Did The Titanic Flounder?

In a recent news article there was confusion on this, when a baseball team was referred to as a ship that had hit an iceberg and “floundered.”

The noun “flounder” is a fish. The verb “flounder” means “to struggle awkwardly to move, as in deep mud or snow; plunge about in a stumbling manner.”

This could certainly describe a struggling football team’s woeful efforts, but not when it’s being compared to a ship. A ship in trouble can “founder” — “to fill with water, as during a storm, and sink.”

Applied to things other than ships and boats, to founder is “to break down; collapse; fail.”

Something that’s floundering is still making some effort, even if inelegantly. Something that’s foundered has stopped moving altogether.

How to keep them straight? Once again, I bow to the great Daffy Duck, who says of a foe temporarily knocked unconscious:

“He’s colder than a foundered flounder.”

For now, th-th-that’s all, folks!

Except for a reply from my letter to the editor. It must be lost in the mail.There was recent confusion on this, when a football team was referred to as a ship that had hit an iceberg and “floundered.”

Would You Look For A Bucket?

We have all heard the phrases 'bucket list' and 'kick the bucket' but where did kicking the bucket start?

We all know what a bucket is - and so this phrase appears rather odd. Why should kicking one be associated with dying?

The link between buckets and death was made by at least 1785, when the phrase was defined in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

"To kick the bucket, to die."

One theory as to why, albeit with little evidence to support it, is that the phrase originates from the notion that people hanged themselves by standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck and then kicking the bucket away. There are no citations that relate the phrase to suicide and, in any case, why a bucket? Whenever I've needed something to stand on I can't recall ever grabbing a bucket. This theory doesn't stand up any better than the supposed buckets did.

The mist begins to clear with the fact that in 16th century England bucket had an additional meaning (and in some parts it still has), i.e. a beam or yoke used to hang or carry items. The term may have been introduced into English from the French trébuchet - meaning a balance, or buque - meaning a yoke. That meaning of bucket was referred to in Peter Levins' Manipulus vocabulorum. A dictionarie of English and Latine wordes, 1570:

"A Bucket, beame, tollo."

and was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV Part II, 1597:

"Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket." [to gibbet meant to hang]

The wooden frame that was used to hang animals up by their feet for slaughter was called a bucket. Not unnaturally they were likely to struggle or to spasm after death and hence 'kick the bucket'.

Fore!

I came across a little tidbit the other day that said that the word 'golf' was an acronym that means gentlemen only, ladies forbidden.

OOOps.

It seems hardly worth mentioning but, of course, the word golf wasn't coined as an acronym formed from 'gentlemen only, ladies forbidden'. In fact I do only mention it as it is one of those nonsense stories that circulate on the Internet and this may help cut down on the number of times it gets repeated.

Golf is a very ancient game and the name is first used in print as early as 1457:

"And at e fut bal ande e golf be vtterly cryt downe and nocht vsyt."

This was part of a proclamation by James II of Scotland aimed at reducing the time that the populace spent playing golf and football , which were keeping his subjects away from archery practice. The edict was repeated later by James III and James IV, who called golf and football 'vnproffitable sportis'.

There were many spellings of the word prior to the acceptance of the current spelling - goff, gowf, golf, goif, gof to name just a few. The unsupported idea that the word was formed from an acronym hardly explains how all the alternative spellings came into being. Acronyms are in fact a 20th century innovation and more than half a millennium too late to be the source of the name golf.

The real derivation of 'golf' is obscure and the subject of considerable dispute.

Of course, this brings to mind just a few golf quotes -

Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with sticks.

P. J. O'Rourke

Golf is a game in which a ball - one and a half inches in diameter - is placed on a ball - 8,000 miles in diameter. The object being to hit the small ball but not the larger.

John Cunningham

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Mark Twain

And, last but not least -

If you foozle with your cleek, And your putts are let's say-weak.
If your drives, for all to see, Do not always leave the tee.
And to slice them is a habit, If, in short, you're a rabbit.
Do not put your clubs away Drink a Guinness everyday.

An early Guinness advert.

Skirting An Issue

I know some of you may not understand this post, but I bet you know someone who might. I came across this phrase yesterday. 'FENDER SKIRTS.'

A term I haven't heard in a long time, and thinking about 'fender skirts' started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like 'curb feelers.'

Since I'd been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first.
Any kids will probably have to find some older person over 50 to explain some of these terms to you.

Remember 'Continental kits?' They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental.

When did we quit calling them 'emergency brakes?' At some point 'parking brake' became the proper term. But I miss the hint of drama that went with 'emergency brake.'

I'm sad, too, that almost all the old folks are gone who would call the accelerator the 'foot feed.' Many today do not even know what a clutch is or that the dimmer switch used to be on the floor.

Didn't you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the 'running board' up to the house?

Here's a phrase I heard all the time in my youth but never anymore - 'store-bought.' Of course, just about everything is store-bought these days. But once it was bragging material to have a store-bought suit or dress or a store-bought bag of candy.

'Coast to coast' is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term 'world wide' for granted. This floors me.

On a smaller scale, 'wall-to-wall' was once a magical term in our homes. In the '50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure.

When was the last time you heard the quaint phrase 'in a family way ?' It's hard to imagine that the word 'pregnant' was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for use in polite company, so we had all that talk about stork visits and 'being in a family way' or simply 'expecting.'

Most of these words go back to the '50s, but here's a pure '60s word I came across the other day 'rat fink.' Ooh, what a nasty put-down!

Here's another word I miss - 'percolator.' That was just a fun word to say. And what was it replaced with? 'Coffee maker.' How dull... Mr. Coffee, I blame you for this.

I miss those made-up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like 'DynaFlow' and 'Electrolux.' Remember? "Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with 'SpectraVision!'"

Food for thought. Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore. Maybe that's what Castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with Castor oil anymore.


Some words aren't gone, but are definitely on the endangered list. The one that grieves me most is 'supper.' Now everybody says 'dinner.' Save a great word. Invite someone to supper.
Perhaps you could discuss fender skirts.

Do You Know These Groups?

Nouns of Association (also sometimes called nouns of assemblage) are words that describe groups of similar objects. We use them all the time and you will recognize the vast majority of them, but there are also a large number that are not well known. An example you might know is “A litter of kittens” – litter is the noun of association. So, here are 20 that you probably didn’t know, to help spice up your sentences.


1. A clowder of cats

2. A parenthesis of cellists

3. A coalition of cheetahs

4. A shock of corn (with stalks included)

5. A brace of dogs (2 dogs)

6. A leap of leopards

7. A coterie of Orchids

8. A dray of squirrels

9. A midden of shells

10. A murder of crows

11. A thought of barons

12. A knot of toads

13. A parliament of owls

14. A covey of quail

15. A passel of piglets

16. A rascal of boys

17. A rafter of turkeys

18. A skein of geese (in flight)

19. A shrewdness of apes

20. A cete of badgers

21. A flush of plumbers

22. A Rand of Objectivists

23. A yap of chihuahuas

24. An ogle of office boys

25. A descent of relatives

Sources used for verification: Milwaukee Zoo, Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Have You Ever Visited These Places?

Let's sample a few toponyms -- words derived from the names of places.


brigadoon (BRIG-uh-doon) noun

An idyllic place that is out of touch with reality or one that makes its appearance for a brief period in a long time.

[From Brigadoon, a village in the musical of the same name, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, based on the story Germelshausen by Friedrich Gerstacker. Brigadoon is under a spell that makes it invisible to outsiders except on one day every 100 years.]

"There is a feel of Brigadoon to Cooperstown, the lush village of baseball and opera tucked into the middle of an idyllic nowhere in upstate New York." Elisabeth Bumiller, Cooperstown, The New York Times, Jul 1, 2001.


stoic (STOH-ik) noun

One who is or appears to be indifferent to pleasure or pain; unaffected by emotions.

adjective

Unaffected by pleasure or pain.

[After the name of the school of philosophy founded by Greek philosopher Zeno (c. 340-265 BCE) that one should be free of passion and be unaffected by grief or joy. From Middle English, from Latin stoicus, from Greek stoikos from stoa, the porch where Zeno taught.]

"Those who stand to lose revenue from electronic-book piracy are being remarkably stoic in the face of the first high-profile incident." Christine McGeever, E-book Piracy Doesn't Frighten Publishers, Computerworld, Apr 10, 2000.


Timbuktu (tim-buk-TOO) noun

1. A town in West Africa in central Mali. Also Tombouctou.

2. Any remote place.

"`You can never find a space [at the mall]; you have to park in Timbuktu,' Ms. Dvorak says. `Then you have to walk all over the mall.'" Dean Starkman, The Mall, Without the Haul, The Wall Street Journal (New York), Jul 25, 2001.


El Dorado (el duh-RAH-doh) noun

A place offering fabulous wealth or opportunity.

[From Spanish, literally, the gilded one. After a legendary place in South America sought for its gold by 16th century explorers.]


ultima Thule (UL-tuh-muh THOO-lee) noun

1. The northernmost part of the world believed habitable by the ancients.

2. A distant or remote goal or place.

[Latin ultima, farthest, Thule, name of a place.]

"Opportunities? In culture's Ultima Thule? Absolutely, both Clink and Egan affirm." Mike Dunham, Growing Talent Pool Figures in 'Requiem', The Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska), Apr 9, 1999.

"It is much too early, say the experts, to presume Samurai's exile to ultima Thule wherein rust those firecracker Ford Pintos, runaway Audi 5000s and Ralph Nader's Corvairs that were unsafe at any speed." Paul Dean, Safety and the Samurai: Fans Don't Mind a Few Bumps, The Los Angeles Times, Jun 9, 1988.

Known to the ancients as the northern-most region of the habitable world, Thule had been variously identified as one of the Shetland islands, Norway, or Iceland. Today's Thule is in northwest Greenland, within the Arctic Circle.

Incidentally, the name Greenland is ironic, as more than four-fifths of the land is ice-capped. The palindromically named village of Qaanaaq, in the district of Thule, has the distinction of being the northern-most naturally inhabited place on earth.

At least one linguaphile lives in Greenland (with email address ending in gl, the domain code for Greenland), but we don't know if there's one in Thule.

Remembering The Atmosphere

Recently I was reminded of a use for the word 'atmosphere'. The second definition below is the one I mean.


From Merriam-Webster

Definition of ATMOSPHERE

1a: the gaseous envelope of a celestial body (as a planet)
b : the whole mass of air surrounding the earth

2: the air of a locality

3: a surrounding influence or environment

4: a unit of pressure equal to the pressure of the air at sea level or approximately 14.7 pounds per square inch (101,325 pascals)

5a: the overall aesthetic effect of a work of art
b : an intriguing or singular tone, effect, or appeal

I cannot describe what or even how I feel when I sense a very different atmosphere at a particular location. Words fail me. But it is there and of that I have no doubt.

The wedding in England last weekend reminded me of the incredible atmosphere I sensed in Westminster Abbey many years ago. All of those old names suddenly became alive to me as I gazed in wonder at, for example -














The only other place that has done that to me was the battlefield at Gettysburgh PA. We visited there back in 2001 (before I had ever seen the Ted Turner movie!). It was a very sobering time and I still have vivid, treasured memories of both places.

Have you ever visited a place like these?

Five Words and a Preview

It's a phonic (and phony) world out there. We have megaphones and microphones. Megaphones magnify our voice, so why doesn't a microphone miniaturize it? We have phonograms but they are not the opposite of gramophones.

Human languages, like humans, are never too logical. Homophones have nothing to do with Homo sapiens. The former prefix is from Greek homo meaning "same" while the other is from Latin homo meaning "man".

Here are five terms that are homophones of everyday words: toxin, analyst, beaut, bowl, and seed.


tocsin (TOK-sin) noun

An alarm bell or a warning signal.

[From Middle French toquassen, from Provençal tocasenh, from tocar (to touch) + senh (bell).]


annalist (AN-uh-list) noun

A historian, especially a chronicler of yearly events.

[From Latin libri annales (yearly books), from annus (year). Ultimately from the Indo-European root at- (to go) that is also the source of annual, annals, annuity, and anniversary.]


butte (byoot) noun

An isolated hill rising abruptly from the surrounding area, having steep sides and a flat top.

[From French butte (mound).]


boll (pronounced the same as bowl) noun

The pod of a plant, as that of flax or cotton.

[From Middle English bolle, from Middle Dutch bolle (round). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bhel- (to thrive or bloom) that gave us flower, bleed, bless, foliage, blossom, and blade.]


cede (seed) verb tr.

To yield or to surrender something, such as a territory.

[From Latin cedere (to go or to yield). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ked- (to go or yield) that's also the ancestor of exceed, secede, proceed, cease, and necessary.]



Coming next - last weekend there was a place involved in a major news story. No, not the killing of bin-Laden. As I watched the goings-on I was taken back to when I had walked that place. It is one of two places I have visited that really gives meaning to the word atmosphere of a location. The feelings and thoughts that occur as you stand there are staggering.

Perhaps you would care to venture a guess as to the name of that location and, perhaps, even the other "place of atmosphere" in my memory?