Author Archives: Angela Tung

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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup: grammar, wordplay, Canadianisms

Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

Don't Panic Badge

Earlier this week we celebrated what would have been Douglas Adams’s 61st birthday. Google had an interactive Doodle honoring the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while Neil Gaiman spoke to The Washington Post about Adams’s genius.

National Grammar Day is over but discussion about grammar never ends (in a good way of course). Stan Carey asked which was worse, a double comma or unclosed bracket, and got lots of answers. Ben Yagoda told us seven grammar rules we should really pay attention to, The New York Times rounded up some dangling grammar gaffes, and Open Culture shared David Foster Wallace’s write-up of five common usage mistakes.

Ben Zimmer discussed one young man’s journey to find the origin of scalawag and was also busy anointing the champions of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and the Symmys Awards, for the year’s best palindromes.

In more wordplay news, Simon Akam at Slate asserted that words like chillax and bridezilla signify the death of the American pun. However, the love of puns seems to be going strong at the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships.

At Language Log, Mark Liberman explored nerditude. Johnson took a laughing look at the overzealous Quebec language police and explored metaphors in the digital age. At Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda told us about the slang expression, a hell of a note; Lucy Ferriss weighed in on hypercorrection; and Geoffrey Pullum gave his opinion about quite. Anne Curzan discussed commas and the language of texting, which is apparently a linguistic miracle.

Stan Carey told us about the dramatic grammatic evolution of LOL and the origin of the word kempt. At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Michael Rundell gave us the story behind dapper and the difference between who and whom.

Some people freaked out about the wrong definition of literally literally going in the dictionary. John McIntyre suggested that they chill out, and also considered the words omnibibulous and git.

In the week in words, Erin McKean noticed pogonophobia, “fear of facial fuzz”; sede vacante, Latin for “the seat being vacant” (regarding the Pope); tuts, video tutorials on YouTube; and polocrosse, “a mashup of lacrosse and polo.” Fritinancy weekly selections included wudu, “in Islam, the ritual washing of the face, hands, and other body parts in preparation for prayers”; and grist, “grain for grinding; ground grain.”

Word Spy spotted safe shake, “the touching of elbows used as a handshake replacement to avoid spreading germs”; instamentary, “a documentary produced in a very short time, particularly one about a recent news event”; openture, “the tendency to not seek a resolution or ending for an emotionally difficult experience”; and, just in time for Pi Day, pi-ku, “a haiku on the theme of the mathematical constant pi.”

The Dialect Blog dialogued on drawer-draw conflation and the hateful history of wog, “an offensive term in British English which refers to various immigrant groups.” Lynneguist dispelled the myth of –ogue-less Americans. Fully (sic) took a look at Canberra bashing, “the act of criticising the Australian federal government and its bureaucracy,” a term that “will be included in the next edition of the Australian National Dictionary.”

In other dictionary news, Grantland offered some tidbits from The Devil’s Dictionary of Sportswriting, and the first edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms is now online, from which Akira Orent gleaned 24 particularly interesting ones (we may have mal de raquette from our visit to Boston last week).

At the Visual Thesaurus, Georgia Scurletis stared, glanced, and glared at the words of Twilight. Largehearted Boy alerted us of brackets for “swooniest male” in Young Adult literature (Team Peeta – no, Gale! no, Peeta!), and Quora blogs gave us some Harry Potter etymology.

Mental Floss gave us 11 nicknames and the people who hated them, and The Atlantic explained why hot gym girl is a grosser nickname than hot gym guy. We learned how mountains in the U.S. are named, about the experiences of a lip reader, and why it’s important to invent new words (you don’t need to tell us twice!).

We love that these dead authors have lively social media profiles. We want these tiny books made by 17-year old Charlotte Bronte and these miniature libraries. We’d also like to visit these bookstores in barns.

We were disturbed and amused by these suggested renamings of horse meat, and we’re unreasonably excited now that line breaks are allowed in Twitter.

That’s it for this week!

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Jim Linwood]

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Word Soup: The Favorite Words of AWP 2013

Wordnik schwag

Last week Wordnik headed out to snowy Boston to attend the AWP annual book fair. With over 10,000 attendees and 600 booths, AWP’s is one of the biggest writers’ conferences in the country, and we met tons of interesting people.

We also held a contest: give us your favorite word and we’ll randomly draw three people to win a set of Pocket Posh dictionaries. Congratulations to Lawrence Eby whose choice was the underrated gulch; Nicholl Denice who chose the awesome onomatopoeia; and David Fishkind who went with the lovely gambol.

Now what about all those favorite words? We collected 186, from akrasia to zeugma, and while we can’t cover them all here, we’re excited to give you some highlights. (And because we’re Wordnik, we made a list of all 186 words.)

We received positive words such as happiness, love, and please; beautiful color words such as azure and vermillion; and words having to do with light and shadow like illuminate, luminous, chiaroscuro, and, well, shadow. Crepuscular, “pertaining to or resembling twilight,” was another favorite, as well as dailygone, a Scots word also meaning “twilight,” a new word for us.

A couple of words were meta, such as dictionary and, you guessed it, word, and many simply sounded great, like gobbledygook, kerfuffle, bamboozle, catawampus, ishkabibble, and kerplunk! (which the submitter insisted “had to include an exclamation point”).

Others had to do with specific definitions, such as cataract (“The waterfall, not the degenerated cornea”), and monstrance, which has nothing to do with monsters but is, in the Roman Catholic Church, “a receptacle in which the host is held” (although monstrance and monster are etymologically related).

We received a few anatomy words (alveoli, flange, patella, and phalanges, though we have a feeling that has less to do with finger bones and more with the pseudonym of a certain sitcom character), and a couple of fear words, namely triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, and hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, the fear of very long words, which the submitter pronounced perfectly (“I practiced for hours”). Impressive!

A couple of people felt the pressure of choosing one favorite word and went with the reliable cat. Others were hungry for lunch and picked yogurt, tapioca, chocolate, clementine, persimmon, pomaceous, and the terrific hangry, to be angry from hunger. Still others chose the simple and emphatic no, including five-year old Jonah who wrote the word in all caps (“NO”).

One attendee’s favorite was habiliments, with which she won a spelling bee, while another attendee’s least favorite word was colonel, with which she lost a spelling bee (“I got too excited and spelled kernel instead”). Another attendee picked orange, because “nothing rhymes with it.”

Some words received multiple votes like defenestrate, to throw out the window; diaphanous, “transmitting light; permitting the passage of light; transparent; clear”; interrobang, a blended question mark and exclamation point; and, for some reason, elbow.

A few are definite word of the day contenders, like cacoethes, compulsion, mania; eldritch, strange or eerie; lour, “to be dark, gloomy, and threatening, as clouds”; and flitch, a wooden plank or slab, or a slab of bacon.

Several people’s favorite words were from other languages. In French we had malheureusement, “regrettably, unfortunately,” and pamplemousse, a grapefruit. In Spanish we got igualmente, “likewise”; sonrisa, “smile” but also “sunrise”; and jubilacion, “retirement” but also “jubilation.”

We received the German gemütlichkeit, “coziness more or less,” and in Finnish another vote for “orange,” oranssi. In Mandarin Chinese we got lao wai, literally “old foreigner” but also any foreigner, and from Jamaican English, ku yah, “But see here!” which we’ll begin using immediately.

Finally, we know we shouldn’t play favorites but we can’t help it: the neologisms. There was the Philadelphia slang widorwidout, “with or without (cheese, onions, etc)”; that old favorite, frenemy; and puh-leeze, of which we were assured is “now accepted by the OED” (and even if it weren’t, we would still love it).

There was hyperbolate (“If it’s not a word, it should be” – we agree!), and scrumtrulescent, which was coined by James Lipton (as played by Will Ferrell): “Match Game was absolutely scrumtrulescent.”

Again, check out all the favorite words of AWP 2013.

We hope to see you all next year!

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Coupon Lingo: 10 (Not So) Extreme Couponing Words

low prices everyday

Low Prices Everday, by _tar0_

Daylight saving time – or “spring forward” – begins this Sunday. While we’re not sure how “losing” an hour saves us anything, we were inspired to explore another way one may save: through coupons. Our explorations opened a whole world of couponing lingo. Our 10 favorites are here.

blinkie

“Next comes a bag of cherry tomatoes and three jars of Peter Pan creamy peanut butter, free with a doubled coupon—called a blinkie because it was dispensed from one of the blinking coupon boxes installed in grocery store aisles.”

Matt Schwartz, “Bargain Junkies Are Beating Retailers at Their Own Game,” Wired, November 29, 2010

Blinkies are a type of coupon dispensed from a machine in a store aisle or at checkout. The machine generally has a blinking red light designed to get shoppers’ attention.

A blinkie is also “a small animated graphic for use on a webpage, usually taking the form of picture or phrase with blinking lights around it.”

BOGO

“They decide which numbers will be most enticing, and whether ‘50% off’ sounds better than ‘buy one get one’ offers—known as ‘BOGO,’ in industry parlance.”

Carl Bialik, Elizabeth Holmes, and Ray A. Smith, “Many Discounts, Few Deals,” The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2010

BOGO stands for “buy one get one (free).” The earliest citations we could find for BOGO were the early 1990s, although the acronym could be older than that.

catalina

“If you’ve shopped for groceries at a large supermarket, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the long ‘string’ of coupons that print out at the register along with your store receipt. These checkout coupons, or ‘Catalinas,’ as coupon shoppers commonly call them, are incredibly valuable to coupon shoppers.”

Jill Cataldo, “How ‘Catalina’ Coupons Help You Save,” The Eagle Tribune, May 7, 2010

A catalina coupon is printed at the register after purchase, and is named for the marketing firm behind the idea.

extreme couponing

“The advent of extreme couponing, popularized by the TLC show of the same name about people who clip coupons obsessively, is sparking a backlash as some manufacturers and retailers complain that the pursuit of a big bargain has an ugly side.”

Allison Linn, “Extreme Couponing Sparks Backlash,” NBC News, September 15, 2011

A Wall Street Journal article from March 8, 2010 seems to be the first to mention the term extreme couponers, or “discount devotees [who] have formed vast online communities that collectively unearth and swap digital, mobile-phone and paper coupons,” combining “dozens of coupons and [going] from store to store buying items in quantity, getting stuff free of charge.” The TLC reality show, Extreme Couponing, debuted in December 2010.

Extreme couponing is a play on the phrase, extreme sport, a sport featuring a level of exertion and danger. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), extreme sport originated in 1989 in Skiing Trade News, although a book called Seventh Grade: Most Extreme Climbing was published in 1974.

Coca-Cola is credited with issuing the first coupon

meal ticket

“The government was down to its last bean and wondering where the Heck its next meal-ticket was coming from, when in blows Mr. Man, tucks up his shirt-sleeves, and starts the tables.”

P.G. Wodehouse, The Prince and Betty, 1912

While we now mainly think of meal ticket in its figurative sense – “a person or thing depended on as a source of financial support” – it originally referred to “a card or ticket entitling the holder to a meal or meals,” often at a discount.

Meal tickets originated around 1870 and seemed to be given out to single men and women known as mealers, those who ate in one place and lodged in another. The figurative sense arose around 1899.

peelie

“Try to find one with the sticker coupon (also called a ‘peelie’) to save 50 cents and get it free after doubled coupon.”

Michelle Dudas, “Smart Savings: Clip Coupons, Save for Education,” Fay Observer, December 31, 2011

A peelie is a coupon peeled from the item’s packaging. According to the OED, peelie, or peely-wally, is Scottish slang for “thin; gaunt; pale.” Peelie may be an alteration of pale.

rain check

“So often the store will run out of a sale item and issue a rain check to be used at a later date. . . .The stores certainly honor rain checks, but will not accept the now-expired coupon.”

Jan Leasure, “Store’s Rain-Check Policy Makes Coupon Useless,” The Telegraph, December 8, 1993

The earliest meaning of rain check originated around 1884 and referred to tickets or coupons given to spectators at rained-out baseball games. The figurative meaning of “a promise that an unaccepted offer will be renewed in the future” arose around 1899, says the OED.

The consumer meaning – “an assurance to a customer that an item on sale that is sold out or out of stock may be purchased later at the sale price” – is the newest, coming about around 1955. (The time after World War II led to “mass consumption frenzy.”)

stackable

“With fast-ending sales, stackable coupons and online-only discounts, in-store shoppers often have good reason to question whether the price they see is really the best deal out there.”

Kelli Grant, “App Savvy,” CBS News, April 2, 2012

Stackable coupons are those that can be combined with other coupons and discounts.

stockpile

“We get a glimpse at the couponer’s stockpile. The warehouse-like space usually contains 1,568 bottles of soap, 934 frozen dinners and 6,237 bags of kitty litter. . . .Frightening? Yep. But it’s also a little appealing, especially when you watch the show’s featured couponers pay double digits for a stockpile with a triple-digit price tag.”

Sonya Sorich, “Extreme Couponing on TLC Is a Little Too Extreme,” Ledger-Enquirer, September 27, 2011

Stockpile originated as a U.S. mining term in 1872, says the OED, and referred to “a pile of coal or ore accumulated at the surface after having been mined.” In the early 1940s, the word came to mean “a supply stored for future use,” as well as specifically “an accumulation of nuclear weapons.” Stockpile may also be used as verb meaning “to accumulate and maintain a supply of for future use.”

twofer

“The twofer deal involves a certain expense to producers in the matter of distribution of ‘coupons’ redeemable at the box office on the basis of two tickets for the price of one.”

“Public Likes Bargain Price,” Beaver County Times, October 21, 1974

Twofer, short for “two for (a dollar, etc.),” originated around 1911 as U.S. slang for a cheap cigar, according to the OED, “a cigar sold at two for a quarter.” The coupon meaning, attested to 1948, at first referred specifically to tickets for a play, but now seems to refer to any two for one discount, as well as “an offer, a deal, or an arrangement in which a single expense yields a dual return.”

Twofer used to mean “one who belongs to two minority groups and can be counted, as by an employer, as part of two quotas,” arose around 1969.

[Photo: “Low Prices Everyday,” CC BY 2.0 by _tar0_]

[Photo: “Coca-Cola,” Wired Magazine]

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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup: movies, Dublin phrases, Brogurt

Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

Academy Award Winner

Academy Award Winner

Did you watch the Academy Awards this Sunday? We did and enjoyed this analysis of Oscar speeches far more. Meanwhile, Ben Yagoda enjoyed the luscious language of Lincoln; Ben Schmidt pointed out the anachronisms in Best Picture winner, Argo; and Geoff Nunberg wondered if historical accuracy of language really matters.

In politics, NPR discussed how language shapes the gun debate; we met the man who edits the speeches of North Korean leader Kim Jung Un; and we were glad to learn the Associated Press changed their style guidelines in regards to the language around same-sex marriage.

While last week Allan Metcalf explained the grammar of newspaper headlines, this week he told us about the poetry of it. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Gill Francis assured us you can’t go wrong with a hyphen, and Lars Trap-Jensen gave us a view from Denmark regarding the dominance of English. The OxfordWords blog discussed the language of crime, and Stan Carey translated some wonderful Dublin phrases.

Fritinancy’s word of the week was behindativeness, “the exaggerated rear shape created by a large dress bustle.” The Word Spy spotted goalodicy, “the continued pursuit of a goal despite evidence that the goal cannot be achieved,” and demitarian, “a person who cuts his or her meat consumption in half.”

The Dialect Blog shared a great find, the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation, as well as some thoughts on the language in Game of Thrones. Lynneguist explained the difference between British and American crosswords. Sesquiotica gave us a taste of moxibustion and glides, and as his alter ego James Harbeck, rounded up nine confusing ways to pluralize words.

Jesse Sheidlower spoke to Time Out about sex in the dictionary, while Christine Ammer discussed the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms with NPR. Megan Garber of The Atlantic showed us the Kindle of the 16th century. BBC News discussed SaypU, a proposed universal phonetic alphabet, while Victor Mair at Language Log had his doubts. Akira Okrent at Mental Floss wondered how many languages it’s possible to know. Meanwhile, a quirky dialect in northern California is dying out.

In author news, 50 unseen Rudyard Kipling poems have been discovered, and Jane Austen stamps are being issued for 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice. Based on these syllabi, we’d take a class with any of these famous authors, and would also consider taking these performance enhancing substances if the literary competition called for it, such as these medieval word puzzles.

We loved these illustrations from Edward Gorey for The War of the Worlds and these from Charles Addams for Mother Goose. We learned the fun meanings of some ancient words; the origins of 10 great insults; the linguistic history behind the phrase, rainbows and unicorns; and new ways to sit in the office thanks to smartphones and tablets.

We found out what a space roar is and the possible new names of Pluto’s smallest moons. In other naming news, certain surnames in the UK are dying out and apparently Chicken McNugget shapes have official names. Finally, we were saddened to learn that there’s a real life thing called Brogurt (we hope Burt from Raising Hope gets a cut).

That’s it for this week! Next week we’ll be at the AWP Bookfair. Come to booth 2907 and say hello!

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Davidlohr Bues]

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Word Soup Wednesday: crotcherazzi, jookin’, secessionist

Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words so you don’t have to. Check out our latest selections.

The Catfish's Eye

The Catfish's Eye, by Michael Bentley

catfish

Stephen Colbert [regarding fake MTV and BET Twitter hacks]: “Yes, we were totally catfished. They made us fall in love with the fact that we were duped by vertically integrated platform synergies.”

The Colbert Report, February 21, 2013

Catfish “refers to a person who creates a fake online profile in order to fraudulently seduce someone,” and comes from the movie of the same name in which a man discovers the woman with whom he’s had an online relationship isn’t young and single but in her 40s and married. For even more on catfishing, check out Ben Zimmer’s piece in The Boston Globe.

crotcherazzi

Mindy: “You’ll have to get to know bodyguard, Denelle. And there might be crotcherazzi.”

“Mindy’s Minute,” The Mindy Project, February 19, 2013

Crotcherazzi, a blend of crotch and paparazzi, refers to photographers who capture, whether by design or mistake, crotch shots of female celebrities (usually going commando) as they awkwardly get out of vehicles and inadvertently flash whoever might be watching.

The origin of go commando is obscure. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase may have to do with “commandos‘ reputation for action, toughness, or resourcefulness rather than to any specific practice.”

dash cam

Newscaster: “Motorists have turned to dash cams for self-protection, visual proof to fend off charges from possibly corrupt police officers and from insurance scammers who often stage accidents like this one captured here.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, February 19, 2013

A dash cam is a video camera that sits on the dashboard of one’s car. According to Wired, “a combination of inexpensive cameras, flash memory and regulations passed by the Interior Ministry in 2009 that removed any legal hurdles for in-dash cameras has made it easy and cheap for drivers [in Russia] to install the equipment.” Enjoy the craziest Russian dash cam videos of 2012.

diaper pattern

Appraiser: “And then it’s all beautifully engraved with these diaper patterns, every inch of it. This thing was a very complicated method of manufacture. What they used to do was build up one layer of lacquer, then they had to let it dry under ideal conditions. And then they polished it, and it was another layer, and another layer, and another layer, and another layer.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 25, 2013

A diaper pattern is a repeated pattern of squares, rectangles, or lozenges. Diaper in this sense comes from the Old French diaspre, “ornamental cloth; flowered, patterned silk cloth.” The sense of “underpants for babies” originated around 1837, says the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Jabot

jabot

Appraiser: “Well, it’s a beautiful French Art Deco brooch. I would date it circa 1925. And it’s called a jabot.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 25, 2013

A jabot is “an ornamental cascade of ruffles or frills down the front of a shirt, blouse, or dress,” often held in place with a pin or brooch, evidently also referred to as a jabot. Jabot may come from the French meaning of the word, “crop of a bird.”

jaternice

Andrew Zimmern: “A Czech sausage with a funny name – jaternice – combines some of my favorite flavors and makes great use of a few underappreciated parts of the pig.”

“Iowa,” Bizarre Foods America, February 25, 2013

Jaternice is a Bohemian style liver sausage, and translates from Czech as “pork sausage.”

jookin’

Stephen Colbert: “For the people out there who are not as hip or fly as I am, what is jookin’?”
Lil Buck: “We call it Memphis jookin’ because it’s a dance that originated almost 30 years ago in Memphis, Tennessee. It started with a line dance called the gangsta walk. . . .It was like a really confident line dance. . . .Gangsta walkin’ evolved into jookin’.”

The Colbert Report, February 21, 2013

According to the book Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture by Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, the origin of the word jookin is obscure. It seems to be the same jook, or juke, as in jukebox or juke joint, where juke means to play dance music, to dance, or “to deceive or outmaneuver a defender by a feint.” The word may come from the Gullah word juke or joog meaning “wicked, disorderly.”

Gangsta walking is also known as g-walk, buck jump, rollin, and buckin.

Lupercalia

Stephen Colbert: “The true meaning of Valentine’s Day is all about the L-word. Lupercalia! The mid-February Roman fertility feast that St. Valentine’s Day is based on. As I’m sure you know, Lupercalia is named for Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled Rome’s twin founders, Romulus and Remus.”

The Colbert Report, February 14, 2013

Lupercalia is an ancient Roman festival celebrated in the middle of February. According to the Century Dictionary, the origin of the festival “is older than the legend of Romulus and the wolf,” and “was originally a local purification ceremony of the Palatine city, in which human victims were sacrificed.”

Later “the victims were goats and a dog, and the celebrants ran around the old line of the Palatine walls, striking all whom they met with thongs cut from the skins of the slaughtered animals.” This was “reputed to preserve women from sterility.”

maquette

Appraiser: “These are in fact the maquettes for posters. These are the original artwork that was done from which posters would have been created.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 18, 2013

A maquette is “a usually small model of an intended work, such as a sculpture or piece of architecture.” The word is French and comes from the Italian macchietta, “sketch.”

plein air

Appraiser: “This painting is done in a plein air style. It’s impressionistic. He used a heavy brushstroke in his compositions.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 18, 2013

Plein air, which in French means “(in) the open air,” is “a style of painting produced out of doors in natural light.”

secessionist

Larry Kilgore: “I ran for Senate in 2008 on a secessionist platform and received 225,000 votes.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, February 21, 2013

The word secessionist originally referred to, in U.S. history, “one who took part in or sympathized with the attempt of the Southern States, in 1860–65, to withdraw from the Union,” and now refers to anyone who favors secession, the act of separating or withdrawing from a religious or political organization.

Larry Kilgore is “one of the most prominent supporters of Texas secession,” and during his Senate run in 2007, “advocated the death penalty for abortion and adultery, and flogging for vulgar language and transvestitism.” He also “believes that Abraham Lincoln was the American equivalent of Hitler.” Kilgore legally changed his middle name from Scott to SECEDE (all caps his) in 2012.

tramp art

Appraiser: “The tramp art frame itself is fantastic. They made these out of little thin pieces of wood, as you know… could have been cigar boxes. And tramp art. . .weren’t necessarily made by tramps, they were just made by anonymous people.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 25, 2013

Tramp art is art made from “discarded materials, especially cigar boxes, in the period following the American Civil War through the 1930s.” Tramp art wasn’t necessarily made by tramps or hobos but by “untrained, mainly poor artists from a broad range of nationalities, using meager tools.”

[Photo: “The Catfish’s Eye,” CC BY 2.0 by Michael Bentley]

[Photo: “Jabot,” Public Domain by Dan Rusch-Fischer]