Phrontistery

How vainly men themselves amaze adding bits on to their houses - a games room, a gym, a private cinema. If I ever have the money, I shall build myself a phrontistery, or possibly a phrontisterion, they mean the same thing: a place for thinking.

In such a room the eager phrontist could meditate, cogitate and ponder. This would continue until I got into a bad mood, at which point I would go to the boudoir and sulk.

As Andrew Marvell said of his garden:

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men :
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow ;
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

The Phrontisterion of Trapezous

Licking Lechers

It is, perhaps, appropriate that the English word lecher comes from the French for licker, although it may rather cramp the thoroughgoing lecher's style.

The French for lick is still lecher, which is why the French for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine, which literally means to go window licking.  Meanwhile over in English slang a window-licker is a rude way to refer to somebody who isn't right in the head.

It's also always amused me when talking to academics that, unless you have Olivier-like diction, lecher and lecture sound identical.

Crorections

As Auden said, It is time for the destruction of error.

Since the dear old Etymologicon came out, I have been fielding occasional e-mails from those who have noticed five mistkaes. It’s the first one that shames me as it is of proper lexicographic significance.

1) In my list of the words and phrases invented by Winston Churchill I for some reason included the term iron curtain. I’ve no idea why I did this as, though Churchill did make the phrase famous, it had been around since the eighteenth century as a safety device in theatres, and had been used to describe the Soviet border from at least 1920. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

None of the rest (to my lackadaisical mind) seem to be too serious, but in the interests of full disclosure:

2) I said that beechwood is good for carving because it is soft. However, a correspondent writes:

Beech wood is not soft. Speaking as a former professional cabinet-maker, I can attest with blisters to how soft beech wood is not. Botanically, it's a hardwood as it comes from a deciduous tree, and in practice it is good for the sort of carving you describe as it is reasonably tough, not brittle or splitty (splitty is a perfectly good word in common use amongst woodworkers), but most of all it is a) abundant and therefore cheap; b) of no use in ship-building and therefore available; c) fine-grained, diffuse-porous, not ring porous, and pretty consistently straight grained and therefore takes detail well. Compared to oak, it is not very hard, but compared to other commonly available woods in germany in the middle ages (such as pine and spruce) it is indeed pretty rock-like. My guess would be it was chosen for its consistency, detail-holding, and price characteristics.

3) I said that Thomas Derrick used his invention to execute the Earl of Essex. Derrick did kill Essex, but as the latter was an aristocrat it was done with an axe. A commenter points out:

Essex had the right to have his head chopped off, and Derrick made a complete hash of the job. It took him three strikes before he was able to wave the head about to a great cry of 'God Save the Queen'.

4) I said that the Ancient Greeks used poison arrows. However, I'm told that:

The ancient Greeks did not as a general rule poison their arrows in war. Some of their opponents did, such as the Scythians, so they certainly knew of the practice.


5) I said that outsiders never win horse races, and that favourites always do. A racehorse owner wrote to tell me that this isn’t really the case. The favourite wins about one third of the time. Hundred-to-one shots win slightly less than every hundred races. The remainder is made up by well backed horses who aren’t quite the favourite.

I also made an utterly idiotic passing reference to the Maginot Line, implying that it was a WWI thing, when of course it's WWII. This has already been removed from reprints.


Anyway, all of the above will be tweaked in reprints so that it will look as though I never made the mistakes at all. If anyone else has noteiced an error, do say.

Blockbuster

Somebody has enquired as to what block it is precisely that a blockbuster film busts.

Well, I assume that she meant film. But a blockbuster was originally a kind of bomb. The phrase dates from 1942 when the large bombs of more than eight thousand pounds began to be referred to as blockbusters. But of course, that's explosives and not films.

The second well-attested meaning of blockbuster is rather stranger. It's a kind of estate agent. Specifically, it was a kind of American real estate agent who would irritate the hell out of white people by selling one house on the block to a black person, which apparently in 1950s and 60s America was somewhat controversial.

But the films? Nobody is quite sure. There are two theories. The first is that it's a simple transfer of the explosive power of the blockbusting bomb. There's a line in a detective novel from 1957 that goes:

One day I had what seemed to me like a block~buster of an idea for a musical play.

However, the term didn't really catch on until the 1970s when spectacular and super-grosser were pushed out of the lexicon and blockbuster took their place.

The other theory is just that: a theory. It may well not be true but showbiz folklore says that a blockbuster is a show that is so popular that all the other theatres on the block are bankrupted, and end up bust. This doesn't really work as, presumably, they would profit from the ticketless turnaways who couldn't get into the main show.

This amuses me.

Rasher

This morning, as I incinerated my breakfast, I was reminded of the etymology of the word rasher, as in a rasher of bacon. There are two theories on the subject. The first rather tedious one is that it's cognate with razor and therefore means a thin strip that has been cut off.

However, the first etymologist to tackle the rasher was John Minsheu (1560-1627). He, in his Ductor in Linguas, gives an explanation that is much more fun, though not necessarily much more true.

A Rasher on the coales, q. rashly or hastily roasted.

This does, at least, tally with my experience.

Every damn morning.

Ultracrepidarian

Ultracrepidarianism is giving opinions on subjects that you know nothing about, and is thus a terribly useful word. Ultracrepidarian was introduced into English by the essayist William Hazlitt, but it goes back to an ancient story about the great Greek painter Apelles.

The story goes that Apelles used to leave his new paintings out on public display and then hide behind a pillar to hear people's reactions. One day he overheard a cobbler pointing out that Apelles had painted a shoe all wrong. So he took the painting away, corrected the shoe and put it out on display again.

The cobbler came back, saw that Apelles had taken his advice and was so proud and puffed up with conceit that he had made the great painter change a detail that he started talking loudly about what was wrong with the leg; at which point Apelles jumped out from his hiding place and shouted: ne sutor ultra crepidam, which approximately translates as the cobbler should go no further than the shoe. Thus ultracrepidiarian is beyond-the-shoe.

Anybody wishing to know my opinions on baseball, carpentry or Pop Idol should send a stamped self-addressed envelope somewhere else.

Leave it out, son.

A Year and a Day

All right. I didn't get round to posting anything yesterday for various intensely technical reasons involving gin and smiles. So today's post will have to be on the old rule of a year and a day.

A year and a day used to be terribly important in murder cases. If you stab me and I die five minutes later that's definitely murder. However, what if you stab me and I die a month later? Or six months? Or fifty years? At what point does it merely become a long term injury that may aggravate, but cannot be said to have caused, my final coil-shuffling?

Until 1996, there was a nice simple rule: a year and a day. If your victim dies before then, it's murder: after that it's just bad manners.

Anyway, this takes me back to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the opening scene of which occurs:

While New Year was so yep [young] that it was new comen,
That day double on the dais was the douth [food] served...

When in walks a huge green knight who challenges the assembled knights to a game. Any one who is brave enough can come and strike him once with a sword on condition that, in a year and a day (presumably January 2nd), the green knight can do the same to his assailant. Here's the relevant stanza (spelling slightly modernised):

"Nay, frayst I no fight, in faith I thee tell;
It are about on this bench but beardless childer;
If I were hasped in arms on a high steed,
Here no man me to match, for mights so weak.
Forthy I crave in this court a Chistmas gomen [game],
For it is Yule and New Year, and here are yep [youngsters] many.
If any so hardy in this house holds himselven,
Be so bold in his blood, brayn [mad] in his head,
That dare stiffly strike a stroke for an other,
I shall give him of my gift this giserne [battle-axe] rich,
This axe, that is heavy enough, to handle as him likes,
And I shall bide the first bur [blow], as bare as I sit.
If any freke be so fell to fond [test] that I tell,
Leap lightly me to, and lach [grab] this weapon;
I quit-claim it for ever, keep it as his own.
And I shall stand him a stroke, stiff on this flet [floor],
Else thou will dight me the doom to deal him another, barlay.
And yet give him respite
A twelvemonth and a day;
Now hie, and let see tite [quickly]
Dare any herein ought say."

Gawain takes up the challenge, and, without wishing to give too much away, has a bad January 2nd. An oddity of all this is that the father of a friend of mine still used to say "barlay" in the playground in Cheshire in the 1950s.

Bloody January again