Sherlock Holmes and Dorian Gray walk into a bar...

An interesting anecdote found in a NY Review of Books piece on Arthur Conan Doyle:

Secret sharers, deception and disguise, imposture, buried shame and repressed evil, madwomen in the attic, the covert life of London, the concealment of depravity and wonder beneath the dull brick façade of the world—these are familiar motifs of Victorian popular literature. In 1889, J. M. Stoddart, American editor of Lippincott's Magazine, took Oscar Wilde and another writer to lunch, over which he proposed that each man write a long story for his publication. One of his lunch guests that memorable day went off and dreamed up a tale of an uncanny, bohemian, manic-depressive genius who stalks the yellow fog of London, takes cocaine and morphine to ease the torment of living in this "dreary, dismal, unprofitable world," and abates his drug habit by compulsively scheming to peel back the commonplace surface of other people's lives, betraying secret histories of violence and vice. Stoddart published Conan Doyle's second Holmes novel as The Sign of Four. Wilde, for his part, turned in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Word o' the day

For some reason I really like the word "asinine"; the definition found in Merriam-Webster I find just perfectly expresses its meaning:

marked by inexcusable failure to exercise intelligence or sound judgment

This definition, I think in large part due to the use of "inexcusable", just perfectly evokes the "head-shaking" nature of a truly asinine act. Its etymology is something I had never really thought about until today, but it is sort of obvious in retrospect (from the OED):

[ad. L. asin{imac}nus, f. asinus ass: see -INE1.]

1. Of or pertaining to asses.

1624 BOLTON Nero 246 Her fiue hundred female asses..her asinine dayrie. 1641 MILTON Educ. Wks. 1738 I. 137 That asinine feast of sowthistles. 1873 LONGFELLOW Monk Casal Magg. 157 Since monkish flesh and asinine are one.


2. Having the qualities by which the ass is characterized; obstinate, stupid, doltish.

c1610 CHAPMAN Iliad, To Reader 225 Your asinine souls, Proud of their burdens, feel not how they gall. 1781 COWPER Convers. 209 'Tis the most asinine employ on earth, To hear them tell of parentage and birth. 1859 HELPS Friends in C. Ser. II. I. ii. 153 And I..should be asinine enough to go.

Also interesting are sources of some of the early quotations; use of the word places you in the distinguished company of Milton and Chapman.

Cuckfum

The Wikipedia page on unusual English words and the links found therein look to provide hours of time-wasting, trivial fun.

When you want an array that will go all the way...

While I'm perfectly happy at my new experiment, it's an exciting time at my old previous one. First physics results will be forthcoming at the 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference in India this summer. An article in Symmetry tells the story.

Countdown to Super Bowl Sunday

Bill Simmons provides all the Super Bowl warm up coverage you'll need. Go Pats.

"George is getting angry!"

As related in recent Sports Illustrated and ESPN stories, George Steinbrenner apparently has called out Alex Rodriguez (a.k.a. A-Rod, A-Fraud, Slappy) to be more assertive as a member of the NY Yankees. One theory explaining why he didn't do so last season is that he tried too hard to be "one of the guys" and perhaps didn't want to jeopardize his relationship with Derek Jeter (a.k.a. Captain Intangibles, Calm Eyes). Both seem pretty close here, in the sense that misery loves company:



I'm not sure Steinbrenner is being entirely fair; if memory serves, A-Rod displayed plenty of assertiveness and initiative in the World Series last year:



I fail to see the problem.

Further etymological trivia

Continuing along the same lines as previously, I inevitably found two more words derived from French surnames. One, which I had almost forgotten because it seemed too easy, is of course "guillotine" (Joseph-Ignace Guillotin) and the other, whose origin is new to me: "silhouette" (Etienne de Silhouette). As you can read in the OED, the exact story on how the name became the word isn't settled:

From the name of Étienne de Silhouette (1709-67), a French author and politician. According to the usual account, which is that given by Mercier Tableau de Paris 147, the name was intended to ridicule the petty economies introduced by Silhouette while holding the office of Controller-general in 1759, but Hatzfeld & Darmesteter take it to refer to his brief tenure of that office. Littré, however, also quotes a statement that Silhouette himself made outline portraits with which he decorated the walls of his château at Bry-sur-Marne.

Another member of that subclass of words derived from fictional character names is "paparazzi", from the character named "Paparazzo" in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. If one looks back to mythology, one can find a host of such words, from "titanic", "odyssey", "saturnine", and on and on.

Curiously, "guy" as a generic term for a male person seems to derive from Guy Fawkes himself, but this will require further investigation. Similar work will have to be done to pin down the origin of "cabal", which either gives you five names for the price of one, or just derives from "kabbalah"; I suppose it could be both as well.

Quixotic chauvinism

While writing this post, I had forgotten two words, one from the name of a fictional character (how could I have forgotten?) and one from an actual person. The first of course is "quixotic", from Cervantes' Don Quixote, and the other "chauvinism", which I'll let the OED describe:

F. chauvinisme, orig. ‘idolatrie napoléonienne’ La Rousse; from the surname of a veteran soldier of the First Republic and Empire, Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort, whose demonstrative patriotism and loyalty were celebrated, and at length ridiculed, by his comrades. After the fall of Napoleon, applied in ridicule to old soldiers of the Empire, who professed a sort of idolatrous admiration for his person and acts. Especially popularized as the name of one of the characters in Cogniard's famous vaudeville, La Cocarde Tricolore, 1831 (‘je suis français, je suis Chauvin’); and now applied to any one smitten with an absurd patriotism, and enthusiasm for national glory and military ascendancy.

Update:I was thinking that no doubt there were more words that derived from French names and sure enough I remembered the classic combination of "sadism" (Marquis de Sade) and "masochism" (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch). Consult your local OED for more.

Update:Thinking about it more, "ism" words aren't quite as interesting as the others. One could continue with "calvinism", "onanism", and go on and on...

Of grog and gerrymanders

After reading Bill Bryson's Made in America, An Informal History of the English Language in the United States this weekend I will always think of George Washington whenever the word "groggy" is used; the common meaning of the word these days is "dazed and exhausted", but originally meant "drunk, intoxicated", as one might be after imbibing too much of the concoction known as "grog." The drink, a mix of diluted rum and assorted spices, was ordered by Admiral Edward Vernon in 1840 to be served to the Royal Navy instead of straight rum. The name "grog" derives from his nickname, "Old Grog" and while Bryson claims that no one seems to know how he acquired such a moniker, a look in my copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories reveals that "Old Grog" comes from Vernon's grogham cloak (grogham being a type of fabric). How then does this relate to the man "first in the heart of his countryman?" Well, perhaps it's obvious by now, but it seems that Vernon himself was widely admired as well. One such admirer was the half-brother of George Washington, namely Lawrence, who named the family plantation Mount Vernon after "Old Grog" himself.

Grog is I suppose a cousin of my favorite sort of words: those derived from proper names, probably the most famous of which is "sandwich" (the 4th Earl of Sandwich). Others include "boycott" (Charles C. Boycott), "bowdlerize" (Thomas Bowdler), "galvanize" (Luigi Galvani), "lynch" (Capt. William Lynch), "sideburns" (Ambrose E. Burnside), and "zeppelin" (Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin). Two more brought to my attention by Bryson are the slightly archaic "bloomer" (Amelia J. Bloomer) and "maverick" (Samuel A. Maverick). I suppose a subclass of such words would be those derived from names of non-existent people, for example one Diedrich Knickerbocker (a creation of Washington Irving), from whose name "knickerbocker" and "knicker" derive.

My favorite word of this type is "gerrymander", which is a combination of the name of Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and of salamander. According to the Oxford Dictionary:

this arose through the supposed similarity between a salamander and the shape of a new voting district on a map drawn up when Governor Gerry was in office (1812)

Not content with just linguistic greatness, Gerry later became Vice-President under James Madison. Apparently his pre-gubernatorial days were notable as well. Via Bryson, as one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Gerry compares a standing army to an erect penis, as both are

an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure

A sentiment as true today as it was then.