Some Handsome Hand

Sometimes, the original meaning of a word is so bloody obvious that you can't believe that you don't use it that way any more. Such a word is handsome, which apparently is as it does - a phrase I have never understood. When you realise that handsome used to be a synonym for handy, it seems obvious.

Something that is hand-some is, or was back in the fifteenth century, suitable for the hands. It was easily handle-able. It was conveniently to hand. It was handy.

From convenient it was a short shift in meaning to appropriate. And because a large reward is always felt to be an appropriate one, handsome then started to mean big - a meaning we still use in phrases like "He was handsomely rewarded."

And then, from the sense of being a good size, you got the modern meaning of human, usually male, beauty.

Mind you, this may not be the case in America. Certainly, in the C19th an Englishman could still observe that on the far side of the Pond:

A writer is styled ‘a very handsome author’, meaning a good and clever one, and quite irrespective of his appearance, which may be the reverse of comely.

Not handsome, then.

Leper Juice

Nobody knows where the dan in dandruff comes from, but the second syllable probably derives from the Old English hreofla meaning leper. Perhaps there was a particular flaky chap called Dan.

I hate to tell you this, but there is a thing called leper juice. It's the stuff in the lesions. The things you find in the OED. I'm off to start a soft drinks company.

Incidentally, the World Health Organisation think leprosy's got a bad reputation and prefer to call it Hansen's Disease. This must be a great comfort to those dying of leprosy, but not to people called Hansen.

Not a speck in sight.

Pareidolia

POLONIUS: My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.
HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
POL: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
HAM: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POL: It is backed like a weasel.
HAM: Or like a whale?
POL: Very like a whale.
HAM: Then I will come to my mother by and by.
III,2

There is a word for everything, and the word for seeing shapes in clouds is pareidolia. In fact, pareidolia is the word for seeing patterns in any random system. So if you see pictures in a Rorschach Test, or a man in the moon, or have deduced the date of the Second Coming from a code hidden in the bus timetables, that is pareidolia.

The term was invented by Victor Kandinsky, who was the uncle of the painter and rather strange to boot. He had what he called a delirium of judgement, which is to say he didn't quite hallucinate but he was capable of so misinterpreting the world around him that it amounted to the same thing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think my cup of coffee is trying to tell me something.

Taken from this flickr stream

Soda, Sodium and Pop

It's an odd little reverse of the expected that sodium is actually derived from soda, which was a fifteenth century term for a mysterious alkaline substance. Sodium, was not isolated and named until 1807. Soda itself probably comes from the Arabic suwwad, which is the name of a sort of herb.

The chap who invented, or discovered, sodium, was Sir Humphry Davy, who has great literary significance as he was the subject of the first ever Clerihew, an odd sort of four-line poem that has a man's name as a first line.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

He was also the first Englishman to use the word potassium, which is named after potash.

Soda water is first recorded in 1802 as a name for fizzy water with bicarbonate of soda in it. To an Englishman, soda remains just the name for carbonated water, however in America it is a generic name for fizzy drinks. This map shows the Arab word's infiltration of the United States (double click to enlarge):

Cock-Squailing

Those of you who have read The Etymologicon may just remember that in chapter two I recount how the French game of poule, where you threw things at a chicken for a prize, gave us the idea of pooling your money. As I recall, I had a lot of fun at the expense of our Gallic and gallicidal cousins.

However, I have now discovered that we had almost exactly the same sport in England. It was called cock-squailing, or sometimes cock-throwing. It was pretty much the same as the French version. You paid a penny, and in return you were given a stick, or cockstele, to throw at the poor chicken. Whoever killed the chicken, got to eat him.

Changes in attitude to this practice can be seen from two OED citations. The first from 1663:

Cock-throwing. Cock-a-doodle do, 'tis the bravest game.

And the second from 1825:

Cock-squailing, a barbarous game, consisting in tying a cock to a stake, and throwing a stick at him from a given distance, so as to destroy the bird.

There are references to cocksteles going back to the early sixteenth century. However, the fullest description I could find was the following letter to The Sporting Magazine from 1795:

Gentlemen,

As the custom of squailing at cocks is very prevalent in the part of the country in which I reside, and as it may not be known to the generality of your readers, I take the liberty of transmitting the following description.


A few days ago I happened to be a spectator where a rabble of idle fellows were convened for the purpose of barbarously torturing at a stake, those domestic animals. Among the rest, a rustic approached in tattered garb, with a bad on his shoulder, wherein was supposed to be deposited a cock. But though he attended ultimately for the purpose of making the dumb creature the sport of infidels, he feigned to profess himself a friend to humanity, nor would he submit to tie his bird to a stake, as is the custom, but devised the following manoeuvre: That a large earthen pan should be procured, under which the cock was to be lodged, to be paid the gamester's stipulated gratuity for throwing, and whoever was fortunate enough to break the pan, would be entitled to the sheltered victim.


These humane proposals being unanimously acceded to; the rustic artfully conveyed the pretended object of his sympathy under the potter's vessel. A ragamuffin undertook to abolish the clay-burnt mark; and after having incurred a pretty heavy expence shivered the pan to atoms, when to the astonishment of the multitude, (though to their no small diversion) instead of a cock, up flew a huge rusty owl, crying Hoo-hoo-hoo! The winner has ever since been known and called by the name of Hoo-hoo-hoo!


Yours & C
Duckwing
Ipswich
June 10, 1795

Though cock-squailing gets several other mentions, some things make me suspicious of that particular story, not least the name of the correspondent.

Anyway, I thought I'd recount my researches, partly because it's a splendid corroboration of the etymology, partly because I was a little unfair to the French, and partly because cock-squailing was always practised on Shrove Tuesday, which is tomorrow.

Cocksteles at the ready.

The Inky Fool wondered why he had been asked to dress up in such a silly chicken costume.

Egg Saturday

Today is, according to the Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English (1857), Egg Saturday - being the Saturday before Shrove Tuesday. It should be celebrated with eggs and dancing, like all other days.

Each and every morning.

Professor Yaffle

Just a little something for those who remember Bagpuss: a yaffle is, or was, a Kentish dialect term for the Green Woodpecker.