words

Word: Macaronic

Time for another nice word. Today I have chosen …

Macaronic (noun and adjective)

A burlesque verse form in which vernacular words are used in a Latin context, with Latin constructions etc. It can also be used where the verse is based on Greek instead of Latin; and thus loosely to any form of verse in which two or more languages are mingled together.

Hence it has also come to be descriptive of a jumble or medley.

According to the OED the word seems to have been invented by Teofilo Folengo (‘Merlinus Cocaius’) whose ‘macaronic’ poem (Liber Macaronices) was published in 1517. In the second edition of 1521 he explains that the ‘macaronic art’ is so called from macaroni, which is quoddam pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum (literally a crude, rustic mixture of flour, butter and cheese) — so probably quite tasty.

quotes

Quotes

Another round-up of quotes recently encountered.

If you know someone who’s depressed please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation, depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest and best things you will ever do.
[Stephen Fry]

If you must chose between two evils pick the one you’ve never tried before.
[Walt Whitman]

All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
[Sean O’Casey]

Roman law explicitly set out the who, where and why of cursing. One expert calculated that the Romans had eight hundred ‘dirty’ words. Egyptian lawyers of the same period would seal documents with a hieroglyph which translates as: ‘As for him who shall disregard it, may he be fucked by a donkey.’ The actual hieroglyph? Two big penises, both erect.
[Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing]

Everyone without exception believes that their own native customs are by far the best … there is plenty of evidence that this is the universal human attitude.
[Herodotus, ca. 440BC, quoted in Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing]

No one has ever spelled out how the mere hearing of a word could corrupt one’s morals.
[Steven Pinker, 2002, also quoted in Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing]

Obscenity lies not in words or things, but in attitudes that people have about words and things.
[Philologist Allen Walker Read, 1935, and another quoted in Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing]

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
[John Stuart Mill]

The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.
[Colonel Rainsborough]

Don’t ever do the best you can do. It’s better to be mediocre.
[Terry Allen]
This is certainly true: doing it properly and right first time doesn’t get rewards except more work. It’s the mediocre and even the incompetent who get the rewards because they have the time to shout about how good they are.

ramblings

Dates

One for the pedants amongst us from today’s XKCD …


ISO 8601 also defines:

  • use of the Gregorian calendar
  • dates are of a fixed number of digits, so leading zeros are required
  • the week begins on a Monday
  • week 1 of the year as the week with the year’s first Thursday in it
  • and similarly for times.

There’s a full discussion of the ISO 8601 standard on Wikipedia.

words

Word : Goolies

OK, so let’s have another word. I’ve just finished reading Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing by Peter Silverton. Yes, it’s interesting but not deep and quite light-hearted — as one might expect. One thing he said which I didn’t know (or had long forgotten) is the origins of the word goolies. So today we bring you…

Goolies, or as the OED would have it gooly (in the singular).

Yes, in standard English it normally appears in the plural and means the testicles.

According to the OED, which hedges its bets slightly, it is “apparently of Indian origin”, like from the Hindustani golí, a bullet, ball, pill. Curiously the first referenced citation is only in 1937 — I would have expected it to be around 100 years earlier. It was certainly a word I learnt quite early in my school days, so it must have been in regular North London usage by the end of the 1950s.

Usefully(?) gooly also means a stone or pebble in Australian slang. (Well again, so the OED says.)

What is also interesting is that the OED doesn’t know the origin of the cricketing term googly (a ball which spins from leg to off when bowled by a right-arm bowler to a right-handed batsman) and which one might expect to be related to gooly. So who knows?

Anyway there’s another Indian word you know, to go along with pyjamas and bungalow.

photography

Buggered Britain 15

Another instalment in our occasional series celebrating the underbelly of Britain, at least as perpetrated locally. This is the Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

This empty shop (at one time I recall it was a double glazing showroom) is at Rayners Lane, in west London, opposite the tube station. This was a nice small local shopping area, even when I worked there almost 30 years ago. But no longer. Now it is decidedly scrofulous and decaying; populated only by Asian and Polish establishments which never seem to do any trade.

Buggered Britain 15
And as you’ll see that above is next to this …

How to make your eaterie look attractive - Lesson 6
Which has definitely been tidied up a bit in the last couple of years, but to me still looks pretty disreputable.

personal

Five Questions, Series 3, #3

So here’s another attempt to catch up a bit. Here is an answer to the third of the Five Question I posed some weeks ago.


Question 3. Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

I’m not generally proud of what I do. I do things. The right things. And I expect to. In fact I usually expect that I’ll do better than I do. And I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet. I just get on with things. So there is little to be proud of. So I find answering this rather difficult.

I suppose the things which has most surprised (and delighted) me, and hence something I am proud of, is that Noreen and I have been married for 33 years. Today that seems to be quite an achievement.

What’s even better is that we have achieved it while doing two really environmentally friendly things: no children and no car!

What about you?