Learning | Excoriate

A recent online headline caught the attention of a few of us at the library. It referred to a professional baseball player being "excoriated" for training for a position he no longer plays.  Never mind the controversy about the player's motives for training; it just seemed like an unnecessarily big word for a sports story headline.

Excoriate. From Richard King's photostream on Flickr.com.
Some rights reserved

Excoriate comes from the Latin word excoriatus,  which in turn is derived from the prefix ex- (meaning out or from,) and the Latin word corium (meaning skin or hide.) Both excoriatus and excoriate mean to flay, or strip off the skin or hide. In the eighteenth century, the word started to be used figuratively, meaning to censure or denounce. 


So why didn't the news agency use a shorter word like censure or denounce? I don't  have a good answer for that. Journalists used to try to write news stories that could be read at a sixth grade level.  Perhaps that reporter and editor did not know about that practice, or didn't care.


A search for excoriate in our Shiny New catalog found no results. Instead, I'll leave you with a list of books about that controversial baseball player.

Learning | Scree

If you have read any of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Mysteries, you have probably encountered the word scree, meaning landslip. (If you have not read them, the word comes up frequently, since the main characters are archaeologists who often excavate in Egypt. There's scree all over the place!)

This comes from an Old English word, related to the Swedish and Danish skred, meaning to slide or glide. 

It also means a mass of detritus, forming a precipitous, stony slope upon a mountain-side; also, the material composing such a slope.

Scree, from Carlos Baquero's photostream on Flickr.com. 
Some rights reserved.

I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary for the definition, because I thought I had found another use of the word in the book I'm currently reading. 

It's an historical novel by Nancy E. Turner, titled My Name is Resolute.  

It's the story of a tenacious young girl who is captured from her aristocratic Jamaican home, then sold several times as a slave.  

She carries valuable family treasures, such as coins and jewelry, sewn into pockets on her petticoat. 

(She also settles in colonial Lexington, Massachusetts, in the years leading up to the American Revolution. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) 

Here's the quote from page 197, which employs the word scree:

"How shall I make myself into a woman? As I made an apron, as I made my own thread and turned it into a plaited cloth, hid my scree within, and then was abandoned by my only kin?"

I puzzled over this for a while.  Was this an editing error? Did the author really mean to use the word scree, or a similar word, screed? 

Screed is a word with multiple meanings;  it is probably derived from the word shred. Turner had already described that petticoat as tattered and patched up. I don't think she meant screed in the above passage.  

Scree lobelia in fruit, from John Sullivan's photostream on Flickr.com.
Some rights reserved.

The original meaning of scree might be used here as a part of a metaphor, describing the changes in Resolute's circumstances as a series of slides and slips down a mountain.

The above photo of a scree lobelia plant bearing fruit amongst rocks on the side of a mountain reminds me of the main character, Resolute Talbot.  She is a strong-willed child, who grows into a determined, productive woman. I won't spoil the story for you with specific details, but she plays a very important role in the American Revolution.

Learning | Tride and True? I thought it was Tried and True.

I always heard an expression that I thought was tried and true. I would hear the phrase to describe something (usually a product, but sometimes a method) that was reliable. It sounded like it meant tested and therefore proven. 

I suppose I never saw it in writing, because it surprised me when I saw it written as "tride and true." This was on Facebook, and I suspected it was a typographical error. But I looked it up, and tride is a real word.

I work at Cesar Chavez Central Library now, so I was able to consult a printed volume of the Oxford English Dictionary for the definitions of tride and tried! I expect few people will find that as exciting as I do, but I must remind you: I am a word nerd.

So the OED says that tride was an old adjective used by horsemen related to gait and pace, meaning short and swift, or short and nimble. Either way, it sounds like a reliable horse to me.

The Gingerbread Horse Runs Through the Pasture, 
from Pete Markham's photostream on Flickr.com. Some rights reserved.

But a second definition, also obsolete, is the past tense and participle of try. So it is another way of spelling tried. So we are back to my original understanding of the phrase as tried and true, more or less meaning that a thing or method has proven reliable.

Tried and True" handpainted sign, 
from Damon Styer's photostream on Flickr.com.  
Some Rights reserved.

I won't call the Facebook post I saw a typo, since technically tride is an older spelling of tried, but I think the phrase usually is written as tried and true. When I looked up the entire phrase in the OED, it appeared under tried, but not tride.  That settles the question for me.

Learning | Eastertide Musings

Eastertide is upon us!

I found myself using the word Eastertide in a conversation recently. I know it means the Easter season, just as Christmastide is the Christmas season. Why does the suffix -tide mean season?

The word has Germanic origins; it is related to the modern German word Zeit, which translates to the English time. 

After I learned that, I began to wonder about the use of the word tide  to describe the movements of water.  

Watching the tide come in and go out from the slough in my backyard makes me think how logical it would be (especially for those to live near water) to associate marking time with the movements of the tides. 

Here are two children's books for those who want to learn about tides.  Note: the second one is in Vietnamese; it is about a grandmother who explains tides to a small child.

If you would like to learn more about Easter, or just read some fun stories, follow this link for books about Easter.

Learning | Bibliographies at the Lieberry

Ouch! The title of this post really bothers me.  I hope it bothers you, too.  I hope you say the word library correctly.  

Library comes from the French word, librarie (bookshop or bookstore,) which in turn came from the Latin librarium (chest for books.)  Would you care to guess what the Latin root libr- means? It means book. 

Library Defined, By the American Heritage First Dictionary,
 Lester Public Library, Two Rivers, Wisconsin
Photo courtesy of Lester Public Library's photostream on Flickr.com.
Some rights reserved.

Libr- originally meant the inner bark of trees (paper or parchment.) It's also related to the English word leaf. Sometimes, the pages in a book are referred to as leaves.

Since the word comes from libr-, it is very important to keep that r sound when pronouncing library. Checking out books has nothing to do with lies or berries!

In English, we use the word library to mean a place for books--usually the kind of place that lends books, rather than selling them.  Other countries have a word for the same thing, but since they still use words like librarie or libraria for establishments that sell books, they call lending libraries by a word like bibliothèque, Bibliothek, or biblioteca.

Bibliothèque de l'université de Caen.
Photo courtesy of Karl Dupart's solcarluscaen photostream on Flickr.com.
Some rights reserved.

Bibliothèque comes from another word that means book. That Greek word, biblion, is also the source of the words Bible and bibliography.  Bibliographies! Ah, yes, the other part of the post title that bothers me:  The misuse of the word bibliography. Bibliography comes from biblio- (book) and -graphy (writing.)  It usually is used to refer to the list of books cited in a scholarly work.

Bible, Solomon Teaches Youth, Walters Manuscript W.51, fol. 54r from the Walters Art Museum's photostream on Flickr.com. Some rights reserved. Bibliography, from Zoonoses: The Lethal Gifts of Livestock: bibliography slide, by Delia Grace, ILRI 'livestock live talk' seminar, 31 Oct 2012, from ILRI's photostream on Flickr.com. Some rights reserved.

I hear customers asking for a bibliography when they really mean a biography. These words sound similar, so it's easy to make that mistake. But if you remember that the root biblio- means book, maybe you can remember that a story of a person's life is not a bibliography, but a biography.  

Especially since the Latin root, bio- means life. Think of other words that contain the root bio-, like biology (study of life) or antibiotic (a medicine that destroys or inhibits the growth of microorganisms.)

Speaking of biographies, I hear another mistake frequently. Many people ask for the autobiography section of the library, when they really mean the biography section. An autobiography is an account of a person's life, written by that person.  So, if the author of a biography is the same person the book is about, it is an autobiography. 


These are a few of my favorite picture books in the children's biography section:

Stone Girl, Bone Girl: the Story of Mary Anning

Bon Appétit!: the Delicious Life of Julia Child




The following autobiography by George Carlin is most decidedly not for children, but he sure knew his way around words:

Last Words

Do you have a favorite biography, or autobiography--or even a favorite bibliography? Tell me about it in a comment below.

Learning | L is for Lollygag

A lollygagging dog.
Photo courtesy of Randy Son of Robert's
photostream on Flickr.com.
Some rights reserved.

Every once in a while, I encounter a book that seems to have been written by a kindred soul (or, one might say, a fellow word nerd.)

L is for Lollygag: Quirky Words for a Clever Tongue is such a book.  I remember making lists of words when I was a kid. Some words were cool, some were interesting, and some were hilarious, like lollygag. This book has so many of those words, that I remember putting on those lists, I almost wondered if the authors stumbled across my childhood scrawls. Nah, that couldn't be the case, because my handwriting was downright illegible.  But only a kindred spirit would include words like fiddlesticks, rigamarole, and kit and caboodle for consideration.

As if the words and definitions were not delightful enough, the editors included droll, retro illustrations for the words and phrases (think about those animated interludes on Monty Python's Flying Circus--that's the idea!) 

I checked L is for Lollygag out in November, and I've renewed it a few times already.  I'm enjoying it so much, I know I'll be checking it out again someday, if only to use it as a list to inspire me to look up etymologies, or word origins.

I'll only bore you with one etymology today, from the title: lollygag is an interesting word for those looking up word histories, mainly because we aren't sure what it originally meant.  It did not appear in print until 1868; it seems to have something to do with tongues (lolly is an English word for tongue.)  

As the Wordphiliac entry for lollygag pointed out, it no doubt is somehow related to the expression loll, to have one's tongue hanging out. Of course, gag is a word we associate with mouths, too; think of something to put into somebody's mouth to stop them from talking.  But tongue-gagging is not how we use the word these days; to lollygag is to dawdle or waste time.

Learning | Burma-Shave, Part 2

My introductory Burma-Shave post last week barely touched on the discussions we have had on the subject at Troke.  

My co-worker, Ginny, asked the same question that occurred to me, when I received The Verse By the Side of the Road: the Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles through the Link+ program.  We both wondered how the shaving cream got the name Burma-Shave. In short, "Why Burma?"

My father (the co-pilot, back row, furthest left) and
his fellow crew members from the 40th Bombardment Group.
The aircraft behind them is "The Song of India,"
the B-29 they flew on missions from Tinian over "The Hump."

Burma (or Myanmar, as is it currently known) is a mountainous country located on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal.  Its northern border touches Bangladesh, India and China; its southern region reaches Thailand and the Malay Peninsula.

Trivia question

Name the television series that is the source of the following dialogue:

"BURMA!"
"Why'd you say 'Burma?'"
"I panicked."

See the answer at the bottom of this post.

Ginny and both have fathers who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War, in the China/India/Burma theater. They were both stationed on the island of Tinian. (Small world, isn't it?) Perhaps we're more inclined to ask,"Why Burma?" than the average person.

Clinton Odell, the founder of the Burma-Vita company in Minnesota first invented a liniment which was supposed to have a number of health benefits. It was mostly comprised of ingredients from Burma and the Malay Peninsula, so he called it Burma-Vita. It is reported to have smelled terrible, which may have been one reason why it never became a commercial success.  

Mr. Odell was inspired by a brushless shaving product he saw in England, called Lloyd's Euxesis; he hired a chemist to develop a similar product, which he named Burma-Shave. (I couldn't help but to look up the origin of the name Euxesis; it comes from the Greek root eu- [good] and -xesis [to scrape]...so it's all about shaving well.)

Burma-Shave did not sell very well until Mr. Odell's sons started advertising the product on roadside signs. The first signs were placed 100 paces apart, but those distances grew as people began driving cars faster.  The publicity generated by those roadside signs can still be felt today--most people familiar with the name Burma-Shave immediately think of those signs; and conversely, when people see a sequence of rhyming signs by the road, they think of Burma-Shave.

Answer to the trivia question:

Monty Python's Flying Circus, Series 2.  It was part of the Exploding Penguin on the TV Set sketch from Episode 22, "How To Recognize Different Parts of the Body.". Graham Chapman exclaimed "BURMA!" after John Cleese speculated about where the penguin came from, "Penguins don't come from next door; they come from the Antarctic."

Learning | Nonplussed

My friend, Holly, posted on her Facebook status recently, asking her friends to list their least favorite words, and why. Apparently, she had read an article on a similar topic recently, and somebody said they couldn't stand to hear the word "moist."  

Mocha Caramel Pound Cake.
Photo courtesy of onlinepastrychef's photostream on flickr.com.
Some rights reserved.

Holly and I both think that's funny; we like the word moist. For many of us, it conjures up the thought of delicious, moist cake--because there was a certain brand of cake mix that claimed cakes turned out moister, if one used their mix.

It's easier for me to think of words I like, than those I don't, but I did think of one: nonplussed. I don't encounter it too often, but when I do, it's when I'm reading a book. I never hear people say it.  

Truthfully, one reason I dislike the word is because I have had trouble remembering what it's supposed to mean. The word nonplussed  seems to be used to describe a person's reaction to something they don't like. I had some vague idea it might be related to being angry or confused.

I looked it up on the Oxford Dictionary Online, before I posted the word in a comment under Holly's status.  Here's what the ODO says about it:

• 1(of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react:he would be completely nonplussed and embarrassed at the idea

• 2North American informal (of a person) not disconcerted; unperturbed.

Well! No wonder I was confused. Those two meanings seem to oppose each other.  I must be reading it in different contexts, so that it means different things. 

The other reason I dislike the word is because it doesn't sound like what it means. The morpheme "plus" made me think of arithmetic--which, come to think of it, was not my favorite subject in school.  I read about the etymology of nonplus; it comes from Latin, meaning "no more." That actually  makes sense, if we consider it as meaning no more can or should be said, it especially sounds like the first meaning listed in the ODO. 

I suppose you might say that the ODO helped me to overcome my dislike of nonplussed. After reading so much about the term, I think I will not be nonplussed when I come across the word in a book.

Learning | The Conquest of the Ocean

The Conquest of the Ocean: an Illustrated History of Seafaring

Author Brian Lavery tackles a vast subject in this new non-fiction Dorling-Kindersley book for adults. It examines the history of seafaring all over the world, including exploration, ship design, cultures, trade routes, slave ships, and much more.

The Dorling-Kindersley publishing company is well known for its beautifully illustrated children's books on all sorts of scientific and historical topics. I see children check them out to use in reports, but I also see them check them out just for fun. 

I'm glad to see that some of that fun is present in this title for grown-ups. There are beautiful, easy-to-read maps, drawings and photographs that enrich the impact of the informative text. It would be helpful to students doing reports on various subjects, but it's also entertaining for anybody interested in ships, the ocean, different cultures, and history.

Compasses

Mayan Codex

This book is recommended for readers from 8th grade and up.

The Spanish Armada

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