Tag Archives: meanings

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’25 A To Z Challenge – X

I have previously whined opined that I accept the inevitable evolution of the English language.  I just don’t want it to be led by guys with their name on their shirt.  HOLY SHIT!!  It just got even worse.  I recently ran into the Newspeak word

XERTZ

At first, I thought it might have something to do with new, electronic, micro-circuitry.  We should be so lucky.  The Earl of Sandwich invented a new type of food, because of his addiction to, and his refusal to leave, the gambling tables.

This word, which means, Xertz means to gulp or swallow something quickly, often in a greedy or hurried manner, similar to chugging or scoffing down a meal or beverage.

It is a (mostly) slang term, invented by gamers, who are addicted to, and refuse to leave, their precious keyboards, barely taking time to eat, drink, sleep, or attend to basic bodily needs and functions.

Heroin is not toxic, and by itself, will not damage the body.  All of the harm – physical, emotional, social, financial – is caused by distraction from immediate reality.  JUST SAYIN’!!

 

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TILWROT VII

I read a sword-and-sorcery fantasy book in which paladins were repeatedly mentioned.

Off down the rabbit hole I went.

Things I Learned While Researching Other Things

The modern definition of paladin, is guard, or protector.  It comes from the 12 mythic, ninth-century knights of Emperor Charlemagne of France, who went around rescuing maidens, slaying dragons, and protecting abused peasants – the story of Camelot, King Arthur, and Lancelot and the boys, but told in French.  It comes from palatin, a guard at the Roman Emperor’s palace, on the Palatine Hill.

In the westerns-littered late 1950s, there was a somewhat different TV series.  The protagonist passed out business cards which read HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL- wire Paladin.  I always thought that Paladin was his name.  Either my parents did not know the meaning of the word, or they thought that 10-year-old-me already did.

This character was the man with no name, 30 years before Clint Eastwood’s. It was never given.  In one episode, an interested bystander asks him what his name is.  He merely replied, “Paladin,” earning the snarky response, “Of course it is.”

With his quick and deep brain-power, he was more of a frontier private investigator, than a gunfighter.  Aside from his formidable wits, his main armament was the Colt Peacemaker .45 caliber Cavalry model, six-shooter revolver.  It had the 7-1/2 inch barrel, 2-3/4 inches longer than the standard Gunfighter model.  Not exactly like Lee van Kleef’s 12 inch Buntline Special version, but capable of discharging bullets at a higher speed, and accurate at greater distances.

One of three books written about the character, and the series, suggested that his name was Clay Alexander, and that he was a college-educated graduate of West Point, but no other information source close to the production verifies that.

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’25 A To Z Challenge – D

 

CAUTION: OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR MAY BE FARTHER IN THE PAST THAN YOU’D LIKE

Today, I’d like to talk to you about

DEBAUCHERY

Because at my age, that’s all I can do – talk about it.  Actually, I can’t remember a time when I did anything but talk.  It seems to be one of those ‘Negative’ words that doesn’t have a ‘Positive.’  Nobody ever ascends into ‘Bauchery.’

The dictionary says that it means

excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures; intemperance.

Archaic. seduction from duty, allegiance, or virtue.

But one person’s debauchery is just another’s normal Saturday night.  One condemnatory Christian caller to an Atheist podcast, defined it as a male college student who had unmarried sex with a female, and later, moved on to have unmarried sex with one or more other females.  Sounded a lot like Incel jealousy to me.

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’24 A To Z Challenge – I

Not to sound too negative or anything, but this week’s word is one of those words that doesn’t seem to have a positive.  I’m talking about

INEFFABLE

There, I said wrote it.  It does seem to be one of those negative words, that doesn’t have a positive for.  I have a whole list of them that I’m gonna do a post about – after I finish my procrastination practice.

Actually, the word effable does exist, although it’s even more rare than ‘ineffable’.  I thought at first that it was to describe many people’s driving skills, but it turns out to mean, utterable, expressible.  Too many of them have the word/name ‘Jesus’ on the back of their cars, so that’s the expression that I utter.  “Jesus!!  Who the eff taught you to drive – Crash Bandicoot??”

Ineffable then, just means that a thing is too…. something – holy, or horrible, to be expressed or described in words.  That’s when I resort to sign language, one finger at a time.  Thumbs-up to you though, if you show up here on Friday.  😀

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’24 A To Z Challenge – C

As the housewife said to the kettle, when she saw that it had boiled dry….

O I C U R MT

Once upon a time, the definition of “Dictionary”, in the dictionary, was not “Dictionary.”  Despite three similar but different religions – Greek, Eastern Orthodox (Russian), and Roman – using it to identify themselves, the word Catholic means universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.

Five Hundred years or more ago, The (Roman) Catholic Church compiled definitions and meanings of ALL the words and phrases – at least all the Holy, Religious ones – let the peasant rabble speak what vernacular they wished.  Since all the important meanings were included, they called it The

CATHOLICON

It was more than a mere book, or single volume.  Copies of it consisted of small libraries.  Like Samuel Johnson’s later Dictionary, social, political, and religious commentary was added to the meanings.  Johnson’s definition of Oats was, a cereal grass, which in England feeds horses, but in Scotland, it feeds the men.  An English baron exclaimed, “But what horses!  And what men!

What I’m going to do is Decide on a suitable word choice for the letter D.  I would be de-lighted (placed in the dark) if one of my readers made a suggestion.  D-cells?  D-cups??!  Defenestrate??  No, that one’s out the window.  😉

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I’m Going All Medieval On You

Some of our most popular phrases have a long history, including some that go back to the Middle Ages. Here are 10 medieval phrases from the Dictionary of Idioms and their Origins.

  1. “The apple of one’s eye”

In early medieval England the pupil of the eye was known as the apple (Old English æppel) since it was thought to be an apple-shaped solid. Since the delicate pupil of the eye is essential for vision, it is a part that is cherished and to be protected. Thus apple of the eye was used as a figure for a much-loved person or thing. Even King Alfred the Great used this phrase.

2. “Baker’s dozen”

This phrase arose from a piece of medieval legislation, the Assize of Bread and Ale of 1262. Bakers of the period had a reputation for selling underweight loaves, so legislation was put in place to make standardized weights. To make sure that they did not sell underweight bread, bakers started to give an extra piece of bread away with every loaf, and a thirteenth loaf with every dozen.

3. “To curry favour”

The phrase came from the Middle English words ‘curry favel’, which in Old French was ‘estriller fauvel’. It meant ‘to rub down or groom a chestnut horse. In Le Roman de Favuel, a 14th-century French romance, a chestnut horse representing hypocrisy and deceit is carefully combed down by other characters in order to win his favour and assistance. The popularity of the work led people to accuse those who tried to further their own ends by flattery to be currying favel. By the sixteenth century the phrase had changed slightly to currying favour.

4. “To play devil’s advocate”

Devil’s advocate is a translation of the Latin ‘advocatus diaboli’. This was the popular title given to the official appointed by the Roman Catholic church to argue against the proposed canonization of a saint by bringing up all that was unfavourable to the claim. The post, which was officially known as Promoter of the Faith (promotor fidei), seems to have been established by Pope Leo X in the early sixteenth century.

5. “To throw down the gauntlet”

The gauntlet was a piece of armour that knights wore to protect their forearms and hands. A gauntlet-wearing knight would challenge a fellow knight or enemy to a duel by throwing one of his gauntlets on the ground.

6. “By hook or by crook”

Records of this phase date back to the 14th century. One theory for its origin suggests that a medieval law about collecting firewood allowed peasants to take what they could only cut from dead trees by using their reaper’s bill-hook or a shepherd’s crook.

7. “Hue and cry”

This phrase dates back to 12th-century England. Hue comes from the Old French ‘huer’, which means to shout out. In the Middle Ages, if you saw a crime being committed, you were obliged to raise ‘hue’ and ‘cry’, that is to shout and make noise, to warn the rest of the community, so they could come to pursue and capture the criminal.

8. “A nest egg”

By the fourteenth century the phrase nest egg was used by peasants to explain why they left one egg in the nest when collecting them from hens – it would encourage the chickens to continue laying eggs in the same nest. By the seventeenth century this phrase now meant to set aside a sum of money for the future.

9. “A red-letter day”

During the fifteenth century it became customary to mark all feast days and saints’ days in red on the ecclesiastical calendar, while other days were in black.

10. “To sink or swim”

The phrase refers to the water ordeal, a medieval practice of judging whether a person was innocent or guilty by casting him or her into a lake. The belief was that water would not accept anyone who had rejected the water of baptism, so if the victim sunk they were innocent, but if they floated they were guilty. Chaucer used a similar phrase: “Ye rekke not whether I flete (float) or sink”.

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’23 A To Z Challenge – K

KITCHENER

The Word – The Man – The City – The History – The Myth

First, the meaning.  The word, not necessarily the name, means just what it seems to mean.
Noun

  1. A person employed in, or in charge of, a kitchen.
  2. An elaborate kitchen stove.

The family of my city’s namesake must have done some significant social-climbing over several centuries, in Britain’s rigidly stratified society.  What began as a lowly cook or scullery maid, finally gave us minor nobility, Horatio Herbert Kitchener.

He was born a mere 3rd Baronet.  He followed his father into the Army, and soon showed more than average planning, tactics, and leadership ability.  After he won several battles, and invented concentration camps, in southern Africa, he was raised to First Earl of Kitchener.

He was a product of his time.  He had no charity for anything or anybody that wasn’t British.  He barely skated past a court martial for having 9 prisoners and a German missionary summarily shot.  On the other hand….

Mankind invented footwear to protect from rocks and thorns and poisonous snakes.  As ‘boots’ became firm and solid, so did abrasion and foot irritation.  At first, rags were wrapped around feet to help fill the footwear and prevent internal rubbing.  Eventually, knitters, almost entirely women, learned how to knit socks to cushion feet in boots, and keep them warm.

For most people, (men) the seam which closed the toe-end caused no serious problem, but for Infantrymen who had to quick-march 20 or 30 miles, carrying 50 pounds of ruck, it was soon found that those seams caused pain and bleeding.  Your army can’t fight, if it can’t move.

Lord Kitchener knew some knitters, and approached them with a request to develop a method of sealing the ends of socks – American, sox – which did not protrude or irritate.  One of them discovered a smooth method of grafting closure.  It was named the Kitchener Stitch.  That’s like having the Burger King Whopper named after you, because you ordered one.

‘Sand Hills’ became ‘Ebytown,’ and eventually the city founded by people of German ancestry, became Berlin.  In 1916, with much anti-German sentiment generated by the First World War, they voted to change the city name, to honor this war (?) hero who had died at sea.  A newly-settled little unincorporated village of about 300, on the British Columbia/Washington border, claims that they were first, taking the name in 1898.

The three little cities of Hespeler, Preston and Galt, to our south, were forcibly amalgamated into the city of Cambridge, by the Provincial Government in 1973.  Today’s Woke society, and Cancel Culture, are busy eliminating past sins.  If the statue of Queen Victoria is doused with red paint, and it is demanded that it be removed, and her park renamed, then the name of a racist colonialist bully-boy will soon be removed also.  I suspect that Cambridge, Kitchener, and the city of Waterloo will all be folded into the already-existing Region of Waterloo, which, like L.A. encompasses the entire County of Waterloo.  Whatever they call it, I plan to still be here blogging atcha.  😀

 

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Words Society Has Distorted

MORE WORDS SOCIETY DISTORTS

Gay does not mean homosexual, yet means merry and joyful.

Lesbian derives from Lesbos which means forested and woody, not homosexual.

Fag derives from Fag-end which derives from the word Remnant and Remnant means what’s left or remaining around and does not mean homosexual.

Fagot derives from Fagotto which means bundle of something or sack of something and does not mean homosexual.

Gigolo derives from Gigolette which derives from Gigue which means Irish dance and ette which means smaller form of something and does not mean a man who has sex with different women for money.

Prostitute derives from pro which means before, for and statuō which means to set up, to erect and does not mean a female who has sex with different men for money.

I empathise with this author’s intent, and I congratulate him for his attempt to reduce Fundamentalist hate-mongering.  It’s just that correct English usage, better research, and valid assertions would have been so much better.  Out of six claims, he only got all of them wrong – and all for the lack of the word ‘just,’ or ‘only.’

The Woke term ‘Presentism’ means, to apply the morals and social values of today, to actions which occurred in the past.  This writer is doing the exact opposite – ‘Pastism’??  He wishes to still apply the definitions of yesteryear, to today’s situations.

The English language is an amorphous, ever-changing entity.  I’ve said that it’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree.  Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.  They reflect the definitions that the majority of people currently use.  What a word meant a week ago – a month ago – a year ago – a decade ago, it doesn’t JUST/ONLY mean now.

These derogatory terms have been in use, longer than he’s been alive.  While they’re not nice, they are part of modern speech.  ‘Gay’ is still used occasionally to mean merry and joyful, but despite any dispute, it now definitely means homosexual.  (It also means lesbian, as we’ll see next)

Homosexual is not the same as lesbian, in the same way that actor is not the same as actress.  If two men have sex, they are homosexual.  If two women have sex, they are lesbian.  They are all ‘gay,’ which indicates same-sex attraction.

Like the myth of the Amazons, the island of Lesbos was once thought to be populated entirely by women, who satisfied their urges with each other.  The island was, and still is, forested and woody – but that’s not what the Greek name Lesbos means.  It comes from the Hittite word Lazpa, which means, land, realm, or city.

A faggot (British – fagot) was a bundle of something, particularly wood for burning.  One piece from the bundle, represented by a cigarette, was called a fag.  A fag-end was a cigarette butt, or some other valueless scrap.  While the expression means something that is left, it did not come from the word ‘remnant.’  It also did not come from Fagotto, which is an Italian bassoon, but from the Greek, ‘phakelos’ = bundle, and it still currently means gay.

Gigolo is the masculine derivative of gigolette – woman of the streets or public dance halls.  The modern spelling is Boy-Toy, or Cougar-bait, but they still exist.

The continuation of the word prostitute’s meaning, ‘to erect,’ – (and there’s a Freudian allusion) is to then present to the public for sale.  It seems a very apt definition.  While these can be judgmental and insulting terms, they are definitely part of modern speech, like it or not lump it.

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Different Kind Of Fibbing Friday

Time for something a little different from word definitions.
Pensitivit101 explored her archives and found some questions set by Teresa Grabs who was the originator of Fibbing Friday.
There are some gems so if any questions for March seem familiar, you can understand why!

  1. What did you find in the unopened can of mixed nuts?

Schrodinger’s cat.

  1. They just cancelled your favorite TV show – what do you do?

Start to rebuild your IQ level.  If Facebook and Twitter had burned down, we’d have some decent politicians and we wouldn’t be in this Brexit mess.

3. What is the answer to 3 Down?

Prevarication.

4. What do Scots wear under their kilts?

I wear Argyle socks and my Sgian Dubh, ‘cause I’m a sharp dresser.

5. How did the platypus get its name?

My So–So Great-Great-Grandfather bestowed that name on it.  At least witnesses at the time think that’s what he said.  Aside from being Scottish, his pronunciation was never the best because he was the official taste-tester at a whiskey distillery just outside Canberra.  Some folks said that he had a drinking problem, but his mates said he never had a problem drinking.  He died when he tripped, and drowned in a big vat of it.  When the foreman told his wife she said, “Ach, Robbie, ya ne’er stood a chance.”  The foreman replied, “Sure he did.  He got out three times to go to the loo.”

6. You find a treasure map – what is the treasure?

It’s peace and quiet on a small, independent, bucolic island in the Caribbean, named Tikoyya, where ‘Woke Society’ has been declared a terrorist organization, and local ordinances forbid the import or possession of any of those Snapgram/Instabook/Facechat thingies.

7. They are making a movie of your life – what is the biggest whopper they invent?

Wanting to make me appear rustic and pastoral, they claimed that I was born in a log cabin.  I was born in the woods, to an old Momma wildcat, and didn’t build that cabin until I was almost three.

8. Bollocks doesn’t mean what Americans think it does…what does it really mean?

The problem is not with the meaning of the word.  The problem is with the idea of Americans – THINKING!  😳

9. What did you give the last person who asked you for a tip?

I said, don’t bet on the Eagles in the Super Bowl, and don’t take any wooden nickels.  I will safely take them off your hands because I’m a numismatist, although I’ve never been charged or convicted.  It just means that I’m a coin collector.

10. What is over the next hill?

Sisyphus, pushing a huge rock.  His shift is over, and I’ve come to relieve him.

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’22 A To Z Challenge – N

 

NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST!

Now that I have your attention….  I got nothing.  😳

I would like to believe that Vladimir Putin won’t go as far as to start lobbing nukes, just because he can’t get his petulant, entitled way, and take possession of a chunk of Europe best known for its export of strippers and mail-order brides.  I think that he will come to his senses prior to that point, but I’ve been wrong before.

He guaranteed his sycophantic nincompoop BFF, The Donald Trump, an uninterrupted supply of future trophy wives, and we all saw how much and how often his reign term in office went bad.

I used the word nincompoop intentionally.  It has come to have a soft, inept, amusing, meaning, but it came from the Latin, non compos mentis – not in one’s right mind, crazy, F**king insane!

I once read an article by an American writer (Whom I did not know was American), in the (Canadian) Macleans Magazine, which described a Canadian politician as a

NUMSKULL

I agreed with his assessment, but sent him a snippy email which read, “It’s numbskull, not numskull, you numbskull.”  He responded with considerable restraint and grace, telling me that he put a B in the word when he submitted it, but that someone at the magazine had edited it out, apparently to make room to add a U to one of his other words, to make it ‘colour.’

NEVER MIND

I felt like such a nitwit.  😳