When you can’t understand something, whether it’s an unfamiliar subject in your own language, or something a foreign language, you might say “it’s all Greek to me”. At least you would in English. According to World Wide Words, this phrase comes a Medieval Latin proverb Graecum est; non potest legi (It is Greek; it cannot be read). I understand that Medieval scribes, who weren’t familiar with Greek, wrote this phrase next to any text they came across in that language.

The equivalent phrase in French is C’est du chinois (It’s Chinese). In German the phrase is Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof (I understand only railway station). In Czech incomprehsion is compared to a Spanish village – Je to pro mne španělská vesnice (It’s a Spanish village to me). Does anybody know why?

What about in other languages – are there any similiar idioms indicating incomprehension?

Today’s word-tastic topic is cran-morphing, the practice of dismantling words and glueing parts of them on to other words. Word-tastic is an example of this that I just made up – it combines the word word with -tastic from fantastic. Another popular cran-moph is -gate, as in Irangate, Dianagate and Whitewatergate. This comes from the Watergate Scandal, named after a hotel in Washington D.C.

Cran-morphs or cranberry morphs usually only mean something in relation to the words from which they have been detached. All those whatever-gates usually have nothing to do with gates, though you could construct a folk etymology along these lines – this cran-morph is associated with scandals and cover-ups which involve the revealing of secrets. The opening of a gate could be linked to the discovery of those secrets.

Other cran-morphs include:

• -tabulous, from fantastic and fabulous, as in fantabulous and blog-tabulous
• -holic, from alcoholic, as in shopaholic, chocoholic and biblioholic
• -thon, from marathon, as in telethon, shopathon and eatathon
• -licious, from delicious, as in magalicious
• -nomics, from economics, as in ergonomics, Clintonomics, cybernomics and Enronomics

Details of the origin of the term cran-morphing can be found on Language log.

For more whatever-gates, see Wikipedia.

According to the Double-Tongued Word Wrester, the collective noun for unicyclists is a wobble. This makes sense as unicyclists do tend to wobble quite a lot, at least at first – I certainly wobble a bit when riding my unicycle. The collective noun for jugglers is a neverthriving – any ideas where this comes from? So is a group of juggling uncyclists a neverthriving wobble?!

There are many other collective nouns in English, some of which are rarely used or have been coined for fun. Most such words are for groups of animals or people. Relatively few are for inanimate objects. Some collective nouns come from the habitat of a particular creature, e.g. a cete of badgers, a nest of mice; others are based on a physical characteristics, behavioural traits or sounds made by animals, e.g. a prickle of hedgehogs, a sneak of weasals, a murmuration of starlings.

Here are a few more examples:

an aarmory or aardvarks
an absence of waiters
an army of frogs
a babel of words/languages
a business of ferrets
a clutter of cats
a chattering of choughs
a crash of rhinoceroses
a descent of woodpeckers
an embarrassment of parents
a fluther of jellyfish
a murder of crows
a parliament of owls
a shuffle of bureaucrats
a warren of wombats

Source: http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/

At the online sales conference I attended today, we were bombared with a bewildering multitude of acronyms and abbreviations. There was much talk of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – even knowing what these abbreviations stand for doesn’t necessarily help you to understand them, in some cases.

An acronym is a pronounceable name made up of a series of initial letters or parts of words, such as NATO (North Altantic Treaty Organisation). Acro- is a combining form meaning something at a height, summit, top, tip, beginning or end. It comes from the Greek ακρος (akros) – extreme, topmost.

An abbreviation is a shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase used in place of the whole. Abbreviate comes from the Latin Latin abbreviāre from the Latin brevis – brief.

isogloss, noun = a line drawn on a map around the area in which a linguistic feature is to be found, such as a particular pronunciation of a given word

Origin: from the Greek ισος (isos) – equal, and γλωσσα (glossa) – tongue/language.

Other words with similar meanings include: isolex, an isogloss for a particular item of vocabulary, and isophone, an isogloss for a particular feature of pronunciation.

The distribution of names of carbonated beverages in the USA can be divided using isolexes – in some areas the usual name for such drinks is soda, in some it’s pop, and in others it’s cola or coke. In the UK we call such drinks pop or soft drinks.

The phenomenon of isoglosses is discussed in the Linguistics books I’m currently reading and I like the sound of the word. This word, and the related words, also illustrate one of the advantages of being familiar with the Greek roots of English words. Now I know that iso(s) means equal, words using this prefix are slightly easier to understand.

The title of today’s post is an example of a metaphor from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The full version is:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances;

According to Wikipedia, a metaphor, from the Greek: μεταφεριν (metapherin) – “to carry something across” or “transfer”, is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. A trope is a figure of speech consisting of a play on words.

There are a number of different types of metaphors:

Extended metaphors, which set up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. The above quote from Shakespeare is a good example of this.

Epic or Homeric similes are extended metaphors containing details about the vehicle that are not, in fact, necessary for the metaphoric purpose. An example of this from Black Adder is: “This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis’.”

Mixed metaphors combine parts of two or more unrelated metaphors together creating a nonsensical but often amusing image. For example, “look before you bark up the wrong end of the stick”, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it spoil the broth” and “They’re biting the hand of the goose that laid the golden egg”, from Samuel Goldwyn.

Dead metaphors started life as metaphors but over time have lost their metaphoric nature and become ordinary expressions. Examples include “to grasp a idea”, “arm of a chair” and “leg of a table”.

Have you mixed an metaphors or heard any metaphoric mixing being committed recently?

An aptronym or aptonym is a name that relates to its owner’s profession or personality, often in a humorous or ironic way. For example, William Wordsworth (poet), Larry Speakes (presidential spokesman under Ronald Reagan) and Anna Smashnova (tennis player).

This word was apparently coined by Franklin P. Adams, an American newspaper columnist in 1938, according to this blog. There are more aptronyms here and here.

Names of characters in Dickens sometimes reflect their personalities or jobs: Scrooge, Uriah Heep, Gradgrind, Sweedlepipe, Honeythunder, Bumble, Pumblechook and Podsnap. Other aptronymic character names include Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan’s A School for Scandal, and Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Is your name an aptronym, or do you know anyone with an aptronymic name?

One of the things they talked about yesterday on Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4 was onomatophobhia, the fear or dread of certain words or phrases. They interviewed people who go out of their way to avoid hearing or seeing particular words, in most cases as a result of negative and/or traumatic associations with those words. There was also a man who finds it very difficult to say his own name for fear of mispronouncing it.

Like most phobia words, onomatophobia comes from Greek ὀνομα (onoma) – ‘name’ and φοβυς (phobus) – ‘fear’.

Are there any words that you avoid and/or dislike intensely?

There are many interesting phobias listed at thefreedictionary.com, including:

• Anatidaephobia – fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you
• Luposlipaphobia – the fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly-waxed floor.

Both were made up by Gary Larson for his The Far Side cartoons.

My brother and his girlfriend are currently polliwogs, but sometime today or tomorrow they will become shellbacks. A polliwog or pollywog is a sailor who has not crossed the equator, while a shellback is one who has, or an experienced or old sailor.

According to nautical tradition, when the equator is crossed, a ceremony is performed for King Neptune and shellbacks ridicule and humiliate polliwogs.

Polliwog comes from the Middle English polwygle. Pol comes from Middle Low German polle, hair of the head, head, top of a tree, and wygle from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wiggeln.

There’s some details of the equator crossing ceremonies in the US navy at: http://www.desausa.org/pollywog_to_shellback.htm

And you can follow my brother’s adventures at:
http://kikasailing.blogspot.com