Language
In a Word
mampus
n. a great number, a crowd
onde
n. strong feeling against a person
siffilate
v. to whisper
fremescent
adj. murmuring, growing noisy
Gladys Cooper’s sister, Cissie, was equally misled by an audience when she went on stage for the first time, after acting as her sister’s dresser for many years. Although she only had a small part, the audience apparently started to hiss almost as soon as she had come on stage. This happened every night and in the end she came into the wings in tears. Gladys Cooper could not understand what was going wrong and she asked the House Manager to see if he could find out what was the matter. So he slipped into the back of the stalls just as her sister was making her entrance and from where he was standing he heard the audience whispering:
‘It’s Cissie Cooper, Gladys Cooper’s sister … It’s Cissie Cooper, Gladys Cooper’s sister …’
— Kenneth Williams, The Complete Acid Drops, 1999
Front and Rear
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In HORSESHOER, the letters in the first half of the word are repeated in the second half in a different order.
Talking Points
In September 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower found himself campaigning against the eloquent Adlai Stevenson, Time magazine made a list of his incomprehensible utterances:
“In our efforts throughout the world, on outpost positions, I mean positions that are exposed to immediate Communist threat, physical threat, if we will help those people hold out and get ourselves back where we belong as reserves to move in to any threatened danger point if they carry it to that point, carry it to that level, then what we will be doing it will be taking these 22 million South Koreans, pushing programs for getting them ready to hold their own front line.”
“I had some service friends that came to me along about May and some things beat around my head, and asked me, ‘General, why are you so crazy to ever get into this kind of thing?’ I had to find some answer that was quick because I was pretty busy in Europe. I got a picture of my three grandchildren and I put it on my mantel and I said, ‘Look at that.’ I want to talk about the future for a second in their terms. This is my particular philosophy. We have been talking about social gains for all our people in terms of, first, political issues, and secondly as of goals in themselves. Now I reject both doctrines, both ideas.”
“We are not going to let our citizens, through no fault of their own, fall down into disaster they could not have foreseen and due to the exigencies of our particular form of economy, this modern economy where they have no power to keep themselves out of that.”
Arnold Roth observed, “The man who had commanded the greatest army in history seemed to have inadequate command of his own thoughts, or at least the vehicle by which he carted those thoughts into public view.”
In a Word
bibliopolist
n. a bookseller
cunctative
adj. slow; tardy; dilatory; causing delay
numquid
n. an inquisitive person
aliunde
adv. from elsewhere; from another source
[Edmund Law] had a book printed at Carlisle; they were a long time about it: he sent several times to hasten them; at last he called himself to know the reason of the delay. ‘Why does not my book make its appearance?’ said he to the printer. ‘My Lord, I am extremely sorry; but we have been obliged to send to Glasgow for a pound of parentheses.’
— Henry Colburn, Personal and Literary Memorials, 1829
Sure Enough
From Lee Sallows, “A novel geometric proof that 16 is a square number.” :)
(Thanks, Lee!)
Time and Talk
Speakers of the Kuuk Thaayorre language, spoken by the Thaayorre people in Queensland’s Pormpuraaw settlement, use absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) rather than relative spatial terms (left, right), even at small scales. So, for example, they would say, “The cup is southeast of the plate” or “The boy standing to the south of Mary is my brother.”
In 2010, University of California psychologists Lera Boroditsky and Alice Gaby gave Kuuk Thaayorre speakers sets of cards depicting temporal progressions — a man aging, a crocodile growing, a banana being eaten — and asked them to arrange the shuffled cards on the ground to indicate the correct temporal order.
English speakers arrange the cards from left to right, Hebrew speakers from right to left. But the Kuuk Thaayorre arranged them from east to west, regardless of the direction the subjects themselves were facing.
Among other things, this means that the Kuuk Thaayorre must be constantly aware of their orientation in the world. “We never told anyone which direction they were facing,” Boroditsky wrote later. “The Kuuk Thaayorre knew that already and spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.”
(Lera Boroditsky, “How Language Shapes Thought,” Scientific American 304:2 [February 2011], 62-65.)
In a Word
stridulous
adj. emitting a particularly harsh or shrill sound
tumultuary
adj. restless; agitated; unquiet
emportment
n. a fit of passion; anger, fury
bangstry
n. masterful violence
Of the numerous war scenes in operas of all ages, it is worth noting one in particular for its extraordinary tempo marking. The opera Sofonisba (1762) by Tommaso Traetta (or Trajetta) opens with a battle scene in which two oboes, two horns (pitched in C and D respectively), and a string band are instructed to play ‘Allegrissimo e strepitosissimo,’ literally, ‘very joyfully and with much animation and gaiety and extremely noisily and boisterously.’
— Robert Dearling, The Guinness Book of Music Facts & Feats, 1976
One Way
The French constrained writing group Oulipo refers to the “Canada Dry principle” — the color, name, and bottle design of that ginger ale would lead you to think it’s alcoholic, but it’s simply not. Similarly, “falindromes” are expressions that appear to be palindromes but aren’t:
O, gin, need a dingo?
So cats taste staccato tacos?
Ray, eat a ripe pirate tea. YAR!!
Mime Eminem.
A-hah! A banana ban. Haha!
“I, a CD-ROM?!” ribbed a bearded Mordcai.
A brazen zebra.
Pandas tired diet? A sad nap.
I am mad at a Canada dam, Mai!
These are from an extinct 2008 blog created by Amir Blumenfeld; there was also a short-lived Twitter account (“Able sidlers race cars, Idris Elba!”).
A working palindrome, by Stephen Fry:
Rettebs iflahd noces, eh? Ttu, but the second half is better.
Dilemma
Bishop Porteus, whom in all conversations about him George III called the Queen’s Bishop, was asked by her Majesty, at a period when all ladies were employed (when they had nothing better to do) in knotting, whether she might knot on a Sunday. He answered, ‘You may not;’ leaving her Majesty to decide whether, as knot and not were in sound alike, she was, or was not, at liberty so to employ herself on that day.
— Horace Twiss, The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon, 1844