Tag: words

G is for things beginning with G

I suppose I could have gone with gray.

greenland_map_220Leslie, part of our ABC Wednesday team, posted this on Facebook. I’m lazy enough to stretch it into a whole blog post.

“The last name game: Use the first letter of your last name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real places, names, things, nothing made up.”

1. Last name? Green.

2. An animal? Giraffe. I could have gone with one of these, but it was the first thing I thought of.

3. A boy’s name: George. The obvious choice, other names notwithstanding. My wife and daughter’s distant relative is Prince George of Cambridge. Plus, for some sort of linguistic reason, it is the name I’m most often mistakenly called.

4. A girl’s name: Gina. The first name that came to mind, as opposed to these.

5. An occupation?: Ghostwriter. I think I could do that. Here are other options.

6. A color? Green. I suppose I could have gone with gray. Actually, I couldn’t.

7. Something you wear? Glasses, because I do. I almost went with gloves, which I also wear a good deal of the time. Or galoshes, which I think is a funny word. Some other choices.

8. A beverage? Green tea. Since I don’t like gin, all my obvious choices had two words – ginger ale (drink it when I’m sick), grape juice (reminds me of Communion), grapefruit juice (drank in lieu of orange juice in the 1970s). More ideas.

9. A food? Green grapes. Grapefruit, graham crackers, and green beans were contenders. Other options, though adding “grilled” to food I think is a bit of a cheat.

10. Something found in the bathroom? Germs. Literally, the only thing that came to mind. Hadn’t thought of these.

11. A place? Greenland. There are, of course, tons of these, so I limited the list to countries. I first thought of Greece but settled for my homeland. Here are other countries.

12. A reason you’re late? Gridlock. Again, my first consideration. From this roster, the best ones start with the word “got” … a flat tire, in an accident.

13. Something you shout? Gadzooks. Seriously, the initial thing that came to mind, and there are plenty on this list that I have said far more often, including gosh, groovy, go away, get out, get away from me, goal, golly, Gesundheit, and good grief.

14. Something you hate? Greed. Didn’t find a list I liked. Gossip is another option. I suppose the universe of G things might apply.

15. A band? Green Day. There are lots of them, and Genesis, the first book in the Bible, actually came first to mind. Or the Go-Go’s, who I saw perform a few decades ago. Or something from this compendium. But let’s pretend that I’m as GREEN obsessed as I feign to be.

A song from those three groups, the ones I most associate with each group:

Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

The Go Go’s – We Got the Beat

Green Day – American Idiot

abc 17 (1)
ABC Wednesday – Round 17

E is for epiphanot

ephiphanot.words-deserve-to-be-in-the-english-dictionary
Apparently, epiphanot is a made-up word. By that, I mean not yet broadly accepted in dictionaries. But it is a good one, and used widely, though I hadn’t heard of it until Uthaclena shared it with me.

The Urban Dictionary cites the definition above, then uses a quote from the movie Animal House to make the point.

The Collins Dictionary has this definition pending: “[facetious] a false or underwhelming epiphany.” It seems in keeping with the generally agreed-upon meaning and shows its derivation, and by extension, its pronunciation, presumably with the emphasis on the second syllable.

Verbotomy has a somewhat different take: “n. An out-of-body, or out-of-brain, experience which occurs when faced with a demanding intellectual challenge. v. To lose your train of thought while trying to demonstrate your intellectual prowess.” I think this is less in keeping with my understanding of the word.

abc 17 (1)
ABC Wednesday – Round 17

V is for veeblefetzer

In Don Rosa’s 1997 story “An Eye for Detail”, Donald Duck goes to work in Uncle Scrooge’s veeblefetzer factory.

face partsWhat DO you call that thing which is, you know, that, er, doohickey, a “thing that’s too unimportant to have a name of its own, or whose name you have for the moment forgotten”?

One word is veeblefetzer:

A word usually used facetiously as a placeholder name for any obscure or complicated object or mechanism, such as automobile parts, computer code and model railroad equipment.

A 19th-century Yiddish language slang word with limited usage is generally accepted as the origin. In German, the verb weben means to “weave”, while fetzen means to “rip” or “shred”…

[In the 1940s] Alfred J. Gross… invented the walkie-talkie… He was the father of Citizens’ Band radio, and for his “handle” he used the pseudonym “Phineas Thadeus Veeblefetzer”.

A few years later, Harvey Kurtzman brought the word into popular usage in his comic book Mad…

In other words, we’re talking whatchamacallits, such as:
Aglet – the piece of plastic covering the ends of your shoelace
Ferrule – the metal band that connects the pencil eraser to the end of the pencil
Tragus – the little piece of cartilage that sticks out at the front side of your ear.

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

P is for phraseology

Arthur turned me on to the Anglophenia posts.

Select-Language-iconThere is a movement at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, which I once visited, to “bring a collection of old school words back into the modern-day vernacular.” They are:

Caterwaul – A shrill howling or wailing noise.
Concinnity – The skillful and harmonious arrangement or fitting together of the different parts of something.
Flapdoodle – Nonsense.
Knavery – A roguish or mischievous act.
Melange – A mixture of different things.

Obambulate – To walk about.
Opsimath – A person who begins to learn or study only late in life.
Philistine – A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.
Rapscallion – A mischievous person.
Subtopia – Monotonous urban sprawl of standardized buildings.

Caterwaul and philistine I use as often as possible, myself.

Arthur asked: “But who’s championing the case of the words we should lose?”

Why, Lake Superior State University, ALSO in Michigan, is! LSSU put out its 40th Annual List of words to be banished, among them “bae,” “cra-cra”, “curated,” ”skill set,” ”takeaway”, and “polar vortex.” The only one that really makes me crazy is cra-cra, meaning crazy, and like terms that are no shorter than the original word, and sound foolish.

I do agree with the complaint about curate: “It used to have a special significance reserved mainly for fine art and museums. Now everything is curated. Monthly food and clothing subscription boxes claim to be finely ‘curated.'”

More phraseology

7 Lost American Slang Words.

The Daughter found it humorous that “monosyllabic” has five syllables. There’s one thing which we all — regardless of language — may have in common. One syllable, that is.

Flammable Versus Inflammable – What Is the Difference?
***
Arthur turned me on to the Anglophenia posts:

How To Speak British
How To Insult Like the British

Untying the Not describes the “Wicked Bible.”

15 unique illnesses you can only come down with in German

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

The word “apothic”

apothic crush

My friend Dan, always with a question, writes:

Apothic: A mysterious word. Searching Google, apothic is used for a lot of commercial enterprises, particularly a cheap red California wine that appears to be popular. It also pops up as a scent, as an alternative medicine peddler, a carpentry shop, etc. But mostly the wine.

Urban Dictionary gives “beautiful or stunning,” but there’s only one entry which makes that definition highly suspect. The word “apoth” appears to have nothing to do with it, that is an archaic derogatory term for someone who is an apothecary, plus apoth is also a Northern English local word meaning “silly.” Not to be confused with aphotic, which means “unfathomable depth.” My spell checker keeps trying to make the word apothem, which is a line drawn in a polygon from the center to one of the sides.

So in desperation I checked the wine maker’s site, and found Apothic Red Wine is put out by Gallo. (Urp.) On their site I found, “Inspired by “Apotheca,” a mysterious place where wine was blended and stored in 13th century Europe…” So I find Wiktionary which defines apotheca as a warehouse or repository. But then I see “apotheca” appropriated as a coffee house and as another herb peddler, flower seller, a hair shop, etc.

So finally I zeroed in. It seems that an apotheca, back in ancient Greek times, was a storeroom usually in the upper part of a house used particularly for storing wine. So I’m guessing that “apothic” is a modern made-up word that has not been copyrighted (although it appears that someone tried to claim copyright) that is supposed to sound like something technical to do with wine. But, judging by the variety of commercial names, the use of the word is scattered all over the place.

Perhaps a Librarian can help me out here. Am I missing something? Or is this too tedious to bother with? Is this what I do when I get up early?

“So I’m guessing that ‘apothic’ is a modern made-up word” – well, all words are ultimately made up. And my best guess is someone made an adjective out of apotheca, which is the antecedent to boutique and bodega.

To your last sentence: I think you already have the bulk of your answer, a variation of apothecary: Mid-14c., “shopkeeper, especially one who stores, compounds, and sells medicaments,” from Old French apotecaire (13c., Modern French apothicaire), from Late Latin apothecarius “storekeeper,” from Latin apotheca “storehouse,” from Greek apotheke “barn, storehouse,” literally “a place where things are put away,” from apo- “away” (see apo-) + tithenai “to put, to place” (see theme). Same root produced French boutique and Spanish bodega. Cognate compounds produced Sanskrit apadha- “concealment,” Old Persian apadana- “palace.”

Surely THE answer you seek may be derived by the right librarian or linguist. But I’m hitting the same references as you are. I DO agree that the “beautiful” definition is suspect.

The only reference I found you did not mention is the Thesaurasize definition, “Of, or relating to the eye or to vision,” which I find even more puzzling. Maybe this was confused with aphotic, “being the deep zone of an ocean or lake receiving too little light to permit photosynthesis.”

I looked at the USPTO.gov website. Yes, E. & J. GALLO WINERY CORPORATION has a lot of trademarks that are LIVE (active), Apothic, Apothic Brew, Apothic Dark, Apothic Fire, and Apothic Smoke. Two of them they have even trademarked not just the name but the logo design:

APOTHIC CRUSH (pictured)
The color(s) red is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of a red label with a letter “A” surrounded by various swirl designs centered at the top. Centered below is cursive lettering spelling out CRUSH in what appears to be fabric, and directly below that are printed capital letters spelling APOTHIC CRUSH. Forming a rectangle around the border of the label are swirl designs.

APOTHIC RED
The color(s) red is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of a three dimensional configuration of a glass bottle for the goods, namely, a bottle with a round circumference and vertical sides that gradually curve in at the neck; the bottom of the bottle is concave. Around the middle of the circumference of the bottle it is shaded darker than the rest of the bottle, and at the top of the shaded section on one side of the bottle is a label, which consists of the red letter “A” surrounded by various red swirl designs. Directly underneath the label are the words APOTHIC RED in capital letters, with APOTHIC in white lettering and RED in red lettering. The top of the bottle is covered by red sealing material that goes halfway down the neck of the bottle and covers the cork at the top of the bottle.

GALLO has abandoned the trademarks for Apothic Frost, Apothic Ice, Apothic Lust, and Apothic Spice.

The only other company that has trademarked the word apothic is LUX BEAUTY GROUP, West Hollywood CALIFORNIA 90069.

This title is DEAD (abandoned) – ROYAL APOTHIC INVISIBLE SKIN: Cosmetics, toiletries, non-medicated skin care preparations, non-medicated bath and body gels and lotions, body washes, and soaps for personal use

But this is LIVE (in use) – ROYAL APOTHIC: Non-medicated bath and body gels and lotions, non-medicated skin care preparations; soaps for personal use; perfumes; and scented room sprays.

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