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By Anatoly Liberman

“From the north so dear to southern climes” is an awkward prose rendition of a line occurring in a lyric titled “Clouds” by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. In 1840 he was exiled to the Caucasus, where Russia tried to “pacify” the Chechens (!). Lermontov improvised “Clouds” at a small farewell party in St. Petersburg, and I have chosen it to introduce the discussion of the words north and south (check out the discussion of east and west here). The juxtaposition of the hands will become clear later. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

All over the world when people decide to name cardinal points, they look at the sky. Terms used for orientation should therefore be immediately transparent: we expect them to mean “toward sunrise,” “toward sunset,” “related to a certain constellation,” “in the direction of a certain wind,” and so forth. And indeed, Latin oriens “east” is akin to oriri “to rise,” while occidens “west” is a cognate of occidere “to fall down.” Speakers of Latin did not need an etymologist to interpret those words (such specialists existed even then, for example, Varro, the most famous of them all): sunrise and sunset tell their own story. But of the English words—east, west, north, and south—only the first reveals its past to the initiated. The other three are so opaque that after centuries of guessing their origin remains a matter of dispute. (more…)

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Ben Keene just can’t get enough blogging! Check out the hot news story he dug up.

I can’t claim credit for breaking this story, but neither could I keep it to myself. Apparently, the secret to staying young isn’t an age-reducing cream or some sort of cocktail of pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements. It’s travel. At least that’s what has worked for Barbara Hillary (who also seems to think that remaining single has aided her longevity), a seventy-five year old former nurse who just returned from a trip to the top of the world, becoming the first African American woman to do so. Although it wasn’t until 1992 that she first ventured beyond US borders, Hillary has since visited Guyana and Manitoba, where she photographed polar bears. (more…)

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