Word Facts for July 2-8, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of July 2-3, 2011: when in Rome - Augustine once asked his fellow priest Ambrose, "Should we fast on Saturday, as they do in Rome? Or on Sunday, as they do in Milan?" Ambrose replied, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do; when in Milan, do as the Milanese do." The fourth-century bon mot became an instant success, and both priests are now famous saints. The expression continues to be used in many languages (including English), often abbreviated to "When in Rome..."

Word origin for July 4, 2011: Roger Wilco - In the shorthand used by radio operators in the United States during World War II, "Roger" represented the letter R and stood for the word "received," as in "Message received." "Wilco" is an abbreviation of the phrase "will comply." The phrase thus means "I have received orders and will obey them." It has been a staple ever since, though the code was revised in 1956 with R now represented by the word "Romeo."

Word origin for July 5, 2011: arsenal - An "arsenal," meaning a naval shipyard / munitions warehouse / place where weapons are stored, is taken from the Arsenale, a shipyard built in Venice (Italy) in 1104. Its name (in turn) comes from the Arabic dar as-sina'a, which means "house of manufacture" - a factory, in other words.

Word origin for July 6, 2011: girl - Before about 1300, "girl" referred to a child of either sex. The origin of gyrle, the first known form of the word, is obscure. It may be related to the Old English gierela, a sack-like garment that children wore, and that perhaps made them all look alike.

Word origin for July 7, 2011: fast food - In the late 1940s and early 1950s, America was car-crazy and increasingly covered with new roads and highways. Drive-in restaurants were common only in Texas and Southern California, but a new kind of food service was in demand. Enter "fast food," a term coined in 1951 to designate a meal ordered at a soda-fountain counter and carried away as opposed to eaten there.

Word origin for July 8, 2011: snarky - To be "snarky" is to be archly irritable or short-tempered. The adjective, once found almost exclusively in British English, dates to 1906. In the postwar era, Americans discovered the term and have happily used it ever since. ("Yeah, sure," a snarky person might say.) It originates in the old verb "to snark," meaning to make a kind of nose-trumpeting snort of the kind a disbelieving listener might make on hearing a preposterous claim.

Word Facts for June 25-July 1, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of June 25-26, 2011: poach - In days of old when knights were bold, hunting was a privilege reserved for the nobility. A hungry peasant would thus have to steal an animal from some estate - and, naturally, that animal would have to be small enough to carry away. In this case, it would be carried away in a poche, or sack. The same word gives us our expression "pig in a poke," which means something not shown and whose value therefore is not known.

Word origin for June 27, 2011: honeymoon - In use since the Middle Ages in English, the "honey moon" was a folk name for the full moon that occurred in the month of June. In rural England, marriages often took place just before the late spring planting season began, the ritual idea being to encourage fertility of both field and family. The term later came to be applied to the aftermath of the wedding itself.

Word origin for June 28, 2011: hobnob - "Hobnob" comes from an English dialect term "habnab," which means "have and not have." The word first turns up in print in William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night in the sense of "one way or another," and by extension, a drink that would be drunk no matter who raised a toast to it. Thus, "to drink hobnob" came to mean something like "to party" today, and "hobnob" now means to spend pleasant time hanging out with someone.

Word origin for June 29, 2011: plumber - Pipes that bring in and take out water from a home were once made of lead - in Latin, plumbum, a material that a plumbarius worked with. New pipes are rarely made of lead these days, but the material remains enshrined in the name of the craft.

Word origin for June 30, 2011: nonchalant - Someone "nonchalant" is cool as a cucumber, or perhaps cold as a fish. The word comes from the French nonchaloir, which means "not heated" - that is, metaphorically, someone who cannot be bothered to get worked up about a given subject. The original sense of "nonchalant," which came into English about 1730, characterized someone who disregarded something that other people were hot and bothered about.

Word origin for July 1, 2011: slouch hat - Usually made of felt or canvas, a "slouch hat" is a form of headwear whose brim falls over the wearer's eyes. The term comes from the English dialect term slouch, which carries the suggestion of leaning lazily or moving without much sense of purpose. Given that "slouch hats" are favored by warriors fighting in the tropics, that suggestion seems unwarranted.

Word Facts for June 18-24, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of June 18-19, 2011: DIY - Americans have always prized being handy, though with the ascendancy of white-collar work in the early twentieth century, manual labor and skills were prized less and less. The phrase "do it yourself" (shortened to "DIY") emerged in the 1950s as a call for suburbanites to gain or regain some of the old ethic. Originally, it was applied to painting and sewing projects, but then came to brand an entire movement - one that even has its own broadcast channel, the DIY Network.

Word origin for June 20, 2011: random - In its original sense (which dates to the medieval period), "random" means "at a gallop," something done on a horse and in a big hurry. Accidents happen at speed, of course, and in time the word "random" came to mean "unplanned / careless / accidental" - as in "a random encounter."

Word origin for June 21, 2011: premium - In its original sense, a "premium" was a reward given to someone for an act that usually involved seizing something belonging to someone else - booty, in other words. The term entered the insurance industry by way of shipping: a privateer would pay a share of the loot to an insurer if his ship returned to its home port safely. If the premiums we pay today resemble a "ransom" fit for a pirate, there's an etymological basis for it.

Word origin for June 22, 2011: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs - Common in many European languages, this old proverb probably comes originally from the French. "Omelette" comes from the French alemette ("knife edge"), so called for the flat thin shape of the finished product. The sense is that if you want to get a big project done, you must not fear steamrolling "the little people." The poet Randall Jarrell rejoined, "That's what they tell the eggs."

Word origin for June 23, 2011: plaza - A "plaza" is an open space in what is usually an urban environment. Roman city planners favored these public squares, for which reason the "plaza" is found whenever the Roman Empire or its descendant states settled. The Latin word platea means "flat area" and relates to the words "plat" and "plateau," as well as the modern term "plaza," which comes into English from Spanish.

Word origin for June 24, 2011: controversy - The word "controversy" (from the Latin for "turn against") once referred to the sort of verbal conflict that we would today call a dispute or argument - and even something so innocent as a mere difference of opinion. Known in English since about 1400, the word now refers (more strongly) to the matter being argued about rather than the argument itself.

Word Facts for June 11-17, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of June 11-12, 2011: cui bono - Someone's been murdered. Who's the prime beneficiary of the will? That's the line of reasoning a savvy detective of the Monk / Columbo school might follow. Cui bono? is the lawyer's tag for it, meaning (in Latin) "Who benefits?" It's a good experience to ask yourself whenever something unexpected happens. The company is cutting jobs. Who makes out well?

Word origin for June 13, 2011: cutty sark - The name of the clipper ship of yore, and of the whiskey named after it, is a mildly dirty joke. In Scots English, a "cutty sark" is a short-cut shirt, namely an undershirt or other undergarment. In Robert Burns' poem "Tam O'Shanter," a young woman is wearing a "cutty sark" meant for a little girl. This causes the hero to cry out, transported, "Weel done, Cutty-Sark!" The phrase became well-known in Britain, and then the ship and drink called "undershirt" came to be.

Word origin for June 14, 2011: finest hour - When someone acts with uncommon value or merit, it is customary to praise that action as his or her "finest hour." The term owes to Winston Churchill. He coined the phrase to refer to the heroic actions of the pilots of the Royal Air Force who drove back wave after wave of German attack planes during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940.

Word origin for June 15, 2011: staycation - It's a terrible thing - at least to some minds - when an economic downturn means that a vacation has to be spent inside one's home watching TV or catching up on chores. Many homebodies, however, like nothing better than spending vacation time in the comfort of one's castle. The portmanteau word "staycation" was coined for the phenomena in 2003, but it did not come into wide use until the recession that began in late 2007.

Word origin for June 16, 2011: fanboy - A "fan" is a fanatic, or so the word's origin tells us, zealous in his or her devotion to a particular idol or activity. The addition of "boy" adds a sense of servility. The term first turns up in the computer hacker culture in the late 1990s to refer to devotees of particular operating systems ("Mac fanboy," "Linux fanboy"), and is now a fixture in youthful slang.

Word origin for June 17, 2011: devastate - The word "devastate" does not relate to vastness, but instead to an old Latin word, vastus, that underlies our word "waste." To "devastate" an enemy country, by that model, is to turn it into a wasteland. The word was rare in English until the nineteenth century, when the advent of modern mechanized warfare made it ever more useful.

Word Facts for June 4-10, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of June 4-5, 2011: Afghanistan - The -stan part is easy: it means "the country of" in several Central Asian languages. But what of the Afghan? "Afghanistan" enfolds an uncomfortable, ever-shifting alliance of tribes, the most populous of which (the Pushtuns) make up about 40 percent of the population. None of the tribes is called "Afghan," though the country's currency is. The name is a curiosity apparently coined by British administrators who hoped that a common name might create a unified country - something that hasn't quite worked out.

Word origin for June 6, 2011: marijuana - Wacky tabacky, weed, marihuana, Mary Jane - the mildly narcotic plant known scientifically as Cannibis sativa has been called countless names. One, in the language of the Carib Indians of Central America, was maraguan. The Spanish heard that as the woman's name Maria Juana, which has given rise to abundant spellings over the centuries.

Word origin for June 7, 2011: mummy - Not the British word for mother, but that of an embalmed body, "mummy" takes its name from the Arabic mumiya, which in turns comes from the root mum, meaning the wax used in the embalming process. The word first appears in English in about 1400.

Word origin for June 8, 2011: You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours - Artemus Ward, the pen name of nineteenth-century writer Charles Farrar Brown, was a master of homespun expressions, in this instance one that suggests a relationship of mutual benefit. Ward/Brown borrowed the sentiment from the French philosopher Montaigne, but the turn of phrase is unmistakably American.

Word origin for June 9, 2011: paisley - A standby of the psychedelic era and a favorite in hippie revivals ever since, "paisley" has its origins in the century before. A textile mill in the Scottish town of Paisley specialized in making the cloth, which originally took only one form and was thus called a "Paisley shawl." Designers eventually figured out other uses, and "paisley" became more widespread throughout the nineteenth century.

Word origin for June 10, 2011: Play it again, Sam. - In the early 1970s, college audiences rediscovered the 1942 film Casablanca, in which a young Ingrid Bergman asks a pianist to play a favorite tune, As Time Goes By. "Play it once, Sam," she says, adding (a couple of lines later) "Play it, Sam." By some alchemy, Woody Allen heard the word "again" in the exchange, and he called a film of his from 1972 Play It Again, Sam - a misquotation that has lived on ever since.

Word Facts for May 28-June 3, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of May 28-29, 2011: lipstick on a pig - Does lipstick disguise a swinish nature? No, that's not the precise sense of this old idiom, which means something like "A leopard cannot change its spots." That is, you can try to disguise someone or something, but that person or thing's essential nature will soon reveal itself. The phrase first turns up in the early 1700s in the form "A pig in armor is still a pig." It's unknown whether any knight took offense.

Word origin for May 30, 2011: Memorial Day - The holiday now known as "Memorial Day" was first celebrated as "Decoration Day" in the late 1860s, honoring Union soldiers of the Civil War who had received medals for their service. When the holiday was extended a couple of decades later to include Confederate soldiers, it was renamed "Memorial Day" - that is, a day for remembering the contributions of the nation's armed forces.

Word origin for May 31, 2011: HBO - In 1972, an entrepreneur named Charles Dolan broadcast a film via satellite to a group of test subscribers in the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He had set up shop as the Green Channel, but (just before the broadcast) he changed the name to Home Box Office, which gives us the acronym "HBO." Dolan's firm expanded into New York City, then nationwide, to become a satellite and cable television pioneer.

Word origin for June 1, 2011: cruft - "Cruft" is a computer-geek term that refers to the stuff that tends to accumulate on every computer - obsolete software, dead email, code that doesn't quite work. It takes its name from Cruft Laboratory, a physics building at Harvard University, where old scientific equipment was stacked so high that researchers inside couldn't see out the windows. The word dates to about 1945.

Word origin for June 2, 2011: noodle - In the sense of "head" - as in "Use your noodle!" - "noodle" dates to the early twentieth century. It may originally have come from the language of crime, but it quickly spread into the slang of the Jazz Age, The term probably does not come from the food item, but instead from the English dialect term "noddle," referring to the back of the head.

Word origin for June 3, 2011: ennui - "Ennui" is a French word borrowed by English meaning "boredom," though its original sense is far stronger. It comes from the Latin in odio, meaning "in hate," and it is cognate with another form of the same Latin word, "annoy." Boredom is a perfectly good word to express the same thing, though "ennui" connotes a kind of spiritual malaise.

Word Facts for May 21-27, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of May 21-22, 2011: hooah - The U.S. Army exclamation "hooah," used to mean everything except "no," dates to the 1980s. It is said to derive from the acronym HUA, meaning "heard, understood, and acknowledged" in response to an order. Films that place the term in the Vietnam era are anachronistic. By the way, the Marines say "oorah" instead of "hooah," imitating the sound of a klaxon.

Word origin for May 23, 2011: hokey pokey - Is the "hokey pokey" really what it's all about? In wartime England, a bandleader concocted a hit tune that borrowed a phrase from Italian ice cream vendors, Ecco un poco - meaning "try a little" - and joined it to an old children's dance. The "hokey pokey" craze rapidly spread throughout the 1940s, though in various parts of the English-speaking world, it is known as the "hokey cokey" / the "cokey" / the "hokey tokey."

Word origin for May 24, 2011: loblolly pine - The "loblolly pine" grows in the swamps of the American Southeast, and it has been known by that name - which may have been borrowed from an Indian language - since 1760. "Loblolly" occurs as a dialect term for "mudhole" in the following century, and it is that usage that gives an old-fashioned southern dessert: a gooey, sticky mess of cream / sugar / egg - its name.

Word origin for May 25, 2011: fungible - Something "fungible" is not made of fungus, or even fun, but instead is interchangeable. It comes from the Latin fungi, which means "to perform," and is typically found in legal and economic contexts to mean something that can be converted readily into something of the same kind, be it a stock share or a junior employee.

Word origin for May 26, 2011: Peter Principle - Published in 1969, Laurence J. Peter's book, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong, was famous for the observation: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." The corollary is that the real work is done by employees who have yet to be promoted to their levels of incompetence. The "Peter Principle" is often confused for Murphy's law, which is another matter entirely.

Word origin for May 27, 2011: eat my shorts - Bart Simpson's favorite curse is not original to him - or rather, his writers - yet no one really knows who came up with it. It turns up in a passage by the novelist Ken Kesey in 1973, about the time it sees print in the old National Lampoon magazine - but even then, it seems to have been borrowed from somewhere else. Whatever the case, it was widespread slang across American college campuses in the mid-1970s, when Simpsons creator Matt Groening was attending school.

Word Facts for May 14-20, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of May 14-15, 2011: Brooklyn-style pizza - New Yorkers know that a good piece of pizza can be easily folded over and eaten like a pocket sandwich, a process that usually involves a stream of grease running down one's forearm, a very small price to pay indeed. Outside New York, this is called "Brooklyn-style pizza," even though the earliest pizzerias were found not in Brooklyn but in Manhattan's Little Italy section. Brooklyn, incidentally, takes its name from the town of Breukelen in Holland.

Word origin for May 16, 2011: ozone - First isolated in 1840 by Christian Friedrich Schönbein (1799-1868), a German chemist, "ozone" is a form of oxygen. Schönbein came up with the name from the Greek verb ozein, meaning "to stink," because of the acrid smell associated with the gas. The Texas town of Ozona takes its name from nearby fields of natural gas that give off a similarly sharp smell.

Word origin for May 17, 2011: deadpan - In the argot of the theatre world, pan makes "face." A "dead pan," therefore, is a face that shows no emotion or expression, perfect for suggesting stoicism or (in comedy) incomprehension. Critics have coined the term "deadpan violence" to describe the emotionless killings that have characterized films by the likes of John Woo and Quentin Tarantino.

Word origin for May 18, 2011: chutney - In Hindi, chatna or chatni refers to a spicy, often hot condiment made of fruit / peppers / other ingredients that was traditionally used to mask the flavor of meat that was beginning to spoil. The British colonizers of India liked the concoction so much that they began to consume it at home as well as abroad, leading to the establishment of the Major Grey's Chutney factory in Mumbai, at one time the world's largest exporter.

Word origin for May 19, 2011: Oregon - The origin of the name for the American state of "Oregon" is disputed. Some sources claim that it comes from the Algonquin word wauregan ("beautiful"), others that it comes from the Chinook jargon word for an oily smelt that was highly prized as a trade item and abundant in the waters of "Oregon." Still others link it to the French pronunciation of the Carib Indian word hurucan, which gives us our "hurricane" and well describes the state's often stormy coast.

Word origin for May 20, 2011: macedonia - In French cuisine, a macédoine (rendered in English in that form or as macedonia) is a mixed-fruit salad, sometimes served with cream or ice cream. The name is fanciful, borrowed from the former Greek and Yugoslav province in the Balkans, which is famously a mix of many ethnicities. Originally the French term was a metaphor for a mixed-up jumble, and then it was later applied to food.

Word Facts for May 7-13, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of May 7-8, 2011: almacantar - The rare word "almacantar" describes a circle of altitude over Earth that is parallel to the horizon. An astronomical term, it is used to describe imaginary lines in the sky by which an astronomer calculates the height of a star in the sky relative to the horizon. Like many astronomical words, it comes from the Arabic, in this case from the word meaning "the sundial."

Word origin for May 9, 2011: amphigory - An "amphigory" is a poem that appears to be normal, but has no real meaning on closer inspection. An example is Lewis Carroll's beloved poem Jabberwocky, full of made-up words. "Amphigory," too, is a made-up word that comes to English by way of French.

Word origin for May 10, 2011: margarine - In 1869, a French nutritional chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés concocted a fatty-acid butter substitute that he called margaric acid, after the Greek word for "pearl," margarites. Originally, "margarine" - the name under which it came to be marketed - had a shiny, oily, grayish-white color, but manufacturers added yellow coloring to make the foodstuff look more palatable.

Word origin for May 11, 2011: farrago - A "farrago" describes an ill-sorted group of objects (as might be found in a junk drawer), or of people (as might be found in a mob). The word comes from the Latin word meaning "mixed fodder," a jumble of any old swept-up grain used to feed livestock.

Word origin for May 12, 2011: carfax - A "carfax" is a place where four roads meet, from the Latin quadrifurcus, "four-faced." The word is rare outside Britain, it not having been exported to American English, even though there are plenty of places in America where four roads meet. The vehicle-history company Carfax takes its name not from this, but from the pronunciation of "car facts."

Word origin for May 13, 2011: omphaloskepsis - "Omphaloskepsis" is a fine Greek word that directly translates to "navel gazing," skepsis being a kind of close examination that gives us the word "skeptic." This form of meditation is not entirely common, but the term "navel gazing" is, usually in a derogatory sense. The Greek original does not carry the skepticism of the English term.

Word Facts for Apr. 30-May 6, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Apr. 30-May 1, 2011: nerd - In his 1950 children's book, If I Ran the Zoo, Dr. Seuss used the word "nerd" to describe an odd-looking creature. It's not clear whether he coined the word or borrowed it, but by 1951, it was widely used to signify a socially inept or "square" person. Now often combined with attributives such as "computer" and "golf," it means someone whose expertise or interest in a subject is deep, but whose social skills may leave something to be desired.

Word origin for May 2, 2011: disparage - You can "disparage" someone or something, but can you "parage" to make up for it? Not really. The original meaning of the term, from the Old French desparagier, is "mismatch" or "marry unequally," as when a movie star weds an unknown or a prince falls in love with a pauper. Through time, it came to suggest the unpleasant conversation that might result when the bloom was off the romance, and now means (in modern terms) "to talk smack about."

Word origin for May 3, 2011: gopher - The critter called the "gopher" is one of the less repulsive rodents, just as the waffle is one of the more attractive ways of making pancakes. The analogy may seem strange, but guafre is the French rendering of the Dutch word wafel, which means "honeycomb." When English speakers encountered the creature in French-speaking Louisiana, they borrowed the local term, which referred to the rodents' honeycomb-shaped burrows.

Word origin for May 4, 2011: Gatorade - In 1965, concerned that so many of his players suffered from heat exhaustion in the tropical sun, a University of Florida football coach did some research, and discovered that carbohydrates and electrolytes had to be replaced as quickly as they were burned if his Gators were ever to be a winning team. Scientists at the university jumped in, developing the drink they called (naturally enough) "Gatorade."

Word origin for May 5, 2011: Nashville - The "home of country music" honors a Revolutionary War general named Francis Nash, a Virginia-born North Carolinian who died at the Battle of Germantown in 1777. North Carolina migrants to Tennessee named the city after him. Nashville's official name is Nashville-Davidson County, reflecting the merger of city and county governments in 1961. The second name honors another fallen Revolutionary War general, William L. Davidson.

Word origin for May 6, 2011: kit and caboodle - In eighteenth-century English slang, "the whole kit and caboodle" referred to the totality of a person's possessions or the company he or she kept. ("She brought the whole kit," or "He and his whole kit just showed up.") On the American frontier, the phrase became "the whole kit and boodle," the latter being a slang term meaning "crowd" - thus, "the whole bunch and whole bunch." The redundancy notwithstanding, the phrase has been popular since the nineteenth century.

Word Facts for Apr. 23-29, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Apr. 23-24, 2011: religion - The word "religion" probably derives from the Latin word religare, which means "to bind." The sense is that a practitioner such as a monk or nun is bound by an oath of religious office. "Religion" once referred only to the practice of belief in a formal institution such as a monastery, but by the late Middle Ages, it had come to refer to belief generally.

Word origin for Apr. 25, 2011: foamcrete - "Foamcrete" is an ingenious kind of concrete foam used to stop airplanes in an emergency landing. The term first appeared, with the substance itself, in 1996, when it debuted at New York's Kennedy International Airport. The material can stop a runaway Boeing 727 travelling at 60 miles (97 kilometres) per hour in about 133 yards (123 meters). Fortunately, it is seldom used.

Word origin for Apr. 26, 2011: Quonset hut - A prefabricated metal building built en masse during World War II to provide temporary housing and offices for troops in the field, the "Quonset hut" takes its name from the place in Rhode Island where it was first manufactured. It takes its design, however, from a Royal Army engineer whose name is enshrined in the British version of the building, the Nissen hut.

Word origin for Apr. 27, 2011: May you live in interesting times - This supposed pearl of Chinese idiom, a curse that plays on the negative aspect of the word "interesting," is actually a sort of fortune-cookie saying - the fortune cookie being, of course, an American invention. In this case, the saying appears to have originated with a staff member at the British Embassy in Beijing in the late 1930s, though why its writer should have attempted to pass it off as ancient wisdom is anyone's guess.

Word origin for Apr. 28, 2011: Celsius - The world's most commonly used system of temperature measurement, which sets zero as the freezing point of water and 100 as its boiling point, was named for its inventor, Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701-1744). He coined the centigrade system just two years before his early death. The less obvious system that has 32 as the freezing point and 212 as the boiling point was likewise named for its inventor, German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736).

Word origin for Apr. 29, 2011: utmost - Readers familiar with 1960s slang - or fans of Jetsons reruns - will remember the expression "way out," a general term of approval. In just that spirit, speakers of Old English used the word ütmest, or "most out." The superlative sense comes from the bottom-to-top ranking familiar to contemporary theologians, in which heaven was the "utmost" of places relative to the earth.

Mormons CAN'T be Christian! / The Waffle Test

I saw that Shelley is in Richmond now (at Lunen Road), so I made plans to meet up with her - she says Richmond Centre is okay with her husband Greg (who knows the area), so Sears at 3 it is! (then I can buy detergent) Teunis and I discussed eggs, chewing, sausage, omelettes, milk, popes, detergent, his brother-in-law Jordan being Mormon AND Christian (I don't get it - apparently he celebrates Easter?!), theology, Norse religion, real Christian denominations / Protestants, Catholicism, Anglicans, Judaism, Lutherans, bounties on black people / Irish (unless both were slaves) / Mormons (all could be shot on sight!), and more prior to his heading out to spend all day with Jordan AND Kaili. He says he considers Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses to be (extreme) Christians, but then he himself isn't a Christian either. Hmm... mind is blown. Must reply to Mandy's emails, too!

You Are Selfless

You are appreciative of all of the good things in your life. You count your blessings. You are affirming and supporting. You accept people where they are, imperfections and all. You are unselfish, humble, and altruistic. You get great joy from putting others first. You are warm and welcoming. You will go the extra mile to make someone feel included.

The Waffle Test

Blogthings: We Have a Quiz for Almost Everything

Word Facts for Apr. 16-22, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Apr. 16-17, 2011: nimrod - In the Bible, Nimrod was both a great hunter and a king powerful enough to get the construction of the Tower of Babel going. That project ended badly for Nimrod and for humankind as a whole. Nimrod came to be a metaphorical term for any skilled hunter, but was also used to mean "tyrant." Today, "nimrod" is used to mean a dense, bumpkinish person, the underlying prejudice being that a hunter - a country person, likely - cannot possibly be intelligent.

Word origin for Apr. 18, 2011: habitat - "Habitat" (the place) and "habit" (the custom) share an origin: the sense of the Latin original habitare is "to live in," and (by extension) one's normal way of life, a habitus being something that one does because they know no other way. Animals habitually inhabit a "habitat" because it is in their nature to do so, in other words.

Word origin for Apr. 19, 2011: Mercedes - In 1896, Austrian businessman Emil Jellinek became one of the first distributors of a line of automobiles built by the firm of Gottlieb Daimler, on whose board he later sat. Company engineers named a new car after his daughter, Adriana Jellinek, in 1901. Her nickname was Mercedes, the Spanish word for "mercies." Her father changed his name to Emil Jellinek-Mercedes in 1903.

Word origin for Apr. 20, 2011: kaolin - Also called china clay or paper clay, "kaolin" is a fine clay of hydrous silicate of aluminum, used in manufacturing paper, ceramics, and pharmaceuticals. "Kaolin" takes its name from the Mandarin Chinese kau ling ("high ridge"), after a place where the clay was mined.

Word origin for Apr. 21, 2011: Gibraltar - The British colony of "Gibraltar," in southernmost Spain, takes its name from a long-ago historical moment. IN 711, the Saracen chief Tarik destroyed the army of the Spanish king Roderick. Tarik built a castle on the Rock of Gibraltar, so named for being the Gebel-al-Tarik, which means "Tarik's mountain" in Arabic.

Word origin for Apr. 22, 2011: recycle - It is perhaps ironic that the word "recycle" comes from the language of the petroleum industry, referring to the reuse of industrial coke to process gasoline. The term in that sense dates to the 1920s, and it came to refer to the reuse of any material in an environmentally responsible way only in the 1960s.

Word Facts for Apr. 9-15, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Apr. 9-10, 2011: Deadhead - The term for a devotee of the rock band Grateful Dead dates to 1971, though as two words: "Dead Head." It first shows up on the liner notes to the band's album Live Dead, announcing a fan club for the group. The band might have been chagrined to learn that the word had another sense dating to the early nineteenth century: a "deadhead" is someone who enters a performance or conveyance without paying the admission fee.

Word origin for Apr. 11, 2011: a hard row to hoe - Tough soil, as farmers know, makes for tough tillage and backbreaking work with the hoe. This folksy American expression refers to any daunting task. Because most Americans are a few generations off the farm, the saying is often misstated as "a hard road to hoe" - which would indeed pose a difficult job.

Word origin for Apr. 12, 2011: gargoyle - The fanciful creatures called "gargoyles" found on Gothic cathedrals and other buildings serve a useful purpose: they disguise downspouts that enable rainwater to drain quickly from the steeply pitched roofs. The downspout openings are in the gargoyles' mouths. The name comes from an Old French word that means "the sputterer," for the sound an overly full monster would make.

Word origin for Apr. 13, 2011: dribble - In soccer, a "dribble" is a series of short kicks that moves the ball along the field. Taken metaphorically from the fitful issue of water that comes from an uncooperative pipe, the word is a variant of "drip," which itself is onomatopoetic. Basketball borrowed the soccer term to refer to a movement made with the hands, not the feet.

Word origin for Apr. 14, 2011: grass station - A coinage from 2006 that first turns up (naturally) in California, a "grass station" is a place at which to procure biofuel - vegetable oil, say, that can burn in a modified automobile engine. The phrase is a play on "gas station," which first turned up in American common speech in the 1920s and eventually replaced the once more widely used "filling station."

Word origin for Apr. 15, 2011: pony up - The term "pony up," meaning to pay someone, has nothing to do with betting on horses. Instead, it is believed to derive from the Latin legum pone, which denotes obeying the law, the law in question being to pay one's workers. The full phrase, taken from the Latin version of Psalms, is Legum pone mihi domine viam iustificacionum tuarum. "Teach me, O Lord, the ways of your laws."

Word Facts for Apr. 2-8, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Apr. 2-3, 2011: just the facts, ma'am - A staple of television from 1951 to 1970, the series Dragnet was famed for its laconic detective, played by Jack Webb. Comics parodied the show with the line "Just the facts, ma'am," though Webb's character (Joe Friday) never uttered it. Instead, he said in an early episode, "All we want are the facts, ma'am," giving birth to a slight misquotation that has endured ever since.

Word origin for Apr. 4, 2011: metadata - "Metadata" is information attached to a digital file that is not strictly intrinsic to the file itself. Instead, it includes information about the author, the file's editing history, and the like. The word dates to 1983 in professional computer literature, from which it spread into the broader lexicon. The word "data," meaning a body of information, is about four centuries older.

Word origin for Apr. 5, 2011: restaurant - Does a chef restore a famished soul the way a conservator restores an old painting? Perhaps, for "restore" is the root meaning of the word "restaurant." The first known use of the word was in Paris in 1765, when a chef who had been working for the nobility opened up his own eatery in the French capital. The word entered English at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Word origin for Apr. 6, 2011: J.C. Penney - In the early 1900s, an enterprising young man named James Cash Penney bought a dry-goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming, where he had been working. He changed its name from the Golden Rule Store to J.C. Penney Company. Then he relocated to Salt Lake City (Utah), and then Buffalo (New York), where he built a chain of shops that sold inexpensive goods of many kinds. As of 2010, the company had about 1200 stores throughout the United States, as well as others in South America.

Word origin for Apr. 7, 2011: riddle - An old word for speaking in English is rede, which turns up in the verb "to read." It often meant "to counsel," but in the sense of "riddle," which shows up in the language more than a thousand years ago... it means to counsel using oracular, hard-to-decipher speech. Thus, the word "riddle" (now meaning an innocent enigma) once had a more portentous, darker meaning.

Word origin for Apr. 8, 2011: moist - An import from French into English in medieval times, "moist" probably derives from the Latin mucidus, which means "moldy." Some scholars link it to the word must, meaning "new wine," but the first explanation is likelier correct. In either case, "moist" consistently comes in as one of the most disliked words in English, perhaps because of its clammy associations.

Word Facts for Mar. 26-April 1, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Mar. 26-27, 2011: power corrupts - An oft-repeated observation is "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." The author of the sentiment, the British politician and historian Lord Acton, actually wrote "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" in 1887. Not all power, then, is bad, though Acton added: "Great men are almost always bad men."

Word origin for Mar. 28, 2011: congruous - Something "congruous" congrues - that is, it agrees, which is another Latin-derived way of saying the same thing. We know the word mostly through its negative, "incongruous," which carries the sense of not quite adding up as opposed to merely disagreeing.

Word origin for Mar. 29, 2011: finagle - The word "finagle" comes to us by way of the dialect once spoken on the borderlands of Scotland and England, where it meant "to deceive or hoodwink someone." In American English, "finagle" has a softer meaning; it is often used to suggest charming or outwitting someone, without necessarily intending to do that person any harm in the bargain. Still, it first turns up in political slang, so maybe hoodwinking is the name of the game.

Word origin for Mar. 30, 2011: Netflix - Founded in California in 1997, "Netflix" is the world's largest video-rental company, wedding the U.S. Postal Service to the Internet. Its name is a natural blend; the "Net," of course, refers to the Internet, while the "flix" borrows from an old-fashioned term for the flickering images called motion pictures.

Word origin for Mar. 31, 2011: medieval - At its heart, the word "medieval" (from the Latin medium aevum, and its English kin "Middle Ages") represent a theological construct: the thousand-year period marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the modern era, which in turn will end with the Second Coming.

Word origin for Apr. 1, 2011: anchorman - The lead broadcaster in a news or talk program is called an "anchorman" (or "anchorwoman," or sometimes just "anchor"), borrowing from the language of track and field, where an "anchorman" is the captain of a relay team. The term in the television sense first appeared in a news piece for the Washington Post in April 1949, referring to TV personality John Cameron Swayze.

Word Facts for Mar. 19-25, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Mar. 19-20, 2011: Purim - The most festive of Jewish holidays, "Purim" (from the Hebrew word meaning "lot" - in the sense of "destiny") commemorates deliverance from a plot by the Persian vizier Haman to annihilate all the Jews of the Persian Empire. It is celebrated with public recitations from the Book of Esther, the exchange of gifts of food and drink, singing and masquerading, and giving charity to the poor.

Word origin for Mar. 21, 2011: an offer you can't refuse - One of the best-known lines in movie history comes from the 1972 film The Godfather, when the Mafia kingpin played by Marlon Brando says of an adversary, "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." Said adversary does refuse, which earns him a world of hurt - and which puts the line into the vernacular almost immediately.

Word origin for Mar. 22, 2011: Asperger's syndrome - Hans Asperger, a Viennese pediatrician, first identified the syndrome that bears his name, a form of autism, in 1944. He wrote several papers about the syndrome, arguing that obsession often accompanies greatness. "It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential," Asperger wrote. "The necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world... with all abilities cannibalized into the one specialty."

Word origin for Mar. 23, 2011: Tuscany - How is that "Tuscany" and Etruria are the same words? The answer is that different peoples of ancient Italy called the people we know as "Etruscans" different things: some Truri, some Tusci or Thusci, some Etusci, some Etruri. In the late days of the Roman Empire, the Italian province came to be called Toscani, meaning "belonging to the Tusci," and so "Tuscany" it now is in English.

Word origin for Mar. 24, 2011: excuse my French - Do the French swear more than Americans or Britons? No. In 1936, back in the days when "bloody" - short for "by God's body" - was not spoken in polite company, a comic writer (Michael Harrison) wrote: "[It was] a bloody sight better (pardon the French!) than most." The phrase spread rapidly throughout British slang and came into American English during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of Americans were stationed in England.

Word origin for Mar. 25, 2011: book - Before paper, parchment, or vellum were widely used in northern Europe, scribes wrote on sheets of bark from the beech tree, which takes forms such as buch in German and boek in Dutch. In Old English, the word arrived as bok, the origin of the modern word "book."

Word Facts for Mar. 12-18, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Mar. 12-13, 2011: junta - In Spanish, the adjective junto / junta means "joined," as a closely united group or a cabal of competitors might be. It was in the darker sense of a team working to overthrow a ruler that the term was introduced to English in the seventeenth century, though the term does not carry any such judgement in the original Spanish.

Word origin for Mar. 14, 2011: tramp stamp - The coinage "tramp stamp" turns up in Australian slang in about 2006 to mean a tattoo on a woman's lower back that can be seen when she wears low-riding trousers. "Tramp," a wearying kind of walking, dates to the fourteenth century; the word in the sense of a promiscuous woman dates only to 1922 and may have been coined by the playwright Eugene O'Neill. The rhyming slang makes unfair assumptions, but it has become widespread in just a few years.

Word origin for Mar. 15, 2011: conspiracy theory - It's not just we moderns who worry that strange things happen in the corridors of power to account for extraterrestrials, assassinations, and the other stuff of what is generally called "conspiracy theory." The term turns up a few years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in - fittingly - the Washington Post, under the headline "The Conspiracy Theory." The Latin-rooted word conspiracy literally means "breathing together," that is, talking softly with heads together, as plotters might do.

Word origin for Mar. 16, 2011: frenemy - Also spelled "frienemy," this word coinage describes an ancient phenomenon: someone who appears to be a friend is an enemy, stabbing you in the back for his or her own advantage. Ancient though the phenomenon may be, the word for it first shows up in 1953, in a newspaper piece by the columnist Walter Winchell asking, "Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies?" The word was apparently forgotten until 2006, when journalists revived it, and it spread from the headlines into common speech.

Word origin for Mar. 17, 2011: forever and a day - To wish someone a long life in Ireland, one asks that he or she last "forever and a day." The expression has long had a place in American English, along with its cousin, "forever minus a day." An anonymous poet wrote in 1917, "May you all live forever / May I live forever less a day / For I would not wish to live / When all my friends had passed away."

Word origin for Mar. 18, 2011: UFO - Just when the first "UFO" hit the skies is unknown, but apparently U.S. Air Force pilots encountered unidentified flying objects in 1953 when the term and its acronym first turned up in an aviation magazine. The term officially replaced "flying saucers," which had appeared in pilots' reports for a year or so before then.

Word Facts for Mar. 5-11, 2011

Word origin for the weekend of Mar. 5-6, 2011: dungaree - In Hindi, dungri is a kind of rough calico that is often used to make durable work clothing. Imported to England, the cloth was dyed blue, the preferred color for manual laborers. (thus our phrase "blue-collar workers") Thus colored, the cloth resembles denim, and the word "dungarees" is sometimes used interchangeably with "blue jeans."

Word origin for Mar. 7, 2011: password fatigue - Do you have password fatigue? Most modern users, it would seem safe to guess, do... worn to a frazzle by having to memorize passwords to enter various closed sites. Coined on the analogy of mental fatigue and battle fatigue, the phrase turns up in computer magazines in the mid-1990s.

Word origin for Mar. 8, 2011: laissez les bon temps rouler - Visitors to New Orleans or fans of zydeco music know the phrase laissez les bon temps rouler, which is the French equivalent of an African-American expression from the South, "Let the good times roll." Both phrases have entered common American speech, and although it is not definitively known which one preceded the other, each exhorts us to relax and have a good time. Happy Mardi Gras!

Word origin for Mar. 9, 2011: congregation - The word for an assembly of people, and specifically an assembly of churchgoers, comes from the Greek gregos ("flock") and the Latin con ("with" or "together") ... the origin lays bare the metaphor of clerics as pastors - shepherds, that is - and of the Good Shepherd.

Word origin for Mar. 10, 2011: Dalmatian - The breed of dog with white coat and black spots was first imported in England in 1810 and traveled from there to the United States, where it soon became one of the more popular varieties of dog, and remains so today. It was originally bred in Croatia, where it was called dalmatinac - that is, from Dalmatia, a coastal region along the Adriatic Sea.

Word origin for Mar. 11, 2011: diaper - In medieval times, a "diaper," whose root is the Greek word aspros ("white") was any kind of white, loosely woven linen such as a farm worker might wear on a hot day. It came to be used for a garment for babies only in the nineteenth century, and then mostly in the United States. In Britain and other English-speaking nations, the preferred term remains "napkin," often shortened to "nappy."

Twins Information, as of August 2007

Thank goodness for the Internet Wayback Machine! All info taken from Facts About Multiples.


Twins (2)

Most Sets of Twins
16 sets - Mrs. Fyodor Vassilyev (Russia, 1700s) (in addition to 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quads). The father remarried, and had more multiples (not sure how many).

Other families with more than one set of multiples are listed in the Multiple Multiples section.

Most Premature (All surviving)
22 weeks, 1 day (125 days early) - Kay and Nick Banski.
120 or 119 days (22 weeks, 6 days or 23 weeks) - Courtney and Chloe Smith (Louisiana, March 1 2000)
119 days (23 weeks) - Devin and Dorraine Johnson (Ohio, April 8 1996).

Lightest Total Birthweight (Both surviving)
24.5 ozs (1 lb 8.5 ozs) - Courtney (12 ozs) and Chloe (12.5 ozs) Smith (Louisiana, March 1 2000).
30.3 ozs (1 lb 14.3 ozs) - Anne (14.8 ozs) and John (15.5 ozs) Morrison (Canada, January 14 1994).
30.3 ozs (1 lb 14.3 ozs) - Roshan (17.28 ozs) and Melanie Gray (13.02 ozs) (Australia, November 1993).

Lightest Twin (Single Baby, surviving)
8.6 ozs - Rumaisa Rahman (Illinois, Sep 19 2004). Her twin Hiba weighed 1 lb 4 ozs. Rumaisa is believed to be the smallest surviving baby in the world.
12 ozs - Courtney Smith (Louisiana, March 1 2000).
12 ozs - Kylie Walpole (Texas, February 11 2004) Born 2 months early; her twin Trinity was 2 lbs 8 ozs. Kylie was fully developed and did not need to be on a respirator.

Heaviest Total Birth Weight
27 lbs 12 ozs - Patricia Jane (14 lbs) & John Prosser (13 lbs 12 ozs) Haskin (Arkansas, February 20 1924) born to Mary Ann Ward Haskin. Jane died Aug 3 2001.

Heaviest Twin (Single Baby)
14 lbs - Patricia Jane Haskin (Arkansas, February 20 1924).

Heaviest Adult Twins (Combined Weight)
1466 lbs - Billy Leon (5 lbs 4 ozs at birth, 743 lbs adult - d 1979) & Benny Loyd McGuire McCrary (5 lbs 3 ozs at birth, 723 lbs adult, d 2001) (North Carolina, December 7 1946). Their highest weight was a combined 1597 lbs.

Longest Delayed Twin Birth (Both surviving)
95 days apart - Timothy & Celeste Keys (Louisiana, October 15 1993 and January 18 1994) .

Oldest Set of Twins to Ever Live (Combined Ages)
216 years, 9 months - Alice Smith Lindsay (Australia, Mar 31 1893 - Jul 1 2004) & Eugenia Smith Collins (Australia, Mar 31 1893 - Oct 8 1998).
216 years, 20 days - Kin Narita (Japan, Aug 1 1892 - Jan 23 2000) and Gin Kanie (Japan, Aug 1 1892 - Feb 28 2001).
214 years, 10 months - Dale (Ohio, Jun 20 1895 - Jul 17 2004) and Glen Moyer (Ohio, June 20 1895 - Apr 2001).

Oldest Living Twins (Male or Female, Both Living)
1901 - Gertrude Eddy and Dorothy McMahon (Prince Edward Island, Canada, November 13 1901). No updates since 2003 on their status.
1901 - Mary Fisher and Bill Binnie (Scotland, December 3 1901). Currently in British Columbia, Canada. No updates since 2002 on their status.
1901 - Identical twins Hilda Coldicott Edwards and Mabel Coldicott Jeans (England, December 16 1901). No updates since 2003 on their status.
1902 - Ellen Hall Robertson and Sarah Hall Jeanmougin (Manitoba, Canada, May 29 1902). They just celebrated their 104th birthdays in 2006.

The Twinstuff page has more detailed information on oldest sets.

Tallest Twins (Male)
7' 4" - Michael and James Lanier (Michigan, November 27 1969).

Tallest Twins (Female)
6'7" and 6'6" - Beatrice & Suzanne Bofia (Cameroon)
6' 6" - Ann and Claire Recht (Oregon, 1988). Ann and Claire are the current Guinness Record holders.

Shortest Twins (Male)
2' 6" (30") - Matjus and Bela Matina (Hungary, 1903 - 1935). Primordial dwarfism; appeared in the Wizard of Oz as Mike and Ike Rogers.
2' 10" (34") - John and Greg Rice (Florida, 1952). John passed away November 5 2005.

I am trying to find out who the shortest living set of male twins is currently.

Shortest Twins (Female)
4' 1" (49") - Dorene Williams and Darlene McGregor (California).

First Test Tube (IVF) Twins
World - Stephen and Amanda Mays (Australia, June 5 1981). They were the 7th and 8th IVF babies born in the world and the first twins.

Canada - Colin & Gregory Rankin (Ontario, March 25 1982) Conceived via IVF in England. First IVF in North America.
USA - Heather & Todd Tilton (New York, 1983). Conceived via IVF in Virginia.
Nepal - Koirala (2005)

Longest Separated Twins
75 years - Iris Johns and Aro Campbell were separated from each other Jan 13 1914 and reunited 75 years later.

Most Identical (Contest Wins)
22 - John & William Reiff (Pennsylvania, July 1 1930) won a record 22 titles. William passed away in 2000 and John in 2005.

Youngest Mother of Twins
11 years old - Unidentified (Brazil, 2000) Had twin boys.

Youngest Father of Twins
13 years old - James Sutton (England, 1999) Identical twins Leah & Louise. James is a twin; he and the mother (who was 17) are still together.

Oldest Mother of Twins (Both twins survive)
70 years old - Omkari Panwar (India, June 27 2008) boy/girl, IVF. She is also the oldest woman to become a mother.
66 years and 358 days old - Carmela Busada (Spain, December 29 2006) IVF
66 years and 230 days old - Adriana Ilescu (from Romania, born in the UK, January 16, 2005) Eliza. Twin sister lost in utero.

Oldest Father of Twins (Both twins survive)
78 years, 1 month old - Thomas James Lambert (Louisiana, March 15 1948) Dale and Dean
75 years old - Everett Franklin (Kansas, 1962) Don and Naomi.

I have read an article where TV host Art Linkletter said he ran across a man from Chicago who had fathered twins at the age of 100 (in addition to his most recent child, at age 104). The mother was in her 30s. I haven't been able to verify this.

Twins Marrying Twins (Quarternary Marriage)
28 - I have recorded 28 instances of twins marrying twins, but have seen a statistic claiming there are about 250 quarternary marriages existing.

Sets Born Per Year (USA)
Since 1989, there have been an average of 56,136 sets of twins born each year in the US.