:: The Wendy House ::

After consulting with the experts (mum, friend, their books, the internet) I thought that the nobly, noble, small tree in my garden was a ‘Sambucus nigra’ more commonly known as an Elderberry and before that as aeld. 

Like many trees the Mythical history of the Elderberry proposes, or describes its traditional uses.  The name may come from the Anglo-Saxon term ellaern or aeld which means “fire” or “to kindle a fire“.  It was associated with female-centric goddess systems then over time gradually perverted to represent ‘mischievious faeries’ by both the celts of Ireland and England.  Traditionally the Elder is placed by the back door of a home, where mine grows, to keep evil spirits from influencing or entering the home and used to pin the thatch to a roof.  The runic association is with Feh, the first rune, indicating where one sequence ends and another begins,  the cusp of transition,  renewal.

 British Christians gave the Elder a more sinister press,  claiming that Judas committed suicide by hanging himself from this tree.  He must have been short or the tree leaning over a decent drop.  Along with many other trees it is claimed Jesus was crucified on an cross made of Elder.

Then a garden specialist happened to wander by saying that’s a Viburnum tinus…

Today is the anniversary of a day when the darned Normans (French of viking origins) defeated the Anglo Saxon’s (English of German and Danish origins).  The English were led by the recently elected (Witenagemot, Witan) Danish Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, the nick-namesake of one of our current princes,  just outside a holiday resort called Hastings on the English south coast. 

The invading Norman team were lead by William the bastard who had allegedly been promised the English throne by King Edward the confessor (Saxon).  King Harry’s team had just hiked from York (241 miles, 386 kilometres) in a remarkable 4 - 7 days after fending-off an invasion by the Norwegian King Harald the hard who may have been promised the English throne by a Danish King Canute the hardy.

The basic plot is that William the bastards’ team kills most of Harry Godwinson’s team. 

William the bastard, Duke of Normandy, became William I of England,  namesake of the current heir to the English throne, 2nd in line.  Most histories subsequently refer to William the bastard fellow as ‘William the Conqueror’ or ‘Guillaume le Conquérant’ .  Apparantly Londoners don’t acknowledge or use the ‘conqueror’ part of his rather convincing political spin, they politely refer to him as William Duke of Normandy.  

William’s arrival appears to have marked the end of the system of elected monarchy in England, though the Witan remained in name their role changed to that of the Norman feudally based system where membership was based on gifts of land originating from the King,  effectively a King’s court,  this system later evolved into the current Parliment.

On a linguistic note,  according to Jonathan Stern:

Anglo-Saxon and Norman French wouldn’t agree what gender some noun or other was… so they’d just forget about it and call it “it”.This has created a very flexible language (once referred to as “a lot of foreign words mispronounced”) which often has two subtly different words for things (e.g. compare our “come” and “arrive” with the German “kommen” and the French “arriver” - remember Anglo-Saxon would have been very like German; Norman French was closely related to Parisian French).

The small and yet pleasingly formed Reading Museum within the versataile town hall has its very own hand embroidered 1885 copy of the 70 metre long Bayeux Tapestry.

I thought I knew what this idiom meant until I tried to verify it online.  This is what I believed:

• cop. To view, gather or recieve.
• flack.  Tiny metalised paper strips dropped from World War II aircraft as a means of interferring with enemy radar that is attempting to identify their position to relay to the anti-aircraft guns. 

In Wendy’s world,  to cop some flack is to be on the recieving end of lots of small irritations that together add up to major disruption.  This interpretation is consistent with usage of the phrase in forums, blogs and news item titles.

Merriam-Websters 4th and last definition of flack is ‘anti aircraft guns’ or ’the bursting shells fired from flak’.  It cites the origin of the main meaning of flack ‘one who provides publicity’  as ‘unknown,  1939′ .  During WW2.    WW2 airplanes also used to drop publicity (propaganda) leaflets,  Dropping flack and dropping small leaflets have remarkable behavioural, if not intended funtional, similarity.

Dictionary.com’s 6th entry for flack cites the meaning of flack that looks most similar to my current understanding of its use

• Antiaircraft artillery.
• The bursting shells fired from such artillery.
• Excessive or abusive criticism.
• Dissension; opposition.
• Informal:  Excessive or abusive criticism.
• Informal:  Dissension; opposition.

The biological term ‘cell’ was coined by Robert Hook, most famous for the eponymous Hooks law and working as Sir Christopher Wren’s colleage on St. Pauls Cathedral and a substantial proportion of London after the great fire.  Evidently Robert Hook meant to leverage the connotations of a monks cell, one of many defined spaces with an identical yet sparse functional content.

cell phones are named after the cellular network that supplies the signal,  possibly the term cell has the same root in a monks cell.  Two very diverse current-use meanings (phone, biological component) stemming from one original use.  Possibly…

In the UK buildings can be licenced to pursue music, dancing, and entertainment of the like kind, they also enjoy throwing several large dollops of befuddlement into the mix, just in case

According to a Westminster tour guide and the world wide words website:

Our parliament comes from the old French parlement, which at first meant only a “talk, consultation, conference” (it derives from the same French word parler, “to speak” as parlance, parley and parlour, the last of which, etymologically, is a “room set aside for conversation”). Later parlement evolved to the sense “formal consultative body” and so to “legislative body”.

Now that was interesting,  wasn’t it? 

The BBC reports that ‘Dr.’s slang is a dying art’.   Evidently,  Dr.’s slang was a creative way of insulting their patients and each other.  I do like a good insult,  its the basis for bringing entertainment into otherwise dull parliamentary debate.  Aparantly Dr.s used ‘acronyms designed to spell out the unsayable truth about their patients’.  Why unsayable?  Doctors should have a skill for being concise, frank, honest.  The exmaples provided in the article may be ‘creative’ but they are also based on stereotypes many of which may be prejudicial and lead to inappropriate treatment decisions.  Cited exceptions to prejudicial stereotyping included TTR (Tea Time Review), PFO (Patient Fell Over) PGT (Patient Got Thumped).  These all seem fair game for saying out loud or acronyms.  But instead of saying or writing NFN (Normal for Norfolk),  why not list the actual behaviours that lead to the application of that prejudice,  for example,  ‘Observed Talking To Treestump’ (OT3).

If the slang perpetuates prejudices then it (not patients) should die.

Ask AskOxford.com describes the origins of the English term ‘POSH’ in a way that aligns with the folk myth I somehow acquired:

The story goes that the more well-to-do passengers travelling to and from India used to have POSH written against their bookings, standing for ‘Port Out, Starboard Home’ (indicating the more desirable cabins, on the shady side of the ship).

A website that explains English phrases considers the above explanation as being popular over accurate and lists other,  less well known,  plausible alternatives such as:

Posh is also the Romany word for money and this was current throughout the 19th century.

The Romany word for halfpenny is a popularly web-cited explanation, the true origin may now be lost with old buffers

a buffer is a description applicable to an old man according to my folk memory and:

• Oxford.com (UK)
• Merriam-Websters online dictionary first definition (US).

But not according to the majority of current online English-language dictionaries and encyclopedia, including:  

• Wiktionary doesn’t (yet) list buffer as an old man, neither does wikipedia.
• Encarta defintitions 1, and 2 (Microsoft).

 I suspect that age is killing-off old buffers…

In the quiet zone a
baby cries
phone sings
headset treble-beat twangs
A couple of work colleagues converse flirtatiously
Wendy wonders at the shift in the meaning of quiet….

Not an affectionate hand gesture,  a book press.

Small press’ such as Reading’s own ‘Two Rivers Press’ can target selling their publications to interest groups,  niche markets.  Two Rivers probably refers to  the river Kennet and Thames that meet in downtown Reading. 

It publishes works that have general intereast and local significance, for example,  Adam Sowan’s history of street names ‘Abbatoirs Road to Zinzan Street’,  the works of the Reading local, international, performance poet (AFH),  and historical treasures such as history and analysis of what is thought to be the oldest written song in English (circa 13th century).  The manuscript of the song, a ‘rota’, was found in Reading Abbey and now lives in the British Museum. 

A wonderful pocket-sized book with many thematic block-prints and ebulant multilayered interpretations of the meanings of the rota.  A rota is a song intended to be sung in a round of several people….   Wikipedia describes the Reading Rota in a rather dull descriptive manner,  the author of the Two Rivers book explores possibilities with a cheeky enthusiasm and passion that makes the book a pleasure to read,  its style is pixie-years beyond Wikipedia.

…Sumer is icumin in….   there has been much singing in a broad Bristolian burr in the Wendy House recently,  though I haven’t managed to do the minimum 2 or three voices required for a rota.  I am,  at least,  not scaring the cats who defintiely prefer me not to sing in their presence.

 How apt that a small press based in Reading should publish a book about a hand written document found in Reading long ago.

Writing Instruments

including pens and pencils

excluding typewriters,  keyboards or other electronic writing instruments.  

Instruments just for writing.  No drawing incase the writing instruments revolt, explode or splat all over your bestest jumper.  I think they’re planning to ambush my clothes.

Basingstoke

BBQ activity or something way more sinister?

Overheard in the Hogshead:

Its housing for the morally deprived

Maidenhead

Town or symbolic body-part?

People who hail from Reading are (pick one option or add one of your own making):

• Readingensians
• Readonians
• Readibus
• Readifolk
• Readipop

Thanks to Adam Sowan for raising my awareness of these options. Obivously I like the Readibus option because of my prediliction for buses.  But how do you get to be a Readibus?  So far I’ve found 2 things:

1. living in close proximity to the big white house or at least being able to identify it by its address
2. Working for specific companies or at specific locations (e.g. Thames Valley Park) . 

What other things do you think it takes to hail from Reading?  When will I have been ‘localised’ (in a conmputer jaron sense of the word)?

Apparantly US English is classed as an ethnic minority version of English. 

In my local diner:

Wendy:  “Hold the tomatoes”
Wait-staff: “No to-MATE-Os?”
Wendy: “Yes, No…” (gets confused)

The Banana splits used to say “hold the bus“.  In the original Jessie James film (1939) the newspaper editor used to say “Hold the press” and in various films people in food shops would ask wait staff to “hold the pickle” and “hold the mayonaisse“.   I learned all my original American from the TV.  I thought this meant that in the US you could ask to have pseudo-vegetables held by wait-staff in diners.  Apparantly it’s slightly more complicated than that.

PrivateLie: how long have you lived in the US?

Wendy: severn yers

PrivateLie: you haven’t picked up the accent

Wendy: ….

PrivateLie: you have lost a lot of your burr

YURrrrrS urv lurv’n oral-oh-VURrr ‘ee UMPURrrrrr UV durmm’d ee BURrrrrrrr uv moiy Reej-in-AU AXE-synth een’ FAY-VURrrrrrr urrrrrv moi bee-een  UN-urs-ood  

 INNIT? 

   Braces (UK) & Suspenders (US)

Are a practical and a fashion item in the US.  They were out in abundance in Sedro Woolley (the city formerly known as Bug) for the July 4th parade.

Wikipedia cites Larry King as a famous US braces wearer and describes them as:

Braces in British English (and also sometimes in North America) or suspenders in American English, are elastic fabric straps, run over the shoulders, that hold up trousers. The entire strap of braces may be elasticated, or only at attachment ends, with the most of the straps being of woven cloth with either a X-Back or Y-back crosspatch and leather end tabs. Braces typically attach to trousers with clips or, less commonly nowadays, with buttons

The locals here in the NW US do not appear to use the word rent as extensively, or in the same contexts, as a British English speaker would use it.  I wonder why the use grew to be different?  For example

NW US Americans do not:

• rent a van.
• rent a semi-detatched home.
• rent a cottage in the lake district for a fortnight.
• rent a chainsaw to trim the overgrown beech hedge surronding their garden.

NW US Americans do

• hire a truck.
• take a lease on an apartment.
• do Europe in two weeks.
• tune their own chainsaw to peak performance ready to join them on a July 4th parade or carve something purrity for their yard or porch.

The origins of blinking in single-molecule Raman spectroscopy are known, the Merrium-Webster defines it multiple times as transitive and intransitive verbs,  wikipedia disambiguates blinking in many ways and finally the  UK slang dictionary refers to it as an adjective:

Used as an intensifier, but a particularly mild expression. E.g.”Your blinkin’ washing machine has broken down again.” or “It’s blinkin’ heavy, this washing machine

I couldn’t find the aetiology of this blinking adjective.  I wonder where it came from and where its going.

a sight for sore eyes = a sight to sooth sore eyes = something good

According to phrase-finder of the phrase predates a recording of its origins and defines it specifically as referring to seeing a person,  a person is a sight for sore eyes,  it is good to see them.  Phrase finder attributes the first recording of the phrase to Jonathan Swift in 1738 then proceeds to identify new uses similar to those I found through a quick web-search:

1. as a soundbite,  title,  on journalistic articles that refer to web pages, sites:  the Gaurdian refering to unviersity web-pages,  the American Bar association Web2.0., a website summarising websites. 

2. play on word sound (homophone) replacing sight with site and for with 4.  For example as the name of this freeware website.

3. to advertise optical products such as eye balm.

This post was inspired by curiousity after having encountered the opposite meaning used conversationally: 

site a sight for sore eyes = a sight to produce sore eyes = something bad

This opposite meaning is much less prolific.  I have not found it through web searches.  A literal interpretation of the idiom legitimately produces this meaning because the goodness,  or badness, of the sight for the sore eyes is not explicit in the phrase, you have to infer it from the use context.  

City

Derby is the county seat of Derbyshire on the edge of the Peak district national park.  The park is a place of outstanding natural beauty with some wonderful rock-climbing locations.  Wikipedia describes the origins of the city’s name thus:

‘Derby’ is a corruption of the Danish and Gaelic Djúra-bý (recorded in Anglo-Saxon as Deoraby) (Village of the Deer); however some assert that it is a corruption of the original Roman name ‘Derventio’. The town was also named ‘Darby’ or ‘Darbye’ on some of the oldest maps, eg. Speed’s 1610 map. The city is one of the few cities that has retained a name with a Viking origin

Contest

According to many websites the orginal Derby race in 1779 was a horse race at Epsom Downs in Surrey named after Edward Smith-Stanley the 12th Earl of Derby.  This original horse race has grown into an internationally prestigious event as an annual meet since that year.  The Merriam Webster dictionary cites the use Derby as being generalised to cover the ethos of the orginial race meet:

1. any of several horse races held annually and usually restricted to three-year-olds
2. a race or contest open to all comers or to a specified category of contestants (bicycle derby)

Many people in the US and in Australia pronounce this  der-bee as, indeed, the lettering implies.

Hat

The Bowler hat was originally designed with a hard bowl and narrow brim to serve as stylish yet protective headgear for horse riders.  Named the Bowler hat in England after its original manufacturers.   In the United States they call the bowler hat a Derby hat after the 12th Earl of Derby.  Charlie Chaplin, Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel all wore bowler hats.  

Wikipedia also describes a restaurant in Los Angeles that called the Brown Derby Hat,  built in the shape of a Bowler.  

According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary the word fabulous is a Middle English* word from the Latin word fabulosus, that means:  resembling or suggesting a fable: of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature.

What is a fable?  Wikepdia describes a fable:

“a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim“

Aesop’s collection of fables mainly follows wikipedia’s defintion.  Some of Aesop’s fables lack anthropomorphised animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature.  The explicit Maxim’s often have a lyrical expression that may have helped their uptake in everyday conversation.  I recognised many of the maxims without ever having read the orginal fable, for example

“one sparrow does not make a summer”

“Necessity is the mother of invention”

“Honesty is the best policy”

Already knowing these maxims helps me to remember the fable.

* Middle English is described by Wikipedia as between 1066 (Norman Invasion of England) and the 15th Century 

A new word.

It doesnt mean:

• an entrapreneur on intranets.
• an introverted entrapreneur.
• the space between more multiple entrepreneurs.

It is actually a contraction of ‘internal entrapreneur’ attributed to a 1983 UK PhD thesis.  It’s possible I’ll explore the subtle distinction in meaning and its French origins later.  Or possibly not.

Wendy:  How do you spell reoccur?

American: recur (giggles)  re-OH-kerr,  with an o,  is that an English version?

I can spell occurance.  If I need a second occurance I may be cornered into attempting a spelling of re-occur, reoccur, if it just keeps on happening I have to remember to drop an o and a c to let it recur.  It’s all too complicated…   …I wonder why,  I failed to find any evolutionary descriptions of these words.

Kenneth Wilson’s guide to American English (1993) cited on Bartleby.com gives advice that I can understand and follow:

The usual Standard words are recur, meaning “to return (to),” “to come back (to),” “to occur again,” as in The trouble recurred last week for the dozenth time; recurrence, meaning “one of several repetitions, yet another return,” as in If there’s another recurrence, we must take action; and the related adjective recurrent. Reoccur and reoccurrence are said to differ from recur and recurrence in that they suggest a first or single repetition: That odd noise reoccurred an hour later. They are rare in Edited English, and most desk dictionaries don’t include them, but they appear fairly often in the speech of the inexperienced as synonyms for recur and recurrence: That odd noise reoccurred just after you’d left. Its reoccurrence made me nervous. Especially in writing, best practical advice is to stick with recur and recurrence, for one repetition or many.

Heard on NPR “it is real important not to overlook established restaurants”

This use of the word ‘real’ as an adverb, intensifier  is not familiar to me.  Webster implies that this use evolved from abreviating the word ‘really’.   If you listen carefully you wont hear me describe anything using this abreviation, or super,  you will hear fully pronounced words including but not limited to the following:  quite, very, extremely…..   

“(back) to the wall” is a phrase whose meaning is not immediately clear.  Like many idioms it has probably evolved from a description of something literal.   I”ve been unable to find a verification of the original meaning online.  The following is a story a York Minster tour guide once told me.

Medieval stone churches in the UK rarely included seating.  Pews may be available for wealthy, aristocratic church members.  Peasants normally had to stand during the religious services.  Peasants that were elderly or had physical infirmities would move towards the walls of the church where they could lean,  or sit on stone-carved seats.  The poor infirm had their backs to the wall.  

Nowadays English churches provide seating for the elderly, and a tasty cup of tea.

Many of the online dictionary’s describe the definition of ‘gotten’ as the past participal of ‘got’.  Mumzie thought it best that I not use the word ‘gotten’ or indulge in using ‘got’ for anything other than indicating possession.  I never really heard the word ‘gotten’ in use in  England or the use of ‘got’ to refer to anything other than possession.  Then I came to the USA where both words are liberally used in many different ways that,  at first, felt ‘wrong’ to me.  I looked them up and it seems that North America has held onto orginal usage of these words that have fallen by the wayside in Britain.  I wonder why.  It can’t all be due to Mumzies instructions…..

This Random House website attempts to tease out the differences between got and gotten:

In modern use the most important thing to remember is that British English has got almost exclusively, to the point where gotten is sometimes considered erroneous. (Some derived forms with gotten, such as begotten, forgotten, and ill-gotten are still in use in British English.) In American English gotten is more common, but got still has fairly wide use.

The use of gotten was previously criticized in American English by critics who used British English as a standard, but it is rarely objected to today. 

Despite moderate study of the variation between got and gotten in American English, it is difficult to draw many firm conclusions. It is generally true that gotten is used for the sense ‘obtained; received’ (”We’ve gotten tickets” means ‘we acquired tickets’) while got is used for the sense ‘possessed; owned’ (”We’ve got tickets” means ‘we possess tickets’). This distinction cannot be made in British English without using a different word.

American English also uses gotten for the senses ‘come’ (”She should have gotten there by now,” not “She should have got there by now”) and ’cause’ (”I’ve gotten them to reply before,” not “I’ve got them to reply before”).

Other distinctions are sometimes suggested, but the usage is highly variable and cannot be easily summarized.

I found this one article that more fully describes a complex set of ways of using gotten,  for the linguisitcally fascinated amongst you.  Highlights include:

I’ve gotten the answer means I have figured out the answer, rather than I have the answer.

The key is the overlap between the Possessive use of have and the Perfect use of have, plus the fact that one of the senses of get is come to have. If one has come to have a cold, for instance, then one has a cold, and the AmE usage of has got means that one is currently infested, due to the present relevance aspect of the Perfect.

Faced with the overwhelming interpretation of (ha)ve got as simply have, AmE has innovated a new past participle gotten to be used whenever other, non-possessive forms of get are intended.

If one is simply speaking of the acquisition of something, for instance, rather than the current possession, one says I’ve gotten ….. in AmE since I’ve got implies that one still has it, and therefore focusses on the current Possession rather than the Perfective acquisition.

The wealth of the county town of Wiltshire, Trowbridge, came from the making of cloth from wool,  dating back to the 14th century.  

Spinning is one step in the process of making cloth from wool.  Prior to the invention of the Spinning Jenny people who had not successfully secured an income through either a husband or fathers income, spun wool. 

Spinsters.