galericulate
adj. covered by a hat
See whelve.
Language
Theater Reports
In reviewing a Royal Shakespeare Company production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the New York Times in 1970, Clive Barnes found “David Waller’s virile bottom particularly splendid.”
He’d intended to capitalize “bottom.”
In 1915, Woodrow Wilson escorted his fiancee, Edith Galt, to the theater. The Washington Post reported that he “spent most of his time entering Mrs. Galt.”
That should have read entertaining — though presumably she would have been entertained either way.
“Triangle Rhyme”
Although the altitudes are three,
Remarks my daughter Rachel,
One point’ll lie on all of them:
The orthocenter H’ll.
By mathematician Dwight Paine of Messiah College, 1983.
(Further recalcitrant rhymes: month, orange. W.S. Gilbert weighs in.)
In a Word
nod-crafty
adj. nodding to give an air of wisdom
… What?
From a September 1909 Baseball Magazine account of a Giants-Pirates game:
With the third inning faded into the dim and forgotten past, the fourth spasm in the afternoon’s matinee of Dementia Baseballitis hopped into the glare of the calcium glim. It was the Giants’ turn to paddle the pellet, Murderous Michael Donlin taking his turn beside the glad glum. Mike biffed the bulb on the proboscis and sent it gleefully gliding to the distant shrubbery. … Bresnahan managed to get next to the seamy side of a floater and the Toledo kid sent the denizens of Coogan’s Bluff into Seventh Heaven of Gleefullness by starting the pulsating pill on a line for the extreme backyard. But they reckoned without the mighty Wagner. The Carnegie Dutchman extended a monster paw, the near-two bagger was cleverly captured by a dainty dab of his lunch hook and before you could bat an eye he had whipped the globule over to Abby, who made an earnest effort to put Donlin down and out but missed by a fraction of an inch.
Baseball historian Douglas Wallop translates: “In the New York half of the fourth inning, Mike Donlin singled and catcher Roger Bresnahan lined out to Wagner, who almost doubled up Donlin at first base.”
Now how long before the translation becomes incomprehensible?
Fair Point
‘My dearest Maria,’ wrote a recently-married husband to his wife. She wrote back, ‘Dearest, let me correct either your grammar or your morals. You address me, “My dearest Maria.” Am I to suppose you have other dear Marias?’
— The Illinois Farmer, June 1863
Apathy on Rails
When the San Diego Wild Animal Park opened in 1972, it featured a monorail that visitors could ride around the park’s perimeter. The railway was called the Wgasa Bush Line, a suitably exotic name that many visitors assumed was African.
In fact the name arose in a planning meeting. When chief designer Chuck Faust couldn’t think of a name, he wrote WGASA on the plans. “Everybody laughed because they knew what it stood for, but they loved it because it sounded African,” zoo founder Charles Schroeder wrote later. “We thought WGASA would blow over, but it actually stuck.”
It stands for “Who gives a shit anyway?”
In a Word
smellfeast
n. “one who is quick at finding and frequenting good tables”; a parasite
Diplomacy
“Mr. Speaker, I said the honorable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honorable member may place the punctuation where he pleases.”
— Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when asked to apologize to another member of Parliament
“The Story of Esaw Wood”
Esaw Wood sawed wood.
Esaw Wood would saw wood!
All the wood Esaw Wood saw Esaw Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esaw saw to saw Esaw sought to saw.
Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And oh, the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood.
But one day Wood’s wood-saw would saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood’s wood-saw would saw wood.
Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esaw sought a saw that would saw wood.
One day Esaw saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood.
In fact, of all the wood-saws Wood ever saw saw wood Wood never saw a wood-saw that would saw wood as the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood would saw wood, and I never saw a wood-saw that would saw as the wood-saw Wood saw would saw until I saw Esaw Wood saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood.
Now Wood saws wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood.
Oh, the wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw!
Oh, the wood Wood’s woodshed would shed when Wood would saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood!
Finally, no man may ever know how much wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw, if the wood-saw Wood saw would saw all the wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw.
— W.E. Southwick
Anthologist Carolyn Wells writes, “Well, you don’t have to read it.”