Word of the week
1 Feb, 2012
Ambrose Everett Burnside (23 May 1824–13 September 1881) was a Union Army general in the American Civil War. His early campaigns were successful but his forces were heavily defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of the Crater, earning him the reputation as one of the most incompetent generals of the war. His military reputation was one of being obstinate, unimaginative, and unsuited for high command.
Despite these failings, Burnside was popular in the army and in the political career he pursued afterwards. He was personable, cheerful and remembered everyone’s name. He was modest (apparently unusual for the officers of the Union Army) and recognized his own shortcomings—only reluctantly taking the promotions thrust upon him.
He was known for “wearing what was probably the most artistic and awe-inspiring set of whiskers in all that bewhiskered Army”. And despite his military failures and unexceptional political achievements he gave his name to the particular way he wore his facial hair. The strips of hair grown down the sides of his face in front of his ears became known as burnsides. This distinctive style is now known as sideburns with the compound switched around. If sideburns meet at the chin they then, by definition, become a beard.
Burnside was not the first man to wear sideburns. They are known throughout history. Alexander the Great had them. The Torah, the Jewish holy book, includes a law on how you should wear them it says, “You shall not round off the peyos of your head” (Leviticus 19:27). Peyos are defined as the hair in front of the ears that extends down to beneath the cheekbone, level with the nose. This unusual law was aimed at helping Jewish men avoid vanity and to focus on being of good character.
Sideburns replaced whiskers, the previous word for sideburns, in English. The Mexican form, as worn by revolutionaries, were known as balcarrotas.
Sideburns are not the only eponyms (objects given the names of people) that got their names from association with soldiers. There are wellingtons, rubber boots named after another military leader, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852); and the cardigan, a knitted sweater that buttons in front named after James Thomas Brudnell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), a British cavalry officer.
23 Jan, 2012
It is Australia Day this week so I have chosen a most Australian word as the word of the week. If you get called a drongo it is likely you have done something rather unintelligent in front of your mates. Drongo is a uniquely Australian, mild form of insult, defining a person’s wit as being at a level only slightly cleverer than idiot.
The word drongo originates as a word for a type of bird. The Spangled Drongo (Dicrurus bracteatus) is the only species of the drongo family found in Australia. The name originally comes from Malagasy, the indigenous language of Madagascar (where there are quite a few drongo species).
It is commonly suggested that the slang use of drongo came about as a reference to the bird’s apparently manic and almost comical behaviour as it swoops and dives in flight chasing insects. The strange behaviour was then metaphorically applied to people who were behaving idiotically. Another suggestion is that it refers to the idea that some species of the bird migrate to colder regions in winter, which is contrary to commonsense. However, the birds’ behaviour or migratory habits are not things that most Australians would be familiar with and are considered incorrect derivations.
The true derivation is from the Australian racehorse named Drongo of the early 1920s (which had taken its name from the bird). Now, while every Australian reveres Phar Lap—the thoroughbred that became a national hero a few years later (during the Great Depression)—Drongo is little remembered except that his name has passed into Australian folklore.
Drongo was not a particularly bad horse, he ran several seconds and a third in major races and even came fifth in the 1924 Sydney Cup. Although he came very close to winning major races, in 37 starts he never won a race (Phar Lap on the other hand won 37 races from 51 starts including the Melbourne Cup in 1930).
Soon after Drongo retired, racegoers started to use his name to describe other horses that were having unlucky careers or that had failed to live up to expectations. The word drongo soon took on a more negative meaning and was applied to people who were hopeless cases, no-hopers or fools.
In the Royal Australian Air Force during the 1940s new recruits were known as drongos, which, in a nice little bit of word-use, recombined the bird meaning with the idiot meaning.
So if you get called a drongo this Australia Day remember poor old Drongo, who was neither a bird nor a flyer.
16 Jan, 2012
This year is the centenary of one of the most famous distress calls of history. On 14 April 1912, during a moonless night in the middle of the Atlantic the Titanic hit an iceberg. Soon afterwards Captain Smith ordered the First Radio Officer, Jack Phillips, to radio for help.
These were the pioneering days of wireless communication. Wireless telegraphy had only just started to be used on ships through the work of Guglielmo Marconi (who was waiting in New York to join the Titanic on the return journey). Telegraphers used morse code to send messages by tapping out letters using a series of dots (short signals) and dashes (long signals).
CQD
When Phillips first sent the Titanic’s distress signal he tapped out: CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD CQD. British wireless operators used CQ as a general broadcast to all stations, and since 1904, CQD as a distress signal. The letters meant calling all stations (CQ) we are in distress (D) and did not represent a message such as Come quick danger.
SOS
After little response to the CQD message, Harold Bride, the Second Radio Officer suggested they also use SOS SOS SOS. SOS had been adopted in 1908 as the international distress signal (after much debate) because the three dots, three dashes and three dots were unmistakable and could not be misinterpreted. There is a popular but incorrect belief that SOS means Save Our Ship, Save Our Souls, or Send Out Succour.
The distress signals of the Titanic were recognised but the ships that responded were not close enough to get there before she sank.
Mayday
More than a decade later, with the development of voice transmission, a new international distress message was required. The Mayday callsign originated in 1923 when Frederick Mockford, a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London, was asked to think of a distress call easily understood by pilots and ground operators. Because most of the airport traffic at that time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the word Mayday from the French m’aider, a shortening of venez m’aider meaning come help me.
Pan-pan
The distress signal pan-pan is used for an urgent situation of a lower order than a Mayday (or SOS) such as a mechanical breakdown or a medical problem. It comes from the French, panne, meaning a breakdown. Similarly to other distress signals there are constructed meanings for the word: Possible Assistance Needed or Pay Attention Now.
These distress signals, CQD, SOS, Mayday and pan-pan, have all been derived from words or codes. The constructions of phrases around them are examples of “backronyms”, reverse or backward acronyms, phrases constructed around words rather than acronyms that are words constructed from phrases.
This year we will remember the lost souls of those passengers who, despite the signals of their radio operators, were not rescued from the waters of freezing Atlantic a century ago.
21 Dec, 2011
Christ
Christmas is the mid-winter celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Christmas means literally Christ’s mass. It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038.
Sometimes Christmas is abbreviated to Xmas, the X representing Christ. Although this irritates some people, it is a very old tradition, with an early form, Xres mæsse, appearing in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of about 1100.
Christ is the main title given to Jesus, it comes from the Greek, khristos, for the anointed. This term replaced the Old English name, hæland, for “healer” as the preferred descriptive title for Jesus. Jesus has about 200 different titles or names in the New Testament.
Jesus the Saviour
The Hebrew name for Jesus is Yeshua, a name found 27 times in the Hebrew Bible. Yeshua is short for Yehoshua (Joshua), which means Yahweh (God) is salvation. It is derived from the Hebrew verb yasha which means saves or delivers and Yeho of the divine name of God, Yahweh. (Matthew 1:21—She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.)
Messiah
Messiah comes from the Aramaic meshiha and Hebrew mashiah meaning anointed (of the Lord), from mashah meaning anoint. Christ is the Greek translation of the Aramaic, messiah.
In the Old Testament prophesies, the Messiah was the term used for the awaited leader who was to deliver the Jewish nation from the oppression of the Romans. The modern English form represents this transferred sense of the liberator or saviour of a captive people.
Emmanuel
Emmanuel meaning meaning God is with us (Matthew 28:20—I am with you always, even unto the end of the world). It consists of two Hebrew words: El, meaning God, and Immanu, meaning with us. This is an example of theophany, using God’s name (El) as part of given name, which is common throughout the Old Testament (Daniel—God is my judge; Gabriel—strong man of God; Israel—struggles with God; Michael—who is like God; Nathaniel—gift of God; and Samuel—name of God).
Lord
Lord, is the English translation of the Greek word Kyrios (κύριος) for God, lord or master which appears over 700 times in the New Testament. Kyrios was the common translation of the Aramaic, Mari, which was a respectful form of address, meaning a superior teacher, a ranking similar to Rabbi.
Redeemer
The Redeemer (Job 19:25 But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth) comes from Latin redimere to redeem, buy back and, in this sense means that Christ will redeem the souls of mankind by his sacrifice upon the cross.
28 Nov, 2011
Supercilious is an adjective used to describe the haughtily disdainful or contemptuous either as a person or the facial expression that characterises it.
Supercilious is a word that shows that word-makers have always had a sense of humour. Supercilious came into English in the early sixteenth century from the Latin word, supercilium, meaning haughty demeanour and pride. However its literal meaning was eyebrow from super, meaning above and cilium meaning eyelid. It comes from a description of the raised eyebrow that is an expression of arrogant contempt or haughty superiority.
When I think of supercilious my mind always conjures up a character from Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, accustomed as they were to mingling with the haughty aristocracy of Regency England. A little search through their works yields quite a few passages—which follow, with a little abbreviating—that give a strong sense of superciliousness.
I have accompanied the passages with some of our favourite supercilious Australians.
 Alan Jones never less than totally supercilious |
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, … had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa …
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Besides the old lady, there was another relative of the family, whose visits were a great annoyance to me – this was ‘Uncle Robson,’ … He seldom deigned to notice me; and, when he did, it was with a certain supercilious insolence of tone and manner that convinced me he was no gentleman: though it was intended to have a contrary effect. |
 Paul Keating known to be this supercilious |
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
What sort of a person is Miss Wilson?’ she asked.
‘She is elegant and accomplished above the generality of her birth and station; and some say she is ladylike and agreeable.’
‘I thought her somewhat frigid, and rather supercilious in her manner today.’
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
As for Richard Wilson’s sister … shortly after the death of her mother she … took lodgings in – the county town, where she … lives … in a kind of close-fisted, cold, uncomfortable gentility, doing no good to others, and but little to herself; … loving no one and beloved by none – a cold-hearted, supercilious, keenly, insidiously censorious old maid. |
 Kevin Rudd even super-supercilious |
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Young ladies,’ continued Joe, assuming a lordly air, ‘ye’d better go into th’ house.’
‘I wonder what for?’ inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker’s somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him; for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master’s mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as wormwood and gall certain business- visits of the heiress to the Hollow’s counting-house.
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk.
‘I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry,’ he said. ‘I can seem to make light of his apprehensions, and look down ‘du haut de ma grandeur’ on his youthful ardour. |
 Fred Nile not only supercilious but sanctimonious
|
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Bennets were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune, and risen to the honour of knighthood by an address to the king during his mayoralty. … For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody. |
27 Oct, 2011
We love the word bogan. We use it to describe those uncouth people that live next door. No longer are we restricted by geography to call the uneducated, unrefined people, westies (if you live in Sydney, for instance)—our vulgar neighbours can now come from the east, the north or the south.
The word bogan has given us—the usually egalitarian Australians—a word to help us gain social superiority over other Australians without being accused of snobbery. It has also given marketers the cashed-up-bogan market segment to which they can sell beer, hair loss cures, new utes, holidays to Bali and silly sporting memorabilia.
Bogans have been described as “hyper-Australian” a concept that suggests they are the exaggerated versions of us all. There are two sub-species of bogan: the plain bogan, and the cashed-up-bogan.
Word origins
The origin of bogan is not known but its mainstream use really began with Kylie Mole in the late 1980s TV series the Comedy Club. It was used before that in parts of Australia.
Some suggest that bogan is related to the Irish/Dubliner phrase ‘bogger’ equivalent to the westie for someone from the bog areas west of Dublin.
Bogan has displaced many regional Australian words for the vulgar underclass. These words usually refer to places where members of the lowest socio-economic, cultural group are thought to breed.
In the ACT the preferred word was ‘booner’ or ‘boonie’ being a shortening of someone from the ‘boondocks’, the far-distant, uncivilized regions of the outer suburbs. Queensland had the bevan and the bev-chick; Western Australia has bogs; Tasmania has the chigger (someone from the suburb of Chigwell); the Riverina has the gullie; Victoria has the Scozzer and Melbourne the mocca.
Plain bogans
Plain male bogans wear singlets, flannelette shirts, thongs or Ugg boots and ill-fitting track-suit pants or shorts.
They have skinhead haircuts, mullets or “frullets” (front-mullets). The mullet, the hairstyle that is short at the front and long at the back, has its own regional names and varieties, “boon curls”, or “bogan rolls” (short all over except for a curling fringe at the back). Bogans are very vain about their hair and certain celebrity bogans supplement their income appearing in commercials to help prevent hair loss (or more correctly mullet loss).
Favourite things are beer (VB, veebs, or XXXX because they are easy to spell), bourbon (Jack Daniels or Jim Beam because they have people names), rugby league or Aussie rules football (the simpler the rules the better) and particular types of motor vehicle, or “wheels”, the Holden Commodore, Holden Kingswood or the Ford Falcon. Utes are de rigour.
Plain female bogans shop at Target and Best and Less. They have tramp stamps, use cheap cosmetics and fragrances, wear short, tight skirts that show too much of their physique, particularly their muffin tops. They have children (sprogs) with unique, unconventional names with eccentric spellings, such as, Anakin, Deezel, Harlee, Brock, or Sharaz.
Cashed-up-bogans
The cashed up bogan or CUB, first appeared as a marketing term for a consumer segment. It is characterized as blue-collar nouveaux riche with well paid jobs and high disposable incomes that they spend on flash items to fulfil their aspirations of higher social status. Many work hard making their money in Western Australia mines and they want to spend their income on new utes, boats and motorbikes, luxury clothing, booze, food, holidays to Bali, investment properties, sports memorabilia and flat screen televisions.
Some CUBs are giving up their utes and muscle cars for prestige cars. BMW, Audi and Lexus are advertising in the tabloid press to appeal to this market. However many CUBs don’t want to attract the attention of the tax office by driving too flash a car.
CUBs are less popular than plain bogans because they go against the idea that some people deserve to be poor and instead are buying things that the rest of us can’t afford.
Living in Boganville
Australian Prime Ministers always try to connect with the battlers and workers. Julia Gillard succeeded better than them all when she was voted Biggest Bogan of the Year last year (pushing Russell Crowe into second). A lot of people find her exaggerated, or hyper-Australian accent irritating and some think it is deliberately put on to appeal to the bogan masses.
It is understood in Canberra that Bogan-ville is Kevin Rudd’s name for The Lodge since Julia Gillard, and her boyfriend, Tim Mathieson, moved in, after his replacement as Prime Minister.
Rudd’s insult is typical of our use of bogan. The more bogan-ness we see in someone else the better we feel about ourselves. When I drive my children to school in the 4WD unshaven and wearing my tracksuit pants and ugg boots, listening to the Best of Cold Chisel, I think of myself as a relaxed and casual suburbanite a long way from being a bogan. But really, most of us live only a little to the east of Boganville.
5 Oct, 2011
In 1754 Horace Walpole, the son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, composed a letter that introduced seredipity into the English language:
… It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of … now do you understand serendipity?
The Three Princes of Serendip was published in Venice in 1557 as a translation of the Italian Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo which was itself a translation of part of a Persian poem, the Hasht Bihisht (The Eight Paradises) of 1302, which is the first mention of the three princes.
The story of the three princes involves a piece of deduction about a missing, lame, blind, toothless, camel carrying a pregnant woman, honey and butter. By identifying the particular camel the princes are rewarded by a king and set off on adventures in which they make accidental discoveries due to their undoubted cleverness.
The three princes were from Serendip, the old name for Ceylon or Sri Lanka. Serendipity, meaning the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident, comes directly from this tale. Serendipity has been incorporated into other languages: French sérendipicité or sérendipité, and Italian serendipità.
Some argue that the definition should also include the preconditions of intelligence and wisdom for serendipity to truly occur—as in the story of the three princes—or the discovery is merely luck. John Barth wrote in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991):
You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it.
You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously.
22 Sep, 2011
Petard is a word that survives in the modern world entirely in the expression hoist with his own petard, which means someone fails because of their own plans or because of their own deviousness. It is usually understood that its literal meaning is to be blown up with your own bomb. But there is a far more comical interpretation.
The expression is one of Shakespeare’s most descriptive—he used it in Hamlet III.iv.207 in 1605.
For tis the sport to haue the enginer Hoist with his owne petard.
The word, petard, in English, comes from the late 16th century and was used for a small cannon-like bomb used to blow in doors and breach walls. The English borrowed the word directly from the French who had coined the word pétard for this type of bomb. The bomb was made by filling a thick metal cannister with gunpowder, setting it against the wall or door to be breached and then exploding it by lighting a wick. Petards were quite unreliable and often exploded prematurely “hoisting” the engineer setting it alight high into the air.
Petard has a rather humorous ancestry having been derived from the Middle French word péter, which meant to break wind, from Old French pet for a fart, which originally came from Latin, pedere to break wind. The bomb got its name because its sound was fart-like.
When I first came across the expression—learning Shakespeare in my English lessons—I was very much impressed with the metaphor. However, I still cannot forgive that English teacher for not explaining that Shakespeare, who loved his puns and his double entendres, was probably also suggesting that the engineer was blown up by his own fart. This would have given the schoolboy me a much greater love and appreciation of Shakespeare than I had at the time.
12 Sep, 2011
Now, while the Rugby World Cup is dominating the world’s sporting news, we must use the opportunity to wrest back the word football from our soccer rivals. Soccer (Association Football) came into existence at least a generation after rugby football. At that time there were many forms of football around in England and around the world. The followers of Association Football have been trying to misappropriate the word football for many years without having any basis in history.
The world game
Harpustum
Football is a sport as old as history. There are forms of football in many cultures around the world that involve carrying the ball. The Māori in New Zealand played a ball game called Ki-o-rahi on a circular field throwing and kicking a ball called a ki. The Australian Aboriginals had a kicking and catching game, Marn grook, which in some places used a ball made from possum skins.
In Manipur, India, they play Yubi lakpi (meaning literally coconut snatching), a football game using a coconut, very similar to rugby.
In Europe the Romans played a ball game called Harpustum (from the Greek, harpazein, meaning to snatch) described as involving many wrestling holds. They took it all over their empire. The Georgians have Lelo burti (meaning literally field ball), a full contact ball game.
A game played on foot
A large misconception about football is that the word originated as a ball game that involved exclusively kicking the ball with your foot. Football got its name because it was a game played on foot as opposed to on horseback (there was a game called horseball that originated in 1700). This had an important class distinction in that the aristocratic sports were equestrian and the peasants played on foot. It may also have been a name used to differentiate forms of football from handball in medieval times.
Shrovetide footballs
Early English football games were played between neighbouring villages and involved an unlimited number of players on opposing teams (men, women and children), who would compete to carry a ball made from anything including inflated pig bladders to the objective (hence the goal).
These games are referred to as folk football, mob football or Shrovetide football (Shrovetide being the week before Lent). In the many royal proclamations that came out to ban them they were referred to as Fute Ball despite some of these games strictly forbidding kicking the ball.
There were many forms: the Irish had Caid (meaning scrotum of the bull, lets hope this was not a literal name); the Welsh had Knapan (Cnapan, Knappan); the Cornish had hurling to goal; the West Country of England (Devon, Gloucestershire, etc) had hurling over country; the East Anglians had Camp Ball; and the Scots the Ba Game.
- Calcio in Florence
The Shrovetide football game at Ashbourne in Derbyshire between the people from each side of Henmore Brook (the Up’Ards and the Down’Ards) is the origin of the term “local derby” for an intense sporting match between neighbouring teams.
The French had a similar version called la Soule or la Chole also played mainly on Shrovetide. Florence, in Italy, had a version they played in a piazza that they called giuoco del calcio fiorentino (the Florentine kick game) or simply calcio (kick). All these games involved throwing and kicking as well as a lot of body contact.
Killing the ball
The Vikings played a game called Knattleikr. In Iceland it was played on frozen lakes. According to Icelandic sagas the ball was hard enough that when thrown in anger at another player it could cause bloodshed.
Some of the English games were referred to as kicking the Dane’s head. While not suggesting a bloody ritual it might link the game to the Vikings and be a bit of folk revenge. In some forms of folk football once the ball got to the goal it was symbolically killed and the game was over—hence the modern sporting expressions dead ball and killing the ball.
Running rugby
An early game of rugby
Another misconception about the origins of football comes from the myth of William Webb Ellis. During a football game at Rugby School, he picked up the ball and ran with it to produce the game of rugby. But the revolution was not so much picking up the ball but running with it. They were not playing soccer because it had not been “invented” at that time in the 1820s. They were playing a school form of football that involved catching and throwing.
By the way, the game of rugby gets its name from Rugby, a large town in Warwickshire, in the west of England. The town got its name from the Anglo-Saxon Hrōca burh, or later Norman French, Rocheberie, meaning Rook Fort, from the bird’s name. Later the burh, for fort, was replaced, perhaps under the influence of Danish settlers, with -by, meaning village, to become Rugby.
Rugby Football rules
Organised games developed in English private boys schools during the 19th century when cheap rail travel meant inter-school matches became feasible. The schools all played football games with diverse and always changing rules but needed to agree on sets of rules when they played each other. Rugby School created the first set of such football rules in 1845.
Soccer
It took another 18 years before Association Football codified their rules, in 1863. This form of the game was called soccer, an abbreviation of Association Football (ie …ssoca…), and was a parallel formation to rugger, a common name of rugby at the time. Association Football did not allow all the players to pick up the ball, the lucky exception being the goalkeeper.
Aussie Rules
In Melbourne, in the 1860s, the Australians developed their own set of rules, Aussie Rules which was designed as a game to keep cricketers fit during the winter and hence is played on the oval field equivalent to a cricket oval.
All football rules
- Modern day calcio
The first official Rugby Football Union rules were adopted in 1871 for the adult game. American Football developed its distinct rules in 1880; Gaelic Football published their rules in 1887; Rugby League broke away from Rugby Union in 1895 and developed a few rule changes. Before the distinction between amateurs and professionals it was common for football teams from different places to play under different rules as agreed with their opposition.
Using the word football
In Australia where there is great competition between football codes, we talk about football when we know who we are talking to: whether it be rugby league, rugby union or Aussie rules supporters. Soccer is still soccer.
Association Football is claiming to call itself football as a distinction from the other forms of football that use their hands. Don’t be fooled as history tells another story.
14 Aug, 2011
I was thinking about hullabaloo as my word of the week. When I tried to guess its origin I found that I was completely wrong—it is a native to England and Scotland. I had thought that all words ending in -oo must come from a similar place. I decided to be a bit scientific and to do a short survey of the origins of words ending in -oo.
First I Googled “words ending with oo”. There were too many invented words in the list. To narrow the list down I used an old Little Oxford Dictionary to select mainstream words and to filter out obscure and newly adopted words. I ended up with 31 words ending with oo: Ballyhoo, Bamboo, Boo, Buckaroo, Cockatoo, Coo, Cuckoo, Didgeridoo, Goo, Halloo, Hoodoo, Hullabaloo, Igloo, Jackaroo, Kangaroo, Loo, Moo, Peekaboo, Shampoo, Shoo, Taboo, Tattoo, Tattoo, Too, Vindaloo, Voodoo, Wallaroo, Waterloo, Woo, Yahoo, and Zoo. There is probably a bit of cultural bias in this so forgive me for that.
Some -oo words
I then did a short analysis of their origins and meanings. Words ending in -oo seem to come from all over the world. There are representatives from small language such as Innuit (igloo), Malay (bamboo), Pacific Islands (tattoo and taboo) and Australian Aboriginal (kangaroo) as well as the large languages as Hindi (shampoo), Greek (zoo), French (loo) as well as many words from US and UK English.
There is a certain quirkiness about -oo words with their origins coming from slang words from English circuses, the Western Front, the Wild West and Outback Australia; from the imitation of natural sounds such as the call of the cuckoo and the coo of doves; from literature (yahoo from the writings of Jonathan Swift); and to describe the flora and fauna of exotic places such as Australia and Malaya.
Ballyhoo
Publicity or hype (1908) from English circus slang for a short sample of a sideshow (1901). It is of unknown origin—there is a village of Ballyhooly in County Cork, Ireland; in nautical lingo, ballahou or ballahoo (1867, perhaps 1836) meant an ungainly vessel, from Spanish balahu for schooner.
Bamboo
The tall strong plant from the grass family (1590s). It came via Dutch bamboe and Portugeuse, bambu and earlier mambu (16c.), from the Malay word samambu.
Boo
To startle, boh, a word used to produce a loud and startling sound. It may be related to Greek, boaein, to cry aloud, roar or shout (early 15c).
Buckaroo
In the western U.S. a cowboy, especially a broncobuster or horsebreaker (1820–30). Evolved via bakhara, baccaro, bucharo from the Spanish vaquero, vac for cow and ero for person.
Cockatoo
Species of large and noisy parrots from Dutch kaketoe, originally from Malay, kakatua, possibly echoic, or from kakak meaning elder brother or sister and tua, old (1610s).
Coo
The sound of doves (1660s) from England.
Cuckoo
The bird that heralds the spring, from Old French, cocu, echoic of the male bird’s mating cry. Greek kokkyx (mid-13c). Used to mean stupid person in 1580s.
Didgeridoo
Musical instrument of Australian Aborigines made from a long wooden tube that when blown into creates a low drone (1924).
Goo
First used in US English in 1903 of obscure origin, but probably related to burgoo (1787) for a thick porridge served to English sailors and then in the US a thick meat and vegetable stew.
Halloo
Version of hallo, holla, or hollo a shout to attract attention, which seems to go back to at least c.1400 English. Perhaps from holla to stop, cease.
Hoodoo
One who practices voodoo (1870) in US English. It is most likely an alteration of voodoo. First used to mean something that causes or brings bad luck in 1880.
Hullabaloo
From hollo-ballo meaning an uproar, chiefly used in northern England and Scottish, perhaps a rhyming reduplication of hollo (see halloo) (1762).
Igloo
Canadian English, from an Innuit word for house or dwelling (1824).
Jackaroo
An abbreviation of Jack( the kang)aroo used to describe inexperienced colonists in Australia (1880). Also Jillaroo.
Kangaroo
The large Australian macropod. The word probably is from the Guugu Yimidhirr (Endeavour River-area Aborigine language) word, gangurru, for large black kangaroo (1770).
Loo
Lavatory perhaps from 1922 from French, lieux d’aisances, meaning lavatory but the literal translation is place of ease. Thought to be adopted by British servicemen in France during World War I.
Moo
To make the characteristic sound of a cow (1540s) of imitative origin, English.
Peekaboo
Peek-a-boo, as a children’s game from 1590s in England. Used to mean see-through, dates from 1895.
Shampoo
Meaning wash the hair first recorded in 1860. It originated in 1762, meaning to massage in Anglo-Indian from Hindi champo, meaning to press, or knead the muscles.
Shoo
A call used for driving away people or animals (1620s) from the exclamation (late 15c.). A shoo-in as an easy winner was originally a horse that wins a race by pre-arrangement (1928). English.
Taboo
Something that is consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed. First used in 1777 by Captain James Cook in his book A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes said to be Tongan, ta-bu meaning sacred, from ta, mark, and bu, especially but used in many Pacific languages, eg, Hawaiian kapu, Tahitian tapu and Maori tapu with similar meanings.
Tattoo
Originally a signal calling soldiers or sailors to quarters at night from Dutch taptoe, from tap faucet of a cask and toe shut. So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to shut off the taps of casks (1680s). Not related to skin tattoo (see below).
Tattoo
To mark the skin with pigment (1769) first attested in writing by Captain James Cook from a Polynesian noun, Tahitian and Samoan tatau, and Marquesan tatu.
Too
Preposition meaning furthermore. The spelling with -oo is first recorded 1590 in English.
Vindaloo
A hot sauce used in Indian food. Thought to come from Portuguese vin d’alho for wine and garlic sauce in the early 20c.
Voodoo
Religious witchcraft of Haiti and Southern U.S, from Louisiana French voudou, but originally from West Africa, perhaps Dahomey (1850).
Wallaroo
Native Australian word for a species of black kangaroo.
Waterloo
After the battle that took place June 18, 1815, at the village near Brussels where Napolean was finally defeated. Used metaphorically to mean a final, crushing defeat first in a letter by Lord Byron in 1816. Flemish loo means sacred wood.
Woo
To seek the favor, affection, or love of someone, especially with a view to marriage. It is an old English word, wogian, of uncertain origin perhaps related to woh, wog, for bent or inclined, as with affection.
Yahoo
A brute in human form (1726) from the race of brutish human creatures in the English writer’s Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The Internet search engine named in 1994.
Zoo
Short for Zoological Gardens of the London Zoological Society, established 1828 in Regent’s Park (1847) from Greek zoion for an animal, but literally a living being.
International origins of -oo words
The family of words ending in -oo must be the most multicultural group of words in the English language—they come from all over the world and from many different languages.
31 Jul, 2011
The new Mrs Malaprop?
Improving your vocabulary and word choice will help you properly reticulate [sic] your ideas.
I am not incinerating [sic] that any of you lack the consecration [sic] needed to focus on writing good English but I can safely say, without fear of contraception [sic], that poor word choice can reach into all aspects of communications and writing like the giant testicles [sic] of an octopus and ruin the whole effect.
Word choice is not rocket surgery. Mrs Marple [sic] was famous for getting her words wrong; and even I am not inflammable [sic], I do sometimes choose the wrong words.
A good writer will not confuse his propositions [sic] with his compunctions [sic]. If you are, like me, not gifted with a pornographic [sic] memory I recommend that you refer to entomology [sic] dictionaries. They are great suppositories [sic] of information.
If you are using lots of words of more than one syllabus [sic] look for a simpler cinnamon [sic]. Although using a dinasaurus [sic] can be time-consuming, patients [sic] is a virgin [sic] that will replay [sic] you endlessly. There are also pneumatics [sic] to help you remember the right words.
So let me reverberate [sic] by dipping into the literary cannon [sic] of The Rhyme of the Ancient Marinade [sic], and remind you that you shouldn’t let a poor vocabulary be an alcatraz [sic] around your neck. If you keep your feet solidly on terracotta [sic] and focus on improvement the carrot is there at the end of the tunnel [sic]. The pineapple [sic] of success is communicating clearly to your reader – that is the crutch [sic] of the matter.
20 Jul, 2011
18 Jul, 2011
I have a fondness for the adjective pelagic. It means of the open sea and comes from the Greek word pelagos for sea. It shares a little with the similar Greek word for the mysterious sea people who lived in Greece before the Dorians, the Pelasgians, who came from no one knows where and then disappeared back into history.
Pelagic is a soft-sounding, evocative word, creating a sense of otherworldliness, of things far from the dominion of man. It tends to be used in two senses: for seabirds, such as the albatross, that spend most of their time out in mid-ocean; or for fish, like the sunfish, that live and travel great distances on the uppermost levels of the sea.
Unfortunately, I have some cause for unhappiness as the scientists have got their rationalist hands on pelagic, and turned it into a technical adjective. For them, pelagic describes things of the ocean, from the low tide mark out to the open sea, and includes the whole volume of water from the surface to the bottom.
Scientists have taken the poetic and precise pelagic, which described the uppermost layer of the open ocean, and stripped the magic out of it. They have tacked on some Greek-derived prefixes and used it as a technical tag for all the depths of the seas.
Epipelagic zone
Epi- is a Greek prefix with a variety of meanings from: upon, beside, among, on the outside, above, over. The epipelagic zone from the surface down to 200 m is the zone where there is enough light for photosynthesis, so most of the ocean’s plants and animals live there.
Mesopelagic zone
Meso- is the Greek prefix for middle. The mesopelagic zone is from 200 to 1000 metres below the ocean surface. It is also known as the twilight zone because only some light penetrates this deep but not enough for photosynthesis.
Bathypelagic zone
Bathys is the Greek word for deep. No light penetrates this zone so it is also known as the midnight zone. The bathyal zone or bathypelagic zone extends from 1000 to 4000 metres depths.
Abyssopelagic zone
Abyss derives from the Greek word meaning bottomless. The abyssopelagic layer (from 4,000 to 6,000 metres) contains the very deep communities near the bottom of the ocean.
Hadopelagic zone
The zone gets its name from the Greek’s word for hell, Hades. The hadopelagic or hadal zone defines the deepest trenches in the ocean below 6,000 metres.
Benthic
I include benthic for completeness. It is derived from bathys as the Greek word for deep. Relating to the bottom of the ocean or lake or to the organisms that live there.
The scientifically derived zones have some interest for word buffs but are never going to find their way into poetry. Would Shakespeare have begun Richard III thus?
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the abyssopelagic zone buried*.
[*In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.]
11 Jul, 2011
Carbon is a non-metallic element that makes up less than one per cent of the earth’s crust and 100 per cent of the Australian political debate.
Much of the world’s carbon is contained in coal that was created during the Carboniferous Period from 360 to 300 million years ago. We are forced to burn more and more coal to keep up with the demand for electricity that is needed to run our air conditioners in the summer to escape the effects of global warming. The Australian Government is now asking us to pay a tax on carbon pollution because of global warming.
Although carbon has been known to man since prehistory, the word was coined in the 1780s by the French scientist, Antoine Lavoisier as charbone. It was based on the Latin carbo for glowing coal or charcoal, from the Proto-Indo-European base-word ker for heat, fire, or to burn, which is also seen in our word cremate.
Carbonifeorous is a scientific Latin construction meaning coal producing from carbo for coal and ferous for producing, containing, or bearing.
Coal, which is technically mineralised fossil carbon, comes from old English col and is similar in all the Germanic languages: Dutch kool; German, Kohle; and old Norse kol.
Coal can be classified in quality from the poorest quality brown coal, lignite, to high quality black coal, anthracite.
Lignite still contains the remnants of lignin, the plant material from which coal is formed, and is from the Latin lignum for wood. One form of lignite is jet, which is compact and has a deep black colour from which we get the expression jet black. Jet was carved and polished to make jewellery. Jet gets its name rather classically from Norman French jaiet, via Latin gagates, from the original Greek expression, gagates lithos, meaning stone of Gages, a town in Lycia where it was sometimes washed ashore.
Anthracite gets its name from the Greek word anthrax for charcoal or coal. The bacterial disease anthrax, gets its name from the coal-black-centred boils formed from skin infections. A boil with a red centre was known as a carbuncle, from Latin for little coal!
Carbon might well be disputed as the source of global warming but it is, indisputably, the hottest political word at the moment.
4 Jul, 2011
Choosing the right partner for your life journey can help you to achieve great things and to realise your full potential. Unfortunately choosing the wrong partner can drag you down and stop you achieving your promise. Unfortunately the pairing of dulcet and tones has not been a beneficial choice for the lovely dulcet. Every time you hear or read dulcet you expect her to be followed by her inevitable, plodding partner, tones. It has reduced dulcet to nothing more than a tired, old cliché.
Dulcet has been closely associated with tones for more than 200 years. The Oxford English Dictionary list several examples of “dulcet tones” from about the beginning of the 19th century, including from one of the novels of Benjamin Disraeli, a British Prime Minister.
Introducing speakers with reference to their dulcet tones is such an over-used irony that you cringe. When you hear it you prepare yourself for a barrage of clichés and expect a naïve and unsophisticated speaker.
But dulcet does not deserve this. It is a beautiful word that identifies things as harmonious, melodious and pleasing to the ear. She is descended directly from the Latin word dulcis via the Old French, doucet.
In musical contexts we use the Italian word, dolce, to mean sweet and gentle. The Italian word chose her mate much more wisely than did her English cousin. We drop la dolce vita, the sweet life, into our conversations as we sip our cappuccinos in Leichhardt (the centre of Sydney’s Italian community). When we do so we are using a bit of cosmopolitan language and referencing the classic 1960 Fellini film, La Dolce Vita. It makes us feel suave, urbane and even a little bit sexy. But using dulcet tones just makes us feel a bit daggy and won’t work to impress our friends.
So what can we do with dulcet? We need to wean her away from her partnership with tones. We need to introduce dulcet to new partners, hoping that when she gets out there she can build new relationships and grow into the word that dolce has become. Good luck, sweet dulcet!
24 Jun, 2011
I have been wondering why the English are so fond of chariots. Chariots are a recurring theme in the English national identity and in their rugby songs. They even made a film called after them. What is it all about?
Boudica attacks the Romans
Chariot is a relatively recent word. It originates in 14th century French as an extension of char from Latin, carrum (from which our modern car or automobile gets its name). Carrum was the Roman word for the two-wheeled Celtic war chariot called a karros by the Gauls and Celts. Boudica, who led England’s revolt in 60 AD, almost defeated the Romans from the back of her chariot.
If you have been to Twickenham in London when the English rugby team is playing there you will have heard the crowd singing about chariots. The Welsh are far more famous for their love of hymns and for their mass choral singing but the English can sometimes sing as passionately (although never quite as beautifully).
The English rugby crowds have historically sung God Save the Queen (which is the British national anthem). More recently the English crowds have chosen Jerusalem (or more correctly And did those feet in ancient time) as their “official” anthem to match the rousing anthems of the Scots (Flower of Scotland), the Welsh (Land of my Fathers), the French (La Marseillaise) and to attempt to compete with the Haka of the All Blacks from New Zealand.
Jerusalem, is a short poem written by William Blake in about 1804 and was set to music by Hubert Parry in 1916. It is often sung in English churches as a hymn (I was married in England and we sung it during the ceremony). Jerusalem became very popular in the First World War during a time when the prospects for an allied victory were looking poor.
Those outside England may not be familiar with Jerusalem but will recognise it from its chorus:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
It is from here, from the little line at the end of the chorus, that the chariot of fire that has rumbled its way into the core of English identity. Blake’s reference is from the Old Testament, 2 Kings 2:11, and refers to how the great prophet Elijah was taken into heaven by God at the end of his life:
Elijah goes to heaven in a chariot of fire
And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
Blake uses the phrase, chariot of fire, as a metaphor for God’s divine energy. He is calling upon God’s strength and power to help build Jerusalem in England. The poem is based on a folk tale that Christ had visited England as a boy with his uncle, Joseph of Arimethea. Blake is suggesting that Christ brought heaven to England and with God’s help England can again be a new Jerusalem, a heaven on earth. It is a powerful message seeking God’s divine blessing to make England great.
Thirty years ago the wonderfully uplifting film Chariots of Fire was released. It told the story of how Harold Abrahams, Eric Liddell (who played rugby on the wing for Scotland) and other British runners prepared and competed at the 1924 Paris Olympics. It dominated the Oscars in 1981 and remains one of the great British films. The film’s working title (according to Wikipedia) was Running until the screenwriter, Colin Welland, heard Jerusalem being sung on Songs of Praise, a weekly TV program of church music, and was inspired to call the film Chariots of Fire.
While Jerusalem is an English anthem sung by its rugby crowds, English rugby has adopted its own, unique anthem. How this happened is a legend of modern rugby.
In 1988 Chris Oti, a fast and talented winger was selected for the English rugby team at a time when England were struggling to win games—they had scored only two tries in twelve matches. Oti, who was English born, was the first black player to play for England in 80 years.
Oti played his second test against Ireland at Twickenham. The score was only 3-0 at half-time and the English try-scoring drought looked to be continuing. But in the second half England broke out and Oti scored three tries as part of their 35-2 victory. As Oti scored his tries a school group from Douai, a Benedictine school for boys, sang their school’s rugby song in honour of Oti. Their song was ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and as more and more of the Twickenham crowd joined in after each try a new tradition was born.
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home,
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home…
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is a song of the black American slaves. It symbolised their longing to be free of their suffering and to be taken away to God’s kingdom. The Sweet Chariot of this black-American spiritual song is the same as Blake’s chariot of fire. The way to heaven for the devoutly Christian slaves was not to die at their own hands but to have Elijah’s chariot of fire swing low and carry them home to heaven.
So there is the answer as to why the English sing about chariots. They sing about chariots because a poet two hundred years ago sought God’s divine blessing for England and a black rugby player changed the way they played rugby. Good enough reasons for me.
12 Jun, 2011
Stadia versus stadiums
This week more FIFA executives are denying corruption charges; the awarding of the 2022 FIFA Soccer World Cup to Qatar (which Australia had tried to bid for) is again being questioned; and Sepp Blatter, the man in charge, was re-elected unopposed as FIFA president.
But this all obscures another corruption, a corruption of our language. The crime is an example of what Fowler, in his Modern English Usage, refers to as didacticism, or sometimes, as pride of knowledge. It occurred during the unsuccessful Australian bid for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup of six months ago: the bid spokespeople and the press all used stadia as the plural of stadium.
In an earlier post I referred to my abhorrence (perhaps even a little didactically) of the use of fora as the plural of forum. Although most dictionaries list the plural of stadium as stadiums or stadia it is time to eliminate the pompous use of stadia. There are good reasons to do so. Stadium has a different story to flora but it provides us with even less reason to pluralise it as stadia.
Origins of stadium
In classical Latin a stadium is a length. It is derived from the ancient Greek, stadion (anglicised as stade), a length of 600 feet, or approximately 180 metres. It did not come directly into English because early English used a similar measure, furlongs. Furlongs was used to translate Biblical references to stadia, but they are otherwise unconnected. Furlong derives from the Old English words furh (furrow) and lang (long) and originally referred to the length of a ploughed furrow in medieval strip farming (an eighth of a mile or 201 metres).
The stadion was the length of a running track in Greece. The length of the stadion was 176 metres. The first Olympic Games consisted of only one race run over the stadion at Olympia. Spectators were seated on tiered seats around the track, and hence the structure for watching a running race became known as a stadion or stadium.
Stadium, when first imported into English in about 1600, meant a running track. Its meaning was broadened in the early 19th century into its modern usage meaning large oval structures with tiers of seats for viewing a sporting event.
Amphitheatres, arenas and circuses
What we in modern English refer to as stadiums were not referred to as stadiums (or indeed, stadia) by the Romans. The main sporting events that the Romans attended were battle recreations, gladiatorial combats, and chariot and horse races. The venues they built for these events were not called stadiums but were variously amphitheatres, arenas or circuses (venue is from Latin venire meaning to come).
The most famous Roman sporting venue was the Flavian Amphitheatre, more commonly known as the Colosseum in Rome. It staged many events involving gladiators, wild animals, hunts, and battles. Amphitheatre derives from the structure being imagined as two theatres built facing each other, from the Greek amphi-, on both sides and théātron, for theatre (meaning place for viewing).
Arena, from the Latin, harena, is a place of combat and is thought to have come from Etruscan for sand or sandy place. The central stages of arenas were filled with sand to soak up the blood from the sports played there. (Paris has the Arènes de Lutèce, the Roman arena that now hosts schoolboys playing soccer and old men playing pétanque but once hosted gladiators).
The Latin circus, simply meant ring, from Greek, kirkos for circle. The Romans used circus for circular arenas for performances and contests and also for the oval courses for horse racing (especially the Circus Maximus in Rome).
False didacticism
So what does all this mean? It means that the word stadium was used by the Romans and Greeks to describe a place to watch a footrace, the plural being stadia. The places the Romans watched big sporting events were amphitheatres, arenas or circuses. Stadium, therefore, is a word that has was adopted into English only recently to describe large sporting venues and should be treated as an English word with plural, stadiums.
The Romans would not have called a venue for a football game a stadium, it would have been an arena, an ampitheatre and perhaps even a circus but not a stadium. So using stadia to describe a collection of soccer venues cannot be historically nor grammatically justified. This didacticisim is false.
2 Jun, 2011
I need to be more frivolous this week. Bumf is an informal word used to describe, in a slightly derogatory way, the superfluous or unnecessary paper documents that fill our everyday life such as forms, Government documents, publicity material, junk mail etcetera.
Now if you are gentile and don’t like crudity be aware that this fascinating little story does get a little vulgar in its subject matter because, unsurprisingly, the story of bumf starts with bum …
Dr Johnson's dictionary on bum
In international English you come across the word bum in two quite distinct ways: in British English a bum is your backside, bottom, or posterior; while in American English a bum is a good-for-nothing, a loafer or a layabout.
Although we might judge a vagrant to be equivalent to our bottom in social status, the English word, bum, which came into existence a long time ago from an unknown source (Middle English in the 1300s) is not related to the American word, bum, which probably comes more recently from the German word, bummeln, which means to loaf.
Bum, although not considered a hard-core swear word, has a hint of vulgarity about it—albeit it is only slightly naughty—it is a word you can use in front of young children. It did start off as a legitimate word for our backside.
Arse, bum’s word cousin, is an Old English word (aers) for buttocks, and also started as a legitimate word but, perhaps because it is very much older and has had more time to fall from grace, has become even more disreputable. Arse is a word you would not use in front of your youngest children.
Fodder, is an Old English word, for food, especially for cattle food. It also is used for a person or thing regarded only as material for a specific use, such as young men in war time being referred to as cannon fodder.
Now, toilet paper at some time became known as bum fodder. However, the expression was more commonly used metaphorically for literary works, books, poetry, works judged to be of such poor literary quality that their pages could only be used for toilet paper. It seems an easy insult and the concept of using lesser works of literature as toilet paper seemed a recurring theme in 17th century literature:
Thomas Dekker (1609) in The Gull’s Hornbook
A man in a barrel
… you shall sharpen the wits of all the eating gallants about you, and do them great pleasure to ask what pamphlets or poems a man might think fittest to wipe his tail with.
John Dryden (1682) in Mac Flecknoe:
From dusty shops neglected authors come,
Martyrs of Pies, and Reliques of the Bum.
John Oldham (1683) A Satire:
And all thy deathless Monuments of Wit,
Wipe Porters Tails or mount in Paper-kite?
A concept that continued well into the 20th century with a quote variously attributed to Voltaire, Churchill or German composer, Max Reeger:
I am seated in the smallest room in the house.
I have your letter before me. Soon it will be behind me.”
Bum fodder became abbreviated to bumf and over the last century has moved away from its literal meaning. The novelist, Virginia Wolf, used it in a letter of 1912 asking “is this letter written upon bumpf?’
Bumf is a fascinating word because we can see it moving away from a playful and vulgar construction to a meaningful word that has cast off its past and gained a respectability not given to its parent. Evelyn Waugh in Officers and Gentlemen (1955):
He did not, even in his extremity, quite abandon his faith in the magic of official forms. In bumf lay salvation.
Bumf has joined the mainstream by disguising its parentage. By using a hint of the exotic it has fooled us into not realising its evolution from some very old English vulgarity. It also shows how generations of English speakers and writers have conspired against politeness to bring this wonderful and graphic word into the language. It epitomises how language truly works—not by logic and appropriateness but by imagination and descriptiveness. Bumf is a triumph.
Acknowledgement: There is a great blog post by Michael Gilleland from which I referenced most of the older quotes.
30 May, 2011
The tightening economy is causing changes to consumer behaviour. Cocooning is a term to describe the trend towards people socialising less and retreating into their homes. The term was coined by Faith Popcorn, a future forecaster, in the 1990s to explain the growth in home delivery, home businesses, and home shopping. However, nowadays there are a few more variations that you should know about.
Carcooning
Carcooning is a form of cocooning where it is the car that becomes the place to retreat. This leads to new behaviours such as dashboard dining.
Staycation
The staycation is a staying at home vacation instead of a trip away. The idea is that the stay-at-home-vacation is the same as a going-away-vacation except eating out, outdoor activities and relaxing, are done from your home as a base.
Homedulgence
Rather than cutting out indulgences some consumers find equivalent but cheaper alternatives that are home-based. This results in do-it-yourself indulgences such as cocktail parties and inviting guests for lavish dinners rather than going to nightclubs or restaurants.
Caving
Caving describes families who prefer being at home to being elsewhere. This is different to a staycation because it is all year round and is a reduction in spending on external hobbies and recreation.
Hiving
Hiving is different to caving in that it is not social withdrawal but a refocusing of social and worklife to the home. Hiving is a combination of comfort and connection as you engage your friends and acquaintances in your home life.
22 May, 2011
Sunday morning and the world has not ended. My hangover has gone which is a good post-apocalypse result. There are no hoof prints in the garden, no open graves and there was no thundering in the night. The only trumpet to be heard is my daughter’s rather perfunctory practising, which for quite different reasons creates within me a fear of God.
- The end of the world was nigh
Most of this end of the world imagery has stemmed from the Book of Revelations, a book contentiously added to the New Testament early in the 2nd Century. There were quite a few early Christians who rejected it and did not think it should be included in the Christian canon at all.
Revelations, is thought to be the writings of John of Patmos, an unknown early Christian (perhaps suffering persecution for his beliefs), although it was credited to St John the Apostle (this was often done to give a piece of work more credibility with early Christian Bible readers). It was probably written at the time of the Emperor Domitian (51-96 AD) who may have been responsible for severe persecution of Christians.
Revelation means the revealing of the power of God. It comes from the Latin revelare, to reveal. The Book of Revelations describes how the forces of the Christian God would rise up and conquer the evils of the world and only the chosen would survive (reassuring thoughts for the early Christians contemplating martyrdom).
Revelations has given us many important Christian icons and symbols. It certainly gave church artists material for their most terrifying works: the four riders of the Apocalypse, the seven seals, the number of the beast, Armageddon, the seven trumpets and also The Last Judgement.
- Four riders of the Apocalypse
The Apocalypse and Armageddon are often used as the Christian descriptions for the End of Days. But the end of the world, fitting with our pessimistic nature has quite a few names Judgement Day, doomsday or currently in vogue The Rapture.
However, apocalypse originally meant the same as revelation: apocalypse coming from the Greek for uncover or disclose in much the same way as revelation had come from the Latin for revealing.
Doomsday is the Old English equivalent of Judgement Day. In Old English dom originally meant law, judgement or condemnation and thus a book of laws was a dombec. But as doomsday (dom daeg) meaning Judgement Day was used the meaning of doom shifted to mean the end of the world.
Armageddon comes from the Hebrew words har meggido, meaning mountain of Megiddo. It is mentioned in Revelation but only as a gathering of kings in preparation for battle. Armageddon as the battle of the end of times is not part of the bible but a tradition within most of the western religions.
But Revelations is not the only source of the apocalyptic vision. Many of the visions of Revelations were inspired by the prophets of the Old Testament including Ezekial. The Gospel of St Matthew describes Christ’s version of the beginning of sorrows. The important thing for believers is that Christ said at Matt 24:36:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
It is rather arrogant, then, for any Christian to claim that he has more advanced knowledge of the end of the world than even the Son of God. When it comes we are unlikely to get a warning other than some rather better trumpeting than I am hearing.
del.icio.us
digg
Furl
Spurl
Technorati
Yahoo My Web