Category Archives: holidays

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How to Speak Rabbit

Raving Rabbids

Raving Rabbids

Easter is right around the corner, and you know what that means: a visit from the Easter Coney.

Don’t know what a coney is? Neither did we, at first. The word rabbit once only referred to rabbit young, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. An adult rabbit was called a coney, which ultimately coming from the Latin cuniculus, “like a rabbit.” (Cuniculus also refers to “a small underground passage,” similiar to rabbit burrows, and “a genus of lemmings,” so-called because they “somewhat resemble small rabbits.”) Coney got dropped for rabbit in the 19th century after “British slang picked up coney as a punning synonym for cunny,” a word for a certain female body part. You can still see coney in use today in Coney Island, aka “Rabbit Island,” named because of its “many and diverse rabbits.”

Many and diverse also are rabbit idioms. In cricket, a rabbit is “a very poor batsman.” In running, it’s “a runner who intentionally sets a fast pace for a teammate during a long-distance race,” perhaps named for the artificial rabbit in dog racing. A rabbit punch isn’t a punch from a rabbit but “a chopping blow to the back of the neck,” so-called “from resemblance to a gamekeeper’s method of dispatching an injured rabbit.”

Rabbit food refers to “vegetables, especially those that are raw.” To rabbit on is to “talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner,” and is a shortening of Cockney rhyming slang, rabbit and pork. Rabbit rabbit is “a common British superstition,” in which one must say, “Rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit,” or some variation thereof, “upon waking on the first day of each new month,” to receive good luck for that month.

As for bunny, it first came around in the 1580s meaning “squirrel,” then in the 1680s become a pet name for rabbit. The word may ultimately come from the Scottish bun, “tail of a hare.” (Bun meaning a roll or biscuit may come from the Old French buignete, “a fritter,” which originally meant “boil, swelling.”) The bunny hug is “a syncopated ballroom dance” made popular in the U.S. in 1912.

The bunny hop is another type of dance, “created at Balboa High School of San Francisco in 1952.” A Playboy Bunny is a waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club, while a badge bunny is “a woman who is romantically attracted to police officers.” Under most of our beds are dust bunnies, “a mass of fine, dry particles of matter, especially hair and skin particles, that is formed by static electricity,” named presumably for their fluffy, bunny-like appearance. An older term for dust bunny is beggar’s velvet.

If you want to get all scientific, there’s lagomorph, “any of various plant-eating mammals having fully furred feet and two pairs of upper incisors.” The word comes from the Greek lagos, “hare,” literally “with drooping ears.” Lagos also gives us lagotic, “rabbit-eared,” and related is lax, “slack, loose, relaxed.”

Rabbit fur is lapin, “especially when dyed to imitate a more expensive fur,” and is an alteration of the Old French lapriel. Civet is “a stew, usually of rabbit or hare, flavored with onion, cives, garlic, or the like,” and may ultimately come from an Arabic word meaning “cream.” Gibelotte is another type of rabbit stew originating from France, and translates as “fricassee of game.”

A fricassee is “a dish made by cutting chickens, rabbits, or other small animals into pieces, and dressing them with a gravy in a frying-pan.” The word probably comes from the French frire, “to fry,” plus casser, “to break, crack.” Meanwhile, Welsh rabbit, also known as Welsh rarebit, isn’t rabbit at all but a dish of “melted cheese over toasted bread, flavored in various ways, as with ale, beer, milk, or spices.” Welsh was “used disparagingly of inferior or substitute things,” while rabbit, according to World Wide Words, “is here being used in the same way as ‘turtle’ in ‘mock-turtle soup’, which has never been near a turtle, or ‘duck’ in ‘Bombay duck’, which was actually a dried fish called bummalo.”

And in case you’re wondering what the heck rabbits have to do with Easter anyway, Discovery News says the origin of the Easter rabbit “can be traced back to 13th century, pre-Christian Germany, when people worshiped several gods and goddesses,” including Eostra, “the goddess of spring and fertility,” whose symbol “was the rabbit because of the animal’s high reproduction rate.” As for Easter eggs, they “represent Jesus’ resurrection.”

We hope you enjoyed this trip down the rabbit hole of rabbit words. Now excuse us while we revive ourselves with bunnies of the chocolate variety.

[Photo: “Raving Rabbids,” CC BY 2.0 by Ken’s Oven]

 

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Lucky Words

fourleafclover

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, which has gotten us thinking about luck and luck words.

The phrase luck of the Irish is commonly thought to mean “extreme good fortune.” However, according to Edward T. O’Donnell, an Associate Professor of History at Holy Cross College and author of 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History, the term has not an Irish origin but “a happier, if not altogether positive,” American one.

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.”

Money Spider

Money Spider, by Silversyrpher

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Silversyrpher]

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. Unberufen translates 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

Phillie Phanatic at St. Patrick’s Day Parade, by Mobilus In Mobili

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 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!”

[Photo via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 by John]

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Happy Pi Day!

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!

Whatever mnemonic device you use, have fun memorizing a million digits of pi!

[Photo via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 by medea_material]

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What Is Love?

Clark's O. N. T. Spool Cotton [front]

What is love? En Vogue sang about it, poets have mused on it, and people look it up in the dictionary. Here’s our attempt to understand what exactly love is.

The word love comes from the Old English lufu, “love, affection, friendliness.” The Greek root for love is philia (see this list for lots of examples) while the Latin root is amare, which gives us words like amorous, paramour, amiable, and more.

Puppy love, which goes back to at least 1834, is “adolescent infatuation,” and was also once known as calf-love, presumably modeled on the overeager, needy behavior of puppies and calves. A crush, first recorded in 1884, is a “temporary infatuation” while a man crush (which seems to have originated around 2005) is when a straight man has “a crush-like but non-sexual feeling of attraction toward and admiration for a man.” A man crush may result in a man date and possibly some bromance.

Limerence is a type of unrequited love. The word was coined by psychology professor Dorothy Tennov who claimed that the word “has no roots whatsoever” and “no etymology whatsoever.” To carry a torch for someone means “to love or to be romantically infatuated with, especially when such feelings are not reciprocated,” and may come from the “the Greek and Roman tradition of a wedding torch.” This idiom gives us torch song, “a song, often sentimental, lamenting an unrequited love,” which seems to have originated in 1927.

Few of us are lucky enough to experience love at first sight, or as the French say, coup de foudre, literally “stroke of lightning.” How about yuanfen, “a relationship by fate or destiny”? Or koi no yokan, “the sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love”? (Be sure to check out the rest of Big Think’s list for more untranslatable foreign love phrases.)

If you’re a flirt, you’re “one who plays at courtship.” Flirt originally meant “to turn up one’s nose, sneer at” (1550s), then “to rap or flick, as with the fingers” (1560s). By the 1560s, flirt as a noun came to mean “a pert young hussey,” and by 1777 the verb sense came to mean “play at courtship,” which may have been influenced by Old French fleureter, “talk sweet nonsense,” or “to touch a thing in passing.”

If you like to flirt, you also like to mash (check out our blog post on letters and notes for the etymology). Or maybe smirting, a blend of smoking and flirting, is more your thing. Smirting was coined in Ireland after “the introduction of the pub and restaurant smoking ban in January 2004.” There’s also smexting, smoking and texting, a more solitary activity, unless of course you’re engaging in sexting or textual intercourse (in which case you may want to save your cigarette for afterward).

If you prefer a real date, try cyberdating (especially since it’s now apparently the second most common way for couples to meet); speed dating, “an organized event in which prospective romantic partners meet each other through a series of short one-to-one  meetings”;  hyperdating, “dating many different people over a short period of time”; intellidating, “dating that emphasizes intelligence, particularly by attending lectures, readings, or other cultural events”; or niche dating, “dating people based on a single characteristic, or on a very limited set of characteristics.”

Bad date? Make sure to arrange a rescue call, “a call to a cell phone placed at a prearranged time to give the person being called an excuse to end a date or other social engagement” (not to be confused with a booty call), especially if you end up with a toxic bachelor, “an unmarried man who is selfish, insensitive, and afraid of commitment.”

Or perhaps you’re a quirkyalone, “a person who enjoys being single and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately,” or a leather spinster, a woman “who is happily unmarried and has no desire to seek a mate.”

Most of us have heard enough about cougars and MILFs, but how about a manther (a blend of man and panther), “a middle-aged man who seeks sexual or romantic relationships with significantly younger women,” or a Mellencamp, “a woman who has aged out of being a ‘cougar’,” named for singer John Cougar Mellencamp. (In case you were wondering, another, far less-SFW eponym is santorum, named for Rick Santorum, and which we’ll refrain from defining here.)

Hear wedding bells? Men might want to consider a management ring, an engagement ring for men. And ladies? Try not to morph into bridezilla, part bride, part Godzilla, a phrase which seems to have originated in the mid 1990s. But it’s okay if you have an office spouse, “a co-worker with whom one has a very close but nonromantic relationship.”

Whew! Love is complicated.

Happy Valentine’s Day, or if you prefer, happy Galentine’s Day.

Special thanks to Word Spy.

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Scottish Food Words: Celebrating Robert Burns

Robert Burns Day, otherwise known as Burns Night, honors the birthday of Scottish poet, or makar, Robert Burns. Lovers of Burns, Scots poetry, and haggis gather together every January 25 to celebrate with a Burns supper, which involves a toast to the lassies, a recitation of Burns’ poetry, and the ingesting and imbibing of many Scottish eats and drinks.

For the first course, you may start with some cockieleekie, “soup made of a cock or other fowl boiled with leeks,” or Scotch broth, “a thick soup made from beef or mutton with vegetables and pearl barley.” Afterward is the “entrance of the haggis,” at which time bagpipes (or zampognas, gaidas, cornemuses, or loures) play some music, such as a pibroch, “a wild, irregular kind of music, peculiar to the Scottish Highlands, performed upon the bagpipe.” The word pibroch comes from the Scottish Gaelic piobaireachd, “pipe music,” which ultimately comes from the Latin pipare, “to chirp or peep.”

Just so you know what you’re in for, haggis is “a dish made of a sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver, minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, salt, and pepper, and boiled in a bag, usually the stomach of a sheep.” The origin of this word is unknown. It may come the Old French agace, “magpie,” playing on the idea “of the odds and ends the bird collects,” and the odds and ends in the dish. Another possible origin is the Middle English hagese, which may be related to haggen, “to chop.” Haggen also gives us haggle, perhaps with the idea of “hacking or chopping” prices.

Haggis

Haggis by tjmwatson on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tjmwatson]

Along with haggis, Burns supper diners might also have some neeps, otherwise known as the rutabaga, the Swedish turnip, or the swede, and which “originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip.” The word neep may be a corruption of “new turnips.” Don’t forget your potatoes or tatties, which presumably comes from the -tat- of potato (see tater), or perhaps some clapshot, “a traditional Scottish dish comprised of boiled potatoes and boiled swede (or Scottish turnip) mashed together with chives.”

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties!

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties! by tjmwatson, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tjmwatson]

While the origin of the word clapshot is unknown, World Wide Words speculates it may be similar to that of the Irish dish colcannon, a dish of “mashed potatoes and cabbage, seasoned with butter,” which was “pounded together in a mortar,” and “that vegetables such as spinach were formerly pounded with a cannon-ball,” hence, the cannon of colcannon. Col is derived from cole, or cabbage (see coleslaw). Clapshot may imply the clap or loud and sudden noise of a cannonball shot.

You may end the evening with some cranachan, “a traditional Scottish dessert made with whipped cream, whisky, oatmeal, honey, and raspberries.” The word is Gaelic in origin and originally referred to a kind of churn or “beaten milk.” A similar British dessert is syllabub.

Of course no Burns Night would be complete without Scotch whisky (otherwise known as usquebaugh, Gaelic for “water of life”), whether a dram, a tappit-hen, or a quaich. Too much usquebaugh? Try the Irn-Bru, a “fizzy orange-gold drink” touted as the Scottish hangover cure, or a few rounds of the Highland Fling, “one of the oldest of the Highland dances that originated in the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland,” and an ancient Scottish cure.

According to the Porridge Lady, to prevent a hangover before a ceilidh (from the Old Irish célide, “visit”) or a gilvarage (perhaps a combination of gild and ravage), have some crowdie.

And remember: we warned you about the haggis.

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Behold the Turkey

Turkeys

Turkeys, by Hey Paul

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Hey Paul]

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, we thought we’d take a look at words related to that big dumb bird, the turkey.

Where does the word turkey come from? In short, it’s named for the country Turkey, “from a confusion with the guinea fowl, once believed to have originated in Turkish territory.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the “Turkish name for [the bird] is hindi,” literally “Indian,” “based on the common misconception that the New World was eastern Asia.” The Virtual Linguist says “the original full name of the bird was turkey-cock, but this applied to a different bird — the guinea-fowl, a native of Africa,” while Dan Jurafsky at The Language of Food traces the bird’s history, from its domestication in south-central Mexico to its journey to Europe and the U.S.

How about those turkey sounds? Gobble, which also means “to swallow in large pieces” and “to seize upon with greed,” is imitative in origin and comes from the Middle English gobben, “to drink greedily.” Gobben probably comes from gobbe, “lump, mouthful.” Related are gob, “a mouthful; a little mass or collection; the mouth,” gobbet, goblet, and gobsmacked.

Related also is gobbledygook, nonsense or unclear jargon. The word was first used in 1944 by Congressman Maury Maverick (a grandson of Samuel Augustus Maverick, “an American cattleman who left the calves in his herd unbranded,” for whom the word maverick is named) in a memo banning “gobbledygook language.” As for its origin, “Maverick said he made up the word in imitation of turkey noise.”

The word cluck,“to utter the call or cry of a brooding hen or a hen with young chicks,” comes from the Old English cloccian, which is imitative in origin. A Turkish word for turkey is culuk. Jollop is another word for the cry of a turkey, and according to World Wide Words “was at one time a name for the wattles of the bird, probably from dewlap.” Another meaning for jollop is “a strong liquor or medicine,” also spelled jalap and perhaps influenced by the word dollop.

How about turkey sayings and slang meanings? Turkey meaning “a failure, especially a failed theatrical production or movie,” attests to 1927 while the meaning “a person considered inept or undesirable,” is from 1951. Both come from the idea of the turkey being a silly and stupid animal. The meaning “three consecutive strikes in bowling,” may come from a 19th century American tradition of awarding a turkey to such a bowler.

Turkey also has the lesser-known meaning of “a bag containing a lumber-jack’s outfit.” The origin is unknown, though perhaps it’s named for the bag’s turkey-like appearance. A blind turkey is a sack “stuffed with rags or waste, “deaconed” with a tattered pair of overalls and of a pair of shoes and designed to deceive those labor agents who decline ship laborers who have not baggage stand hostage for their arrival at the job.” To hoist the turkey means “to take one’s personal belongings and leave camp.”

Talk turkey means “to talk or negotiate plainly, frankly, or seriously.” World Wide Words says the phrase was first recorded in 1824 “but is probably much older,” and originally meant “to speak agreeably, or to say pleasant things.” This meaning may come from “the nature of family conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner table,” or “because the first contacts between Native Americans and settlers often centred on the supply of wild turkeys.” The most complex explanation is:

a story about a colonist and a native who went hunting, agreeing to share their spoils equally. At the end of the day, the bag was four crows and four turkeys. The colonist tried to partition the spoils by saying “here’s a crow for you” to the Indian, then keeping a turkey to himself, giving another crow to the Indian, and so on. At this point the Indian very reasonably protested, saying “you talk all turkey for you. Only talk crow for Indian”.

The meaning changed to “frank talk” in the 19th century when “to ‘talk turkey’ was augmented” to “talk cold turkey,” with no relation to cold turkey’s meaning of “immediate, complete withdrawal from something on which one has become dependent, such as an addictive drug.” This meaning of cold turkey stems from 1910 and came from the idea that “cold turkey is a food that requires little preparation, so ‘to quit like cold turkey’ is to do so suddenly and without preparation.”

A jive turkey is “someone who is jiving, as in behaving in a glib and disingenuous fashion.” The turkey portion of the phrase presumably comes from the word’s meaning of a stupid person while jive’s origin is more complex. The word’s meanings of “to deceive playfully,” “empty, misleading talk,” and “a style of fast, lively jazz and dance music” attest to 1928. Some claim the origin is the language of the Wolof, “West African people primarily inhabiting coastal Senegal.” However, others doubt this claim, saying that:

although the Wolof are relatively prominent to many Americans because of the large number of Senegalese immigrants in this country, and to black Americans because the Goree Island slaving settlement is a popular tourist attraction, the fact is that there is no evidence that Wolof speakers were predominant among slaves in the United States, numerically or culturally.

Other turkey phrases include turkey-shoot, “a rifle-shooting match in which a live turkey is the target and the prize,” which gives us the figurative meaning of “something easy.” A turkeycock is “a pompous or self-important person,” probably from the image of a strutting male turkey. The turkey-trot is “an eccentric ragtime dance, danced with the feet well apart and with a characteristic rise on the ball of the foot, followed by a drop upon the heel,” which was popular in the early 20th century.

Has all this turkey talk gotten you hungry? How about some tofurkey, “a meat substitute resembling turkey, usually made from tofu,” or unturkey, “a vegetarian substitute for turkey, particularly a turkey-shaped ‘bird’ made with wheat gluten, soy, and other vegetarian ingredients”? If meat’s your thing, then you might want a turducken, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, or a turbaconducken, a turducken with each bird wrapped in bacon. “It’s a real lardapalooza!” as Fritinancy says.

Or you may want to try the turducken of desserts, the cherpumple, “a three-layer cake with an entire pie baked into each layer—a cherry pie baked inside a white cake, a pumpkin pie baked inside a yellow cake and an apple pie baked inside a spice cake.”

For even more Thanksgivine-related fare, check out Fritinancy’s post on how Butterball got its name, her terrific roundup of fun turkey and Thanksgiving related info, and Cracked’s list of the five most insane versions of Thanksgiving from around the world.

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Words on Plot and Treason

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot.”

Tomorrow is Guy Fawkes Day, “observed in England to commemorate the foiling of the attempt led by Guy Fawkes in 1605 to blow up the king and members of Parliament in retaliation for increasing repression of Roman Catholics in England.”

In her post on autumnal holidays, Lynneguist says “the main autumn ritual in the UK is Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night.” In Lewes, “a site of Protestant martyrdom,” Guy Fawkes Night is “huge,” often involving bonfires, fireworks, and parades (or “Mardi Gras with fire,” as Lynneguist puts it).

lewes bonfire night 2010

lewes bonfire night 2010 by http://heatherbuckley.co.uk, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by heather buckley]

Guy Fawkes’ foiled attempt is also known as the Gunpowder Plot. The word plot originally referred to “a piece of ground; specifically, a small piece of ground of well-defined shape,” and comes from the Old English plot, “small piece of ground.” The meaning, “a stratagem or secret plan; a secret project; an intrigue; a conspiracy,” is from the 1580s, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, “probably by accidental similarity to complot,” meaning “a plotting together; a joint plot; a confederacy in some design; a conspiracy,” and may be a “back-formation from [the Old French] compeloter, ‘to roll into a ball.’”

A plot is also known as a conspiracy, “an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.” The word conspiracy comes from the Latin conspirare, “to agree, unite, plot,” and which literally means “to breathe together.” Conspiracy theory, “a theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act,” is attested to 1909.

A stratagem is “any artifice; a trick by which some advantage is intended to be obtained,” and comes from the Greek strategein, “to be a general, command,” which also gives us strategy and stratocracy, “a military government; government by force of arms.”

A subterfuge is “that to which a person resorts for escape or concealment; a shift; an evasion; artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument.” Subterfuge comes from the Latin subterfugere, “to evade, escape, flee by stealth,” with subter meaning “beneath, secretly” and fugere meaning “flee.” Fugere also gives us fugitive.

Intrigue is “secret or underhand plotting or scheming; the exertion of secret influence for the accomplishment of a purpose,” and comes from the Latin intrīcāre, “to entangle.” An intrigante is a female intriguer. Machination is the act of “contriving a scheme for executing some purpose, particularly a forbidden or an evil purpose; underhand plotting or contrivance.” The word ultimately comes from the Latin machina, “machine, engine, fabric, frame, device, trick,” which also gives us machine and the phrase deus ex machina, “an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot,” literally “the god from the machina,” with machina referring to “the device by which ‘gods’ were suspended over the stage in [Greek] theater.”

Treason is “violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies,” and comes from the Latin traditionem, “a handing over, delivery, surrender,” which also gives us tradition. High treason is “criminal disloyalty to one’s country,” while petit treason (petit is French for “small”) is “the crime of killing a person to whom the offender owed duty or subjection, as one’s husband, master, mistress, etc.,” and “is now not distinguished from murder.”

Perfidy is “deliberate breach of faith; calculated violation of trust; treachery.” The word perfidy comes from the Latin perfidus, “faithless,” which comes from the phrase per fidem decipere, “to deceive through trustingness,” where per means “through” and fidem means “faith.” Treachery comes from the Old French trichier, “to trick.”

A traitor is one who is guilty of treason, and comes from the Latin trādere, “to betray.” Some eponymous synonyms for traitor include Benedict Arnold, a general during the American Revolutionary War who later defected to the British; quisling (named for Vidkun Quisling, “head of Norway’s government during the Nazi occupation”); and Judas, “one of the twelve original Apostles of Jesus, known for his role in Jesus’ betrayal into the hands of Roman authorities.”

But Guy Fawkes Day gives us more than words about plot and treason. The word guy, an informal term for a “man or fellow” or “persons of either sex,” comes from Guy Fawkes himself. Guy earlier referred to “a person grotesque in dress, looks, or manners; a dowdy; a ‘fright,’” which came from the meaning of “a grotesque effigy intended to represent Guy Fawkes.” Around 1847, guy came to mean “a fellow.” The name Guy is French in origin and related to the Italian Guido, “leader.”

How about that mask? It was first made famous by the comic book series and film, V for Vendetta, and then taken up by the hacktivist group Anonymous. It can now also seen at Occupy protests all over the country.

Disobey

Disobey by mediafury, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by mediafury]