent attacks of durn'd fool."
Amazing how people can twist religion to
support what they wish to do or believe. Two such doctrines involve the
biblical Adam and are called "Adamite" (and more importantly, each
led do a more-interesting secular meaning of the term).
Since Adam was naked, some claimed that the proper way to worship was to return
to that state by casting off one's clothes. (How enjoyable worship must be! It
often involved well let's delicately say "the activities you might
expect of naked adults gathered together.") More perniciously, some
claimed that the Lord had created other, inferior humans before Adam. The
descendents of Adam ("Adamites") were therefore superior to the
others' descendents ("pre-Adamites") and, not surprisingly, the
former were identified with the white race. Other peoples were classed as
pre-Adamite and therefore inferior. I know, it sounds unbelievable, but I quote
a modern proponent of that view:
the false
doctrine that "all races are derived from Adam". That there was a
pre-adamite creation of bipeds is made clear in Genesis 1:24-25 and what we
must note is this difference between the two. The pre-adamite was made with
substance or he was material, the first Adam was created in the image and
likeness of God.
Putting it all together, adding the innocent
meanings and illustrating only the latter:
adamite 1. (religion): a. a sect whose members,
purporting to return to Adam's pure condition, cast off their clothing as part
of worship. b. a descendant of Adam as opposed to a descendent of
inferior peoples the Lord is supposed to have created before Adam (pre-Adamite).
2. (after 1.a. and b. above) a. a nudist or a naked person b.
pre-Adamite (adj): of extreme antiquity
Nudity:
an Indian wench, perfumed with grease of bear and covered no more than an Adamite,
flings herself upon him and bites him in the neck! "'God!" cried
Ebenezer. The good man struggles, but the maid hath strength ...
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor [I modestly refrain from continuing to
its conclusion this tale of "the singular martyrdom of Father
FitzMaurice," a missionary that is, his seduction.]
But don't you worry none, I've nought to fear from the likes o' that over
there. He's just a barmy old loon-Verney the Adamite he is,
harmless but he do tend to tear yer clothes given half the chance.
Robin Jarvis, The Alchemist's Cat
Antiquity:
Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales
have
at various
intervals intervals, been found
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, ch. 104; more in ch.104-105
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite
ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my
ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my
family pride is something inconceivable.
Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado, as spoken by Pooh-Bah
There's an interesting twist in the last
quote: Pooh Bah is using pre-adamite to denote superiority rather than
inferiority.
Methuselah a very
old man [but see below for extended senses]
[After biblical Methuselah, Genesis 5, who lived for 969 years.]
The General nodded
"They should have given him the division" he added grumpily.
"MacArthur said he was too young. Apparently you've got to be a Methuselah
to get a command out there. The magic age seems to be fifty-two."
Anton Myrer, Once an Eagle
[F]or most people more learning goes on faster up to the age of eighteen
or twenty than ever after, even if they live to be older than Methuselah.
(That is why vocabulary increases so rapidly for the first twenty years of life
and comparatively at a snail's pace thereafter.)
Norman Lewis, Word Power Made Easy
Methuselah (by
extension) 1. any plant or animal alive but extremely old for its kind or
circumstances 2. pertaining to extremely long life-span
We had a mouse
that lived for several weeks with the vipers. While other mice dropped in the terrarium
disappeared within two days, this little brown Methuselah
scampered about in plain sight of the snakes. We were amazed.
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Scientists have pinpointed the Methuselah gene - a stretch of DNA
that confers healthy old age on men and women
Robin McKie, The Observer, Feb. 3, 2002
Note re wine:
A methuselah (not capitalized) is a wine bottle of eight times
the standard size.
Many oversized wine bottles are named after biblical characters: you can get a Jeroboam,
Rehoboam, Methuselah, Salmanazar, Balthazar, Nebuchadnezzar, Melchior, or a
Solomon of wine. Caution: Some of these terms refer to one volume when
used for wine generally, but to a different volume when used for champagne.
Solomonic having
great wisdom or discretion in making difficult decisions; esp. by crafting
compromise or by creatively "thinking outside the box"
OED's definition ("suggestive of the wisdom of Solomon") is not
particularly helpful, unless you're already familiar with Solomon and know the
nature of his wisdom. So I've composed the above definition, based on review of
usage. If you don't like it, your money will be cheerfully refunded.
Here's a fine case of thinking outside the box:
They told me the
story of a recent attempt to stage Julius Caesar at the University of
[Pakistan]. It seems that the authorities became very agitated when they heard
that the script called for the assassination of a Head of State.
Extreme
pressure was brought to bear on the University to scrap the production.
Finally, the producer came up with a
brilliant, a positively Solomonic solution. He invited a
prominent British diplomat to play Caesar, dressed in (British) Imperial
regalia. The Army relaxed; the play opened, and as the first night curtain
fell, [one saw] a front row full of Generals, all applauding wildly to signify
their enjoyment of this patriotic work depicting the overthrow of imperialism
by the freedom movement of Rome.
Salman Rushdie, Shame: A Novel
doubting Thomas one who insists on "seeing the evidence" (Note:
this is not a term for simple hardheaded skepticism. Rather, it implies
that the demand for evidence is uncalled-for or extreme.)
[After the apostle Thomas, who said he would disbelieve Jesus' resurrection
until he saw Jesus with his own eyes. (John 20:24-29)]
The IRA - Western
Europe's deadliest terrorist group - yesterday declared that it had put its
formidable armoury beyond use.
The Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist
Party found instant fault with the announcements
a highly significant event
was shrouded in clouds of cynical mistrust
Mr Paisley will therefore, as
expected, remain a doubting Thomas, his demand for
photographs of the decommissioning having been rejected.
David McKittrick, The Independent (UK), Sep. 27, 2005