Manscaping

Bored rigid on a train yesterday, I could be found flipping idly through the 'entertainment' section of an abandoned newspaper, catching up on everything I never wanted to know about Angelina's reproductive habits and Shania's failing marriage.

My eye was caught, however, by a gripping account of Cameron Diaz's preference for men who sport the body hair nature intended them to wear, as

1) I share her tastes, and could nod sagely through it and
2) because she used a delightful word to describe the bizarre phenomenon of perfectly sexy men waxing themselves into some smooth, hairless, prepubescentish metrosexual nightmare...

"Manscaping"

Heh heh.

Very good, I thought. The little genius behind the word unfortunately turned out to be a smooth, hairless, prepubescentish metrosexual (sorry!) who I have no wish to offend, but since I've already typed that little rant, it seems too late to go back and change it...

Now old Burt up there was more my parent's generation studmuffin, but damn, I simply could not find a nice furry picture of anyone in existence today! And you know, generations apart though we be, I'd say ashtray, uh..dead bear...smarmy grin... and possibly 'stach aside, that boy looks good!

Oh, and for those heterosexual men out there? Women like you furry. It's true.

We might even need you furry.

If a pig gets piles

does the vet diagnose hamerrhoids?

Now that's avuncular!

Not sure what I imagined it meant, but gazing blankly at the word 'avuncular' nestled beside the word 'affection' it suddenly dawned I'd been glossing over this word and making it fit whimsically into whatever context it occasionally appeared.

It also seemed clear it couldn't have anything to do with the vascular disorders, carbuncles, pustules or possibly wildly curly hair that spring to my mind when viewing this word...

turns out, it means 'uncle-ish' -

'of, pertaining to, or characteristic of an uncle, especially in benevolence or tolerance'

from the Latin avunculus meaning 'maternal brother.'

Obviously, the rest had to be hunted down and made to submit as well:

'Materteral' from the Latin matertera meaning 'maternal aunt; mother's sister'.

Latin amita means 'paternal sister'.

Latin patruus means 'paternal brother'.

These distinctions did not make it into English, leaving us only with aunt and uncle - 'parent's sister' and 'parent's brother'.

Loath though I am

to overshadow the list of archaic insults (can one over overshadow such a thing?), the discovery of LabLit - the culture of science in fiction and fact needed communicating to the public at once. It is invidious to pick a favourite, but Science at sea: what the novels of Patrick O'Brian can teach us is a good start. Now back to the archaic cussing, you.

Archaic words: Insults

Mumper (begger, moocher)

Lickspittle (despicable moocher, one who would stay and lick the very last drop from a spigot)

Hoodpick (miser, skinflint)

Heanling (a low, base person)

Whifling (insignificant person)

Smellsmock (errant clergyman)

Porknell, Gundygut, Tenterbelly (fat person)

Fopdoodle (simpleton, fool)

Hoddypeak, Hoddy-noddy, Hoddypoll (stupid blockhead)

Poop-noddy (a person giddy and silly due to falling in love)

Velvet head (soft in the head)

Fleak, Fizgig (flighty or silly, frivolous woman)

Tittup (proud, forward woman with a strut, a 'hussy')

Wallydraigle, Drassock, Daggle-Tail, Draggle-Tail (slovenly woman)

Taw-Bess (slattern)

In-depth histories and origins of these, and a quillion others - in the fascinating and exhaustively titled book Poplollies and Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words - along with Tenderfeet and Ladyfingers: A Compendium of Body Language, by Susan Kelz Sperling.

No Amazon link, support your local book store, as McGrath always says.

(picture is detail of the book cover)

When a boat is creaming along

(a sailing boat, obviously - is there any other sort?) a thrilled skipper will call it 'Twelve knots and a Chinaman.'

It from the days of old (Pre GPS) when to establish a shi[p's speed you would stream a logline: a wooden disc was dumped into the sea which would run knotted line off a reel - however many knots passed through the officers fingers that would be how many knots (are we getting this yet) the ship was making.

A ship's boy (or an apocryphal Chinaman) would hold the reel as the log line ran out, and on occasion when the ship was creaming along the line would run to its bitter end. The ship's boy (or the apocryphal Chinaman) holding the take-up reel in a palsied grip not wishing to lose ship's kit, would be hoiked overboard.

So a fast ship is doing '12 knots and a Chinaman.' They were less enlightened days. But it is funny.

The art of the political insult

is discussed in The Times newspaper. When it comes to slagging off political opponents it's clear things ain't what they used to be. Here's one of the best from Benjamin Disraeli about William Gladstone when Disraeli was asked to distinguish between a calamity and a misfortune:

“If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune. If anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity.”

The Times is going all pottymouthed: last week they ran a column calling for higher-quality swearing. But that could not be linked to in a family blog.

One of the best political comebacks of all time was John Wilkes to the Earl of Sandwich (although some have said this exchange is apocryphal):

"Egad sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox."

"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Ouch. Egad is a much under-used word, along with Gadzooks.

Why English as a foreign language must do people's heads in.

Age.

Ago.

One vowel difference completely changes the pronunciation of the 'g'.

And how to explain away Loughborough (the market town in Leicestershire), pronounced Luffburr-uh? I have heard someone from across the water say Loogerborooger. Using logic (say our visitor was a Vulcan) the name should be Luffboruff, which sounds like a Labrador of my acquiantance being sick.

On the other hand if he'd been to North Ireland first, he might have said Lockborooger. Strangford Lough - the latter word in pronounced 'lock', not 'luff'. And to add to the confusion your boat's sail has a luff so you can luff a boat up, I have done so in Strangford Lough, which is not a lough in the Loughborogh sense of the word. It's enough to make you want to lough yourself in a dark room and lie down with a damp flannel on your forehead, and I was born to this stuff.

Stickleback

has 'ck' in it twice. I only just noticed.

Just sometimes a word comes along

that makes you want to fall over and grovel on the ground at the beauty that is the English language. Today it was dabberlock. It could be place in Shropshire, possibly a point on a canal where in 1870 coal barges with weary horses would drop through a flight of locks.

Dabberlock could be the next station along from Adlestrop:

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

(Edward Thomas)

It could easily be a name in a Dickens story - a first name or a surname. Anyone who can name a character Poll Sweedlepipe could do wonders with Dabberlock...oh no, Dickens names here we go:

"I was barely twenty," said Mrs Badger, 'when I married Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I became quite a Sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding day, I became the wife of Professor Dingo."

"Of European reputation," added Mr Badger, in an undertone. (Bleak House)

Snagsby, Chadband, Smallweed, Vholes, Dedlock, Tulkinghorne, Rouncewell - all splendid names picked at rapid random from Bleak House's pages. Dabberlock would belong there.

It could also be a nudge-nudge-wink-wink word in the finest tradition of British euphemistic seaside humour: 'Doctor, I've got this swellin' in me dabberlocks.'

Turns out it's a seaweed, fond of wave-battered shores which glories in the Linnaean binomial Alaria esculenta, which rolls off the tongue rather well, too.

Quality...

the Bad Astronomy blog really doesn't need any more plaudits, but here's a swordplay one for the post Hal Bidlack, Colorado's next congressman. Lt. Col. Bidlack was chairing a meeting in 2003 when news came in of the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. I'll let bad astronomy's Phil Plait take up the story:

"About an hour before I was to speak, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up upon re-entry over Texas, killing the astronauts and putting NASA into a tailspin itself. I was rocked, as was everyone, of course.

Hal was asked to announce this at the meeting, minutes after it happened. With only moments to prepare, this is what Hal said:

The space shuttle Columbia was lost a few minutes ago. At 200,000 feet over Texas, NASA lost contact and images from the ground show the shuttle breaking up and impact is reported north of Dallas.

Now listen to me. I’m a career military officer. This is a tragedy. But these people were doing exactly what they wanted to do, in exactly the place they wanted to be. When Dave Scott set foot on the moon on Apollo XV he said, “Man’s fundamental nature is to explore, and this is exploration at its greatest.” Gus Grissom gave an interview a week before the fire on Apollo I and he said, “if there’s an accident, for God’s sake, don’t let it stop the program.” This is a tragedy, but they understood, and that’s what we do in the military.

We’re going to take an hour break. We’ve got TVs in the lobby. We’re going to try to put a TV into this signal and of course you can go up to your rooms if you wish. And in an hour; let’s call it 11:30, that’s an hour and 15, we’re going to continue the conference because I believe that it would be an insult to their memory to deny this audience the information that we want to give it. We can mourn, and we shall, but with dignity and grace, and remember that the space program is an amazing thing. I know astronauts. They were where they wanted to be.

Grace, humanity and eloquence in a time of great emotion and under pressure. America needs that man in power.

There is a very sexy French word...

that means "the scent a woman's perfume makes after it has mingled with her body oils and pheremones and sweat and heat."

I cannot remember it and it is driving me around the twist.

No, it isn't la sillage, which refers to the 'wake' of perfume left as a woman walks away.

If you know the word I'm thinking of, help!

Tautology.

Why isn't it the study of certain types of law? Just wondering. Oh, it's tort. Sorry.

'Panic gripped me tripes!'

Les Dawson. Google him and watch or read anything you can: one of the funniest men to ever use the English language. Sadly, he died about two decades before podcasts were thought of.

Quality, not quantity.

There are so many blasted words these days. We have some wonderful writers in our blogrolls and RSS feeds. You wander into a bookshop and twenty minutes later you're spine-blind. How many words, books, articles, speeches make a difference?

J.K.Rowling's have to a generation of younger readers. Passages in sacred books certainly have for good and ill. In the 21st century British House of Commons, that rather raddled grandmother of Parliaments, the most astonishing inane blather is talked, although sometimes there is reported a speech which 'brings the house down' or excites the interest of parliamentary sketch writers (a funny sub-species, their telomeres sadly degraded by cynicism). Time was when public access to words was at a premium, when people or a parliament could be swayed by oratory and when words could change the course of history.

In British history Winston Churchill used words that changed the mind of a Parliament, of a nation and ultimately of America bringing them into the war. In May 1940, many in the British government wanted to sue for peace with Hitler. Churchill, recently appointed Prime Minister as the Germans stormed through France and Belgium, disagreed. Nor did he lie:

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grevious kind. We have before us many, many long years of struggle and suffering.'

The British Expeditionary Force and French Army were hemmed in to Dunkirk: Churchill insisted that they must be evacuated and 335,000 of them were. Churchill told the House of Commons:

the Navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, out of the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.

He promised the British hard struggle. He put Dunkirk into context. Then he went on to tell Britain, and the world, that Germany could be defeated:

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone......We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Even at 68 years distance, those words have the power to chill and thrill the mind. Churchill's oratory and confidence crushed in the House of Commons those who would come to an accommodation with Hitler and when the speech was repeated over the radio it helped convince the British people that they could defy Hitler's tyranny. By mid August Britain was fighting for its life: the airfields of southern England were under constant attack and the fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force were flying several sorties a day to deny Hitler the dominance of the air he felt he needed to mount an invasion. In the House of Commons on August 20th Hitler said of the fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force:

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

So saying he started a myth. Lady Violet Bonham Carter wrote to Churchill stating that sentence 'would live as long as words are spoken and remembered. Nothing so simple, so majestic and true has been said in so great a moment in history.'

Indeed. Quality, not quantity.