Are plimsoll shoes related to the Plimsoll line on a commercial ship?

Yes, indeedy.


A plimsoll shoe or simply plimsoll is a type of athletic shoe with a canvas upper and rubber sole, developed as beachwear in the 1830s by the Liverpool Rubber Company (later to become Dunlop). The shoe was originally, and often still is in parts of the UK, called a 'sand shoe' and acquired the nickname 'plimsoll' in the 1870s. This name derived, according to Nicholette Jones' book "The Plimsoll Sensation" because the colored horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull, or because, just like the Plimsoll line on a ship, if water got above the line of the rubber sole, the wearer would get wet.

We'd been looking at an incoming container ship and I was wondering if the plimsoll shoe got its name because of the resemblance of the demarcation between the shoe's rubber sole and canvas upper and the Plimsoll line on the ship.

The Web is a wonder.

Labels: factoid, history, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:31 PM|| |

Back in February, Greg Morago wrote an article for the Houston Chronicle titled, C’mon, get happy: Experts say you can.

At the time I noted in the book I keep in my back pocket, lefthand side: "hedonic adaptation"

I'd forgotten all about it until I was thumbing through the book this afternoon, looking up word references I'd forgotten, killing time.

"hedonic adaptation" -- an interesting idea.

There's a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation. It basically means that people adapt and get used to things, she [Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at UCRiverside] said. Let's say you suddenly have less spending power. You feel less wealthy because you have less money in the bank. That's going to make you unhappy. What happens is that you get used to that. Our daily life is not determined by the size of our savings account. We'll adapt to almost everything.

In a similar way, people who have extraordinary fortune, win the lottery, get that high six-figure job, become accustomed to their new circumstances and instead of feeling euphoric about their change in lifestyle, soon discover life's the same old same old.

Hedonic adaptation is a good thing when your circumstances take a tumble. You don't, after all, want to be moping around forever because you had to turn in your Mercedes for a used Honda.

But, if you have had extraordinary good things happen to you, stop every once in a bit and reflect on them. Remember how lucky you are. Remember what a good life you lead. Don't let hedonic adaptation pull you down until your extraordinary life becomes just ordinary and you get the mopes because the sparkle's gone out of your life.

Labels: life, psychology, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:05 PM|| |

The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources

I did one of those "Twenty Five Things" sorts of things over on Facebook. On that list were four items pertaining to Webbie things:

16. I collect quotations and factoids and bits of sparkly info and stash them away and then can't find them when I want them.

17. I do the same with Web bookmarks and then discover that a site I just discovered is one whose bookmark I'd stashed away nineteen months ago. Too many pretties?

18. I no longer cut recipes out from newspapers and magazines (much...) because things of that sort are all on the Web, or a decent substitute is.

19. I worry (seriously) that one day the Web won't be there and I'll be lost and archive-less because I've given all my stuff away and grown dependent on the Web as resource. And then where would I be?

What does that have to do with Phrontistery?

I came across Phrontistery today (AFTER I put together the Facebook note) and thought, oh, cool. Wordstuff stuff. I loves Wordstuff stuffs.

I clicked my Delicious click to bookmark the site ... and found that I saved it 06 Jun 2007 ... which is just under twenty months ago.

Oh.

If you like Wordstuff, though. Go there.

Since 1996, I have compiled word lists in order to spread the joy of the English language. Here, you will find the International House of Logorrhea (an online dictionary of obscure and rare words), the Compendium of Lost Words (a compilation of ultra-rare forgotten words), and many other glossaries, word lists, essays, and other language and etymology resources.

Labels: life, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:55 PM|| |

Save The Words -- interesting words that have fallen by the wayside as new dictionaries are published.

Save The Words. Learn their definitions. Use them in memos or Scrabble.

Site says that lexicographers check for what "new" words are showing up in the language and will sometimes add a word back into the dictionaries that had previously been given a pink slip. e.g. wheatgrass

Labels: wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:30 PM|| |

The things you learn whilst playing Scrabble.

Pandit

pundit from (1672) "learned Hindu." Broader English usage first recorded 1816.

Thx, JMT!

Labels: factoid, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:07 PM|| |

I checked all my links on the internet-resources' WordStuff page yesterday, using the handy dandy Free Link Checker as a first pass and then following with a check of all the other links as a cleanup sweep.

One of the links the free link checker found was a definite 404. (Robin Queen's collection of linguistics links ... The page was 404 and after I found her UMich faculty Web site, seems her collection of links is no more, or not what I remembered.)

I went looking for the substitute link or another link just like it.

And found this.

ovablastic.blogspot.com has cut and pasted and reformatted my wordstuff links page onto its blog -- a blog, I might mentioned, that is surrounded by ad stuff.

No mention that the links and commentary aren't its.

No mention that link collection is mine as is the commentary.

No mention of my collection of links and how to get there.

Now ovablastic itself found that little nest of links through Stumbleupon, which does point people to my site.

Why did it cut and paste the HTML and pop it on its blog with no hattip or pointer to my site?

Because it's clueless and a thief. Yeah. That could be it.

n.b. for allz of you who may say, "But links are links and not copyrightable!" The collection of links with the associated commentary is copyrighted. 'tis just not worth it to go lay sue papers in ovablastic's mailbox. I'd rather mention here that someone with ads on its site stole my content and is a thief.

(Hi, ovablastic! Hope you Google your nym every once in a while! If you'd had an e-mail easily available on your blog, I would've dropped you a note. This is the next best bet.)

Labels: blog, peeves, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:57 PM|| |

OEDILF - The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

An aphorist states what is known
In a pithier, folksier tone.
He is given to joke
That the mightiest oak
From a balanoid object is grown.

(BAL-uh-noid) Acorn-shaped.



Sorts by topic, author, word, &c.

We are presently accepting submissions based ONLY on words beginning with Aa- through Dd- inclusive.

Labels: URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:55 AM|| |

Maybe the next time I have to look up chyron I'll remember what it means.

(Three's the charm.)

Labels: news, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:24 PM|| |

[1] BA in-flight magazine. July 2008

hoarding
From context, the meaning was relatively clear.

Merriam-Webster on hoarding:
1: a temporary board fence put about a building being erected or repaired —called also hoard
2: [British] billboard

[2] Independent. 18 Jul 2008

swingeing
"Neither candidate looks likely to balance the budget without swingeing cuts." Context again clear, but etymology?

Merriam-Webster on swingeing:

Etymology: from present participle of swinge
Date: 1575

chiefly British : very large, high, or severe swingeing fines swingeing taxes


Which in turn brought me to Google Books and Hensleigh Wedgwood's A DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY, publ 1872:

Delightful.

e.g. swindle

Swindle G Schwindel swimming in the head dizziness giddiness In a figurative sense Schwindel is applied to dealings in which the parties seem to have lost their head as we say to have become dizzy over unfounded or unreasonable prospects of gain. 'Als der Assignatenschwindel Assignat mania zu wüthen begann' 'Er hat bei dem Akticn schwin del Share mania viel geld verdient' -- Genz in Sanders The word may be translated madness delusion Then in a factitive sense schwindeler one who induces delusions in others Einem etwas abschwindeln to get something from another by inducing delusion to swindle him out of something The parallel form ON sundla to be dizzy connects G schwindeln through ON sund a swimming with svt ma svimma to swim svimra Da si tmlc to be dizzy Du swijmelen falsa imaginari instar dormientium vertigine laborari Kil Da svingel dizziness darnel from producing dizziness svingle to reel as a drunken man.

Delightful.

Labels: wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:48 AM|| |

Corpus of American English

Brilliant app.

The Corpus of American English (not to be confused with the American National Corpus) is the first large corpus of contemporary American English. It is freely available online, and it is related to other large corpora that we have created.

The corpus contains more than 360 million words of text, including 20 million words each year from 1990-2007, and it is equally divided among spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts (more information). The corpus will also be updated at least twice each year from this point on, and will therefore serve as a unique record of linguistic changes in American English.

The interface allows you to search for exact words or phrases, wildcards, lemmas, part of speech, or any combinations of these. You can search for surrounding words (collocates) within a ten-word window (e.g. all nouns somewhere near chain, all adjectives near woman, or all verbs near key).

The corpus also allows you to easily limit searches by frequency and compare the frequency of words, phrases, and grammatical constructions, in at least two main ways:

* By genre: comparisons between spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic, or even between sub-genres (or domains), such as movie scripts, sports magazines, newspaper editorial, or scientific journals
* Over time: compare different years from 1990 to the present time

You can also easily carry out semantically-based queries of the corpus. For example, you can contrast and compare the collocates of two related words (little/small, democrats/republicans, men/women), to determine the difference in meaning or use between these words. You can find the frequency and distribution of synonyms for nearly 60,000 words and also compare their frequency in different registers, and also use these word lists as part of other queries. Finally, you can easily create your own lists of semantically-related words, and then use them directly as part of the query.

Labels: app, resource, wordstuff, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:26 PM|| |

Chapter 1. Specimens of the American Vulgate. 1. The Declaration of Independence in American.
Mencken, H.L. 1921.

[The following is my own translation, but I have had the aid of suggestions from various other scholars. It must be obvious that more than one section of the original is now quite unintelligible to the average American of the sort using the Common Speech. What would he make, for example, of such a sentence as this one: "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures"? Or of this: "He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise." Such Johnsonian periods are quite beyond his comprehension, and no doubt the fact is at least partly to blame for the neglect upon which the Declaration has fallen in recent years. When, during the Wilson-Palmer saturnalia of oppressions, specialists in liberty began protesting that the Declaration plainly gave the people the right to alter the goverment under which they lived and even to abolish it altogether, they encountered the utmost incredulity. On more than one occasion, in fact, such an exegete was tarred and feathered by the shocked members of the American Legion, even after the Declaration had been read to them. What ailed them was that they could not understand its eighteenth century English. I make the suggestion that its circulation among such patriotic men, translated into the language they use every day, would serve to prevent, or, at all events, to diminish that sort of terrorism.]

When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man these rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter.

[... Chapter 1. Specimens of the American Vulgate. 1. The Declaration of Independence in American. Mencken, H.L. 1921. ]

[via Archer]

Labels: politics, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:56 AM|| |

A request from DebbieRO, my former Inkspot.com boss lady, on her Inkygirl blog.

If you have a link to Inkspot.com, PLEASE DELETE IT.
Pass the word.

A plea to anyone linking to Inkspot.com

Labels: URL, webstuff, wordstuff, writing, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:42 PM|| |

But for the most extraordinary example of shifting names we must go to the aubergine, once known also as the brinjal in India. The story starts with Sanskrit vatin-gana "the plant that cures the wind", which became the Arabic al-badinjan. This moved into Europe, again via Moorish Spain: one offshoot — keeping the Arabic article prefixed — became alberengena in Spanish and on to aubergine in French; another transformation became the botanical Latin melongena through losing the article and changing the "b" to an "m"; this then turned into the Italian melanzana and then to mela insana (the "mad apple"). Another branch, again without the "al", became bringella in Portugal, whose traders took the plant, and their version of the name, full circle back to India, where it became brinjal in Anglo-Indian circles (the usual term among English speakers in India today is the Hindi baingan, or aubergine). In another branch of its history, the Portuguese word turned up in the West Indies, where it was again, but differently, corrupted to brown-jolly. All names for the same plant.

[ref: Michael Quinion at World Wide Words]

Question, though. Why is the same beast called an eggplant in the USofA?

Ah, okay. [ref: Wikipedia] "The name eggplant developed in the United States, Australia, and Canada because the fruits of some 18th century European cultivars were yellow or white and resembled goose or hen's eggs."

That makes a ton of sense.

And so ends the etymology detour for the morning.

Labels: food, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:41 AM|| |

2007 is the silver anniversary of the contest.

Jim Gleeson, Madison, WI, is the grand prize winner this year with

Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.

Additional prize winners here: 2007 Results

re the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

[...]

Conscripted numerous times to be a judge in writing contests that were, in effect, bad writing contests but with prolix, overlong, and generally lengthy submissions, he [Professor Scott Rice] struck upon the idea of holding a competition that would be honest and -- best of all -- invite brief entries. Furthermore, it had the ancillary advantage of one day allowing him to write about himself in the third person.

By campus standards, the first year of the BLFC was a resounding success, attracting three entries. The following year, giddy with the prospect of even further acclaim, Rice went public with the contest and, with the boost of a sterling press release by Public Information Officer Richard Staley, attracted national and international attention. Staley's press release drew immediate front-page coverage in cultural centers like Boston, Houston, and Miami. By the time the BLFC concluded with live announcement of the winner, Gail Cane, on CBS Morning News (since defunct through no fault of the BLFC), it had drawn coverage from Time, Smithsonian, People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Manchester Guardian, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Radio, and the BBC. Most important, over 10,000 wretched writers had tried their hands at outdoing Bulwer's immortal opener, with the best entries soon appearing in the first of a series published by Penguin Books, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (1984).

Since 1983 the BLFC has continued to draw acclaim and opprobrium. Thousands continue to enter yearly ...

[via Bob Sloan at misc.writing]

Labels: contest, wordstuff, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:02 AM|| |

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

* It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus!
* Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
* The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
* No membership required.

Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern web technologies, Visuwords™ is available as a free resource to all patrons of the web.

I popped in "errata" and ... nada. "brigadoon" ... nada.

I popped in "graffiti" and made two connections.

... then I popped in "giant"

How fun is this?

"literature"

And "encomium" begets "panegyrist" and "prosody" begets "hypercatalectic."

Fun!

Labels: URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:51 PM|| |

Came across an interesting reference today on Language Log to "the Cupertino effect."

What is the Cupertino effect? You've seen it in action. I know you have.

The Cupertino effect is when your spellchecker fixes the spelling of a word and gives the wrong word.

Why Cupertino? (a town, btw, that I lived next door to for almost thirty years)

Seems the EU folks named the error/effect because cooperation is frequently mistyped cooperatino and some spellcheckers offer up Cupertino as a substitute.

Language Log finds that tale of origin suspect because I find it difficult to believe that many custom dictionaries out there include Cupertino but not unhyphenated cooperation.

Turns out that error can be found in an old version of Outlook Express (custom dictionary copyrighted as "Houghton Mifflin Company © 1996 Inso Corporation")

[reached the Language Log post that mentioned "the Cupertino effect" which led me to the post mentioned above from a click on Sour Grapes' tumblr page]

Labels: wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:21 PM|| |

takeourword.com Blog: the companion blog to the Take Our Word For It webzine and site.

Melanie and Mike are back in action. Check out the blog. Check out the site. Word-huggers and amateur etymologists rejoice.

Labels: blog, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:55 AM|| |

Jan Freeman's 13 May 2007 column on eggcorns

[via Benjamin Zimmer's Language Log ]

Labels: blog, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:06 PM|| |

From the Making of America collection comes a link to An elementary dictionary of the English language. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL. D. (1865).

I love old dictionaries. The actual wordstuff for this one begins at page 31, after all the frontal matter regarding pronunciation and all that.

Seeing how a word was used in 1865 gives one a glimpse at how the current day definition evolved. Some words in Worcester's dictionary have evolved beyond recognition. Some no longer exist.

e.g. p 168 (lacerable - lapful)

laconism - pithy phrase or expression
Lady-Day - 25th March. The Annunciation.
laic- a layman; -- opposed to clergyman.
lamantine - an animal; manatee or sea-cow.
lambative - a medicine taken by licking
laniate - to tear in pieces; to lacerate
lanuginous - downy; covered with soft thin hair

Some of those words are still in use today, although perhaps not in as common use as they were 142 years ago. "lanuginous" was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

Fun stuff, words.

Labels: books, history, information, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:20 PM|| |

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog

[via tnh at Making Light]

Labels: blog, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:46 AM|| |

From Grant Barrett, lexicographer for The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English, Double-Tongued Dictionary: Slang, jargon, and new words from the fringes of English.

RSS feed or just wander. Comments are entertaining too.

e.g. cheddar curtain n. the divisions real and imagined that separate Wisconsin from neighboring states, especially Illinois. Also cheese curtain. Related: Sconnie, Wisconsin, English

Editorial Note: This term is parellel [sic] to Orange curtain, cotton curtain, and other, similar terms.

Citations: 1992 Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 7) "The Mix" p. 5: Lift the cheddar curtain. The Wisconsin State Fair celebrates its 100th year in its current location at State Fair Park in West Allis, Wis., through Aug. 16. 1993 [Julian Macassey] Usenet: alt.tasteless (Nov. 10) "Re: Tasteless Secret Santa": At that time of year (Feb, March), I will probably be in Wisconsin. So I will fly back from behind the Cheddar curtain. 1994 [Bob Christ] Usenet: alt.tasteless (Jan. 14) "Re: Rock 'n Roll for geezers": He's done it! Julian has moved behind the cheese curtain. 1994 [Joseph Betz] Usenet: talk.bizarre (Oct. 12) "Re: Longest Known Palindrome": Wisconsin—Behind the Cheese Curtain. 2003 A. Forester Jones Yellow Snow (June) p. 65: The pilot announced that they had crossed the "Cheddar Curtain" and were over Wisconsin. Adam started visually searching the land below for large warehouses stuffed with surplus cheese. 2005 Northwest Herald (Chicago) (May 23) "Don’t let road work ruin travel": People heading to Wisconsin can find information about road construction behind the cheddar curtain by logging onto http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov. 2006 Bike Black Ribbon (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) (Nov. 19) "BBRS Ride with the Bums": Mid November, behind the cheese curtain is not known for its balmy climes or great trail conditions, but this particular November day turned out to be dry, with a few peaks at blue sky.

Labels: URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:51 AM|| |

Help write the OED.

Balderdash & Piffle - help rewrite the OED

The OED seeks to find the earliest verifiable usage of every single word in the English language – currently 600,000 in the OED and counting – and of every separate meaning of every word. Quite a task! The forty words on the appeal list all have a date next to them – corresponding to the earliest evidence the dictionary currently has for that word of phrase. Can you trump that?


e.g. flip flop

WANTED: Verifiable evidence before 1970.

Ever hear the joke about the Frenchman in sandals? Phillipe Floppe? Never mind. The onomatopoeic word flip-flop referred to a somersault, an electronic circuit, and a manner of moving noisily, before it came to mean a rubber sandal beloved of antipodeans, although of course they call them jandals or (how wrong can you get?) thongs… Flip-flop is the word we are interested in here, and the OED wants your evidence of the word from before 1970.


The OED has a list of words that they're looking to find earliest usage. If you're able to provide CONCRETE dates and usage with verifiable references for the words they're looking for, drop them a line.

I found a couple of earlier dates using Googja and handy references and sent them on this afternoon. They may already have received those ante-datings, but maybe not and the more the merrier.

Join in.

Labels: wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:17 PM|| |

(as I commented on Zen's blog) and repeat here because I think it's worth repeating. ...


The San Francisco Chronicle had an article late last month re Ferlinghetti getting tapped for a Commandeur des Arts et Lettres.


[...]

Ferlinghetti was pleased. When I first showed up to San Francisco after World War II, I was still wearing my French beret.

Later on in the article,

Although his surname and North Beach neighborhood bookstore usually associate him with Italians, Ferlinghetti has a strong French connection. His mother is part French, some of his best friends are French and many of his favorite memories are from living in France, he said.

In fact, Ferlinghetti would rather be called French than a beatnick.

"Obliterate that word," he said. "I came to San Francisco before the beats. I was more of a bohemian and what they called a nonconformist. I didn't do the 9 to 5, which is quite a French-based belief."

beatnick? BEATNICK?

Our own Herb Caen coined the word back when and the Chronicle should have "beatnik" somewhere in their spellchecker.

For shame.

Labels: wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:39 PM|| |