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Ashley Judd: etymology in the news
July 18, 2004, 19:35
wordnerdAshley Judd: etymology in the news
If you want to monitor a topic for breaking news,
Google News Alerts can be set to alert you by email whenever articles appear online that match the topic you specify.
I've set mine to notify me of articles using the word
etymology, and I post here any matters that seem interesting. Feel free to comment, of course. And if anyone wants to join me in monitoring and posting these items, I won't feel you've stepped on my turf; I'll be grateful to you for splitting teh effort with me.
July 18, 2004, 19:41
wordnerdWhy did I call this thread
Ashley Judd? To get your attention, of course, based on
this story from New Zealand:
Ashley Judd has been voted one of the most beautiful women in the world, but she's bland. She doesn't do nude - mom doesn't approve - and rarely gets sexual on screen. She's not especially interesting either - no sex or drug-bitch scandals; her "hobby" is etymology, for heaven's sake.
But this is where she has been smarter than you'd think. Judd has picked projects where the gravitas of her male co-stars reflects well on her, giving some of her movies - the thrillers - a stature that would otherwise not exist.
July 18, 2004, 22:18
<Asa Lovejoy>So why haven't you invited her to make an apperance here? We'll even throw in a whole pocket full of pickles! Ooops, that's another thread!
July 19, 2004, 08:07
wordnerdThe
Car Forum in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette considers why we call a certain type of roadster a "spider", but comes to no solid conclusion. Can we do better? I've posted the question in Q&A.
July 19, 2004, 22:57
<Asa Lovejoy>"Spiders," or "spyders," are light, quick, manouvreable cars.
July 21, 2004, 19:09
wordnerdQuote:
"An airline
terminal is a space you pass through on the way from one place to another, spending only as much time as is absolutely necessary. But the word terminal itself, which supplies the title for Steven Spielberg's new film, also has some darker connotations that tug against its unassuming everyday meaning. Its etymology - termini were the local gods whose shrines served as boundary markers in the ancient Roman world - suggests a frontier between worlds, while its modern medical usage associates the word with mortality."
- A.O. Scott, film review in New York Times, June 18, 2004
August 15, 2004, 14:27
wordnerdGaile Robinson,
Cool, comfy and conservative: Seersucker takes on a new edge,, Bradenton (Florida) Herald (Knight Ridder Newspapers), Aug. 12, 2004:
seersucker: a light, thin fabric, generally cotton or rayon, with a crinkled surface and, usually, a striped pattern.
Etymology: Hindi "shirshakar": "shir" (milk), "shakar" (sugar), from the resemblance of its smooth and rough stripes to the silky surface of milk and bumpy texture of sugar.
First American sighting: In 1830, Brooks Bros. (established in 1818) introduces seersucker fabric, and it becomes such a mainstay that the company includes a testimonial in its literature: "The lightweight summer fabric of puckered cotton, or seersucker, is made available for the first time in America, and introduced in frock coats. The most ideal type of warm weather clothing, seersucker is hailed as a great clothing innovation."
August 15, 2004, 14:48
jerry thomasUnfortunately we don't have a link to the reference, but members of the Early American Birdwatchers' Society are said to have reported an 1829 sighting in New Jersey of a
Double-breasted Seersucker.August 16, 2004, 01:58
arnieMichael Quinion recently wrote about seersucker in
World Wide Words.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
August 23, 2004, 18:11
wordnerdGovernor Arnold Schowarzenegger kicked up a ruckus when he used this phrase, saying said, "
If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers' ... if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men." Horrified opponents call his remark sexist, insulting, and homophobic.
Interestingly, that very term originated "in a long-running 'Saturday Night Live' skit in which two pompous, Schwarzenegger-worshipping weightlifters repeatedly use it to mock those who don't meet their standards of physical perfection."
[Thanks to
CNN for the news.]
August 23, 2004, 19:01
jheemYeah, it's pretty humorous when the leader of the world's fifth largest economy uses a term made famous in a comedy skit that mocked him to refer to special interests that are not currently supporting him. Sorta like Dubya calling somebody a maroon. Ah, sweet breads, ah, my irenic patootie.
September 26, 2004, 13:47
wordnerdFrom
Wine Spector of yesterday:
Question: Can you tell me a little about the etymology of wine terms?
Answer: Viticulture, the science of grapegrowing, is derived from the Latin word for grapevine -- "vitis," but enology (or
oenology), the science of winemaking, comes from the Greek word for wine -- "oinos." The French call the study of grapevines "
ampélologie" from the Greek word for grapevine -- "ampelos."
September 26, 2004, 20:09
jheemLatin
vinum is cognate with Greek
(w)oinos which are both probably borrowed from a Semitic language; cf. Hebrew
yayin 'wine'.
September 26, 2004, 20:42
KallehHmmm, I am interested in that name "Wine Spector;" I would rather it be "Beer Spector."
Is that really the name of it?
September 26, 2004, 21:01
<Asa Lovejoy>quote:
Hebrew _yayin_ .
Although I don't speak Hebrew, that's the noise I make when I have too much wine! Maybe in Hebrew it's onomatopoeic?
September 27, 2004, 08:18
jheemI used to supscribe to
The Wine Spectator. Is this
Wine Spector a ghost of a magazine?
September 30, 2004, 19:08
Caterwaullerquote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
So why haven't you invited her to make an apperance here? We'll even throw in a whole pocket full of pickles! Ooops, that's another thread!
Asa- what thread is that????
*******
"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
~Dalai Lama
September 30, 2004, 22:17
<Asa Lovejoy>quote:
Originally posted by Caterwauller:
quote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
So why haven't you invited her to make an apperance here? We'll even throw in a whole pocket full of pickles! Ooops, that's another thread!
Asa- what thread is that????
I can't remember the thread, but one of the other women made a comment about the line attributed to Mae West, "Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?" She switched "pistol" for "pickle!"
I'm having trouble with this site, and have had since a major format change some months ago, so I can't refer you to the original thread. However, it was fun!
September 30, 2004, 22:19
<Asa Lovejoy>quote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
quote:
Originally posted by Caterwauller:
quote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
So why haven't you invited her to make an apperance here? We'll even throw in a whole pocket full of pickles! Ooops, that's another thread!
Asa- what thread is that????
I can't remember the thread, but one of the other women made a comment about the line attributed to Mae West, "Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?" She switched "pistol" to "pickle!"
I'm having trouble with this site, and have had since a major format change some months ago, so I can't refer you to the original thread. However, it was fun!
September 30, 2004, 23:20
tinmanHere's the
pickle link.
Tinman
October 02, 2004, 03:37
CaterwaullerOH MY!!!!!!!!! Thanks for the link, Tinman . . . and thanks to everyone for all the laughs! Is there such a sport as Aerobic Laughter? There is now!!!!
My favorite Mae Westicism has always been:
When I'm good, I'm very good and when I'm bad I'm better.
*******
"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
~Dalai Lama
October 05, 2004, 18:09
wordnerdA new bit of etymology in the news:
glamour is derived from the word
grammar. Now you'd think there's nothing glamourous about glamour, but here's how it happened.
Middle English
grammarye meant "learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes," and that lore included astrology and magic; hence the term got the secondary meaning of "occult knowledge". The word was carried over to Scotish, where by 1720 the occult sense had acquired a varient form of
glamour, = "magic, enchantment" (especially in phrase
to cast the glamour.) The writings of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) popularized this word, and the sense of sense of "magical beauty, alluring charm" is first recorded 1840.
(All thanks given to
Etymology on-line.)
October 12, 2004, 11:47
shufitzReuters reports the death last week of Edmond Haggar, age 88, the pants pioneer who helped built the casual clothing line that bears his name. According to Reuters, if you wear a pair of slacks, it's because of him. "Haggar and a Dallas advertising executive came up with the word '
slacks' for pants in the 1940s because people were dressing more casually during their 'slack time' away from work, the company said."