Category Archives: Words, phrases & expressions

Picnics and barbecues

François Lemoyne’s “Hunting Picnic” [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

As the Memorial Day weekend approaches, Americans wipe the winter rust from their grills, stock up on steaks and dust off their picnic blankets, readying themselves for the alfresco dining event that opens the summer social calendar. And we ask ourselves that perennial question: just where do these two words describing festive outdoor meals come from? Curiously, one of them didn’t even have a hint of alfresco in its original meaning.

Contrary to various stories floating around the web in the last couple of decades, picnic has nothing to do with lynchings of African-Americans; indeed the word was born nowhere near American shores, but originated in France. And in true French tradition, it started out being all about wine, not food. Pique-nique was first seen in Tony Willis’s Origines de la Langue Française of 1692, and it described a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. (Yes: the French invented the concept of BYOB.) In fact, the whole idea of the picnic began not as a pastoral alfresco dining experience, as we think of it now, but rather as a meal to which each individual contributed, no matter what the context or the setting — like a precursor of the modern potluck dinner. When it first appeared in English usage — which, according to the OED, was in one of Lord Chesterfield’s letters in 1748 (although it was not in common use until after 1800), the word picnic was associated with card playing, drinking and conversation; for some picnics of the early 19th century century, guests would contribute entertainment rather than food items, and so it began English life as a fashionable social occasion, rather than a meal as such. The concept of a picnic being an outdoor repast first evolved from the rather indulgent rest breaks with refreshments taken during hunts in the 18th century, as illustrated in Lemoyne’s painting pictured above. The original word piquenique is possibly from the French verb piquer, meaning “to pick or peck”, paired with the rhyming word nique, meaning “something of little importance or worth”, which has German origins. However, the OED is altogether doubtful about piquenique‘s provenance.

Barbecue is an even older word, dating back to the mid 17th century and a different part of the world: the Spanish Americas. With an etymology much simpler and straightforward than that of its alfresco cousin described above, it comes from the Arawakan word barbakoa describing the raised framework of sticks on which the Indians would cure meat, and slowly over the course of the early 18th century it came to refer more specifically to “an outdoor meal of roasted meat or fish as a social entertainment” (from the Online Etymology Dictionary).

Happy Memorial Day!

Fabrication – something made of metal or lies?

If you do a Google image-search on the word fabrication, you’ll most likely see metal, sparks, and men in masks. But if someone says the word fabrication to you, your brain-image search will probably yield a different crop of results, involving tales, untruths, or the most recent lying so-and-so you’ve encountered. Those fabrications are just harder to capture in jpeg form.

Recently talking to my friend Lynn, I noticed that she talked of “fabricating” this structure or that it was more expensive to “fabricate” that design. Why didn’t she just say “make”?, I asked. It’s because she works in the world of architecture, where fabrication doesn’t necessarily mean a pack of lies. It’s probably fair to say that the most common form of fabrication is of a story or tale, but its most innocent, prosaic and historical form is of the metal (or now digital) variety, especially in an architectural setting. How strange that we should dismiss anything known to us to be fabricated, and yet we might jump at the chance of acquiring something pre-fabricated.

According to the OED, fabricate is a transitive verb meaning 1) to construct or manufacture, esp. from prepared components; 2) to invent or concoct (a story, evidence, etc.); or 3) to forge (a document). The word dates back to the mid-15th century, when it meant simply “to fashion, make, or build,” from the Latin fabricatus or fabricare, a verb with the same definition. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it took a few centuries for the verb to acquire a new and more sinister meaning — with its mendacious use being recorded in print in the second part of the 18th century.

How did a word that had (and still has) such a sturdy, no-nonsense meaning in its literal sense come to acquire the deceit inherent in its figurative sense? I’m afraid I don’t have the answer, but I would be very curious to know if there are any theories or answers to this question.

A laundry list for Jim

Jim in New York recently posed a question for Glossophilia:

“Dear Glossophile, I’ve never in my life made lists for my laundry. Yet I continue to hear the phrase, “laundry list,” as in “laundry list of complaints.” Whazzup? Did folks once need to inventory socks and underpants, etc. before laundering them?”

Yes, Jim in New York, it seems that once folks did indeed have to make inventories of their clothes before sending them to be laundered. The illustration above is of a laundry list filled in by guests of New York’s Hotel Astor, back in the day when it cost a mere 5 cents to launder a handkerchief. According to Wiki.answers, this practice might date back to as early as the Civil War, when soldiers would make a list of their items to be laundered. (Although were there really people laundering the clothes of the military back in those days?) Wiki.answers believes the laundry list proper originated in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century when many sent their laundry out to be cleaned.

The late Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen wrote a colorful little piece about his experience of working for the family laundry business when he was a young teenager. Enlightening and evocative as the article is — with images of counterpanes and half-pairs, women’s blouses and priests’ collars, it’s not difficult to imagine how such lists of clothing items could soon become deadly in their length and detail, especially to those reading or creating them for a living. Laundry lists of yore certainly wouldn’t have made it onto today’s Buzzfeed – the king of entertaining internet lists. No, it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to see how our modern proverbial laundry list (ie. a tediously or unnecessarily lengthy list of items) was born from its literal forebear, which guaranteed efficiency and the return of freshly-laundered undergarments but not necessarily a basketful of laughs.

It’s not just beans that meanz Heinz

When Peggy made her saucy pitch to Heinz on Sunday’s Mad Men — following her former boss’s more cryptic (and in my opinion more classy) presentation to the condiment giant — she drew an interesting distinction between two names of the centuries-old sauce that made its way, originally tomato-less, from the Far East to western shores some time back in the 1600s. Trying to emphasize the superiority of the Heinz brand by dissing its competitors, she asked rhetorically, “What’s the difference between ketchup and catsup?” Her answer, designed to be like catnip to the catsup men-in-suits, was brilliant in its drawing of enemy lines between two words that were (and still are) effectively and officially synonymous. “Well, catsup has more tomatoes, comes in a bigger bottle. It’s cheaper, but tastes just like ketchup. Now, we know that’s not true. But that’s what your competitors are saying, over and over. They’re selling their watered down, flavorless sauce by pretending that they’re you. It makes you angry, doesn’t it?” It was a clever ploy on Peggy’s part to elevate the Heinz brand by distinguishing it not just descriptively but also verbally, aligning one of two generic names of the red condiment (and arguably the more linguistically appealing one — given its initial “k” and lack of feline associations) solely with the brand in question, and assigning the other word — catsup — as a catch-all verbal repository for everyone else’s inferior product. “Heinz: the only ketchup.” But was Peggy correct in making that distinction?

Fowler, in his Modern English Usage, states that ketchup “is the established spelling; formerly also catchup and catsup, of which the second at least is due to popular etymology. A Chinese or Malay word is said to be the source.” The OED explains in more detail that ketchup is “a spicy sauce made from tomatoes, mushrooms, vinegar, etc., used as a condiment”, and also suggests a possible derivation from the Cantonese word k’e-chap meaning “tomato juice”. In other words, both ketchup and catsup mean the same sauce, whatever the ingredients, quality or brand. And it seems they always have done, despite Heinz’s success (as Peggy foretold) at monopolizing the ketchup brand.

European traders were first introduced to the condiment while visiting the Far East in the late 17th century. According to Charles Lockyer in his book An Account of the Trade in India, published in 1711, “Soy comes in Tubbs from Jappan, and the best Ketchup from Tonquin; yet good of both sorts are made and sold very cheap in China.” The Europeans liked the sauce but didn’t like the “k”, Anglicizing its name to catchup as they brought it home to the West. (It is spelt as such in the 1690 Dictionary of the Canting Crew.) Although the “k” version crept back into usage in the early 18th century, the name catchup endured alongside it — especially in North America, where its modified alternative, catsup, was quickly adopted and kept up with ketchup — until Peggy and Heinz so cunningly dissed it in the boardroom. It was actually Jonathan Swift who first put catsup in print, in 1730: “And, for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo, catsup, and caveer.” (The history of the word caviar is another story entirely.)

See Glossophilia’s earlier post on brand names that have morphed into generic nouns and verbs.

It’s Talk Like Shakespeare Day

It’s William Shakespeare’s 449th birthday. Happy Birthday Will! Honoring this special occasion, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has officially proclaimed April 23, 2013 Talk Like Shakespeare Day: “Everyone is encouraged to express themselves through the incorporation of Shakespearean language and dialect.”

Visit the Talk Like Shakespeare Day web site to find out how to emulate the Bard. Below is a nice little starter pack from the site, and then a Shakespeare Insult Kit, if you feel like being a dankish dog-hearted gudgeon for the occasion. But let’s not forget that we talk a little bit like Shakespeare every day. As Mental Floss reminded us earlier this year, many of the Bard’s own verbal inventions made their way into our language and remain there today, as do words that he popularized through his dramas. So when we say addiction, belongings, or even eyeballs, we have Mr. Shakespeare to thank for installing them in our vocabulary. As Romeo & Juliet in Urban Slang explains: “It has been said that Shakespeare created 1 out of 10 of the words he included in his plays. Some of the words already existed, but Shakespeare employs them creatively by using them in a different part of speech. The words that Shakespeare used that were already slang became greatly popularized after being included in his plays. ”

How to Talk Like Shakespeare

Instead of you, say thou or thee (and instead of y’all, say ye).
Rhymed couplets are all the rage.
Men are Sirrah, ladies are Mistress, and your friends are all called Cousin.
Instead of cursing, try calling your tormenters jackanapes or canker-blossoms or poisonous bunch-back’d toads.
Don’t waste time saying “it,” just use the letter “t” (’tis, t’will, I’ll do’t).
Verse for lovers, prose for ruffians, songs for clowns.
When in doubt, add the letters “eth” to the end of verbs (he runneth, he trippeth, he falleth).
To add weight to your opinions, try starting them with methinks, mayhaps, in sooth or wherefore.
When wooing ladies: try comparing her to a summer’s day. If that fails, say “Get thee to a nunnery!”
When wooing lads: try dressing up like a man. If that fails, throw him in the Tower, banish his friends and claim the throne.

How to Swear Like the Bard

The Shakespeare Insult Kit: Combine one word from each of the three columns below, prefaced with “Thou” (example: thou spleeny knotty-pated malt-worm):

The Huffington Post published the 7 Best Shakespeare insults, of which this line from Lefeu in All’s Well That Ends Well is a perfect example: “Methinks thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon you.”

Who’s Miranda?

There’s much discussion and speculation about the likelihood and legality of suspected Boston bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev being questioned without being read his “Miranda warning”, since investigators want to invoke a rare public safety exemption. We all know, from watching movies and Law & Order reruns, that on arrest an individual is read his or her Miranda rights: to remain silent, to consult with an attorney, and to have an attorney present during questioning. Where does the name Miranda come from?

In 1963, a laborer from Arizona, Ernesto Arturo Miranda, was convicted of kidnap, rape, and armed robbery, based on a confession he made under police interrogation. Miranda appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that his fifth amendment rights had been violated because he was not told of his right to remain silent or to consult with a lawyer before his questioning. The Supreme Court set aside Miranda’s conviction in a landmark ruling of 1966, and so the Miranda rights (or Miranda warning) were conceived and enshrined in U.S. law. (Miranda was later retried and convicted for the original crime.)

There is no exact wording for the Miranda warning; however, the Supreme Court’s ruling included guidelines that must be followed when arresting an individual and informing him or her of their rights:

“The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that they have the right to remain silent, and that anything the person says will be used against that person in court; the person must be clearly informed that they have the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning, and that, if they are indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to represent them.

Almost inevitably, a verb has evolved in American English to capture the process described above. According to the Oxford American Dictionary, mirandize is a transitive verb meaning “to inform (a person who has been arrested) of their legal rights, in accordance with the Miranda decision.”

Break a leg, Scottish Lord …

On Sunday night (April 21), the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Macbeth opens on Broadway, starring America’s favorite Scot-of-the-moment, Alan Cumming. Have no fear: I can say Macbeth on this page, and I can scream it from the rooftops of Manhattan’s Great White Way — but I can’t utter that name once I’m inside the walls of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where Cumming does his one-man take on the Shakespeare tragedy. I can’t say it in any theater, for that matter. ‘Cos it’s bad luck.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.” …

Macbeth, the play, is thought to be cursed: hence the superstition, acknowledged throughout the theater world, that to utter its name inside a theater — unless you’re an actor delivering lines during a performance or rehearsal of the play itself — brings bad fortune. Once inside the theater, actors and audience members wanting or needing to refer to the play, its title character or his wife have a cauldron of well-worn euphemisms to use as conversation aids: “the Scottish play”, “the Scottish King (or Lord or Queen)”, and nicknames such as “MacBee”, “Mackers” (especially in North America), or “Lady M”.

“Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and caldron bubble.”

Wherefore art thou so cursed, Macbeth? There are numerous theories about the origin of the jinx and the resulting superstition: take your pick from the list below (and please comment if you know of any others).

1) Shakespeare’s weird sisters’ chant is a real witches’ spell that evokes and arouses evil spirits; witches themselves cursed the play because it revealed their secrets or because they were offended by its original production that employed actual witches and witchcraft.

2) It features a lot of sword-fighting, which requires a lot of rehearsal, so there’s plenty of opportunity for someone to get hurt.

3) Being a popular show, it was often presented by theaters in dire financial straits — or if they weren’t in trouble before the curtain rose on the first performance, they certainly were by the time it fell, several pounds and sword-fights later. So “Macbeth in lights” generally meant lights out…

4) The first actor ever to play Macbeth died either right before or right after the first performance. (A real dagger might have been used instead of the designated stage prop: darn those Elizabethan stagehands.) Actually, it might have been the actor playing Lady Macbeth who perished, and Shakespeare himself had to step in for the leading man-lady.

6) Rather preposterously, Shakespeare deliberately cursed his own creation (using the witches’ chants), so that no-one else could get their grubby directorial hands on his masterpiece. Also, when he heard that James I — the king of Scottish heritage whom he was trying to impress — was distinctly unimpressed with the drama, William went into a sulk and would refer to it only as “that Scottish play” for the rest of his life.

“What’s done cannot be undone.” Well, that might not be entirely true.

What happens if you blurt out “Macbeth” accidentally while you’re waiting in line for the loo? There is a way to undo your thoughtlessness. You have to leave the theater, perform a ritual that will cleanse the theater of the curse, and then wait (often having to knock at the stage-door first) to be invited back inside. The cleansing ritual varies: it can involve turning around three times, spitting over your left shoulder, swearing, or reciting a line from another Shakespeare play, eg. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us” (from Hamlet), “If we shadows have offended” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), or “Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you” (The Merchant of Venice).

“Break a leg”

Here’s another superstition that forbids uttering certain words in a theatrical context: wishing an actor “good luck” before a performance is sure to result in bad reviews from Ben Brantley — or worse. Age-old wisdom dictates that we shouldn’t necessarily tempt fate by wishing good fortune on one another, and this is a commonly accepted human truth not just in the theater world. According to the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo, referring to their fishermen: “‘Evil shall drive away evil’ is a Norwegian saying, and still today Norwegians say ‘skitt fiske’, meaning ‘I hope you don’t catch anything’.” And so it follows that the fanatically superstitious thespians adopted their own phrase to try and outwit those malevolent demons of fate: “break a leg” is what they say to each other for encouragement before a performance. It started to be whispered around theatrical circles in the 1920s, and first appeared in print soon afterwards. According to the Phrase Finder, ‘break a leg’ had a much earlier meaning — “to give birth to a bastard” — that went out of usage in the 17th century and had no bearing on the modern good luck message. Below are the most popular explanations for how the term crept into 20th-century wings and green rooms. Although there really is no evidence for any of them, the first two theories tend to hold the most weight, and the third — though popular and colorful — is simply unlikely.

1) To “break a [the] leg” was an old slang term for bowing or curtseying, ie. breaking the line of one’s leg by bending it at the knee, which is how actors acknowledge the applause of their audience. The mightier the applause, the deeper and lengthier the bow. Similarly, good performances were historically rewarded by coins thrown onto the stage by an appreciative audience, so successful actors would have to kneel or bend their knees in order to collect their pennies.

2) The German phrase “Hals- und Beinbruch” (meaning literally “a broken neck and a broken leg”) was in the vernacular of early wartime aviators and Luftwaffe slang, which passed quickly into the German theater community. (It is thought by some to be a corruption of the Hebrew blessing “Hatsloche un Broche”, meaning ‘success and blessing’.) It’s quite possible that the latter part of the phrase translated and migrated to the circles of British and American actors.

3) John Wilkes Booth, himself a famous actor, leapt onto the stage and claimed to have broken his leg after shooting President Lincoln and trying to make his escape from the theater. A memorable performance indeed — but probably too early to have had such an impact half a century later (and the exact cause of his broken limb is questionable to boot).

4) Instead of applauding with their hands, the ancient Greeks would stomp their legs loudly and the Elizabethans would bang their chairs on the ground: sustained appreciation by either means was sure to result in a broken leg — of the human or furniture variety.

5) The Colosseum was the theater of ancient Rome, in which gladiators fought to their deaths. Spectators would shout “quasso cruris”, the Latin for “break a leg”, as words of encouragement, wishing injury rather than death upon their favored warrior.

6) The much admired French actress Sarah Bernhardt had one of her legs amputated in 1915, and theatrical lore has it that her talent rubs off on an actor who mentions her name.

7) Every actor dreams of getting ‘the big break’ when he or she steps in front of the footlights.

Spreading beyond theatrical circles, “break a leg” is now used commonly to wish success to any performer — or indeed anyone about to embark on a performance-related activity, such as a speech or public interview. And “good luck” is forbidden not just in English and American theaters. In Australia, the substitute term is “chookas”, derived from the early 1900s when chicken (nicknamed “chook” down under) was a post-performance menu treat for casts and crews who had enjoyed a full house. Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries cry “mucha mierda!” (“a lot of shit!”) in their pre-performance pepping. This colorful rally cry derives simply from the high correlation between lots of audience members arriving at the theater by horse-drawn carriage and a lot of resulting horse-shit. Following the same idea, in France it’s “merde!” and in Italy, “merda!”. (The French “merde” has become a standard good-luck wish for ballet-dancers, regardless of nationality or language spoken.)

To wish each other good luck, opera singers have their own saying to ward off spells or curses. “Toi toi toi!” they gesticulate with their mouths and hands, true to their dramatic style. It is thought to be an onomatopoeic representation of spitting three times, since saliva is known to have demon-banishing powers…

***

You say forward, I say forwards; you say toward, I say towards …

Which of these sentences sounds easier on the ear to you? 1) “I’m inching forwards, aiming farther, and heading towards the finishing line.” or 2) “I’m inching forward, aiming further, and heading toward the finishing line.”

If you’re British you probably leaned towards the first (although you might have preferred further to farther); if North American, you almost certainly chose the second.

The differences in usage between further and farther, forward and forwards, and toward and towards often come down to preference, largely determined by which side of the Atlantic you live on. But there are also some subtle differences in meaning that can affect which word you choose.

1) Further/farther:

Take these five recent instances of further/farther in the media:

“Gen. Martin Dempsey said the U.S. has been preparing for further provocations or action from North Korea.” (USA Today). “The Red Sox were waiting to get the results of John Lackey’s MRI further interpreted.” (Boston Globe) “In Britain, the word semolina conjures up images of grim school dinners, but farther east it’s one of the staple ingredients of sweet and savoury cooking alike.” (The Guardian) “In the eyes of the federal government, urban Minnesota has just pushed a little farther into the countryside.” (Minnesota Public Radio). Clare Mann, describing her tour of an Italian volcano in the Telegraph, wrote that “Some visitors climbed farther down into the crater.”

In the first two sentences, further is the adjective or adverb of choice, meaning “to a greater extent, more”, or “to or at a more advanced point in space or time”. However, in the last three examples, in which there’s a sense of geographical distance or movement, the word farther doesn’t seem out of place, as it would in the first couple of sentences.

The words further and farther are virtually interchangeable, although the latter is often used when literal rather than figurative distance is implied. The OED states that “the form farthest is used especially with reference to physical distance, although furthest is preferred by many people even in this sense.” Fowler in his Modern English Usage, explains what he understood to be the surprising etymology of the two words: “The history of the two words appears to be that further is a comparative of fore and should, if it were to be held to its etymology, mean more advanced, and that farther is a newer variant of further, no more connected with far than further is, but affected in its form by the fact that further, having come to be used instead of the obsolete comparative of far (farrer), seemed to need a respelling that should assimilate it to far.”

2) Forward/forwards:

During a Commons debate on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, British MP Caroline Lucas was recently quoted in The Guardian as saying: “As well as looking backwards, it is also about learning the lessons looking forwards.” In this case, forwards is clearly being used to signal the direction of the looking, especially in contrast to the opposite direction mentioned earlier in the sentence. Lucas might also have wanted to distinguish “looking forwards” in a directional sense from the sense of anticipating something positively, ie. “looking forward” to something.

Like further and farther, the distinction between forward and forwards is subtle or in some cases non-existent. According to the OED: “The present distinction in usage between forward and forwards is that the latter expresses a definite direction viewed in contrast with other directions. In some contexts either form may be used without perceptible difference of meaning; the following are examples in which only one of them can now be used: ‘The ratchet-wheel can move only forwards’; ‘the right side of the paper has the maker’s name reading forwards’; ‘if you move at all it must be forwards’; ‘my companion has gone forward’; ‘to bring a matter forward’; ‘from this time forward’. The usage of earlier periods, and of modern dialects, varies greatly from that of mod. standard English. In U.S. forward is now generally used, to the exclusion of forwards, which was stigmatized by Webster (1832) as ‘a corruption’.”

The British forwards might well be in decline, often dropping its final ‘s’ in favor of its American counterpart. A Google search on forwards returns references mostly to a particular type of sportsman — “an attacking player positioned near the front of a team in football, hockey, etc” (OED) — in its plural form.

3) Toward/towards

“Cyprus is edging towards euro exit,” read a recent headline on the Reuters UK blog. “Andy Murray turns focus towards clay court season” was the first part of a Telegraph headline last week. Across the Atlantic, Suzy Menkes in the New York Times talked about “[Mrs. Thatcher’s] attitude toward the Falklands war against Argentina.”

As borne out by these examples, the difference between toward and towards is one simply of usage and preference, determined by whether you speak British or American English (with the latter favoring the ‘s’-less word, in keeping with its preference for the ‘s’-less forward). About toward and towards, Fowler wrote slightly abstrusely: “The -s form is the prevailing one, and the other tends to become literary on the one hand and provincial on the other.” Whether that means logically that American English is both more literary and more provincial than British English is probably best left for a separate discussion …

The verbal anochronisms of Mad Men

Yes, Mad Men is fallible. “Whatever.” Can you imagine Don Draper saying that? In that valley-girl passive-aggressive kind of way? I can’t either. And I’ve no idea if he ever has done, in that way, since the Madison Avenue drama first graced our TV screens back in 2007. But there are a handful of writer-linguist-historians who almost certainly do know, and who would argue persuasively whether or not that particular use of that particular word would have been prevalent in the dialogue of early- to mid-sixties ad men. In this particular case, whatever as a slightly dismissive interjection probably isn’t, in fact, a complete anachronism in ’60s American English. It was in the script* of a 1965 episode of Bewitched, a popular TV sit-com whose lead male character, Darrin Stephens, also worked in a Madison Avenue advertising agency. (Imagine Stephens and Draper sipping martinis together at the bar, or Betty and Samantha twitching their noses over coffee…)

As the curtain goes up tonight on season 6 of Mad Men, I feel as giddy as everyone else that my nearly year-long wait is finally over. But I also felt the need to do a round-up of the last five years of articles and blog-posts that have nit-picked mercilessly through the series’ scripts, reveling in the discovery of verbal flaws and prochronisms** in a TV show that is known for its fanatical attention to historical detail and its retro-accuracy. Perhaps it’s a perverse case of finding the exception that proves the rule, or just an obsessive compulsion to analyze and understand every last detail of something that is loved and admired.

The linguist Ben Zimmer, the former “On Language” columnist for the New York Times Magazine, leads the pack of Mad Men lingo-busters. Practically every article on the web examining the language of the series leads back to a writing or finding of Zimmer’s. Perhaps his most comprehensive and fascinating article on the subject, which he penned at the beginning of the fourth season in one of his last contributions to the New York Times Magazine, delved into the conscientiousness of the series’ scriptwriters and their fanatical attention to period detail. When it comes to a question of usage, Zimmer reported, the show’s research staff “consults the Oxford English Dictionary, slang guides and online databases to determine whether an expression is documented from the era and could have been plausibly uttered. ‘When in doubt,’ [series creator Matthew] Weiner said, ‘I don’t use it.’” For his blog Visual Thesaurus, Zimmer quoted something Matthew Weiner told him during his interview for the New York Times piece. “‘I never want it to be wrong. … Any anachronisms that do occur are mistakes.'” Zimmer revealed in the article: “[Weiner] said he still regrets allowing the character Joan to say “The medium is the message” in the first season, four years before Marshall McLuhan introduced the dictum in print.”

According to Benjamin Schmidt, another linguist-historian whose treatises on the language of Mad Men are almost as numerous as Don Draper’s conquests, the series’ writing staff also run usage queries through the Google Books database to ensure period accuracy, as he reported in his round-up article on Mad Men anachronisms in The Atlantic last year. Schmidt, an intellectual historian (in both senses of those words), has his own blog, Prochronisms, that looks at historical changes in language by analyzing period TV shows and movies, including Mad Men, using an algorithmic computer program that he himself devised. If you want to really geek out on the linguistic NGrams of Mad Men, read his blog post from April last year, when the series had just returned for its fifth season. Rather than identifying specific anachronistic vocabulary or expressions that hadn’t yet been coined or wouldn’t have been in usage in the 1960s, Schmidt takes a broader and more subtle look at patterns and frequencies of particular word combinations in that time setting. Take as an example the relative infrequency of the words “I need” in the ’60s: “To say ‘I need to’ so much is a surprisingly modern practice: books, television shows, and movies from the 1960s use it at least ten times less often, and many never use it all,” Schmidt explains in his Atlantic article.

In 2009, the linguist John McWhorter wrote a detailed and nuanced account in the New Republic of the series’ and the period’s language usage and patterns, focusing more on the socio-economic and contextual determiners of usage in terms of accent and articulation rather than on the usual subjects of vocabulary and idiom. “When Jennifer Crane gets up and takes her husband over the Drapers’ table saying “I want to” see how they are, crisply pronouncing want separately from to, it’s false,” McWhorter suggests. “That woman, even with her poise and aggressive social aspirations, would have said wanna just as we all do when we are not reading from text or laying down an answering machine message.”

These enlightening surveys highlight the very complex challenges faced by any scriptwriter aiming to replicate the language patterns of a bygone era. But interesting and erudite as they are, what we all really want to know is: where are the real bloopers? What words and expressions uttered by Mad Men‘s characters hadn’t yet been invented or entered the lexicon of the time? Considering the dialogue-heavy series has been on the air and under the microscope for five years, it’s impressive that only a handful of instances of actual verbal anachronisms (and even a few are arguable) have been identified; most were included in Vulture’s summary of Mad Men anachronisms published on Friday and are paraphrased below. (The lingo-buster in each case is in parentheses after the offending phrase.)

“The medium is the message.” (Various) Joan wouldn’t have known this phrase in 1960; it was a quote of media theorist Marshall McLuhan that was popularized in his 1964 treatise Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

“I’m in a very good place right now.” (McWhorter) Peggy said this in 1963, referring to her state of mind after smoking marijuana. “Its modern usage is metaphorical, having to do with spirit and development,” explains McWhorter, who says he first heard the phrase used by someone “of a rather New Age-y frame of mind” in 1994.

“1960, I am so over you.” (Zimmer) Joan said this in 1961, and Weiner has cited the 1948 Cole Porter song “So in Love” as proof of the viability of so being used as an intensifier at the time. Zimmer argues: “Scholars of semantics might disagree, seeing a nuance between Porter’s use of the adverb so, which quantifies the extent to which the character is in love, and the later Generation X-style spin on the word as an intensifier meaning ‘extremely’ or ‘completely’ without any comparison of relative degree.”

“I know you have to be on the same page as him.” (Zimmer) The OED traces the idiom “to be on the same page (as someone else)” to 1979. Its first known usage is in a New York Times sports article from that year about the NFL: ‘It takes a long time for everybody to get on the same page as far as the rules are concerned.’

“The window for this apology is closing.” (Zimmer) The OED suggests that this type of figurative window is an extension of the aeronautical term launch window. Though launch window dates to the mid-’60s, the first known use of window as in “window of opportunity” or vulnerability comes from a 1979 congressional hearing.

“Awwa!” (linguist Neal Whitman, also a Visual Thesaurus contributor) Whitman pointed to Ben Yagoda’s 2007 article for Slate on interjections identifying “Awwa!” as “a 21st-century innovation.”

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Mad Men has also been proved guilty of allowing anachronistic fonts and books to trespass on its properties. On his blog, designer Mark Simonson has identified several futuristic fonts spotted on the show, and Andrew Hearst devotes an entire post on his blog to the series’ closing credits, which are set in an ’80s typeface. Zimmer noticed an ’80s edition of the Oxford English Dictionary sitting on Lane Pryce’s shelves, and brought it to the world’s attention on his Visual Thesaurus blog back in 2009. Finally, George W. Bush speechwriter and RedState.com founder Joshua S. Trevino spotted another as-yet-unwritten set of books over Betty’s shoulder in season three: the Griffin’s “The Corps” series was written in 1986, 1987, and 1990 respectively.
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* from IMDB:

“Samantha: Mother, there’s something I have to tell you.
Endora: Good morning, Derwood.
Samantha: Darrin.
Endora: All right, whatever.”

** Prochronism: a particular type of anachronism, in which an event, person or object is placed earlier than it actually occurred or came into existence, eg. a verbal expression that had not yet been coined

Nickname the landmarks: here they are …

Each of these extraordinary architectural landmarks has been bestowed at some point in its history — either before, during or after its design and construction — with a colorful nickname. Clues to most of the nicknames lie in the resemblance of the building to a common household object — but not in every case …

Answers (official building name or address, city, nickname, and origin of nickname if not immediately apparent) are below each picture.

1. The great bell of the clock (and usually the clock and the clock tower as well) at the north end of the Palace of Westminster (London) – Big Ben. Big Ben was most likely named after Sir Benjamin Hall, First Commissioner for Works, whose name is inscribed on the bell; or it might have been named after Ben Caunt, a champion heavyweight boxer.

2. Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral (Liverpool) – Paddy’s Wigwam

3. Clyde Auditorium (concert hall, Glasgow) – The Armadillo

4. Soccer City Stadium (Johannesburg) – The Calabash. The Calabash was named after the African cooking pot, one of the inspirations for the stadium, and reflected the “melting pot” that is South Africa.

5. House of World Cultures (art museum, Berlin) – The Pregnant Oyster

6. Absolute World Building (Mississauga, Canada) – The Marilyn Monroe

7. Sydney Opera House (Sydney) – Nuns in a Scrum

8. MIT’s Simmons Hall (Boston) – The Sponge

9. Kaiser Wilhelm Church (rebuilt after WWII bombings in Berlin) – The Lipstick and Compact

10. Casa Mila (Barcelona) – The Quarry

11. Sydney Harbour Bridge (Sydney) – The Coathanger

12. Velodrome (London) – The Pringle

13. 30 St Mary Axe (London) – The Gherkin

14. 60-70 St Mary’s Axe (London) – Can of Ham

15. 20 Fenchurch Street (London) – Walkie-Talkie

16. 122 Leadenhall Street (London) – Cheese Grater

17. Strata tower (London) – The Razor

18. The Shard in London was given its name because the English Heritage claimed the building would be “a shard of glass through the heart of historic London”. The Shard appears to be the official name of the building, not just its nickname, so this building should really be disqualified from this list.

19. St. John’s, Smith Square (London) – Queen Anne’s Footstool. According to Wikipedia: “As legend has it, when [Thomas] Archer was designing the church he asked the Queen what she wanted it to look like. She kicked over her footstool and said ‘Like that!’, giving rise to the building’s four corner towers.”

20. 175 Fifth Ave (New York) – The Flatiron

21. CBS building at 51 West 52nd St (New York) – Black Rock (for its dark-gray granite and dark tinted windows)

22. 209 South LaSalle St (Chicago) – Rookery Building. The Rookery assumed same name as the building that it replaced: named for crows and pigeons that inhabited its exterior walls and for shady politicians it housed, given the rook’s reputation for being acquisitive.

23. CCTV media building (Beijing) – Hemorrhoid or Big Underpants

24. Frost Bank Building (Austin) – The Owl building. If you view the top of the tower from a corner, the two faces of the tower clock resemble owl eyes and the corner of the observation deck a beak. According to UT Austin legend, this was designed deliberately, as the tower’s architect was supposedly a graduate of Rice University, whose athletic mascot is an owl. The Owl’s architect was in fact Paul Cret, born in Lyon, France, who graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

25. George Pompidou Centre (Paris) – The Cruise Liner

26. Stedelijk Museum’s new addition (Amsterdam) – The Bathtub

27. Beijing National Stadium (Beijing) – The Bird’s Nest