Omniana

An omniana is, according to the OED:

Thoughts or scraps of information about all or many kinds of things, esp. (a collection of) notes, jottings, or short pieces of writing on all or many kinds of subjects.


I feel like the chap in the Moliere play who is shocked to discover that all his life he has been speaking prose without knowing it.
 

Once, the Inky Fool's mind fell out of his ear

Ortzikara

Ortzikara is a Basque word meaning the time when a storm is brewing. Not only is it a useful term, but I feel that there is something ominous in the very sound.  It's the sort of word that a high priest intones over a human sacrifice. That may be only my gloomy imagination, or it may be because Basque words all sound a trifle odd; but ortzikara is certainly a more frightening word than nibble.

I remembered ortzikara today because I am staying fifty miles from a range of invisible mountains. Not that they are diaphanous, but that they are hidden in a summer haze except when a storm is coming. Then they appear, towering gloomily on the horizon, and distant thunders roll over the plain.

It is just beginning to rain.

I should mention that I found ortzikara on the erudite Omniglot blog, here.

The Inky Fool was just laying out his picnic

Concealed Farts

Our word partridge comes from the Old French pertis which comes from the Latin perdicem which comes from the Greek perdix which comes from the Greek verb perdesthai which means fart, because that's what a partridge sounds like when it flies. The low, loud beating of the wings sounds like the clapping of the buttocks when the inner gale is liberated.

Petard, which is a kind of explosive, comes from the French péter meaning fart, for reasons much too obvious to state. Incidentally, it was Hamlet who originally said:

Tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard.

Hoist here simply means raised or blown sky high. Hamlet is talking about how he plans to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who then become dead).

Pumpernickel (bread) was (for some reason unrelated to good marketing) originally just a German insult. Nickel meant devil and pumpern meant... I assume, dear and flatulent reader, that you get the picture. So it's devilfart bread.

All of which carminative fun leaves you with what Milton called "a singèd bottom all involved with stench and smoke."

The Inky Fool in his Sunday Best

Lyttle Lytton

The other day I mentioned the Bulwer-Lytton contest for bad writing. I also mentioned that I disagreed with the judgement of its judges. I have since been informed by a kindly commenter that there is a much better prize: the Lyttle Lytton.

Each winner comes with a cogent explanation from Adam Cadre (I believe) of exactly what is so horribly wrong. There is also a limit of 25 words, which means they march snappily by. I thoroughly recommend it. The 2010 winners can be found by clicking on this link.

The Dog Days

The Dog Days start today. Well, it depends who you ask, really. But if you ask the Book of Common Prayer the Dog Days start today, and that's good enough for me.

Dog Days have nothing directly to do with dogs: they are named after the Dog Star, also called Sirius, which is the brightest star in all the heavens (excluding the sun). Back in Roman times the Dog Star rose with the sun during late summer and it was believed that it was this conjunction of the two brightest stars in the sky that caused the heat of July and August.

If you want to know what the next couple of months will be like, you need only consult Hesiod's Works and Days:

In the season of wearisome heat, then goats are plumpest and wine sweetest; women are most wanton, but men are feeblest, because Sirius parches head and knees and the skin is dry through heat. But at that time let me have a shady rock and wine of Biblis, a clot of curds and milk of drained goats with the flesh of an heifer fed in the woods, that has never calved, and of firstling kids; then also let me drink bright wine, sitting in the shade, when my heart is satisfied with food, and so, turning my head to face the fresh Zephyr, from the everflowing spring which pours down unfouled, thrice pour an offering of water, but make a fourth libation of wine.

Which is, verbatim, what I'm going to say the next time I see a waiter.

That Sirus heats the earth is not true scientifically, but it is true poetically; and poetry is Much More Important than truth. If you don't believe that principle, try using the two methods to get laid.

Shakespeare mentions the Dog Days in Henry VIII. He describes a red-nosed fellow by saying:

There is a fellow somewhat near the door, he should be a brazier by his face, for, o' my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now reign in's nose;

Milton appears to mention the heat of Sirius in Lycidas:

Ye valley low where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks

Pope complains that "The Dog Star rages". But my favourite reference to the Dog Days is, for some reason, Fons Bandusiae by Horace. It's only a passing reference and it's in Latin but it translates very roughly as:

Sabine spring, as clear as glass,
Where the floating flowers pass,
Take tomorrow’s sacrifice
In your water cold as ice:

(For it grew its horns in vain,
For it will not breathe again)
Let the kid-goat’s hopeless blood
Mingle with your perfect flood.

No: the Dog Days’ horrid heat
Cannot touch you. Oxen’s feet
Stray from ploughshare to your pool,
Wander, rest there, and are cool.

Fame is yours, for I shall write –
And eternity recite
In perpetual murmuring tones –
Of the oak upon your stones.

However, as I said, the Dog Days have nothing to do with dogs and nothing whatsoever to do with Hamlet's comment that:

Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

Holy-Days

I am off on holy-day. However, this should not affect the blog too much. I have prepared a posy of posts already. Tomorrow's offering will appear in splendid automation at ten sharp, even as I am riding the funicular railway to my time-share bungalow on the summit of Mount Abora.

However, as there are bound to be gaps I would thoroughly recommend that you rush over and visit How To Write Badly Well.

I'll have some Internet access but will, necessarily, be far slower in replying to interesting, indignant or importunate comments and queries.

The Inky Fool was late for his flight

P.S. If anybody knows of somewhere unbelievably cheap to stay in Paris on the 20th, it would stop me going inseine.

Filler Words: Part the Second: Vocatives

It would be foolish, indeed reckless, to read this post without having first read this one.

Listen, you, I have something to say.

The you is dull and voiceless and could be replaced with many other far more fascinating words. For example:

Listen, dude, I have something to say.

The choice of substitute says nothing about the person being addressed, but an awful lot about the speaker or writer. It therefore gives the sentence a distinctive voice. In writing, where you have no accent or body-language to help you along, that is frightfully important. One well placed vocative can set the authorial tone for a whole book, blog post or ransom note.

Dear = married
Darling = Engaged or theatrical/fashion/overbearing female/gay
My child = Biblical and therefore whimsical
My good man = 1950s, Middle Class and slightly enraged
Dear Reader = Austenish
Gentle Reader = Eighteenth Century. It tells you to read the whole work in a particular, mannered way.
Buddy = American
Chuck = Northern working class
Duck = Ditto
Petal = Working class
Guv = Ditto
Babe [to a man or unknown, unisex reader] = California cool?
Poppet = Wonderfully old fashioned and endearing
Old Bean = Bertie Wooster
My Friend = Sinister mafioso
Dude = American, young. Unlike my friend, dude suggests reciprocity and similarity. I cannot call you dude unless I am a dude myself. (I am not a dude).

Female:

Love = Unshaven
Cherie, Bella, Liebling etc = Effusive female OR gay man
Sweetness = Camper than a row of tents
Hon (or, if she's German, Hun) = Familiar and vaguely American
Baby = Generally cool
Babe = One should remember David Cameron's "I love you, babe" to his wife "caught" on microphone after his conference speech, and Pamela Anderson's respose in the profound and moving film Barbed Wire, where she shoots people.

Male:

Mate = If you are my mate, I am your mate. I am insinuating that I share approximately your views on football, beer and the fairer sex.
Pal = In England always aggressive, but in a weirdly middle-class way
Son = Authoritative, but also threatening
My boy = Healthy, bullish, red-faced
Dear boy = Camp or terribly posh
Chief = Southern working class
Man = This is some good shit we're smoking
Mister = 1930s Chicago Gangster, 1970s cockney, 1990s... in fact there are so many disctinct voices that could be deduced that I should avoid this one until after the voice has been established.
Old chap = Charming in a Terry Thomas sort of way (and if you don't know who that is, click here)

Due to the continuing phallologocentric nature of society (a condition that I do my level best to perpetuate) you can use male vocatives from an unknown reader, but not female ones.

Once, on a train, I was slyly reading a love-letter over the shoulder of the lady next to me, because I am an incorrigible snoop. In it, her beau referred to her as "my little snugglosaurus." There were tears in her eye.

I'm not sure why.

As ever, corrections and additions in the comments please.

Miss Anderson reacting to the Inky Fool's views on vocatives