Myoclonic Jerk

Do you ever, dear reader, just as you're falling asleep, suddenly twitch and wake up? For no reason? I do. It's a terribly common phenomenon; and there is, dear reader, a name for it. It is a myoclonic jerk.

The reason I like myoclonic jerk is not simply that it gives a name to the nameless, but that it sounds like a term of abuse. 'That guy', I can rant, 'is a myoclonic jerk.'

It wouldn't matter that the sentence would be meaningless, because it would sound right.

Incidentally, if you ever experience a myoclonic jerk while you're not falling asleep, you are, in the words of doctor friend of mine, "absolutely fucked".

Pedigrees and Perigees and French Cranes

Here is a pretty picture of some cranes, or grues as the French call them.

Here is a detail showing you the crane's foot or pied de grue as the French call it.

Here is a family tree of the languages derived from Proto-Indo-European.

Do you see the pied-de-grues? Do you see the pedigree? That is because lineages resemble both trees and cranes' feet.

A pedigree should never be confused with a perigee, which is the opposite of an apogee and therefore a low-point. You may, though, if you are the black sheep of your family, be the perigee of your pedigree.

I can fanatically recommend the excellent philological book Pedigree: Words From Nature. It's a trifle odd, though, as it costs £5.68 in Britain, and $140 in America. I may start a hedge fund for rare books.

Incidentally, if you have three toes you are technically tridactylic and generally unfortunate. I have an irrational hatred of people who have toes missing. I fear I may be lack-toes intolerant.

Wodehouse's Imaginary Divas

P.G. Wodehouse used to write musicals. Indeed, that's where most of his money came from for a long time. He also did us all a favour by writing about writing. Unfortunately, both books (The Performing Flea and the expanded Wodehouse On Wodehouse) seem to be out of print. But I read them so you don't have to.

Anyway, when writing musicals the problem for Wodehouse was the performers. Actors may be cattle, but they are vicious cattle. Wodehouse had to accommodate the whims, vanities and contracts of the stars, starlets and gas giants of Broadway.

"Why don't I have any good lines in this scene?" they would demand. "I don't even go on in act two." "I demand a huge emotional moment to display my roscian powers."

One would imagine that poor Pelham Grenville would have been happy to get back to his novels and short stories. There, alone with his typewriter and his imagination, he would be free. But this was not the case.

Wodehouse realised how right the actors were. You simply can't leave a character without a good line. You can't drop somebody half way through a story. Everybody needs a personality or tic. So he would make a point of imagining that he was writing for horrid, vain, demanding actors. He would try to foresee and forestall their complaints and vanities.

And the result was the Blandings books and the Jeeves books and the Psmith books and that whole heap of wonderfulness that we read today.

Often, Constraint is the doting mother of Invention, whilst Freedom sits among her squalid brood refusing even to change Drivel's nappy.

Wodehouse arguing with an actor

Jedward Jedwood Justice

I am reliably informed that there is a boy-band called Jedward. There is also an old practice called Jedwood justice which means, according to Brewers: "Putting someone to death and trying them afterwards."

It derives from the border town of Jedburgh where they used to do this rather a lot. I feel that Jedward and Jedwood justice, though etymologically unrelated, could usefully be brought together.

Incidentally, Jedburgh is terribly important in the history of geology and therefore in the history of history. It was by studying the rock formations nearby that James Hutton worked out his idea of geological time. Geological time stretched the earth beyond the petty grasp of human history or human understanding. In geological time, as Hutton put it:

We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.

Which is a lovely example of antithesis.

Hutton contemplating Jedwood for Jedward

Heroines on Heroin

Once upon a time cough medicines all contained morphine, and because morphine is a trifle addictive this was a problem. People were too worried to cure their coughs. They thought that it was better to hack a little than to become a junkie.

So a German pharmaceutical company called Bayer decided to develop an alternative. They got out their primitive test tubes and rude retorts, and worked out a new chemical: diacetylmorphine, which they marketed as a "non-addictive morphine substitute". Like all new products it needed a name. Diacetylmorphine was all right if you were a scientist, but it wasn't going to work at the counter. They needed a name that would sell, a name that would make people say: "Yes! I want to buy that product!"

So the marketing chaps decided to call it Heroin, because apparently it made you feel heroic. And guess what? It did sell.

Heroin remained a Bayer trademark until the First World War; but the "non-addictive" part turned out to be a trifle misguided.

And that's why heroines are connected to heroin. Incidentally, the adjective for a heroine is heroinal (as distinct from the unisex heroic). Heroinal, though, has been used only once, in 1652, by Sir Thomas Urqhart who wrote the words:

Her mellifluent and heroinal breast...


Oh, and if you are ever offered "heroic measures" in hospital, it does not mean that you're going to have a tall, dashing doctor. It means that they're going to give you dangerous doses because you're probably going to die anyway.

The Inky Fool's accommodation arrangements are coming along fine

Hornswoggle

Nobody knows where the word hornswoggle came from. It popped up mysteriously in America in 1829, came to England, and was still being used by The Sunday Times as recently as 1970.

Hornswoggle meant to embarrass, bamboozle or cheat. It survives today, if it can be said to survive at all, as the stage-name of a small professional wrestler, who also likes to be called Little Bastard.

I feel hornswoggle should be reclaimed by the non-wrestling community. Saying the word aloud is almost as delicious a sensual pleasure as wamblecropt.

Try it. Go on.


Horn-swoggle.

Lofts, Attics and Garrets

To move house I had to clear out the loft. A loft is, of course, aloft. It is up in the air and therefore cognate with the German Lufthansa and Luftwaffe (which just means air force).

Loft is a far older word than attic. Attics are Attic because they're Greek. In a Greek temple you have lots of big columns. Sometimes you have another smaller set of columns on top. They are characteristic of classical Athenian architecture and Athens was the capital of Attica.

The technical term for a small section at the top of a temple then became a jocular term for the small space above a house. The word was first used in this sense by Daniel Defoe in his Tour of Great Britain, in which he also described Hampstead (which I am leaving) thus:

But it must be confest, 'tis so near heaven, that I dare not say it can be a proper situation, for any but a race of mountaineers...

Attics should be used for storing mad women and cash.

Garrets (which originally meant watchtowers) should be used for storing artists.

The Inky Fool leaving Hampstead