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Continued from “Bimonthly etymology gleanings for August and September 2014. Part 1″…

Dangerous derivations and chance coincidences

A correspondent cited a few tentative etymologies of English words.

• Sail: in Mennonite Low German sähl means “harness.”
• Bride: Dutch brudespaar allegedly means “broody pair.” Doesn’t bride mean “broody hen”?
• Cow: the German word kauen means “to chew.” Couldn’t that be the origin of the word cow?

I am sorry to disappoint our correspondent, but such haphazard comparisons should be abandoned. To discover the origin of old words, one has to compare their most ancient attested forms. For example, kauen always had a diphthong, while cow has its late diphthong from a long monophthong that once sounded like Modern Engl. oo (compare German Kuh). And so it goes. On the more intuitive level, one should realize that, if a word has baffled professional scholars for centuries, the most tempting solutions have probably been offered and rejected. By the way, the Dutch compound for “bride and bridegroom” is bruidspaar, not brudespaar; the word has nothing to do with brooding.

Another correspondent wrote that the Russian word for “kiss” also means “to aim.” Whoever suggested this connection seems to have confused the Russian words tsel “whole” (discussed in the post on kissing) and tsel’ “aim.” The sign l’ stands for palatalized (or “soft”) l; where the transliteration has an apostrophe Russian has a special letter (the so-called miagkii znak). Tsel is an old word, while tsel’ is a borrowing of German Ziel “aim” (more precisely, Middle High German), via Polish.

Still another correspondent wonders whether the noun chapbook and the verb tucker (out) “to tire, to weary” can be of Hindi origin. I think chapbook has such a transparent English derivation that it does not merit further discussion. Tucker is probably a frequentative of tuck, like very many verbs of this structure. There is no denying the fact that our correspondent cited Hindi words that have both the form and the meaning closely corresponding to chapbook and tucker. But, as I have written many times while answering similar questions, the fact of borrowing can be ascertained only if we succeed in showing how a foreign word reached English (compare the history of thug, which is indeed from Hindi, or other examples cited in the great book Hobson-Jobson). Was tucker used mainly by Hindi speakers? Do we have any proof that this verb spread from their community? Only a detailed investigation along such lines can sound convincing. Otherwise, we will stay with kauen ~ cow and their likes.

Wise restraint. An old colleague of mine wrote in connection with my post on roil.

“Honoré de Balzac published in 1842 a novel called La Rabouilleuse. The title name is explained as being a word local to the Berry region of France where a young girl is employed to stir up the mud in a stream, thus clouding the water and permitting a fisherman to more readily catch crayfish (crawfish?). One can easily see the way the word is formed: the verb bouillir “boil” plus a reduplicating prefix ra- and a feminine agent suffix. Now the verb rabouillir or some variant of it might fit in with roil both with some phonemes and the meaning.”

The author of the letter did not suggest any solution, and I think he was right to do so. The coincidence looks like being due to chance.

Old Friends

Every now and then I run into publications that would have come in most useful in my earlier posts and comments. But it is never too late to pick up even the oldest chestnuts. For instance, I have challenged the supporters of they ~ them in sentences like when a student comes, I never make them wait to give examples that are really old. Almost nothing has turned up. But here are two more phenomena that have aroused some interest among our readers.

Split infinitive. It would seem that passionate, as opposed to rational, splitting set in several decades ago, and the construction I called to be or to not be conquered the ugly day. Roswitha Fischer’s article on the split infinitive appeared in 2007; however, I read it only this summer. Among many other examples, she quoted Wycliffe: “It is good for to not ete fleisch and for to not drynke wyn” (ca. 1382). I do not follow Wycliffe’s recommendation but in defense of his grammar should say that with for to he had nowhere else to put the negation. I am sure everybody will remember: “Simple Simon went a-fishing, / For to catch a whale.” Nowadays, for to, an analog of German um zu, is dead, except in some dialects.

One… his. We have been taught to say one…one’s. But people keep correlating one with his (now probably their; see above). In The Nation for 1921 I found a letter to the editor from Steven T. Byington (Ballard Vale, Massachusetts) with the funny title Four Centuries of Onehese. The writer quoted five sentences with one—his. I’ll reproduce only the relevant part of them:

• “…one was surer in keeping his tunge, than in muche speking” (excellent advice going back to 1477)
• “…the higher one doth mount, the less doth euery thing appeare which is below him” (1607)
• “If one proposes any other end unto himself” (1650)
• “…one’s sure to break his neck” (1650), “One should do what his own nature prescribes” (1886)

Among other things, the letter discusses the utterance: “One oughtn’t never take nothing that ain’t theirn.” I suspect that in the great books on English grammar by Jespersen, Poutsma, and Curme many more examples of the one… his type will be found. A certain Markman, a friend of James Steerforth’s, “always spoke of himself indefinitely as a ‘man’, and seldom or never in the first person singular” (David Copperfield, Chapter 24 “My First Dissipation”). This way of speaking may help those who have trouble with one.

Check your slang

Also in The Nation, this time for 1922, I found a more than enthusiastic review by Clement Wood of Carl Sandburg’s fourth book of poetry Slabs of the Sunburnt West. In the opening paragraph, Wood expressed his delight about Sandburg’s use of slang. I ran the list by my undergraduate students. Here it is: humdinger, flooey, *phizzogs, fixers, frame-up, *four-flushers, rakeoff, getaway, junk, *fliv, fake, come clean, gabby mouth, *hoosegow, *teameo, *work plug, lovey, slew him in, bull, jazz, scab, booze, stiffs, hanky-pank, hokum, bum, and buddy.

The words that no one recognized are given above with an asterisk. I knew more. However, some of them I knew by chance. For instance, long ago, a bookstore near our main campus closed its doors. It began to sell its stock at a small discount, but every two days the prices went down. The only books that no one wanted to take even when they were free were those by American poets. I grabbed the entire batch and read everything. In this rather dubious treasure trove, I discovered Sandburg, read his poem called Phizzogs, and looked up the word. It has never occurred in my reading since that day. In my work, I have dealt with synonyms for “prison,” so that hoosegow was quite familiar to me. I also knew fliv, but the word is forgotten. This is what I expected, for once I tried the same experiment with jitney and drew blank, while people of my age recognized it immediately. If I had run into a poker player, such a person would have had no trouble identifying four-flushers. Fixers, bull, work plug, slew him in, and stiffs look transparent, but without the context it is impossible to decide their exact meaning. We of course guessed that hanky-pank is a back formation on hanky-panky.

My students say that, when they watch movies of the fifties, they do not understand the slang used there, while their parents are in the dark when it comes to the slang of their children. On the other hand, the words given in bold in my list are today so familiar that no one would have referred to them as particularly striking. One should take into consideration that, to know one’s language, one has to read the literature written in it. It is curious to follow the modern annotations of Oliver Twist and Vanity Fair. Both Dickens and Thackeray used slang quite generously, and the commentators assume that no one understands it today. Perhaps they are right.

I still have some questions unanswered and will take care of them at the end of October.

Image credits: (1) Photograph of Carl Sandburg, 1947. Library of Congress. (2) Sandburg book cover via Booklikes.

The post Bimonthly etymology gleanings for August and September 2014. Part 2 appeared first on OUPblog.

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From the archives of the Portsong Guardian, dated May 1924:

 

A great loss occurred in Portsong today. Mae Wilkin’s cow, Flossie, took ill several weeks ago and poor Mae found her hooves up in her pen this morning. Since Flossie routinely slept in that position, Doc Harkins is not quite sure of the time of death as Mae can’t seem to recall the last time she saw her upright. The old doc is quite sure she has passed, though.

The death of Flossie not only leaves an empty stall in Mae’s stable, it leaves a great loss to the farming community at large. In 1908, Mae’s late husband, Homer discovered Flossie had quite a knack for weather prognostication. While his peers mostly considered him a lunatic, Homer persevered in honing the skills of his heifer until he finally won over believers after she correctly predicted the great hailstorm of March 1910.

His description of her amazing talent was detailed in the transcript of a radio interview by noted Savannah broadcaster Edwin F. Teague:

EFT: How did you come upon the discover of her ability?

HW: I began to noticin’ she always worked her cud on the left. I thought that to be a might peculiar, so I asked her about it one day.

EFT: You talk to her?

HW: Why sure I do. I talk to all of ’em. It sooths ‘em to hear my voice. No good milkin’ ’em without talkin’ sweet to ’em first. They’d squirt out beans or nothing at all if they weren’t peaceful! Anyhow, she didn’t have no answer. But the nexday, just by chance, I noticed she were workin’ it on the right. On about noontime, the sky opened up and cut loose a fierce storm.

EFT: So you noticed a pattern after that day?

HW: Yesir. It happened thataway every time. In fact, when it got to be planting season, I went out to see which side she was chewin’ on before I did anythin’.

EFT: Did you have trouble convincing other farmers about this skill?

HW: At first. If I were at the feed store out yonder in Linkston, I’d tell ’em what the day held and they’d laugh at old Homer. But after I was right so many a time, they had to listen to me. When I told ‘em it were Flossie, they laughed at me until the big storm in 19 and 10 turned out to be the Mighty Hailer! They quit their laughing after that.

EFT: Yes, how did you get from rain prediction to a storm of such magnitude?

HW: Well, it goed like this. When I went out to the field that day to check the weather, she had her mouth filled triple full and slop were coming out both sides. So I know’d it were something unusual coming. I asked her if it were so and she just lowered her big, soft brown eyes to the ground and I knew. I went running around town tell folks to tie down the winders, ‘cause I knew a big ‘un was on its way.

EFT: She prevented a great deal of loss that day. Thank you for your fascinating story, Mr. Wilkins.

 

Ironically, directly across from the story on page 13 was the following advertisement:

Wanted: The Portsong Guardian is seeking a weatherman for immediate duty. Part time - morning hours. Pay commensurate with experience. Bovine preferred.

 

Photo credit: William Warby (Flickr: Cow)

Filed under: Stories

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[Manga Maniac Cafe] Good morning, Jennifer!  Describe yourself in five words or less.

(Jennifer Ryan) Wife, mother, writer, gardener, chocoholic.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] Can you share a typical day in your life?

(Jennifer Ryan) Wake up, drink coffee and eat cookie. Wake up kids. Get dressed. Pack lunches. Wake up teenage son again and help youngest brush her hair. Wake up teenage son for the third time with threats of no food if he doesn’t hurry up. Make breakfast for kids, get them in the car, drop them off at their three different schools. Home, take a shower, get dressed again, drink more coffee, eat another cookie. Check email, book numbers, social media. Write/edit until time to go pick up kids. Make lunch, take it with me and eat it in the car while I wait in car line to pick up kids at all three schools again. Home, make snacks for kids. Get them organized with homework. Work another hour. Make dinner. Work another hour. Get all kids in shower/bath and off to bed. Edit/promo stuff until time for bed, unless Blacklist, Hannibal, Dracula, or other favorite show is on. Stop everything and watch TV.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] What three words come to mind when you think of Claire?

(Jennifer Ryan) Sweet, kind, tough.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] What’s her most appealing quality?

(Jennifer Ryan) Owen might say her alluring ass-ets, but he’s also drawn to her love of children. With two nieces he adores, he loves that she wants to have children and a family filled with love and laughter.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] What irritates you the most about her?

(Jennifer Ryan) Uh, that’s a hard one. If I had to pick something, I’d say it’s that she compares Owen with her ex. After she’s been burned, she can’t help herself, but quickly realizes Owen is nothing like her ex and she can’t help falling for him.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] If you could change one thing you’ve done in your life, what would it be?

(Jennifer Ryan) I wish I’d changed my oldest son’s 5th grade teacher. He spent the whole year dreading going to school. The teacher was tough and just this side of mean. My son was afraid to ask a question, or do anything wrong for fear he’d get in trouble. I wanted him to tough it out, learn that even if you don’t like someone you still have to learn to work with them. Instead, he learned to hate school. He fell behind in class and my straight A student became a D student. To this day, if he has a difficult teacher, he shuts down.

When my middle son got the same teacher for 5th grade, I went to the principle before school started and changed his class assignment. The right teacher makes all the difference.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] What’s one thing you won’t leave home without?

(Jennifer Ryan) With three kids, my phone. So they can contact me, play games, and I can text my husband to bring home dinner.

[Manga Maniac Cafe] Can you share your dreams for the future in five words or less.

(Jennifer Ryan) Live. Love. Laugh. Write. Happiness.

 

Falling for Owen

The McBrides Book Two

By: Jennifer Ryan

Releasing April 15th, 2014

Blurb

The McBrides of Fallbrook return with reformed bad boy Owen. He’ll do whatever he must to protect the woman who’s captured his heart. Attorney by day, rancher by night Owen McBride conquered his dark past and made it his mission to help the innocent—even at the expense of a personal life. But when a client’s abusive ex-husband targets Owen and his gorgeous neighbor Claire gets caught in the crossfire, his feelings turn anything but professional. The mysterious beauty awakens something in him, and he’ll move heaven and earth to keep her safe.

Coffee shop owner Claire Walsh learned the hard way that handsome men aren’t to be trusted. Owen may be sexy as hell and determined to take care of her, but she’s reluctant to put her heart on the line. His presence in her life puts a target on her back, yet the more time she spends with him, the more she finds she can’t help falling for Owen.

Buy Links

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Owen-Book-Two-McBrides-ebook/dp/B00DB3FRSI

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/falling-for-owen-jennifer-ryan/1117908670?ean=9780062306081

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/falling-for-owen/id660540897?mt=11

Link to Follow Tour: http://tastybooktours.blogspot.com/2014/03/now-booking-tasty-virtual-tour-for_11.html

Author Info

JENNIFER RYAN, author of The Hunted Series, writes romantic suspense and contemporary small-town romances. 

Jennifer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three children. When she isn’t writing a book, she’s reading one. Her obsession with both is often revealed in the state of her home, and how late dinner is to the table. When she finally leaves those fictional worlds, you’ll find her in the garden, playing in the dirt and daydreaming about people who live only in her head, until she puts them on paper. 

Please visit her website at www.jennifer-ryan.com for information about upcoming releases.

Find her here
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jennifer-Ryan/520021168037391?ref=hl

http://www.jennifer-ryan.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4693347.Jennifer_Ryan

https://twitter.com/JenRyan_author

Excerpt –

Claire entered her room, saw her rumpled bed, and sighed. She wanted to crawl in and sleep the day away. Not going to happen. Things needed to be done. She had a strange man in her house. Okay, not so strange. Handsome. Gorgeous. Funny. Nice.

She stopped that line of thinking and headed for the bathroom, pulling her robe off and tossing it in the hamper. It took some doing to get the bandage holding the ice pack on her shoulder off, but once she did, she winced at the throbbing ache. She checked the bruise in the mirror, but couldn’t see the scraped, raw skin under the bandage. Not so bad now, but in another day it would bloom into a vivid display of color about four inches in diameter.

Careful as she moved her arm, she pulled her bloody shirt off and tossed it in the trash. She turned on the cold water, cupped her hands, and doused her face, staving off the tears that threatened whenever she thought about what happened tonight. The fear came back, knotting her stomach and making her hands tremble.

She’d worked so hard to create this life on her own. Now, being alone terrified her.

Rafflecopter Giveaway (Two Digital Copies of THE RETURN OF BRODY MCBRIDE)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Interview with Jennifer Ryan, Author of Falling for Owen and Giveaway appeared first on Manga Maniac Cafe.

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4 Stars Chasing Watermelons Kevin White Rex White 32 Pages     Ages: 3 to 6 ……………… Press Release: When Duck opens a crate of watermelons for a watermelon feast, they begin to roll. Duck chases after them. One by one, Duck invites Goat, Pig, Chicken, and Cow to join the chase by promising, “If you help, [...]

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Can’t remember when I’ve had so much creative fun with such a fantastic group of multitalented folk! 13th to 16th January  we arrived in from all over – WA, NT, Vic and  ’locals’ Christian and self.  We were housed in the Gatton Motel, a leg stretch away  from the main venue, not that we needed to walk. We were chauffeur driven everywhere by local Minibus/taxi owner Sue.

This is the door to my room, the non-existent  No. 13, on 13th January, a Friday, how lucky can you get!  Interesting how many places omit room 13, floor 13 etc etc. Do folk really think we are so bound by superstition and hangovers from the dark ages that we will eschew  a room or a whole floor just because of a place in a numeric sequence? Evidently it is so.

Presenting

Our sessions had small groups of ardent attendees at, what for me at any rate, were a series of workshops. who interacted with us freely and kept us on our toes with their questions. [more coming... I just need to sleep now...]

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Folksy drawings illustrate an updated classic nursery rhyme as a boy ventures through his farm and discovers where wool, honey, milk, eggs, and down come from. Click here to read my full review.

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i'm happy to say this piece is all done and ready to be shipped! it was a joy working on this and i truly think it is one of the cutest concepts i've had yet;) it is FOR SALE as a REPRODUCTION/PRINT in my etsy shop and can be found here http://www.etsy.com/listing/70175432/it-s-a-tea-with-milk-and-cookies-kind-of
i "heart" this piece!:)

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i LOVE this piece and am enjoying EVERY second of painting it!:) ok...so as well all know, i am the world's worst photographer;) took this pic with my phone really quick so the colors are a bit "off". but, i'm getting there...:) can't wait to finish it!!!

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ok...this could be one of my new favorites:) this is a sketch for a comissioned piece for the cousin of the little girl's room i just finished up last week-isabelle.
http://theenchantedeasel.blogspot.com/2011/02/isabelles-roomall-done.html
thank so much to liz for asking me to now adorn her niece's room with my work. i am beyond excited to do another piece for this wonderful family!:)
*a few background notes about this piece-mailee loves loves loves cows! her room is pink and brown AND they used to live in washington d.c.*
so i couldn't resist the cherry blossom trees (which are my favorite) and a sweet little pink and brown stuffed cow. besides, what little girl doesn't absolutely love to have tea parties with her stuffed animals/dolls?! i am super excited to start painting this in the next couple of days...:)

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2011 is going to be a tumultuous year for comics. Heck, it’s already tumultuous. There’s going to be consolidation and retrenchment. So over the next few weeks we’ll be checking in at a few companies to see what’s going on — some of it’s great and some of it is not so great. We will start with Top Cow which announced last week

that they were consolidating many of their functions at Image Central, including production, marketing and sales efforts. As we reported last week, publicity manager Christine Dinh was let go. Others downsized in the reorganization include director of sales and marketing Atom Freeman, and editor/designer Phil Smith, as well as some office staff. When asked about the changes, publisher Filip Sablik sent us a statement:

As announced last Monday, Image Comics is expanding its publishing operations to include Top Cow and moving forward will be Image will be handling Top Cow’s design, production, marketing and sales among other tasks much in the same way they have done for all the other Image partner studios. While this did mean consolidating some of our staff down where we had redundancies, it’s overall an incredibly positive move that will strengthen both Top Cow and Image. There are no additional layoffs planned, Top Cow will maintain its offices in Los Angeles and we will continue to have complete editorial control over the titles we put out. As I mentioned in the press release, this is largely an operational change and fans, retailers, and creators shouldn’t even notice any change. If anything it will help us become more efficient and unified. Marc, Matt, and I are incredibly excited by the future of Top Cow and Image! 

We also contacted Top Cow President Matt Hawkins who told us:

I think it means that we’ll have more time to focus on creative issues and developing the characters and the storylines and less time on production and fulfillment and those headaches.  It frees us up quite a bit to do what we really want to do.  It also is a proactive move to ensure that we’ll be around in 5 years.  The publishing business is not easy and anyone banking on their film getting made as part of their strategy for getting out of the red is a fool.

 
We also asked Hawkins what he felt was the biggest challenge facing comics this year, and he had a typically blunt response:

Survival.  There’s going to be more consolidation (like Image and Top Cow) and some people won’t be around in a couple years.  I have my theories on who but I’ll keep those to myself.  People are harping on Wizard right now, but they are doing what they need to do.  Like everyone, you look at where you’re making money and what the potential growth is and you invest your time and energies in that.

Top Cow, which was founded by artist Marc Silvestri as one of the original Image Studios, has always been a survivor, and they will survive this as well — and going with Image Central, which has been hot of late, was a smart move. On a more positive side, Top Cow just announced an exclusive with artist Jeremy Haun and is promoting a new series called Netherworld