December 2010
Battles
A mass grave of soldiers discovered in England is shedding new light on how medieval battles were fought. It’s not a pretty picture.
In a letter sent nine days after the battle George Neville, the then chancellor of England, wrote that 28,000 men died that day, a figure in accord with a letter sent by Edward to his mother. England’s total population at the time is thought not to...
A whale in the Thames
A curious old tract in the British Museum, bearing the date of 1658, gives an account of a wonderful capture of a whale in the Thames, not far from Greenwich, in the month of June of that year. The sailors in the river were, of course, anxious to secure the huge monster who had been so rash as to invade our shores; but they found no slight difficulty in despatching it. All sorts of swords,...
Sleepy
“An Extraordinary Sleeper at Newcastle”
In the year 1752, during the summer, the following particulars happened at Newcastle, in Staffordshire, related by a lady of discernment and veracity, who went to see the sleeper several times. She was a girl about 19 years of age; she slept 14 weeks, without waking, although several methods were tried to wake her, as bleeding, blistering, &c.; in...
Words
Doff your hat
Raise your hat in acknowledgment of or deference to another.
Origin
Doffing seems to be an activity that is limited to hats or caps; it isn’t often that we hear the verb used in any other connection. That needn’t be the case though, as becomes apparent when one realises the connection between ‘doffing’ and ‘donning’. We can don hats and...
My oath
The reason people giving evidence in US an d other courts are required to raise their right hand is steeped in the early days of the American colonies, when branding was popular. For instance, convicts were branded with initials to signify the nature of their crime: SS for slave stealers, B for blasphemers, and so on. They were branded on the hand so their infamy would be clear when they raised...
Poet
A makar is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as royal court poet, although the term can be more generally applied. The word functions in a manner similar to the Greek term ποιητής (poiētēs) which means both maker and poet. It especially highlights the role of the poet as someone skilled in the crafting or making of controlled, formal poetry with intricate or...
Race to the bottom
In 1979, Time magazine reported that Zachary Zzzra had been nudged out of last place in San Francisco’s telephone directory by Zelda Zzzwramp. He added another Z to his name but was then overtaken by Vladimir Zzzzzzabakov.
So he changed his name to Zzzzzzzzzra.
Zzzzzzzzzra was really Bill Holland, a 59-year-old painting contractor who told potential customers to look him up in the back of ...
Mae West
The success of Mae West, the scandalously sexy star who was film’s most successful comedienne in the first half of the twentieth century. Her personal appearances alone would draw crowds in excess of thirty thousand people. She is known for her seductive line, “”Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” spoken to Cary Grant in the movie She Done Him Wrong, and...
Words
My cup of tea
Something or someone that one finds pleasing.
Origin
An English website about the English language can’t of course be complete without some consideration of tea. Tea has been around for a long time, and so has the British slang term for it - ‘char’. In fact, it was known in the west by that version of the Mandarin ch’a before the name migrated through...
St John's Day
Until the 18th century, the day was celebrated in Paris by throwing live cats onto a vast bonfire. Afterwards, people collected the embers and took them home, believing they conferred good luck.
US Civil War
In the Civil War, the young Americans conscripted to General Ulysses S Grant’s side could easily disappear, or buy their way out with a commutation fee, or pay somebody else to take their place. Of the 777,000 potential soldiers whose draft numbers were called, only 46,000 were actually drafted into the Union army. A big number paid other young men a bounty to take their place. Did this...
General Santa Anna
In 1836, a small group of “Texans” living in northern Mexico rebelled against that country in a quest for independence, in some part because Mexico had outlawed slavery. Mexico’s General Santa Anna failed to quell that small rebellion, then was captured and lost that territory. He was released and allowed to return to Mexico, where he regained the leadership of the country,...
Wikileaks
Excerpts from an editorial by David Samuels at The Atlantic online:
The true importance of Wikileaks — and the key to understanding the motivations and behavior of its founder — lies not in the contents of the latest document dump but in the technology that made it possible, which has already shown itself to be a potent weapon to undermine official lies and defend human rights....
Charlotte's Web sketches →
The man who hated Christmas
BOB liked to say how much he hated Christmas. This amazed me and my sister. We’d look at each other: How could anyone hate Christmas? But he’d say it again and again: “Bess, I hate Christmas.” He had a variation on this: “Bess, I hate Christmas trees.” He’d shake his head thoughtfully and chuckle: “They’re nothing but trouble. You struggle with them and fight over them and then they die and...
Words
The whole shebang
Q. I found myself using the phrase “the whole shebang” the other night within earshot of my 8-year-old grandson, and when he queried me as to its meaning, I was stumped for a definition, as I could not reconstruct the word’s origin from its spelling, in whole or in pieces. The dictionaries I consulted were of no help, nor did I find any treatment of it on...
Words
Collywobbles
To have the literal collywobbles is to experience an upset stomach, a bellyache or the gripes. Its risible form may be the reason why it’s most often used for children’s minor ailments rather than for the indispositions of adults. In books and newspapers it’s almost always employed figuratively to refer to that fluttering in the stomach caused by nervousness...