Unlikely Rhymes

       Speaking, as I was on March 29, 2013, of  rhymes that one is not likely to ever see again (the earlier one by a rapper was "righteous" with "might just"), I seem to have ferreted out in some old notes one I myself concocted:

                        You've got to have some chutzpah
                        To buy yourself a foot spa

       Canvas poetry the world over, my friend, you will not find that rhyme anywhere.

       (Well, maybe you will because the only rhyme either one in the pair can make is with the other.)

'Lingua'ge--the Word on the 'Tongue'

       I miss the days in which the word "cooperate" appeared with an umlaut ( ̈) over the second "o"; you knew it was pronounced "co-operate," and not "cooper-ate."  Even using the hyphen is fine with me.  You can tell right away how to say it.

       Today, noticing "biopic" in print, I was aware of the problem again.  Could be pronounced like "myopic," but it isn't.  This word refers to a biographical motion picture and so is a BI-o-pic not a bi-AH-pic.   In this instance,  I'd prefer to see the hyphen, "bio-pic," for clarity.

       We knew at once that "naive" had two syllables and not one when the "i" had the umlaut over it, meaning, from the German, "the sound changes around."    

"Magnanimous"--"Pusillanimous"

       One of the best traits of character is magnanimity--generosity--or, taking the derivation of the word literally--"large spiritedness."  It's a trait I admire greatly but don't often evidence.

       I'm far more likely to display the exact opposite trait, "pusillanimity," which is "small spiritedness."

       The two words share the root anima, --"spirit."

       So I guess we have this choice, and to expand on the differences between the two:  magnanimous--large souled, great spirited, noble, rising above pettiness, with the accent on generosity; pusillanimous--small souled, pettiness of spirit, very little courage of heart, cowardly.

       And our choice is?...

       

"Mairzy Doats"

       Connie and I were musing in bed last night about a "nonsense" song from our childhood:

                Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
                A kiddley-divey too, wouldn't you?
                     
       It had a pleasant nursery-rhymish tune along with the silly words.  Something must have clicked back then, and we each got the delight of the language:

               Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy
               A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?

       Wikipedia says that it was a 1943 novelty song by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. 
                    

"Flatulent"

       I said to my wife, "I've been unusally flatulent tonight."  She said, "No, I'd say about normal."

       Merriam-Webster:  flatulent, "marked by or affected with gas generated in the intestine or stomach," from Latin flatus act of blowing, wind, from flare to blow, as in "inflated."

Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays?

       It 's hard for me to get animated or make a big to-do (there's always one around the corner) whether or not Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays. The movie Anonymous not too long ago advanced the Earl of Oxford. The year before that a highly placed Jewess with both English and Italian background was proffered as certainly better positioned and equipped than Shakespeare to write his plays.

       My feeling is Shakespeare by any other name would smell as sweet.

"Eponymous"

       I come across the word twice in one day. I recognize it but cannot recall what it means.


Newspaper movie guide:

            "Le Havre--A bohemian shoeshiner meets and looks after a young African refugee in the eponymous French port city."


Liner notes for Barbra Streisand's music album.   Lyricist Alan Bergman writes:

            "Finally the day of the first session arrives. The eponymous Streisand Scoring Stage at Sony Studios is filled with Hollywood's finest musicians."


      "Eponymous" means "named after."  The second example is clear. In the first, I had to confirm:   sure, Le Havre in French is "harbor" or "port."

      Greek.  Epi--"after"; onyma--"name." 
      And consider.  An--"no"; onyma--"name" = anonymous.  

Etymology Online

       "Etymonline.com" is a website aimed at aggregating and assimilating online the roots of words from a number of etymological sources.

       Douglas Harper of Pennsylvania is the laborer of love here.  A college graduate in history and English, he is combining the fields by doing a "history of English"...word by word.

       As befits someone who chose this excellent preoccupation, Douglas writes well.  Here's a sample from his bio:


       In 1960, when I was born, my parents lived in a place in Pennsylvania called Exton, a village given that name, for all anyone can remember, because it was just a crossroads "X" on the map.  [T]heir house sat across the Swedesford Road from what is now the sprawling mothership of Exton Hall, but was, in 1960, a bog.


       You may check out Doug's website with a click. 

 
     

The Wits of Watts and Wilde

       A good pair of statements I came across in a 1997 page-a-day calendar I created:


               "Because you don't know who you are, you are never,
                        never, never going to be bored."
                                                                                     Alan Watts

               "Only the shallow know themselves."
                                                                                    Oscar Wilde

Dire "Straits"

     
        I first noted "strait" and saw that it wasn't "straight."  Why?  "Strait" derives from Latin strictus, "strict," and thence from stringere, "to draw tight."

       "Straightjacket" is a variant, but "straight" derives from Middle English strecchen, "to stretch."

       Dennis's eyebrows and folded arms and Mom's look and little flush lines on her cheeks show their reactions.

Creative Misreading

       I just came upon the transcript of a microcassette recording I made while driving the U.S. West Coast and into Canada in 1999--


       This is what I read in a guidebook about Washington's Olympic Peninsula tonight:

             “The lower portion of the subalpine zone is covered by tourists.”

Wait a minute:

            “The lower portion of the subalpine zone is covered by forests.”

But then again, I’ve seen a lot of tourists lately covering a lot of everything.

       Creative misreading can also tell something of the truth.

Comic Relief?

       We're not out of hard economic times.   But I do recall a year or two ago when distress was deeper yet and employment maybe even more huge a worry on people's minds.  The news twice weekly seemed to say something like

                We need 100,000 new jobs a month 
              just to keep up with population growth.

And I always pictured squadrons of little infants going off to work.

Rappers Have an Ear for Rhyme

       Driving home tonight I heard a rap artist on the radio doing his thing, a thing I'm not used to hearing often.  I caught a rhyme that I doubt I would hear anywhere else.  "Righteous" was rhymed with "I might just."

       A lot of different letters and separate words in there that don't seem to add up to a "rhyme that chimes."  But it does.

        If we only take note visually of words and letters, we can be led astray from their actual sound in connected speech.  The rap artist wasn't.  Give it a try a couple times, more if necessary.  (Yes, the "t" at the end of "just" doesn't quite match, but in conversational English, that final "t" jus(t) gets lost.)


      

Footnotes

       It's so good as I go through throwing away most old academic journals which I simply have no use for any more, to realize as I do read an occasional piece that catches my eye,  unlike the many years as a student and academic, I no longer feel the compunction to read the

footnotes.

Homemade Cartoon WordPlay

                     Bomb-smelling dog.                            Bomb, smelling dog.

"One Hundred Names for Love"

       Diane Ackerman wrote One Hundred Names for Love about her husband Paul West, both of them writers, both in love with language and each other.

       When Paul fell victim to a stroke that took his abilities both to understand and use language, Diane nursed him back to health by reminding him of the enormous list of pet names he called her by, such as "swan" or "pilot-poet."  He remembered them and gradually regained those words, then others, with love and language. 

       Diane lists the hundred names in the back of the book.  She says, "Paul had so many pet names for me I was a  one-woman zoo."

The Name Befitting the Profession

       We saw a movie tonight, Ginger & Rosa, a good one.  But as credits rolled by, I spied a name, Gary Hoptrough.  He's a stuntman.  It struck me again how names (perhaps made up) can reflect or be appropriate for the professions their owners are in.  Maybe a big trough requiring a huge effort and skill to get across?

       I've thought from time to time that Hawk Spittle would be a good name for a professional baseball player.  Perhaps it's due to memories of chewing tobacco used by ballplayers to get their nicotine lifts.

       Then there's a name that's not made-up, belonging to my friend Toby's proctologist.  The man performs Sigmoidoscopies, inserting a long tube to examine the lower intestinal track, starting from you-know-where.   The doc's last name...Nestlerod.

Honoring a Rabbi

       A few words from a rabbi we honored last night for his 13 years of service to our congregation before he moves on to become a senior rabbi in Vancouver, Canada.  We truly felt the value of Dan Moscovitz's words and deeds during his years with us.  He says these three points distill the messages he has given us:

       1.  Life is precious.  It is sacred.  And it is final.  We are all going to die.  We cannot control or change that.  The only thing we can influence is how we live.  So live a life of meaning and purpose.  This is the only life you get.  Fill it with holiness, fill it with meaning, fill it with love, with service to others, with intention and attention.  Don't waste it because no one gets two funerals.

       2.  Empathy.  Because we as Jews have suffered,  ancient Egypt, the Holocaust, we of all peoples should understand the pain and the suffering of others.  Be more observant of the lives and the needs of others.  Notice people and their challenges in life.  Understand them before you judge them.  Put yourself in their shoes, see the world through their eyes.  And be an empathetic expression and extension of God in the world and in their lives.

       3.  Live on Jewish time.  By that I mean the Jewish calendar, its seasons, holidays, observances.  They are an ingenious pattern for living a life of meaning.  Shabbat tells us to stop, to stop the rushing of our lives and each week to thank God for the blessings that surround us, the blessings of those in our lives.  Yom Kippur reminds us to make amends.  Chanukah of the power of the few in the face of the many to speak truth to power.  Regular Torah study in the weekly Torah portion gives insight and context to the present...as it honors our past.  To sit shiva removes us from the world to focus on what our world has lost, for we have lost one who is dear and profound to us; it is about the soul.  Tradition becomes a tradition because it had something of value to offer; if it didn't, we would have dropped it.  Follow it, observe it, honor it.

       The song sung by our cantor immediately after Dan's words, carried the theme that was heartfelt for this congregation:  "Because I knew you, I have changed...for good."  

      

"Palaver"

       "Enough of my palavering," said I to my son on the phone before we said goodnight.  Hadn't used that word in ages.  It means "to talk profusely or idly," which is what I had been doing.

       Palaver is from Portuguese palavra, meaning "word" or "speech," from Late Latin parabola, parable.  The two halves of the word derive from Greek para ("beside") and ballein ("throw"), and thus can translate "comparison," which certainly is a meaning of "parable."

       Perhaps too many comparisons or analogies or illustrations or examples can grow profuse and idle and become "palaver."

Which Eye Profession do You "Opt" for?

       I went to see the doctor for new eye-glasses.  Or did I?  Is the optometrist a doctor?  An optometrist is not an M.D., Medical Doctor, but an O.D., Doctor of Optometry.

       Only the ophthalmologist is an M.D., specializing in the structure and diseases of the eye and who may perform surgery.  The optician sees to the proper making of the eye glasses, reading and transferring the optometrist's measurements into the actual glasses.

       All three professions opt for the "op" beginning, which goes back to Greek for "eye."