wendy house

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.

a little bit of free association for the weekend because it’s free and that’s rather nice don’t you think?:

Jack¹ Kerouac:    Stream of consciousness writting

Jack² Manager: Stream of consciousness management

Jack Shite³:   Stream of nothing

Jack Off⁴:   Stream of…

1. not a recently  registered British boy.
2. any resemblance to any manager that I have been or  had, living or dead, is purely coincidental
3. Northern English  slang for ‘nothing’ without a dictionary-style web-reference,   really that’s a bit poor.
4. Removing the instrument used to raise your car when replacing a tyre or  more English slang.   A little bit of ambiguity for you there.   Lovelly.

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.  

boy:   do you interact with customers?

Wendy:    normally I talk to them and interact with computers.   Though sometimes I will  talk to, or at,  a computer or two.

Have you had an notable  interactions recently?

Fictional conversation with my ever-wise Mumsie :

Mumsie: “your dinner’s ready”

Wendy: “I’m not done yet” (tidying my bedroom)

Mumsie: “Gwendolyn,   YOU have not FINISHED.    The Dinner is DONE.    You are not a dinner that can be ‘done’.   Stop what you are doing now,   finish it after dinner, or your dinner will be OVERDONE and you risk being DONE OVER“

A quick look in online dictionarys suggests that  the US usage of ‘done’ is appropriate.   It makes me wince.   It doesn’t ‘sound’ right.   Obviously, I blame my mother for this over sensitivity.   She may not be responsible for this quirk of mine…

Museum of History.   Wendy winces.   At this rate of wincing I’m going to develop a permanent tic.  

The Charlotte Museum of History was a pleasure. Entrance was free on the Sunday I visited.   It was staffed by friendly, attentive,  volunteers.   I thought ‘this is southern hospitality’. The real highlight was the live folk music played by younsters and oldsters.   A ‘live’ museum.   The music  echoed around the impressive, modern, building.   Mandolins,   Banjo’s, Guitars, Violins and more.   Here they are playing ‘Amazing Grace’:

On flick-r there are more of my photographs of Charlotte.

Language certainly evolves at a high speed here in the US.   Especially in the service industries.   The  Comair  ‘flight attendant’* said:

“make sure you have all of your belongings before you de-plane“

De-plane?   what’s wrong with ‘leave’,   ‘get off’   ‘go’ or even the familiar previously used shipping terminology – ‘disembark’

“make sure your cell phone is in the off position’

Now this was just silly.   I understand making sure my seat is in an upright position.    This is just gratuitous wanton repetition of a phrase used in flight-attendant-land.   SILLY.   Then she repeated the same message for Laptops.  SILLY. SILLY.

Are attendents told  not to use normal language like  ”turn your cell phones off?”   WHY?     I will ask if  it happens again on my return flight.

*  an air hostess or steward.  I suspect that calling out the gender  with different names is now considered politically  incorrect, if enabling more descriptive precision. For one extra syllable you get  increased ambiguity through being gender neutral and  possibly the impression of some form of job status  kudos…

Below is a list  of words and phrases I’ve heard used in the US that  could prompt  this fictional conversation with mumzie

mumzie: ‘Oh dear.   Gwendolyn, what a pity.    Your language HAS deteriotated since moving THERE”

reply from US-ified wendy: ‘MOM!       So, it’s cool… …ok… …don’t spaz’ (chews gum)

or reply from UK wendy; “Mumzie you are  death-defyingly CUTE!   Yes my language has changed a little bit.   The change is not really a problem because people can still not-understand what I’m talking about and  I can still appropriately use numerous words of more than 4 syllables. That means there is no need for you to worry.  

mumzie: “That’s enough cheek from you..     …have you brushed your teeth yet today?” (laying an Irony? trap for Wendy)

UK & US wendy:   “MUM!   I’m 42!!!” (Wendy falls into the trap of believing her mother would actually check on her adult  teeth-cleaning activities.   Whoops!)

mumsie*: Teeeee Heee Heeeee….  

Here are the potential mumsie offending words:

“Totally” appears to be used in the US as short hand to confirm agreement.   The UK equivalent  is probably  ”Absolutely”

“OK” this is used as frequently in the UK.   Here in the NW US they appear to say ‘MK‘,   I’m not sure why.   Mumsie doesn’t like  ’OK’ because according to her it’s not a real word.   It’s a word that the American’s bought to Britain in WW2 with their offensive gum chewing habits.   I can  remember her saying to me  ”Take that gum out of your mouth darling.  It’s rude to chew in public.”

“Rocks” used to indicate that something is impressive.     You say “rocks!” As oppose to the slightly more verbose,   specific,  mumsie approved variations  ”was very impressive’ or citing specific virtues  ”I really liked the way the shimmering colours reflected in the moonlight”

“Awesome” (1.) almost the same as “Rocks”   (2.) used to indicate pleasure when someone understands or agrees with you.

“Cool“ appears to have multiple meanings depending on use context.   Here are a few I’ve noticed:

1. I hear what you are saying (OK)
2. I agree with you (OK)
3. That  is not a  problem (OK)
4. very stylish (Rocks)
5. the right thing to do and done with style. (Totally Rocks)

“So” widespread use of this word  to start and string utterances together.   It’s like conversational glue.   There are definitely  UK conversational equivalents such as “right“,   “like” “eerrrr”

‘spaz”  appears to be  used in the US as an abreviation of ‘spasmodic’ or ‘spasm’.   In the UK this term is more likely to be interpretted as an abbreviation of “Spastic”  a derogatory term to refer to people suffering from Cerebral Palsey.   Not politically correct in the UK.

Unlike mumzie,   I do not disapprove of using these words in these ways.   Like mumsie, I prefer minimizing repetition and maximizing creative use of  a broad vocabulary that communicates effectively.  

 * I love my mum she’s wicked!

This is a phrase used by a UK gal to express her feelings when she discovered where I’m living and working now.

W out-of-touch-with-topical-UK-expressions-of-’something’

‘The Making of the King James Bible’

Fabulous book full of socio-cultural, historical, political, and economic insight. He paints very rich pictures of the characters and events that lead to the way the King James Bible was produced. Adams demonstrates incisive use of language with colourful illustrations of lost common knowledge. For example, did you know that the term ‘Stroke’ (apoplectic siezure) is a reference to a blow from an Angel?! Nicolson often quotes original Jacobean English from letters. Example

“I was forcid at last to saye unto thaime, that if any of thaime hadde bene in a colledge disputing with thair skollairs, if any of thaire disciples hadde ansourid thaim in that sorte, thay wolde have fetchid him up in place of a replye & so shoulde the rodde have plyed upon the poore boyes buttokis”. p54

Other excerpts that caught my imagination:

“Uniquely in England, an increasignly powerful state had made itself synonymous with a – more or less – protestant church… …It bridged the divisions which in the rest of Europe had given rise to decades of civil war” p.38

“Jacobean England was an expressive culture (straight-laced continentals remarked on how often and warmly the English kissed)” p.45

Nicolson’s use of the English language is richly concise. It was also challenging. Here are examples of obscure descriptive words I double-checked in the dictionary….

Acquiesce, Agglutination, Amity, Anomolous

Cantankerous, Carapace, Circumlocution

 

Elision, Elysium, Emolliently

FissiveGrograin

Irenic

 

Largesse, Louche

Mollification

Niggardly

Obfuscation,

ObsequiousnessPanoply, Parsimonious, PaterfamiliasRecalcitrant, Reprobates, Redolent, Riven

Unctuous

Winnowing

W

Recently I used the word communion at work.  
I didn’t use it in a religious context.   Websters online dictionary cites the first meaning as “An act or instance of sharing” stemming from the Latin ‘communio’ meaning ‘mutual participation’.   Given this definition I assumed it was alright to use the term because of linguistic technical accuracy.   For my current work context,   I was wrong.

A senior person pointed out the specific ‘religious’ meaning  made my use of the term outside a  religious context offensive irrespective of technical accuracy.   Through  my use I  ‘show lack of sensitivity to religiously minded people’  .

I will avoid offending others  by using this term outside of its religious meaning.  

It was a  lesson for me  in natural linguistic evolution.    It  does sadden me when a word’s meanings are constrained or lost by social forces  like  neglect or ‘political correctness’.     I’d like to live and work  in an environment that  celebrated linguistic diversity.

Accidentally Insensitve Wendy (Known Repeat offender)

I recently read a description of something that I recognized as ‘Hot Desking”. It was summrised by the auther as using a “Hotspot”. “Hotspots” are normally advertised as places where you could get wireless internet connectivity for your Hand-held device (phone, pda). The description I’d read didn’t require wireless internet connectivity. Not a ‘hotspot’ as I understood it.

I then realized that I had not heard the phrase “Hot-Desking” since I arrived in the US. I searched the internet for the term to see what the search results implied. Sure enough, most of the web-sites were addressed with .co.uk at the end. This site describes the term: http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-hot1.htm

Excerpt:

The name may derive from hot bunking, the name given to the sharing of sleeping space by sailors on watch in wartime, when as one went on watch another took his place.

I’ve inferred that the ‘hot’ probably comes from the likelihood that the bunk was still physically warm (hot?) when you got in it at the end of your watch from the body that just left the bunk to go on watch…. a pleasant (?) sensual experience.

This alone seemed weak evidence to determine if the phrase is UK (maybe, Europe) centric. I wandered into the office of a pretty young UK boy and asked him “what would you think of if I said Hot-desking?” He described the term as I understood it. I then wandered into the office of a pretty young US boy and asked him the same question.

He blushed, paused, then said “it depends what mood I’m in“. After I’d finished laughing and commenting on what a great answer that was, he said that he had no idea, he’d never heard the phrase before. I was impressed that he had risked a ”personnel’ violation (e.g. sexual harassment) by flirting with me. Flirting at work seems much more rare in the US than the UK. I took this as confirmation that the US do not use Hot-desking as a term. I then wandered into another colleagues office, described Hot-Desking and asked her if there was a word for it. She said, “yes, Hoteling”

I concluded that Hot-Desking (UK) = Hoteling (US)

Personally I prefer the phrase with the sensual undertones and double entendre… …what can I say…

Wendy with hot-desk and so much more