February 2011
25 Feb, 2011
Today in Christchurch, New Zealand they are sending teams into the cathedral to try to recover the bodies of people killed there during the earthquake. We cannot think of much else than the terrible emotions that the New Zealanders are feeling with the loss of so many people to this unpredictable act of nature. So this week’s word is written in sympathy for New Zealand.
Earthquakes are primordial forces and the word to describe them is old and a bit mysterious. While the word for earth, comes from Old English, eorpe, and can trace its origins back through the Germanic languages, quake has no such history.
The word for quake, cwacian, comes from Old English and meant quake, tremble, and chatter (of teeth). It was related to a similar word, cweccan, which meant to shake, swing, move, or vibrate. Neither word has relatives in other languages and their predecessors are not known.
Quake has a more powerful connotation than other words with the same sense, such as, shake, tremble, vibrate and shiver. Quake is not related to shake, which comes from another Old English word, sceacan meaning to vibrate, make vibrate, or move away. Shake is derived from an old German word and has relatives in other Germanic languages (for instance, skaka in Swedish and skage in Danish).
Although shake and quake are near synonyms, shake is the less violent of the pair, while quake is reserved for the shakes associated with fear and panic. The Quakers were given that name because as part of their religious observance they were to tremble at the word of the Lord.
Tremble and vibrate are derived from Latin words, tremulus, meaning trembling or tremulous; and vibrare meaning to move quickly to and fro, or shake. Shiver is thought to come from a Middle English word chiveren derived from an Old English word, ceafl meaning jaw—from the association with chattering teeth. Seismology, the study of earthquakes, is derived from the Greek word for earthquake, seismos.
Words are not enough for our New Zealand friends but our thoughts are with them. Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), an American poet, described her experiences in London during the First World War in Ancient Wisdom Speaks. There may be some small solace in her words:
Remember these (you said)
who when the earth-quake shook their city,
when angry blast and fire
broke open their frail door,
did not forget
beauty.
17 Feb, 2011
A dragon is a mythical monster often represented as breathing fire, having a scaly reptilian body, wings, claws, and a long tail. It is also sometimes portrayed as a giant snake. Dragons in European tradition are most often symbols of chaos, of evil supernatural forces and are the natural enemy of humanity. In Asia the dragon is usually benevolent, spiritual, and a great source of wisdom.
The word, dragon, originates from ancient Greek, drakon, meaning a serpent or giant seafish. It may have been derived from derkesthai meaning to see clearly which has been explained as the one with the deadly glance (somewhat like the basilisk which, in one form, is a giant snake with a deadly stare). Latin took the same word, Draconis, for snake or serpent.
The dragon features strongly in western mythology denoting the ultimate force that a hero must overcome. In Greek mythology the dragon, Ladon, guarded the Golden Apples of the Hesperides and another dragon guarded the Golden Fleece. Pythia and Python, a pair of serpents, guarded the temple of Gaia until it was seized by Apollo, who then draped them around his winged caduceus which he then gave to Hermes.
In the Judeo-Christian canon, dragon is the translation used for the Hebrew word tannin in the Old Testament, perhaps denoting crocodiles, whales or sea creatures in general and even wolves or jackals. In Isaiah 51:9 it is the Egyptian pharaoh:
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
But in the New Testament whenever dragon is mentioned it refers to the devil. From Revelation 12:9:
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world— he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
Over time the dragon has come to represent the epitome of primordial evil in western culture. It is portrayed as a metaphorical force opposed to the civilizing nature of humanity. DH Lawrence writes:
Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the “dragon,” in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage.
The magical and deep-seated malevolence of the dragon in our culture may be explained in the context of the Jungian collective unconsciousness. The dragon in our imaginations may be a manifestation of our instinctual fear of predators. This has been imprinted in the DNA of our brain and our behaviour in the long distant past when our pre-simian ancestors scuttled around in trees trying to avoid the serpents and raptorial birds that preyed upon us. If this is the case the dragon, the serpent with wings, will continue to wage its magical battle with us for a long time to come.
17 Feb, 2011
Typography or the font choice is an important part of a business’ branding. The choice of font (or  typeface) is as important as the logo and the colour scheme in establishing the right image for your organization.
Classic fonts create a sense of strong personality implying reliability and trustworthiness, the best example being Times New Roman, developed in England at The Times newspaper. If your business has a professional image you need to use strong fonts; using fun or creative fonts would make you look frivolous.
Helvetica, a Swiss font that recently had its 50th birthday, is a modernist font worshipped by some and hated by others. The reason it is so well liked is because it projects an air of safety, reliability and stability. The list of large, corporate brands that use Helvetica is long and includes: Gap, Orange, Hoover, Lufthansa, Panasonic, Royal Bank of Scotland, Tupperware, and Zanussi.
The reasons why Helvetica is disliked are almost the same reasons it is liked: because of its corporate ubiquity it can be seen as bland, conforming and unadventurous.
Some organisation’s font choices are more adventurous, distinctive and can become immediately recognizable. The BBC uses Gill Sans which is slightly quirky but still reliable; New Johnston is the choice of London Underground, Dunkin Donuts uses the Frankfurter font. Sabon is the font originally used by Penguin Books and also now by Stanford University.
Fun fonts should be used with great caution. Comic Sans is so hated by some that they have tried to have it banned. Now, on one hand, I see this as a complete overreaction and a needless waste of effort but, on the other hand, I do really think the world would be a better place if people wouldn’t use it.
There are some people who see the interest in fonts as all too unnecessary. Unfortunately they are probably the same people who turn up to interviews in safari suits and nylon ties. It is not so much what you look like but how you choose to portray yourself that is important in how people assess you.
The importance of type
There is lots of information available on the web about fonts. Here are a couple of very good sites that will give you a sense of the power of fonts in evoking a particular mood of sense of identity.
The graphic designers at Penguin Books (US) all have different views on fonts. This series of video posts shows their passion for their pet fonts and for their disliked fonts—it is a great insight into the power and importance of choosing the right font.
In Live the Language, a series of advertisements for a language-teaching company, the creative director has used typography to emphasise the different identities of the four capital cities chosen: Paris, London, Beijing, and Barcelona. It is an insightful use of typography to differentiate the cultural aspects of each city and it shows how powerful the imagery can be in creating distinct personalities using fonts.
10 Feb, 2011
In honour of the “tsunami of obesity” that has been recently identified as drowning the world’s population, this week’s word is doughnut (or donut)! According to research released last week by the Imperial College London, Harvard and the World Health Organisation the international rate of obesity has almost doubled since 1980.
A doughnut is a confection most often made from flour dough, deep-fried in oil and then covered in sugar or icing or filled with jam. It never appears on a healthy eating menu as its ingredients are salt, sugar and fat; it contains between 200-300 calories; and provides very little nutritional value other than energy. While the doughnut is still legal, international obesity will never disappear. I suggest that national obesity rates correlate very strongly with each nation’s per capita consumption of doughnuts.
Although deep-fried battercakes are part of all national cuisines (for instance, France has oreillettes) it is the American torus-shaped, doughnut that has become the deep-fried cake of choice among the world’s gourmands. In geometry, a torus is a surface generated by revolving a circle in three dimensions around a central point. Torus-shaped objects include inner tubes, lifebuoys and O-rings—however in plain English they are more often referred to as doughnut-shaped.
The first literary reference to doughnuts was from Washington Irving in 1809 in his History of New York where he described them as:
… balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks.
The olykoek was a Dutch word meaning oil cake that, understandably, did not catch on, and if it had, we may not be in the trouble we are now. It also indicates a possible Dutch origin for the recipe. The first written mention of doughnuts is in an English cookbook of 1803 referring to American cuisine.
The word doughnut is made up of two parts: dough and nut. While the dough part is straightforward the origin of the nut part has proved difficult to find. There are many theories as to how the cakes became nuts: some doughcakes are formed from a knot of dough so the original word may have been doughknots; they are cooked in oil similarly to nuts hence doughnuts; or the shape resembles a zero so they may have been known as doughnoughts.
As attractive as these explanations are the answer is probably more a confusion or association of the cooked ring with its cooked hole. The reason doughnuts have a hole in the centre is to help them cook evenly. A large ball of dough cooked rapidly in hot oil often ended up with an uncooked centre. The initial solution was to cut the centre out with a hole cutter. Rather than waste the small ball of dough it was also cooked and this is probably what became known as a dough nut!
And this probably provides the answer. If we want to end the global obesity tsunami we should encourage the consumption of the doughnuts’ holes rather than their rings.
4 Feb, 2011
As Sydneysiders suffer our dog days (see note below) the Bureau of Meteorology appease us by suggesting that thunderstorms are on their way. We pray for the sound of thunder to bring a change from the constant heat.
Thunder is the sound caused by lightning as it passes through the air. Lightning heats the air around creating a high-pressure area. The air expands supersonically creating a shock wave which we hear as thunder.
Our forefathers did not think in terms of shock waves but in terms of thunderbolts and associated the powerful noise of thunder with their gods. In Greek myth, Zeus was a sky god who been given thunder and the thunderbolt by the Cyclopes for setting them free of Cronus. Jupiter or Jove, in Roman mythology, was the king of the gods and the god of the sky and of thunder. In Judeo-Christian tradition thunder was the voice of God (Psalm 18:13):
The Lord thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded
In Scandinavian mythology Thor was the god of thunder. And it is from Thor that most of the Germanic languages, including English, have taken their words for thunder. In Old Norse, por, and in Old High German donar, the words for thunder were the same as for Thor the god. In modern Swedish the word for thunder is tordön which literally translates as Thor’s din.
The Anglo-Saxon god that was equivalent to Thor was Thunor. It is from him that we get the English word thunder with the ‘d’ having slipped in (an example of epenthesis where a consonant becomes added to help pronunciation), as it did in the Dutch word donder closely related to the modern German word donner without the ‘d’.
So it would appear that we still look to our pagan gods when we pray for thunder to relieve us from the long dog days of summer.
NOTE: There was an unusual touch of classical Rome in the Daily Telegraph yesterday when it referred to Sydney’s longest heatwave as our “dog days”—the sweltering days of summer when the temperatures are too hot and the air is stagnant. The Romans used the term because Sirius, the dog star from the constellation Canis Major (big dog) and the brightest star in the night sky, rose with the sun over the hottest part of the northern hemisphere summer. The Romans thought that the dog star added to the sun’s heat, which, of course it didn’t.
del.icio.us
digg
Furl
Spurl
Technorati
Yahoo My Web