The app will create word maps that blossom with related words, branching out to synonyms and definitions. Users will fly through floating constellations of words and discover relationships between them.
IDEA.org is raising funding over at Kickstarter – go over and take a look!
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.
In case you didn’t know, a little show called Mad Men is having its season premiere this Sunday. While the show may get most fashion and design details right for the period, what about the language? “Anachronismmachine” Ben Schmidttakes a look.
At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Orin Hargaves explained speech acts, and Stan Carey posted about nonsense terms (balderdash!), and on his own site, had some great suggestions for new language sites, including Oz Words. Check out their posts on budgie smugglers, “a colloquial term for a pair of men’s swimming briefs” (and an excellent name for a rock band); stormstick, or umbrella; and Johnniedom, “the social world of fashionable young men.”
Across the pond, Lynneguist parsed the difference between get a break and catch a break. Fritinancy deliberated on two big companies with bad name changes (why, Kraft?), and picked for words of the week, minaudière, “a small, hard-sided, often bejeweled evening bag meant to be carried in the hand,” and akrasia, “a lack of command over oneself; a weakness of will.”
In her week in words, Erin McKean noticed stiction, “surface friction that tends to keep mechanisms from beginning to move’”; cheechako, “Alaskan slang for ‘newcomer’”; shengnu, “used to describe an unmarried woman ever so precariously teetering near the age of 30,” literally, “leftover woman”; and quenelle, a kind of dumpling. Meanwhile, Word Spy spotted cisgender, “identifying with one’s physical gender.”
The pokey. The slammer. The clink. How many different ways are there to say prison, and where do these words come from? We decided to find out.
Our latest obsession isn’t completely arbitrary. Forty-nine years ago today, Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary. Also called the Rock, the island was named for bird that roosted there, the pelican, which in Spanish is, you guessed it, alcatraz.
From the other side of the country came the expression up the river, which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, originally referred to the Hudson River and Sing Sing, a maximum security prison in Ossining, New York. Sing Sing was the original name of Ossining, and was derived from the name of the Native American tribe, the Sint Sinck, who sold the area to one Frederick Philipse.
Some prisons were so famous (or in some cases, infamous), their names became common words. The stir in stir-crazy (“distraught or restless from long confinement in or as if in prison”) is a slang term for prison, and comes from Start Newgate, “a former prison in London notorious for its unsanitary conditions and burnt down in riots in 1780.” Meanwhile, Newgate became a verb meaning “to imprison.”
Another synonym for prison, bocardo, originally referred to Bocardo Prison in Oxford, England. Bastille, which comes from an Old French word meaning “fortress, tower, fortified, building,” was “built in Paris in the 14th century and used as a prison in the 17th and 18th centuries,” and now refers to “a jail or prison (especially one that is run in a tyrannical manner).”
But how does one get to prison? You could take a paddy wagon, which may come from Paddy, which originated from “the pet form of the common Irish proper name Patrick (Ir. Padraig),” and became a disparaging term for someone of Irish descent. Paddy wagon was so-called perhaps “because many police officers were Irish” at the time (around 1930). The paddy wagon is also known as a meat wagon, cattle car, or Black Maria.
According to World Wide Words, Black Maria is American in origin, though its exact etymology is unclear. The name may come from a Boston story “about Maria Lee, a large black woman who kept a boarding house in the 1820s with such severity that she became more feared than the police, who called on her to help them catch and restrain criminals,” or from the name of a “famous black racehorse of the period, also named Black Maria.”
Before heading to the big house, prisoners may first be held in a sponging-house, “a victualing-house or tavern where persons arrested for debt were kept by a bailiff for twenty-four hours before being lodged in prison, in order that their friends might have an opportunity of settling the debt.” The sponging-house was so-named “from the extortionate charges made upon prisoners for their accommodation therein,” with sponge meaning “to drain; harass by extortion; squeeze.”
A bridewell was “a house of correction for the confinement of vagrants and disorderly persons,” and became a name “generally given to a prison in connection with a police-station, for the temporary detention of those who have been arrested by the police.” According to the Virtual Linguist, the term bridewell “comes from an old area of London near modern-day Fleet Street, where there was a well dedicated to St Bride,” a patron saint of Ireland, and “is still used by some police forces in the UK, usually as the name of a police station, or of a custody suite.”
A spinning house was “a house of correction, so-called because women of loose character were obliged to spin or to beat hemp as punishment.” Spinster, which originally referred to any person, man or woman, whose occupation was spinning, also meant “a woman of an evil life or character: so called from being forced to spin in the house of correction.” The word is now commonly known as “a woman who has remained single beyond the conventional age for marrying.”
A rogue-house is a house for rogues; a lobspound is a pound for lobs or louts, and was “often applied to the juvenile prison made for a child between the feet of a grown-up person.” Another prison term, hoosegow, was coined in 1911 in the western U.S. probably as a mispronunciation of the Mexican Spanish juzgao, “tribunal, court.” An older term, calaboose (1792), is from the Louisiana French calabouse, which comes from the Spanish calabozo, “dungeon.”
A panopticon was a prison proposed by Jeremy Bentham, “so arranged that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them.” On a smaller scale is the Judas, “a small opening in the door or wall of a cell to enable the guards to watch the prisoners.” Also called a judas-hole.
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.
Here are our favorites from last week:
Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have another chance this week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
During the gold and silver rush years in the second half of the 19th century, a number of the most famous and successful miners were of Irish and Irish American birth. . . .Over time this association of the Irish with mining fortunes led to the expression “luck of the Irish.” Of course, it carried with it a certain tone of derision, as if to say, only by sheer luck, as opposed to brains, could these fools succeed.
The word luck is Middle Dutch in origin, coming from luc, a shortening of gheluc, “happiness, good fortune.” Luck may have been borrowed into English in the 15th century as a gambling term. (Draw an ambsace, or double aces? Then you’re S.O.L., or shit out of luck, a phrase which originated as World War I military slang.)
Luck gives us lots of words and phrases besides the familiar (lucky strike, lucky streak, tough luck, don’t push your luck, beginner’s luck). A lucky-penny is “a small sum given back ‘for luck’ to the purchaser or payer by the person who receives money in a bargain or other transaction,” as well as “a copper tossed overboard ‘for luck.’” A lucky-bag is “a receptacle on a man-of-war for all clothes and other articles of private property carelessly left by their owners,” so-called because these articles “were later auctioned off,” says A Sailor’s History of the U.S. Navy, “thereby making those Sailors fortunate enough to obtain new items for relatively little money ‘lucky.’” Another definition of lucky-bag is similar to that of grab bag or goody bag.
A luckdragon, “a fictitious flying dragon with a wingless elongated body, possessing neither magical talent nor immense physical strength, but distinctive in its unfailing serendipity,” is a meme based on the character from the film, The Neverending Story.
Potluck, now mostly associated with “a meal consisting of whatever guests have brought,” originally meant “what may chance to be in the pot, in provision for a meal; hence, a meal at which no special preparation has been made for guests.” And while potluck bears a striking resemblance to potlatch, a Native American “feast, often lasting several days,” according to the Word Detective, “there is no actual connection between the words.”
Hap is older than luck. Originating in the 12th century, the word comes from the Old Norse happ, meaning “chance, good luck.” Hap gives us happy, as well as haphazard, “chance; accidental; random”; hapless, “luckless, unfortunate”; and mishap, “misfortune.”
Auspicious, “of good omen; betokening success,” comes from the Latin auspicium, “divination by observing the flight of birds.” In ancient Rome, an augur was “a functionary whose duty it was to observe and to interpret, according to traditional rules, the auspices, or reputed natural signs concerning future events.” An auspex was an augur “who interpreted omens derived from the observation of birds.” To auspicate means “to initiate or inaugurate with ceremonies calculated to insure good luck.”
Want to wish someone good luck? Prosit! you might say over drinks. Prosit means “good luck to you,” and comes from the Latin, by way of German, prōsit, “may it benefit.” You might tell a superstitious actor to break a leg (and if they’re in a certain play, definitely don’t utter the name of said play). The origin of break a leg is obscure and complex with many theories.
To bestow good luck on someone, give them a handsel, “a gift or token of good fortune or good will; especially, a New-Year’s gift.” A handsel is also “a sale, gift, or delivery which is regarded as the first of a series,” such as “the first earnings of any one in a new employment or place of business; the first money taken in a shop newly opened; the first present sent to a young woman on her wedding-day, etc.” The word comes from the Old Norse handsal, “legal transfer.”
Need some extra luck? Aside from a rabbit’s foot, horseshoe, or four-leaf clover, carry a porte-bonheur, “a charm, an amulet, or a trinket carried after the fashion of an amulet, suspended to a bracelet or other article of personal adornment.” Porte-bonheur translates from the French as “bearing happiness.” (For more amulets, check out this list.) Also keep your eye out for a money-spider, “a small spider. . .of common occurrence in North America, supposed to prognosticate good luck or the receipt of money to the person it crawls on.”
To ward off bad luck, be sure to unberufen, or touch wood. Unberufentranslates from the German as unbidden, or uninvited, perhaps with the idea of uninviting bad luck. World Wide Words says the origin may have to do with “pre-Christian rituals involving the spirits of sacred trees such as the oak, ash, holly or hawthorn,”; “an old Irish belief that you should knock on wood to let the little people know that you are thanking them for a bit of good luck”; or the “belief that the knocking sound prevents the Devil from hearing your unwise comments.” The phrase is relatively modern with the earliest citation from 1899.
Or you could get your own mascot, “a thing supposed to bring good luck to its possessor; a person whose presence is supposed to be a cause of good fortune.” The word mascot comes from the French mascotte, “sorcerer’s charm,” which ultimately comes from the Medieval Latin masca, “mask, specter, witch.”
Phillie Phanatic at St. Patrick’s Day Parade, by Mobilus In Mobili
Hopefully all of these will bring you to mahurat, a Hindi word meaning “a time or moment considered lucky, often used to mark the commencement of a project.”
Have nothing but bad luck? Then you’re a schlimazel, “an extremely unlucky or inept person,” which is Yiddish in origin, coming from the Middle High German slimp, “wrong,” plus the Yiddish mazl, “luck.” (Mazel tov means “best wishes” and translates as “good luck.”)
(And for you Laverne & Shirley fans, a schlemiel is “a habitual bungler; a dolt,” while hassenpfeffer is “a highly seasoned stew of marinated rabbit meat.” Put it all together and you apparently have a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant, though we can’t find much evidence to back this.)
A jinx is “a person or thing that is believed to bring bad luck.” The word originated in 1911 as baseball slang and ultimately came from the Latin iynx, “wryneck,” a bird used in witchcraft and divination. A Jonah is “a person on shipboard regarded as the cause of ill luck; any one whose presence is supposed or alleged to cause misfortune,” perhaps due to the story in the Old Testament of Jonah and the whale.
To wish someone ill will, say with a wanion. The origin of wanion is unknown though it may have to do with the waning of the moon. You could also say a bad scran to you, with scran meaning “scraps; broken victuals; refuse,” or food in general. Scran may come from the Norwegian skran, “rubbish.” Bad cess to you also works, with cess possibly meaning “a rate or tax.”
Feel bad for an unfortunate someone? Say hard cheese. The phrase has its origins in the literal, “cheese which is old, dried up and considered indigestible.”
Of course we only wish everyone good luck , and so we raise our glasses (or coffee mugs): “Prosit!”
While the television show The Soup brings you “the strange, obscure and totally unbelievable moments in pop culture, celebrity news and reality TV,” Word Soup brings you those strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and just about anything else on TV.
adultaphobe
Liz: “And I can’t be your girlfriend because I’m not an old pedophile.”
Lynn: “We prefer the term adultaphobe.”
“Alexis Goodlooking and the Case of the Missing Whiskey,” 30 Rock, March 1, 2012
Adultaphobe is a blend of adult and the combining form-phobe, which comes from the Greek phobos, “fear, panic, flight.” An adultaphobe is one who fears adults. More phobias.
badge bunny
Hank: “You sure she’s not playing badge bunny with you?”
“Plumed Serpent,” Grimm, March 9, 2012
A badge bunny is “a woman who is romantically attracted to police officers and who seeks out their companionship.” The origin is unknown. The earliest mention we could find was from 2004: “In the past, badge bunnies, also known as ‘badgies,’ ‘badge lickers’ and ‘tin lizards,’ have met cops by intentionally speeding, hanging around police bars or filing silly complaints at precincts.”
condom accident
Jenna: “Tonight during the finalists’ duet, I’m gonna cry. Now of course none of these little condom accidents could actually make me cry. So I’m gonna rub this under my eyes to help me fake it.”
“Standards and Practices,” 30 Rock, March 8, 2012
Condom accident is a disparaging term referring to children, implying that the children are unplanned and unwanted.
Dämonfeuer
Eddie: “They’re kind of a throwback to the days of yore. Knights in shining armor. From my understanding, they come from a dragon-like lineage.”
Nick: “I thought dragons were mythological.”
Eddie: “Dragons are. Dämonfeuers aren’t.”
“Plumed Serpent,” Grimm, March 9, 2012
Dämonfeuers are fire-breathing dragon-like creatures that can take on human form. The word translates from the German as “demonfire.”
duderus
Tina: “Dear Diary, tonight we’re sneaking into the old Taffy Factory. Also, if guys had uteruses, they’d be called duderuses.”
“The Belchies,” Bob’s Burgers, March 11, 2012
Duderus is a blend of dude and uterus. The statement may be a play on phrases around the state of women’s healthcare (“If men could get pregnant. . .”).
funcussion
Timmy [after deliberately bashing own head]: “I got a funcussion!”
“At Long Last Leave,” The Simpsons, February 19, 2012
To man up means “to ‘be a man about it’; to do the things a good man is traditionally expected to do, such as: taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions; displaying bravery or toughness in the face of adversity; providing for one’s family, etc.” To girl down is presumably the opposite.
meatsicle
Sally [referring to a vampire who has been skinned alive]: “I’m not baby-sitting your meatsicle.”
“When I Think About You I Shred Myself,” Being Human, March 12, 2012
Meatsicle is a blend of meat and popsicle. Popsicle is another blend, of pop and icicle, and is a genericized trademark “for a colored, flavored ice confection with one or two flat sticks for a handle.” Meatsicle implies a lifeless piece of meat on a stick.
monsterate
Luke [covered in fake blood]: “Dad staged the whole thing so we could go on the trapeze without you three.”
Claire: “Why?”
Luke: “Because. . .Because. . .Because of this! You’re all monsterating!”
“Leap Day,” Modern Family, February 29, 2012
Monsterate is a blend of monster and menstruate, implying that women turn into monsters when they’re menstruating. (Thanks to Fritinancy for pointing this out to us!)
numismatic
Hank: “Sam was a big-time numismatic.”
Nick: “Is that some kind of religion?”
Hank: “In a way, yeah. Coins.”
“Three Coins in the Fuchsbau,” Grimm, March 2, 2012
Numismatic means “of or pertaining to coins or medals.” Here the word is used as a noun meaning “someone who collects coins; a coin enthusiast.” Numismatic ultimately comes from the Greek nomisma, “current coin.”
Schakal
Eddie: “These are some pretty bad Schakals your relative is writing about. Look out: ate a baby. That’s rude.”
“Three Coins in the Fuchsbau,” Grimm, March 2, 2012
Schakals are jackal-like creatures that can take on human form. The word translates from the German as “jackal.”
shred
Sally [to another ghost]: “Stevie shredded you!”
“When I Think About You I Shred Myself,” Being Human, March 12, 2012
To shred in this context means to annihilate a ghost. Other slang terms of shred include “to drop fat and water weight before a competition,” and “to play very fast (especially guitar solos in rock and metal genres).”
Steinadler
Eddie: “Steinadlers seem to be involved with the military. Like heroic, noble, apparently with very large. . .sausages? I don’t think I’m translating that correctly.”
“Three Coins in the Fuchsbau,” Grimm, March 2, 2012
Steinadlers are eagle-like creatures that can take on human form. Steinadler translates from the German as “golden eagle.”
three-peat
Jess: “Are you going to three-peat this ho?”
“Bully,” New Girl, February 21, 2012
Three-peat, a blend of three and repeat, means to win something three times in a row. In this context, three-peat means to have sex with the same woman three consecutive times.
under-tained
Jon Stewart: “Are you not under-tained? There goes my whole night. Sorry, kids, Daddy can’t read you a bedtime story because he’s got to spend the next five hours watching Blitzer and John King fingerbang Ohio on a magic touchscreen to find out how differently 35-42 year old Catholics voted in Adams County versus this time in 2008.”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 7, 2012
Under-tained is blend of under and entertained, and means to be entertained in an underwhleming way. It plays on the phrase from the film Gladiator, “Are you not entertained?”
That’s it for this week! Remember, if you see any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup. Your word and Twitter handle might appear right here!
Every year on 3.14 (get it?), number enthusiasts celebrate Pi Day (which also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday). Pi is “the name of a symbol (π) used in geometry for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter or 3.1415927,” first used by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1748. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word comes from the Greek letter pi (which comes from the Hebrew word for “little mouth”), as an abbreviation of the Greek periphereia, meaning “periphery,” referring to the periphery or diameter of a circle.
(Pi also means “printing-types mixed together indiscriminately; type in a confused or jumbled condition or mass,” but this is probably an alteration of pie, with the idea of a medley or magpie, a bird known for pilfering and hoarding a medley or jumble of objects.)
Piphilology “comprises the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember a span of digits of the mathematical constant π.” The word is a blend of pi and philology, “the study of language,” which comes from the Greek philologos, “fond of learning or of words.” A mnemonic (from the Greek mnemonikos, “of or pertaining to memory”) is “a device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering.”
A piem is such a device for memorizing the digits of pi (if you’re so inclined). A portmanteau of pi and poem, piems “represent π in a way such that the length of each word (in letters) represents a digit.” A famous piem is “How I need a drink, alcoholic of course [or, in nature] after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics,” developed by Sir James Jeans, an English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician. For more piems, check out Pi Wordplay from Wolfram Math World.
Another type of mnemonic is a visual mnemonic, which works “by associating an image with characters or objects whose name sounds like the item that has to be memorized.” A simple visual mnemonic for identifying one’s drinking glass and bread plate while dining in a formal setting with others is to form a lower case B with one’s left hand and a lower case D with one’s right. One’s drinking glass, represented by D, is on the right, while one’s bread plate, represented by B, is on the left.
First-letter mnemonics take the first letter of each word of a list of words, and form an acronym, a phrase, or a name. HOMES is an acronym used for memorizing the Great Lakes of North America, consisting of Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. SOHCAHTOA is used for remembering the trigonometric functions “sine equals opposite over hypotenuse; cosine equals adjacent over hypotenuse; tangent equals opposite over adjacent.”
Dear King Philip Come Over For Good Spaghetti is just one of many phrase mnemonics used for memorizing taxonomy in biology (domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). A mnemonic for memorizing the planets is My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto), or My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos, for those anti-planet Pluto. Roy G. Biv is a name mnemonic used for remembering “the color sequence of the visible spectrum” (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). For even more first-letter mnemonic devices, visit this list – add your own!
