The odor of mendacity, the kindness of a lie

Deceit is like love: it weaves its way into so much of the drama of our lives, and rare is the writer or thinker who doesn’t have something to say about it, whether in truth or fiction, in jest or with indignation. It lay at the heart of two recent dramatic productions I saw — a play on Broadway and an episode of a TV series. (By the way, isn’t it strange that we tend to watch something on TV but we see something on the stage? And similarly, we only ever tell a lie, but we sometimes speak the truth?)

Mendacity is an overt and powerful theme in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Big Daddy and his favored son, Brick, grapple painfully and eloquently with the lies that underpin and darken their relationships — with each other, with their respective wives, with Brick’s late best friend, all against the backdrop of a grand family deceit concerning Big Daddy’s ill health. “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity …You can smell it. It smells like death,” Big Daddy growls. “Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an’ death’s the other.”

Back in a different time and place, between the wars in England’s countryside, where aristocrats and their servants tiptoe around each others’ lives, Downton Abbey‘s latest episode sets the scene for a different kind of lie: from an honest, reluctant and principled doctor in the aftermath of a terrible tragedy. Only a brave untruth from him, it seems, can start to repair the relationship between two grieving parents, and the Dowager Countess (played by the magnificent Maggie Smith) is determined to coax that lie from his lips. “‘Lie’ is so unmusical a word,” she argues calmly in the face of his protestations. And so the kind deceit is spoken, to profoundly moving and harmonious effect.

Here is what some of the great writers and philosophers of our time have said about the act and art of lying.

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.” — Winston Churchill

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” — Benjamin Disraeli

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” — Abraham Lincoln

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” — Abraham Lincoln

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this —
One of you is lying.”
— Dorothy Parker

“Falsehood is worse in kings than beggars.” — William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

“How subject we old men are to this vice of lying.” — William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II

“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.” — Alfred Tennyson

“Anything is better than lies and deceit!” — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” — Mark Twain

“The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.” — Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.” — Oscar Wilde

“Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.” — Oscar Wilde

Poms, limeys and lemon heads: what’s with the fruity Brits?

We all know that “everyone’s a fruit and nut case” — as Cadbury’s told us in the 1970s when we sang along with The Nutcracker fruitcakes. But why is it that the Brits are tutti fruity when it comes to the nicknames historically bestowed on them?

A close look at the names’ origins suggests that the fruit connection is entirely coincidental.

Limey

A colloquial name for British sailors, as they commonly sucked on limes (or were given rations of lime juice) to prevent scurvy — a disease caused by lack of vitamin C that was common among seafarers. Originally an insult (and still listed as offensive by the OED), limey is rarely used nowadays. But not to be confused with [cor] blimey, a wonderful British word for wow (derived from “God blind me”).

Pom

Pom (also pommy or pommie) is a slang term used in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to describe a British person — especially a recent immigrant. There’s no definitive etymology for the nickname, but most agree that it derives from the name of the succulent Middle Eastern fruit known as the pomegranate. But why that particular fruit? The OED argues that pomegranate is Australian rhyming slang (now defunct) for immigrant. The dictionary cites, as evidence, a line from an article in the 14 November 1912 edition of the Australian newspaper The Bulletin: “The other day a Pummy Grant (assisted immigrant) was handed a bridle and told to catch a horse.” Another explanation for naming Brits after pomegranates is the color they share when British people spend too much time underthe Australian sun. The rhyming slang seems more plausible. Some believe that P.O.M. (or P.O.M.E. or P.O.H.M.E) is an acronym for Prisoner of Mother England, Prisoner of Her Majesty’s Exile, or Prisoner of Millbank (the holding center for prisoners awaiting transport to Australia). Nothing to do with apples, though.

Lemon Head

According to Wikipedia, “”Lemon Head” is a term to describe British and other Western nationalities in Malaysia and Singapore. It originates from the Hokkien dialect language referring to the “red hair” British military based in the Straits Settlements after the Second World War.” Wikipedia lists no citations or verifications, and I can’t find a reference to this nickname anywhere else, in any dictionary. Please comment below if you’re familiar with this nickname, which seems to be unrelated to the lime/vitamin C/scurvy etymology, despite the apparent citrus connection.

Other nicknames for Brits:

Le Rosbif/Rosbeef

This strange French nickname for the English started out as an 18th-century gastronomic term describing the English style of cooking beef. Eventually, in the mid 19th century, the term came to describe an Englishman himself. Nice.

Island Apes

The German name for the British is Inselaffen, which means ‘island apes’ or ‘island monkeys’. Well, it’s better than some of the words we use for the Krauts …

John Bull

Starting life as a character created by political satirist J. Arbuthnot in the 18th century, John Bull — much like America’s Uncle Sam — is England personified, or a typical Englishman, represented in cartoons and caricatures through the centuries. According to Historic-UK.com, “The John Bull character was that of a drinking man, hard-headed, down-to-earth, averse to intellectualism, fond of dogs, horses, ale, and country sports.” Bull faded from the public eye in the 1950s — but many would argue that his characterization of the English man remains true.

Les goddams

A term used by the French during the Hundred Years War to refer to the English soldiers whom they were fighting. The English were notorious for their extreme profanity — and especially for the expletive “God damn”. The nickname is no longer in use. But the British use of profanity is alive and well today.

Nicknames that originated in military contexts:

Black and Tan, or Tan:

The Black and Tans were British men recruited to join the Royal Irish Constabulary and fight against the Irish Republican Party during the Anglo-Irish war. This British Army unit was known for its extreme brutality, and so its name lingered.”Black and Tan” or “Tan” remains a pejorative word used by the Irish to name the British in their midst.

Tommy

A slang name given to soldiers (usually privates) in the British army, Tommy Atkins — or just plain Tommy — dates back to as early as the 18th century, and was well established by the 19th. It is, however, most closely associated with World War I. It’s widely understood that Tommy Atkins was the name the War Office used in its sample guide for soldiers filling out regulation forms and documents, and the OED bears this out, citing “the casual use of this name in the specimen forms given in the official regulations from 1815 onward.”

Redcoat:

Another name for British soldiers, arising from the scarlet uniforms worn historically by most regiments.

Mew or mews?

When we hear British folk talk about a mews (and yes, it is a singular noun, even though it sounds very plural), we think of a quaint cobble-stoned street lined with stable-like town houses, usually forming a quiet cul-de-sac off — and hidden away from — a larger residential street.

A recent article on Narrative.ly described an American mews that few have heard of, let alone seen, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “The Walk, as locals call it,” Narrative.ly exlains, “is a small English-style mew modeled after the streets of London and named for a romantic comedy by British playwright Louis N. Parker, set on a similar mew” [my italics]. Mew? According to all my dictionaries, singular mew means a gull, the cry of a cat, or a house for hawks. But considering it’s hard to find a real mews outside Great Britain, Americans can easily be forgiven for getting confused about the word and its usage …

OED defines mews as a British noun meaning “1. a set of stabling round an open yard or along a lane. 2) such a set of buildings converted into dwellings; a row of houses in the style of a mews [pl. (now used as sing.) of mew(2), originally referring to the royal stables on the site of hawks’ mews at Charing Cross, London].”

The OED’s second definition of mew, as referred to above and from which the modern word mews derives, is “a cage for hawks, esp. while moulting”; this dwelling for birds used for falconry was often the size of a small building — especially when it housed the king’s hawks as it did in 14th-century London. When the hawks’ mews became the royal stables in the 1530s, the name remained; today the Queen’s stables, which were moved in the early 19th century to their current site in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, are still called the “Royal Mews”.

At the end of the Industrial Revolution, before the motorcar replaced the horse-drawn carriage on England’s streets, prosperous Victorians needed dwellings for their horses and grooms that were near enough to their own homes for convenience, but sequestered enough to hide the sounds, sights and smells of the 19th-century stable from the master and his family. So wealthy urban dwellers lived in large terraced houses (or “row houses”, in American English) with stables at the rear that opened onto a small service street — or mews — on which the horses and stable-hands lived and worked.

With the advent of the motorcar, the mews lost its raison d’etre and fell into disuse; those carriage houses that weren’t demolished became commercial properties or were converted into private dwellings, which are now some of today’s most fashionable and sought-after residences on London’s property market. The previously unnamed stable-lanes took on the names of the main streets they had served, with the tag “Mews” added to distinguish between them. Look at a map of Central London today, and in the small, picturesque section of Westminster between Marylebone High Street and Portland Street you can count no fewer than ten mews named after neighboring streets: Marylebone Mews, Wimpole Mews, Beaumont Mews, Browning Mews, Mansfield Mews, Weymouth Mews, Devonshire Mews, Bentinck Mews, Queen Anne Mews, and Dean’s Mews. See if you can spot any more …

There are very few mews outside London (a Washington Mews can be found in New York’s West Village). Some fancy apartment buildings, gated housing developments and cul-de-sacs in Canada, Australia and the U.S. include “Mews” in their names to lend an air of elegance and exclusivity, but few if any of their residents can claim horses and hay-bales as their predecessors.

Pet Peeve Poll: Have your say

There are three types of Glossophilia post that always seem to attract particular interest and attention.

The first is the topic of slang and colloquialisms — the more obscure, quaint, and rude the better. We all want to know where, when and why these strange little words and expressions found their way into the colorful world of our informal banter.

Next is the Great Trans-Atlantic Divide. It’s not the wide ocean that really separates us, nor the fact that we can’t agree on a common system of measurement, DVD-watching or which side of the road to drive on. No, what distinguishes the American from his British counterpart is what comes out of his mouth — and I’m not talking about accents. We speak differently, therefore we think differently. Discuss.

Finally, who doesn’t have a long laundry list of pet peeves when it comes to written and spoken English? No matter how linguistically lofty or proudly proletarian we are when it comes to our choice of words, we all love to prod and pick at those who, like, talk different than us or get on their haughty high horses; the language we all share is an endless and fascinating source of entertainment and amusement, especially when we’re identifying that which bugs and annoys us in other people’s prose.

My father and a couple of his friends (all notably British) have started a list of their favorite pet peeves; here are some of them below, with a few of my own thrown in. (Those marked with an asterisk are heard more in British than American English.) Which of these, if any, annoys YOU most? Please add your thoughts and your own pet peeves in the comments section below.

“Overkill” expressions, which feel the need to introduce superfluous words unnecessarily for extra effect:

“Track record” – when “record” will do

“For free” – when “free” will do

“Kick start” – when “start” will do

“Head off to” – instead of “go to”

“Each and every” – when “every” will do

“At this moment in time” – when “now” will do

The pompous word choice:

“Boasts” – a favorite expression of realtors: “The kitchen boasts a quarry tiled floor”

“Commences” – instead of “starts” or “begins”

“Concludes” – instead of “ends” or “finishes”

“Deduce” – instead of “understand” or “gather”

“Thus” – in informal speech or e-mails

The wrong word choice:

“Literally” used when “figuratively” is meant

“Coruscating” used to mean harshly critical (confusing it with excoriating), when it really means glittering

“Prevaricate” used as a synonym for “procrastinate”, when it really has the sense of deviating or diverting by deceit, not necessarily by delaying anything

“Alternate” instead of “alternative” – as in “Please suggest an alternate route to the airport”

“Presume” instead of “assume” – as in “I presume you’re taking an umbrella?”

Ugly misuse/abuse:

“You and I” used when you and I are the objects of the sentence: “He gave it to you and I”

“Both” applied to two people about each other – as in “they both hated the other” instead of “each hated the other” or “they hated each other”

“Like” instead of “as if” or “as though” – as in “He felt like he was drowning”

“However” instead of “but” used halfway through a sentence – as in “She didn’t like him, however she went out with him anyway”

The difference between “which” and “that”, which isn’t that hard to understand!

“Whomever” used as a subject instead of “whoever” – as in “Whomever likes this apple can have it”

“In regards to” instead of “with regard to”, “in regard to”, or “as regards”. And why not use “about”, “concerning”, or “regarding”?

“Could of”/”should of” instead of “could have”/”should have” – as in “I could of easily beaten him in that match”

“I could care less” instead of “I couldN’T care less”

“Only” before the wrong word – as in “I can only talk to you for a minute” (ie. I can’t sing or dance to you)

“Sung” instead of “sang” in simple past – as in “I sung the hymn this morning”

“All of” when “all” will do – as in “I ate all of the cookies in the jar”

“To transition” (ie. “transition” used as a verb) – as in “We will transition over to a new platform”

Marketing/corporate BS:

As well as some of the pompous words above, prolific use of any of the following, often in combination: “synergy”, “leverage”, “first ever”, “going forward”, “transition” (used as a verb), “out-of-the-box thinking”, “content streamlining”, “strategize”, “bandwidth”, “result-driven”, “paradigm”, “multi-platform”, “functionality”, “empower[ment]”, “top-down”, “e-tailers”, “online assets”, etc.

Meaningless sentence- and gap-fillers (most of these are British-isms):

“Like” used for no apparent reason mid-sentence (or at the end of a sentence by Brits) – as in “She, like, went ballistic”, or * “Have you been to the shops, like?”

* “Basically” – as in “Basically I told him to go”

* “I mean” / “You know” used for no apparent reason mid-sentence. Peter Snow of Channel Four says it in every sentence.

* “To be honest” or “to be honest with you” starting every sentence

* “If you like” ending every sentence

* “Do you know what I mean?” used to fill gaps between sentences

Just …. ugh:

“First ever” (so awful it gets two entries in this post)

“Was like” meaning “I said” – as in “I was like ‘You do!'”

“Thusly”

“With respect, …” or “With all due respect, …” before launching an attack on someone you think is an idiot

Update, during Superbowl lights-out:

“Change it up”

“Space” meaning an abstract area of thought, discussion or virtual territory – as in “You’re invading my personal space”

Let’s get diacritical: necessary, helpful or pretentious?

Here’s a little exercise: which of the words in the following sentence do you think need a diacritic (or some sort of accent), and which don’t?

“Chloe and Rene are cooperating: she’s reading his expose and he’s proofing her resume in a cafe where they’re eating pate as an appetizer, chicken mole as an entree, and souffle for dessert, all washed down with some rose, sake, frappe, and a soupcon of naive romance.”

As we can see from this sentence, there are a few English words — such as rosé, exposé, resumé, and saké — that can be more easily distinguished in meaning from their non-accented homographs (in this case the nouns rose and sake and the verbs expose and resume) by donning a diacritic; others don’t need the linguistic leg-up to be understood. As well as clarifying meaning, accents can serve another helpful purpose: to indicate pronunciation (e.g. frappé, naïve, soufflé).

English, unlike most other European languages, doesn’t have many words that contain diacritics, unless they have been adopted from other languages — especially French — and haven’t been fully assimilated into the vocabulary. However, there are a few exceptions: loanwords that appear in English more frequently with their native diacritics than not are café, cliché, and passé; also, curiously, those associated with food and cookery are less likely to lose their accents (eg. soupçon, soufflé and entrée). Words that have long been in the English vocabulary, even if originally imported from other parts of the world, tend to lose their foreign accessories eventually: hence facade, elite, decor, role and debut. The Associated Press, like most important style guides, ignores all accents. The Economist offers a sensible but ambiguous prescription, allowing for pronunciation accents that are considered ‘crucial’ and advocating accents ‘on French words’ (but who is to determine what is crucial and what is still French?):

“On words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: cliché, soupçon, façade, café, communiqué, exposé (but chateau, decor, elite, feted, naive). If you use one accent (except the tilde—strictly, a diacritical sign), use all: émigré, mêlée, protégé, résumé. Put the accents and cedillas on French names and words, umlauts on German ones, accents and tildes on Spanish ones, and accents, cedillas and tildes on Portuguese ones: Françoise de Panafieu, Wolfgang Schäuble, Federico Peña, José Manuel Barroso. Leave accents and diacritical marks off other foreign names. Any foreign word in italics should, however, be given its proper accents.”

A number of words dress up or down — with or without their accents — according to personal and house style; examples are resumé, saké, naïve, élan, and séance. Proper names such as Renée, Zoë and Chloë* tend to retain rather than omit their original diacritical marks, arguably for their color as much as to encourage their correct pronunciation. The reality star Khloé Kardashian changed her first name from Khlóe to Khloé. Go figure.

Some old-fashioned (and dare I say slightly pretentious) writers prefer to retain accents that the rest of the English-speaking world have long since allowed to fall by the wayside: you’ll occasionally see élite, rôle, début and even hôtel in especially pompous prose. The diaeresis (similar to the German umlaut, and used to indicate neighboring vowels that shouldn’t be mixed but are pronounced separately) also falls into this old-fashioned category — naïve being a fairly common but singular exception (along with the girls’ names mentioned above). Words such as coöperate, reëstablish, and noöne now have modern spellings, often using a hyphen to separate offending vowel pairs: the OED lists them respectively as cooperate or co-operate, re-establish, and no one (two separate words). However, the New Yorker magazine, presumably staying true to its nearly 90-year-old style guide, still uses the diaeresis with consistency and pride.

* Chloe is the name of a 1927 jazz standard written by Charles N. Daniels and Gus Kahn; a 2009 movie starring Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried; a hurricane (0f 1967); and a tropical storm (1971). Chloé is a French fashion house founded in 1952, and a 1875 painting by Jules Lefebvre. 402 Chloë is a large main-belt asteroid named after the goddess.

Happy Birthday, Pride and Prejudice

200 years ago, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — one of the most seminal and well-loved books in English literature — was published. The actual date of publication isn’t clear, but the author had her own copy of the novel in her hands on January 27, 1813 and the Morning Chronicle announced that it was “Published this Day” on January 28.

To celebrate the occasion, here are just a few of Austen’s words of timeless wit and wisdom expressed in her most famous work.

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride– where these is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

“It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are about to pass your life.”

“Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.”

“Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“What delight! What felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?”

Why are you operating on me, Mister?

In most parts of the world, when you go under the knife you expect to be cut open and sewn up — and everything in between — by someone known as Dr. (or Dr — but that’s for a separate discussion). All medical practitioners — whether physicians, surgeons, psychiatrists, or dentists — are generally referred to as Doctor Someone. But trust the UK to be different: there, surgeons go by the seemingly lowly title of Mr, Miss or Mrs. As do dentists.

The reason is simple and dates back to the Middle Ages: physicians and surgeons differed historically in terms of their respective education, training and credentials. Right from the beginning, physicians have had to undertake formal university training to earn an academic degree in medicine before they can enter practice. The resulting degree, or doctorate, bestows the title of Doctor of Medicine or Doctor on successful graduates.

Surgeons followed a very different path until the mid-19th century. In medieval Europe, the most common medical practitioners were the “barber surgeons” who used their tools and expertise both to cut hair and to perform surgical procedures, usually on the battlefield caring for soldiers, or treating their royal paymasters. Rather than pursue formal academic educations and medical degrees, they trained and qualified as craftsmen, usually serving surgical apprenticeships along the way. In England in 1540, the Company of Barber-Surgeons was formed. Over the next two hundred years, under increasing pressure from the separate and flourishing medical profession, the surgeons eventually broke away from the barbers, forming the Company of Surgeons in 1745 (which became the Royal College of Surgeons in 1800 after being granted a royal charter); by the 19th century, barber surgeons had virtually disappeared. This organization oversaw the training and examination of surgeons, awarding successful practitioners with a diploma — rather than the medical degree conferred by academic institutions on graduating physicians. Hence the 19th-century surgeon retained the title of Mister, despite his relatively rigorous expertise and experience.

Nowadays, surgeons follow the same academic path through medical school as their physician contemporaries, becoming Doctors of Medicine once their degrees are conferred; they then undergo a further period of postgraduate study and training in order to acquire full consultant surgeon status, at which point they are addressed as Mister — the title bestowed, ironically, on the most senior, prestigious and highly trained medical practitioners in the UK.

Like British surgeons, dentists aren’t referred to as Doctor. This is simply because they don’t necessarily earn a medical degree, like the 18th-century surgeon, but instead receive a Bachelor’s of Dental Surgery (BDS, BChD, or BDent). In recent decades, British dentists have demanded the right to call themselves Doctor, so that they can enjoy the same privileges (and presumably salaries) as their European and other foreign counterparts. However, medical doctors have objected to the idea, arguing that such a title might mislead patients about the extent of their expertise. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled in favor of the medics in 2008, stating firmly that “Dentists must not use the title doctor unless they are medically or academically qualified to do so.”

Spraint and fewmets

Warning: don’t read this over lunch, or any other meal. Save it for the next time you’re playing Balderdash, the Dictionary Game, or any of those parlor games involving obscure words and unlikely definitions.

An earlier post (https://glossophilia.org/?p=1375) examined terms of venery, ie. nouns of multitude used to name groups of particular animals. Now let’s take a look at words used to name the ‘output’ of particular animals. Yes, there are a few, and understandably most of the names describe certain types or categories of animal waste that have been put to good use by humans, ie. as fertilizers or sources of fuel; it stands to reason that anything that man has to use, handle, distribute, clean up or step in on a regular basis is going to get its own name eventually. (There is a claim — now widely disputed — that the Inuit have multiple words for snow, because of the Eskimos’ extensive knowledge and use of this natural product.) But a few of these animal dropping monikers are peculiar. Why would anyone ever need a word to describe the excrement of an otter, or of a leaf beetle?

Here are the names I’ve found so far; please contribute to the comments section below if you know of any others.

General, especially in wild carnivorous animals: scat
Cattle: (bulk material) dung, ordure, (as fertilizer) manure, (of grazing animals, esp. for fertilizers) tath; (individual droppings) cow pats, cowpies, meadow muffins, buffalo chips, (esp. when burned as fuel) bodewash*
Deer (and formerly other quarry animals), or hunted prey: fewmets (an old English word that describes the feces of a hunted animal by which the hunter can identify it; fewmets are the only evidence of an animal’s existence, before it has been seen itself); see also below
Otter: spraint
Seabirds or bats (in large quantity): guano
Herbivorous insects, such as caterpillars and leaf beetles: frass
Earthworms, lugworms: castings
Horses: manure, road apple
Fossils: coprolite
Dragons and other mythical creatures: fewmets

I’ve deliberately avoided the vast and sometimes colorful vocabulary devoted to human waste, since it seems a little crass for this forum. But there’s no shortage of words both formal/medical and colloquial/vulgar to describe it, and if you really feel the need to indulge your curiosity, there’s a whole web site devoted to slang names for both the product and the process: the “Poop Thesaurus” can be found at http://www.heptune.com/poopword.html.

You might also (inexplicably) want to read poetry about it: here’s a short anthology of works on this unseemly subject:
“Ode on the Commode” by Jack Butler
“Excrement” by Alan Ginsberg
“On the Rectum of Peacocks” by Gabriel Gudding
“****: An Essay on Rimbaud” by Thom Gunn
“The Soul of Spain with McAlmon and Bird the Publishers”
– Ernest Hemingway
“An Epiphany” – X.J. Kennedy
“Holy Shit” – Galway Kinnell
“The Excrement Poem” – Maxine Kumin
“Feces” – J.D. McClatchy
“Yam” – James Merrill
“I Get a Feeling” – Liam Rector
“The Dung Pile” – Peter Streckfus
“The Beautiful Bowel Movement” – John Updike

* Here is an explanation of the origins of the word bodewash on a web site about Canadian words:

http://www.billcasselman.com/canadian_food_words/manitoba_words.htm

“Bodewash” warmed many an early Manitoba settler. This term for dried buffalo dung used as a fuel was borrowed from the Canadian French of fur trappers where it appeared-at first humorously-as bois de vache ‘cow wood’ and also in the more refined phrase bois des prairies ‘prairie wood.’ Buffalo chips or cow chips were both called bodewash, which is a direct Englishing of bois de vache that shows up in the rural Manitoba folk saying “squished flatter ‘n a bodewash chip.” Anyone who could find the chips of buffalo dung used them, since there was little wood available. Dried cattle burns with a heavy odour, while buffalo chips are relatively odourless and were in plentiful supply before the vast herds were slaughtered.”

I do solemnly swear — or affirm?

The Presidential Oath of Office is prescribed in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. When Obama is sworn in for the second time as President of the United States today, he does have the option not to swear but instead to affirm. The language of the Constitution allows every incoming President to make this choice: as it lays out in Article II, Section I: “Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation. ‘I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'” While the reasons for this choice of oath or affirmation aren’t documented in the Constitution or elsewhere, it’s commonly understood that it dates back to the beliefs of certain groups of Christians, notably the Quakers, Moravians, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who take very literally certain Scriptural injunctions that forbid you to swear on oath. As set out in the Sermon on the Mount: “But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation” (James 5:12, KJV); swearing is also prohibited by Matthew 5:33-37.

Franklin Pierce was the only president known to use the word affirm rather than swear (in 1853), and hence he took an affirmation of office, rather than an oath. Herbert Hoover, because he was a Quaker himself, is thought by many to have used “affirm”, but newsreels confirm that he swore, like all but one of his predecessors. Richard Nixon, also a Quaker, chose to swear rather than affirm. (Incidentally, although not included in the text laid out in the Constitution, it is customary for modern presidents to say “So help me God” at the end of the oath.)

So, what is the difference between swearing and affirming? Legally and semantically there is no real difference: they both represent an official and legal promise to execute or fulfill a task — usually an important political or legal duty to a court or country. An oath is usually sworn with reference to an object or text — such as the Bible or the Constitution — and therefore to an external religion or set of principles; an affirmation, on the other hand, refers to one’s own honor, represented often by one’s own name. In English courts of law, the right of Quakers and Moravians selected as jurors to affirm rather than swear was introduced under the Quakers and Moravians Act of 1833, and it was soon extended to anyone who wishes to do so — and no reason for choosing to affirm needs to be given. As well as the Christian groups already mentioned, this option to affirm is a Godsend to atheists and agnostics.

When I was selected for a jury while doing my civic duty at the Old Bailey in the early ’80s, I was proffered the Bible on which ten men and women before me had sworn “by almighty God” to “try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence”, as read from a printed card also given to each juror. (The defendant in question was accused of a gruesome crime and faced charges ranging from grievous bodily harm to attempted murder.) Even in my young mind — I was barely eligible for jury service — I understood that taking such a serious oath with reference to a deity or religion that was outside my field of meaning or understanding was in some way dishonorable, or even dishonest, and it seemed to contradict the very purpose of the oath. So I chose to exercise my right to affirm, sending the clerk of the court scurrying away to find the printed card for affirmations. I didn’t realize at the time that this election to affirm is not at all common (or at least it wasn’t at that time at the Old Bailey), and therefore the appropriate card wasn’t near at hand. As I waited — standing alone before the judge, the bewigged barristers and other court officials, and the defendant himself — I came to realize why people don’t generally choose to exercise this linguistic right: it singles you out. Especially in the solemn and hallowed halls of Great Britain’s most famous court of justice, where notorious criminals have been sent to their deaths and wronged innocents have been famously absolved, you don’t want to draw attention to yourself and stand out from any crowd — particularly not from those twelve good men and true whose job it is to deliver blind justice. English jurors are unnamed and anonymous — even post trial — and the idea of asserting their own identities, ideas, beliefs or theories outside the deliberation room are anathema to the English justice system. As this realization settled in, and I began to question my own reasons for choosing to affirm, the flustered clerk returned to the court and pushed the pagan affirmation card into my hand. I stated my name, and declared that I did “solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” As I came to the end of the statement, glad to know that I would soon be seated again alongside my fellow jurors, it dawned on me (and to the court) that I had been affirmed not as a juror but as a witness. The barrister for the defence leaped to his feet and demanded to approach the bench. Minutes seemed to turn into hours as the judges and lawyers argued over whether I could be dismissed from the jury after reading the wrong affirmation; was I technically a juror at that point, having been sworn into the court, or did the defendant — who now knew my name — still have the right to reject me, as he now wanted to do? Meanwhile I continued to stand, mortified and alone before the court. I was eventually affirmed as a juror, and at the end of the harrowing trial, we the jury convicted him of his dreadful crime and sent him to prison for many years. The trial was ultimately more grueling than my swearing in, but it was nevertheless something of an ordeal because I had chosen to utter a few words that were different.

National Thesaurus Day

It’s a very big day today. It’s National Thesaurus Day. (It’s also Winnie the Pooh Day, and Peking Duck Day, but we at Glossophilia are most interested in our man of words.) January 18, 1779 was the birth date of Peter Mark Roget, who would grow up to become a physician, theologian and lexicographer, earning fame for the publication of his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (known as Roget’s Thesaurus) in 1852. (Most people probably don’t realize that Roget also invented an improved slide rule and the pocket chessboard; he was a man of many talents.) Battling depression for most of his life, Roget found comfort in creating lists, the process of which he found therapeutic and calming. His ultimate list was the book that would become one of the most widely used dictionaries in the world. In its original printing, Roget’s work — a catalogue of words organized by their meanings — was called Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. And that is exactly what Roget’s Thesaurus has done for generations of thinkers, speakers and writers over the last century and a half, helping us to think outside our narrow linguistic tool-boxes and reach for more colorful, unusual synonyms to brighten up and refresh our weary old vocabularies.

There’s perhaps no other lingo more rife with hackneyed words and phrases than that of PR and marketing, the field in which I work; Roget must be wondering in his grave why more marketing executives haven’t bought his book. (Perhaps his publicist didn’t have a wide enough vocabulary to promote it.) Some examples that rarely get past my red pen are feature/featuring, “highly acclaimed”, “highly anticipated”, rave, and renowned. And oh how I wish, in my specific field of classical music, that someone would invent a few more words for perform and performance.

To mark this auspicious day, let’s take a look at Lake Superior State University’s 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/

In the university’s own words on the List’s dedicated web site: “While the U.S. Congress has been kicking the can down the road and inching closer to the fiscal cliff, the word gurus at Lake Superior State University have doubled-down on their passion for the language and have released their 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.

The list, compiled from nominations sent to LSSU throughout the year, is released each year on New Year’s Eve. It dates back to Dec. 31, 1975, when former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe (RAY-bee) and some colleagues cooked up the whimsical idea to banish overused words and phrases from the language. They issued the first list on New Year’s Day 1976. Much to the delight of word enthusiasts everywhere, the list has stayed the course into a fourth decade.

Through the years, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which is closing in on its 1,000th banishment.”

Here is 2012’s List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.

Fiscal cliff

Kick the can down the road

Double down

Job creators/creation

Passion/passionate

YOLO

Spoiler alert

Bucket list

Trending

Superfood

Boneless wings

Guru