WEAKNESSES HISTORICALLY DETERMINED

On YouTube, a liberal analyst said the other day that an individual should be placed on a higher rung than the state — when there is a choice between the two arises. Which is higher: a state or a citizen of this state? Whose interests should be prioritized?

In developed democracies the citizen dominates. He delegates as much authority to the government as he thinks is necessary for the effective functioning of the state. However, he puts his own interest and wellbeing in the foreground, which are (in his opinion) to be cared for first and foremost.

An emerging state is in a different category. As a rule, this state is poor and if needs of separate individuals are met first, the infrastructure of the state, which depends on the individuals’ financial contribution, will suffer most the pension fund, public health service, education, police, and, of course, the army). Actually, that’s what was being done in Ukraine since it gained independence in 1991. Each successive presidential team (while not missing a chance to stuff their own pockets) was trying to be “pleasant” to its voters in view of each coming election. Moneybags gave crumbs to the public. A mere pittance was left for the structures that guaranteed the existence of the Ukrainian state, the army being one of them.

I think about all this observing the developments of the Russia-Ukraine war in the recent days. Ordinary people are gathering clothes and food for the Ukrainian soldiers, they are transferring money to the military units’ accounts and preparing Molotov cocktails to burn the invading tanks or armored cars. Molotov cocktails in the 21^st century? Within thirty years, all the presidents’ men haven’t been able to collect enough money to supply the army with modern weapons. The powers-that-be placed themselves higher than the state, they thought about themselves in the first place, forgetting that a state must be built to secure their assets. “After us the deluge…” The motto of the short-sighted and we-don’t-care-a-pin people.

The second weakness of the Ukrainian present-day military defense campaign is that a great many people still have a positive attitude to the Russians. It’s an element of their psyche they have inherited within three and a half centuries of the Russian domination. During the first two hundred years it was mainly the tsarist and religious propaganda that was trying to “cement” the two peoples: “The Ukrainians and the Russians are Orthodox Christians, whose enemies are the Catholics (read “the Poles”) and the Muslims (= “the Turks and Tartars”). After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution the consolidating ideological glue was the continuously promoted idea of the “unified Soviet people” that was supposed to incorporate both the Russians and the Ukrainians. This, and the fact that practically all the Ukrainians can speak Russian, contributed to the feeling of “closeness”, or “togetherness”.  I was bitterly disappointed to see an amateur’s video yesterday where a Ukrainian guy is talking in a familiar tone with Russian members of a tank crew addressing them as “you, guys..” Although he advised them they should go back to Russia, the impression was that those were really “brotherly” guys. In the same way the Russian soldiers would casually ask a Ukrainian man for a cigarette or a peasant woman for some food. It’s not reported that the Russian soldiers were treated to the cigarettes and the food, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.

Instead of non-acceptance, contempt and hatred towards the invader, just an informal opening: “you, guys…”

Can there be any cure for it?

PEN TO PAPER

This time I am reading much about after-effects of COVID-19, or “long covid”. So, it was without special surprise when a couple of days after I was discharged from hospital, I discovered that my handwriting had noticeably changed: my cursive writing became sloppy and uneven, the lines started going up and down, some letters were left out.

I understood the problem: the connection between the areas of brain responsible for the movement of my hand holding a pen and the fingers holding the pen has been (slightly?) damaged. The recuperation process was immediately launched: I opened my notes and began jotting down some language information: vocabulary meanings, phrases from connected texts for the purpose of reviewing them later to remember them. I was trying hard following the rules of joined-up writing as I remembered them from my student years. Write the whole of the word first, and then “dot your i’s and cross your t’s”. Things were moving rather slowly in the beginning. However, after several hours of practice my handwriting was quite acceptable.

Being interested in the theory of the phenomenon, I browsed the Internet to find out more. The research, published on Frontiers in Psychology, showed how parts of the brain were activated when the subjects were drawing and writing by hand. The findings suggest the movement and cognitive effort required by both activities better enable the brain to encode new information.

“The delicate and precisely controlled movements involved in handwriting contribute to the brain’s activation patterns related to learning,” the authors wrote. “We found no evidence of such activation patterns when using a keyboard.”

It seems that the act of putting pen to paper, involves more sensory experience – or as Prof van der Meer puts it, it “gives the brain more ‘hooks to hang your memories on”. 

“A lot of senses are activated by pressing the pen on paper, seeing the letters you write and hearing the sound you make while writing. These sense experiences create contact between different parts of the brain and open the brain up for learning. We both learn better and remember better,” she said.

Research, including recent neuroimaging studies looking at the literate brain, makes a very strong case about the importance of handwriting with paper and pen.

Brain research shows that handwriting plays a critical role in both reading and writing. In the last decade, research has been comparing handwriting with pencil and paper, handwriting in a tablet, and typing in a keyboard and the effects of these different modes in children’s reading and writing performance. A major finding from this research is that handwriting with paper and pen results in greater gains over the other writing modes, like keyboarding.

Of course, you cannot do without learning keyboarding nowadays. Sooner, most of or students will become “hybrid writers”. However, looking back, I must admit that my generation was happy enough to have focused on putting pen to paper, to respect (if not love ) calligraphy – an art practiced by ancient cultures.

MY MOST RECENT STORY

 I’ve been through Covid. Ten days of fever that couldn’t be subdued, and the blood oxygen saturation level as low as 77-80 (the norm is 100-95). Hospitalization followed. Another two weeks of incessant oxygen supply, intensive treatment with blood test taking, screening, magnetic resonance imaging and all sorts of injections at any moment of day and night. Also, the continuous drone of oxygen concentrators by the side of each patient. You could hardly sleep because of that unstoppable noise.

The personnel was dressed in overalls from top to toe: they were like extra-terrestrials, you could see only their eyes through a crack behind their protective shields.

I’m thankful to these people. Their professionalism and dedication saved my life, which I thought had been quite safe after the double vaccination half a year ago. As it turned out, vaccination was no guarantee.

I’m also thankful to my closest relatives and a couple of true friends who kept encouraging me and came in with any help needed.

At present, I’m at home for self-isolation. A row of medications is lined up on the windowsill – in perfect order which medication is to be taken after which – as recommended by the final discharge summary (the epicrisis).

Here are some thoughts about the experience. In the first place, it was the time for a crisis I had to face. Practically, all the seven decades of my life had been the years of ongoing race: challenges were to be met, duties were to be fulfilled, assignments were to be done. I never looked back.

This time, I did look back. Quite often, Covid is a borderline between life and death. Some short time before I got sick, Revaz, the father of our son-in-law, had died of Corona. He died in Kazakhstan where he was delivering goods from Georgia, and then buried in Tbilisi. Rest in peace, Revaz. A friend of ours, Teimur, died of Covid too. He had been a wonderful friend of Ukraine. Once he asked me to bring him a Kyiv cake he had enjoyed so much when he was visiting Kyiv a few decades ago. Sorry, Teimur, I wasn’t in time to do that. Somewhat later in hospital, when the life-death balance, in my case, was tipped in favor of life, and when I understood it, I became quite a new person: I was filled with the joy of life, I was positive about everything and everyone I saw. I started living anew, and l earned to appreciate the gift I have – the gift of life.

I must be grateful for the opportunity to look back and analyze my life during long sleepless nights to the music of oxygen concentrators. Surprisingly, I came to the conclusion that many events that earlier seemed random and isolated, were, in fact, links of a logical and self-explanatory chain, and my life looks now a well-made jigsaw puzzle where each part is in its proper place. Incidentally, much of that logic was formed by what my parents put into me as a child. Thank you, Mum and Dad!

I remember the November of year 1959. I was an 11-year-old fourth-grader at the time. My father brought me a German textbook for the fifth grade. The textbook was a starter: a required foreign language course began in those days when you were in the fifth grade. So, I began learning German (independently!) a year earlier than I was supposed to, and then (later) English followed. And now, in the Covid hospital, I was intensively reading Deutsche Welle, Tagesschau, the BBC, the VOA with no less passion than when I was working at my German 101 more than sixty years ago. A foreign language acquisition and teaching make me tick.

My writing desk in hospital was my bedside table. Not so much space to spread paper and the stationary. That is why I used small paper notes which I grouped according to the themes covered: English, Deutsch, Ukrainian Studies, Webster, etc. My smart phone was a good and reliable source.

One of the themes was the Bible. Actually, it was one of the central themes I was working on. I read the Bible regularly. The depth of the Book of Books is striking, especially when you compare it to the present-day thinking – tattered, patchy and superfluous. I’m happy that my Covid time gave me a chance to see what Great Thinkers saw in the Bible – I mean the classic devotionals and lectures by C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Charles Spurgeon…

JUST A PIPE DREAM FOR MANY

Last year, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to let foreign-based universities open their branches in Ukraine. The latest news to this effect is that an American University will start functioning in this country in fall 2021. The name of the university is going to be the American University of Kyiv (AUK) and it will be working in partnership with Arizona State University.

I read about ASU on the Internet and, I must admit, I liked the institution, not least because it was founded in 1886 as Teachers College (the type I graduated from) being renamed “state college” in 1945, and finally, “state university” in 1958. Nowadays, it’s one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the U.S. with 150,000 students attending classrooms, 38,000 attending online, 90,000 undergraduates and 20,000 post-graduates. The University boasts of having had as its lecturers 5 Nobel laureates, 6 Pulitzer Prize winners, 180 Fulbright Program scholars, etc. Once it was offering only four-year Bachelor of Education degrees as well as two-year teaching certificates. At present, ASU offers 350 degrees from its 17 colleges and more than 170 cross-discipline centers and institutes for undergraduate students, as well as more than 400 graduate degree and certificate programs.

The Ukrainian educational authorities consider the arrival of the AUK as a harbinger of a new turn in the country’s educational policy. The thing is that the skills received by those who finish Ukrainian higher institutions these days are very low. Only a comparatively small part of graduates are working in the fields they were trained for. What is important for many of students is not the knowledge/skills they acquire but the document certifying that they have gone through college or university, and, for this reason, have better chances to be employed. One of the ex-Ministers of Education says the presence of a foreign university will stimulate Ukrainian universities to “work better” and to compete for better secondary school graduates…

STOP!

I have stopped here. Why does the ex-Minister think that better grads will rush to be enrolled by the AUK? They may be that ambitious, but money (or rather, their absence) is in the way. The annual fee of USD 15,000 is affordable only for very rich parents in Ukraine. The system of grants and loans for university education is non-existent in Ukraine. The overwhelming majority of applicants (no matter now smart they are) will go to local universities which keep closing their academic programs, combine departments, consolidate their colleges and schools and reduce faculty staff (see my previous blog where I wrote about this kind of approach). Unfortunately, NO SPECIAL REASON TO BE OVERJOYED AT THE ARRIVAL OF A FOREIGN UNIVERSITY IN UKRAINE.

There follows a somewhat older article from Kyiv Post about the American university. The premises have been found – it’s the building of the former River Station in the Podil district of Kyiv, specially re-built for the new purpose. Yesterday I read an official announcement about the university tuition fees (see above).

A new American University will open its doors in Kyiv next year to offer U.S.-style education to students from Ukraine and beyond.

Initially, those doors will only be metaphorical: At the moment, the university lacks a building and all higher education in Ukraine is currently online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the university, a collaboration between Arizona State University and local educational institutions, promises to bring new opportunities for a high-quality education to students in Ukraine, according to former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker, one of the founders of the project.

On Dec. 14, he unveiled the project during an online meeting held in Kyiv and moderated by Morgan Williams, CEO of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC).

The university will begin offering executive education in fall 2021 and open to early graduate and undergraduate students in 2022.

Once the university’s website is ready, students from Ukraine and surrounding countries will be able to apply to what will be, according to organizers of the meeting, “the forefront of universities in eastern Europe.”

Open curriculum

According to Volker, the university will not only help students but also Ukraine as a whole: The country needs strong leaders to drive its transition to democracy.

“We want to make education inclusive and innovative to help Ukraine’s education for the years to come,” Volker said.

Ukraine has 1.2 million students, but 87% of the country’s employers don’t believe higher education in Ukraine meets the challenges of the 21st century, according to a recent study by accounting giant Ernst & Young.

The goal of the American University will be to adapt education to the modern world and create highly qualified professionals to work in Ukraine’s growing market.

The university will be fully digital, and students will have access to its online library until the location of the campus has been decided.

Both Ukrainian and English will be used in university instruction, but its president will have to speak Ukrainian.

The project will cost $26 million. By 2026, the university will host 3,900 students and bring in $25.8 million in revenue, according to estimates.

It is critical for Ukraine to have access to American degrees and American-style education, Volker said.

According to a survey conducted by Ernst and Young in 2019, 91% of Ukrainian students would take the opportunity to study in English at a Ukrainian-American university based in Ukraine.

This is why the project will be a “new generation university” with a curriculum covering subjects like the humanities, engineering, medical studies and corporate training, said Cagri Bagcioglu, regional director of Cintana Education, an education-focused investor fund based in Arizona that is supporting the American University project.

Arizona State University will help achieve that goal, according to Stefanie Lindquist, ASU’s senior vice president. One of the largest universities in the United States, ASU has a global footprint and broad international engagement. In recent years, some of its scientists even helped NASA to design a satellite to study asteroids near Jupiter, she said.

The new American University’s curriculum will be built with the help of deans from Kyiv’s most prominent universities: Taras Shevchenko National University and Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

Any student who studies at the American University in Kyiv will be able to come to Arizona for his or her last year of studies, Lindquist said.

The American University in Kyiv will be funded by private investors, at least initially, including Rick Shangraw, CEO of Cintana Education, which has designed 70 university models all around the world.

Business-driven university

For Serhii Voitsekhovskyi, a member of the board of directors at the BGV/ATB Group, one of Ukraine’s largest retailers, the point of the project is to find good specialists.

“We need to know how to develop highly qualified manpower in the country,” he said.

Karlo Goginava, a consultant on the project and managing director at Wings and Freeman, a capital and investor’s bureau based in Tbilisi that has an office in Kyiv, believes that privately-owned universities can help raise the level of education in the country.

For him, better education means better jobs and, by extension, a stronger economy. Ten years ago, 90% of universities in Georgia were public. Now, 60% are privately owned, which has led to higher-quality education and more skilled specialists, he said.

Goginava said feedback from business was crucial for ensuring that the American University’s curriculum will help students work in Ukrainian companies. He called for tailor-made education to fit the needs of businesses.

“You need those big players in Ukraine to be a part of the story because those companies will benefit from highly qualified manpower,” he said.

However, it will take at least two years for the first undergraduates to apply to the university.

“We’re starting with a blank sheet,” Goginava said.

Editor’s Note: This story initially stated that the university would open in spring 2021. It has been corrected to reflect the fact that the university will begin instruction in fall 2021

FARE THEE WELL, FACULTY…

I feel sad as I’m writing this blog. The Foreign Languages Faculty in the Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi (former Kirovohrad) which was opened in 1962 and where I was studying from 1966 till 1970, and later worked as lecturer and dean from 1974 till 1994, has ceased to exist. The thing is that the enrollment at some other faculties of the local pedagogical university this year was not big enough to legally allow the functioning of those faculties. The way out found by the administration of the university was to merge faculties. One example is the Faculty of Philology. The small number of new applicants this summer brought the total number of students there down to about 150 people, while the faculty can exist (and, accordingly, be financed by the government) only when it comprises no fewer than 200 students. For this reason, the Faculty of Philology was joined to the Foreign Languages Faculty (numbering 480 students), the dean of the Foreign Languages Faculty was removed, and the merged unit was again named the Faculty of Philology.

The administration of the university promises to preserve the “foreign” curriculum for the students who opted for foreign languages. However, the new arrangement of the faculties will hardly benefit the students who select English of German as their future profession. First of all, there will be fewer of new applicants because many of them applied being “tempted” by the very name: foreign languages. If this word combination is not found in the faculty’s name, it will mean (and rightly so) that the foreign languages program is diluted and not so effective. Second of all, the new, “non-foreign” faculty administration may not take into account the nuanced needs of teaching foreign languages ​​- such as placing students in specialized classrooms, student exchange issues, inviting teachers, guest lecturers, etc. Foreign language + Literature taught through a foreign language will become a “stepchild” in the new formation. And most importantly, a single faculty requires a unified curriculum. It is very likely that the emphasis in this curriculum will be shifted from purely foreign subjects (e.g., the latest trends in the development of English/German, interpretation of a foreign language text, etc.) to more theoretical courses (general linguistics, laws of language development and etc.).

I will be happy to be proven wrong.

P.S. Here’s a video showing the Foreign Languages students protesting against the closure of their faculty.

https://suspilne.media/162112-u-kropivnickomu-protestuvali-studenti-ta-vikladaci-pedagogicnogo-universitetu/

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-30

Here’s the second part of Mike Bridge’s blog about the development of the English language: “English is Alive.Recent changes in the English language and how we can keep our English up to date”

Influencers on Englishes’ development

English has been described as “…a language which consists of many varieties, each distinctive in its use of sounds, grammar, and vocabulary” (Crystal, 1997:24). In other words, there is not a single version of English and different varieties are used – and are developing – across the world.

Kachru (cited in Crystal 1997:53) saw the spread of English as three concentric circles:

• The inner circle refers to countries where English is the traditional first language e.g. UK, USA.
• The outer circle refers to countries where English has become a lingua franca in multilingual societies, e.g. India, Nigeria.
• The expanding circle represents nations where English has no historical/governmental role but is recognised for international communication, e.g. China, Russia.

Just as Spanish influenced the developing US English (Engel 2017:18), so other languages have influenced different versions of English. We are all influenced by our surroundings and the language that is used. EFL teaching can be seen to have its own version of Englishes. Before I started teaching I had never elicited anything, never heard of an interlocutor and didn’t realise that board was a verb!

Equally my Spanish has influenced my English. Words that I used rarely or have different meanings to the ones I knew before moving to Spain include: perfect; …yes/no?; obliged; disconnect; invent; and transmit.

Of course communication isn’t impeded but they are changing my own version of English. Again, does this matter?

The use of different “Englishes” for global communication

In his 1992 essay Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist (cited in Crystal, 1997:130), Rushdie claimed that “The English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago”. Although a worrying prospect for some, it is even more true 25 years on. Rushdie’s belief is reinforced by the fact that even after the UK leaves the EU, English (through second language speakers) will still be “the most widely-spoken language in Europe” (O’Grady 2017). In a UK-less EU, more people will speak English than German or French!

Although estimates vary, there are approximately 380 million English L1 speakers in the world (Ethnologue 2018). This compares with an estimate for the number of global English L2 speakers of over 1 billion (Crystal 2000). It is thought that the vast majority of the English spoken around the world is not between native speakers but between people using version of Englishes as a lingua franca.

As the world changes so do the reasons English is being used. My students often talk about using English when gaming online – it is the lingua franca of the online gaming community. The most popular Youtube blogger is Swedish but blogs to his 60 million subscribers across the world in English.

Why it’s important to keep our “Englishes” up to date

As EFL teachers, our job is to enable students to communicate in English. We need to be aware that they are likely to be communicating in one or more versions of English and therefore should not be restricted to our – possibly outdated – version of English. The English language(s) change and move on. So should we in order to help our students communicate in 2018 and beyond.

Ways to keep our “Englishes” up to date

We need to both consider how to keep our English “correct” and uninfluenced by the L2 around us whilst simultaneously keeping up with an evolving language.

To help us achieve these two aims, there are a number of activities we can, and should, do. These will help us challenge what we write and say whilst helping us live in less of a “language bubble”. Many of them of course are similar to the activities we tell our students to do to help them with their English:

• Read
• Watch TV
• Listen to podcasts
• Peer observation feedback
• Listen and learn from our students (they are our greatest resource)
• Follow blogs about the English language

Author’s Bio: Mike is a Delta-qualified teacher working at Albany School of English in Cordoba, Spain. He is originally from York, the UK and has never looked back following a career change in 2011. He is passionate about coaching/professional development within ELT and fascinated by the English language. He specialises in teaching exam classes and following declining sports teams.

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English is Alive: Recent changes in the English language

By Mike Bridge

How English is Changing

As Lloyd-James highlighted in The Broadcast Word as long ago as 1935 (cited in Foster 1970:9) “…let us remember that a language is never in a state of fixation, but is always changing; we are not looking at a lantern-slide but at a moving picture”. I love this quote because the use of vocabulary from that time (a lantern-slide is a projector of still images) only serves to emphasise our language’s changing nature.

There are of course many influencers on our English including:

• Other Englishes. e.g. I used to correct students for saying “chapter” when they meant “episode” but with the popularity of box sets and TV streaming services, the two words are becoming interchangeable when referring to television series. Just as US English influences British English, so different Englishes (see below) will continue to influence each other.
• Technology. Changes in language can often be due to trends or the popularity of new lexis rather than new words being invented. E.g. “cloud storage” was coined in the
  1960s but came to real prominence in 2006 (Mohamed 2009). Youngsters, traditionally earlier adopters of technology, are developing a new language and style of writing through different forms of communication such as WhatsApp. Does that make me sound my age? Please don’t answer that!
• Political Correctness. As outdated phrases such as “lady doctor” and “male nurse” are no longer in popular use, other obsolete terms that date from an era where professions were dominated by one sex are also on the decline. An actor is an actor regardless of their gender.

Words enter – or become popular in – the language all the time as these “Words of the Year” demonstrate (Oxford Dictionaries 2018):

• 2011 – Squeezed Middle
• 2012 – Omnishambles
• 2013 – Selfie
• 2014 – Vape
• 2015 – Face with Tears of Joy emoji
• 2016 – Post truth
• 2017 – Youthquake

The word “omnishambles” was invented by the UK TV series “The Thick of It” (Oxford 2018). The trend of invented words becoming “established” will continue. In March 2018, Merriam-Webster added “embiggen ” – a word originally invented by the long running TV show The Simpsons in 1996 – to its dictionary.

During the recent Winter Olympics, a US snowboarder tweeted “Wish I finished my breakfast sandwich but my stubborn self decided not to and now I’m getting hangry” (Kim 2018). Hangry? Was it a spelling mistake? Of course not. The BBC (Amos 2018) followed up the tweet the next day with an article describing the condition of “hangry ” and a Google search provides over 4 million “hangry” references. The word had entered the Oxford English Dictionary on 7 February 2018 (Oxford English Dictionary 2018).

And grammar changes. When McDonald’s introduced “I’m lovin’ it” some grammarians were angered but are we now more able to deal with the continuous use of stative verbs?

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-28

This time I’m reposting two of Kate Woodford’s blogs that appeared in https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/

Getting lost in books: the language of reading

On September 1, 2021 By Kate WoodfordIn the English language, Vocabulary

by Kate Woodford

I was lucky enough to be on holiday last week and spent a portion of it with my nose in a book (=reading). It made me think about all the nice reading-related language that we use, and I thought I’d share it with you in today’s blog post.

The ‘nose in the book’ idiom, by the way, is usually used about someone who is always reading, and the noun ‘head’ is sometimes used instead of ‘nose’: My younger brother always had his nose in a book. / She’s usually curled up on the sofa, with her nose in a book. Someone who loves to read and spends a lot of time doing it may be called a bookworm: Jess is a total bookworm. She always has her head in a book.

Continuing with the theme of enthusiastic reading, if you devour a book, you read it quickly and with great interest: He devoured all three books in the series. If you read a book (from) cover to cover, you read all of it and if you read it at/in one sitting, you read it all during one time of sitting somewhere and reading: Millie read the whole book, from cover to cover in one sitting.

People often talk about getting lost in a book, meaning that they give the book so much of their attention that they don’t notice or think about anything else: I love that feeling of getting lost in a book.

A favourite book that has been read many times may now be dog-eared, meaning that its pages turn down at the corners: I found a dog-eared old copy on my father’s bookshelf. Another adjective for a book that shows signs of damage after much use is well-thumbed: I came across a well-thumbed copy of the novel in the library. Two other adjectives for old, much-read books that are no longer in good condition are battered and tatty: I have a battered old copy here that belonged to my uncle. / I bought a tatty old copy of the book in a second-hand shop.

But what of the opposite, when we read without enthusiasm? Perhaps we read a chapter or two of a book, but didn’t find it interesting or exciting. We can say, slightly informally, that the book didn’t grab us: I don’t know why I couldn’t get into the second novel. It just didn’t grab me in the way that the first one did.

If we’re not interested in a book, we may find ourselves skipping (= not reading) parts of it: I’m afraid I skipped some of the descriptive passages.

Phrasal verbs for reading

By Kate WoodfordIn Phrasal verbs, Vocabulary

by Kate Woodford

Sometimes we read to find out information and at other times, we read simply for pleasure. We may read the whole of a text or only parts of it. To describe the different ways in which we read, we often use phrasal verbs. This week, then, we take a look at those ‘reading’ phrasal verbs, focusing on the slight differences in meaning between them.

Starting with phrases for reading only parts of a book or magazine, etc., there are a number of phrasal verbs with the particle ‘through’ that describe the action of quickly turning several pages of a book or magazine, looking briefly at the text or pictures:

I was flicking through a glossy magazine.

I flipped through their catalogue while I was waiting.

Sam sat, leafing idly through a newspaper.

I thumbed through the report quickly over breakfast.

In UK English, if you dip into a book, you only read a small part of it at any one time: It’s a book for dipping into rather than reading all the way through.

Other phrasal verbs emphasize that you read all of something, but read it very quickly. If you read through or over something, you read it quickly from beginning to end, especially in order to find mistakes: I always read through my essays before handing them in. If you skim through or over something, you read all of it very quickly and not carefully, often just to understand the main points: I’ve just skimmed through the report – I’ll read it in detail later.

Meanwhile, if you pore over a book or document, you read it very carefully, concentrating and taking in all the details: When I left, Sophie was poring over a text book.

Some phrasal verbs emphasize how much text there is to read. If you wade through or plough through a great deal of information, you spend a lot of time and effort reading it, (often when it is boring or difficult):

I had to wade through pages of technical details.

There are still pages of documentation to plough through.

If you read up on a subject, you spend time reading in order to find out information about it: I thought I’d better read up on the company’s products before attending the interview.

Finally, to read something out is to say the words as you read them so that others can hear you: He read out the results of the competition.

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WHAT’S THE WORD?

(from “How Good is Your English” by Cedric Astle)

You have it on the tip of your tongue? But how often do you find that the word you want eludes you at the very moment when you want it?

Proficiency in the use of English depends primarily on the possession of an adequate vocabulary. Here are some questions which will help you assess your vocabulary and build up your stock of words.

• 1.Can you find a single word for each of these phrases?

a)Citizen of the world; b) length of life; c) correctness of behavior; d) worthy of praise; e) the prevailing of fashion; f) of strong health and physique; g) to soak in a liquid; h) to reduce to powder or dust; i) shaped like a cross; j) indented like a saw.

• 2.Give one word for each phrase:

a)To separate into parts; b) to turn to stone; c) without blemish; d) done by stealth; e) lasting only a short time; f) violation of what is sacred; g) to blot out; h) a display of fireworks; i) belonging to familiar speech; j) swearing to a statement known to be false.

• 3.One word for each phrase:

a)That cannot be felt; b) that cannot be avoided; c) that cannot be wounded; d) that cannot be rubbed out; e) that cannot be satisfied; f) that cannot be taken by arms; g) that cannot be touched; h) that cannot be understood; i) that cannot be seen; j) that cannot be heard.

• 4.One word for each phrase:

a)A yearly allowance; b) a reading desk in church; c) a literary theft; d) a declaration upon oath; e) a note to help the memory; f) a medicine to cause vomiting; g) an animal that chews the cud;  h) a person engaged for all kinds of work; i) a person authorized to work for another; j) a new word formed by transposing the letters of the original word.

• 5.One word for each phrase:

a)To cut off the head; b) to free from blame; c) a general pardon; d)a pattern of excellence; e) one who kills a king; f) correct in doctrine; g) relating to the eye; h) the art of making a speech; i)to surrender on terms; j) to make a preliminary survey of enemy territory.

KEY:

1.a) cosmopolitan; b) longevity; c) decorum; d) laudable; e) vogue; f) robust; g) steep; h) pulverize; i) cruciform; j) serrated.

2.a) partition; b) petrify; c) immaculate; d) surreptitious; e) ephemeral; f) sacrilege; g) obliterate; h) pyrotechnics; i) colloquial; j) perjury.

3.a) impalpable, b) inevitable; c) invulnerable; d) indelible; e) insatiable; f) impregnable; g) intangible; h) incomprehensible; i) invisible; j) inaudible.

4.a) annuity; b) lectern; c) plagiarism; d) affidavit; e) memorandum; f) emetic; g) ruminant; h) factotum; i) proxy, or deputy; j) anagram.

5.a) decapitate; b) exonerate; c) amnesty; d) paragon; e) regicide; f) orthodox; g) optical; h) oratory; i) capitulate; j) reconnoiter.

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-26

ONE EGG SHORT OF HALF-A-DOZEN

My very good FB friend has posted the following picture loaded with scintillating linguistic wit. I’m re-posting the picture with Bob Tolliver’s comment.

Bob Tolliver 3 вересня о 20:31 · No, my brain isn’t scrambled and I’m not a poached egghead. I just wanted to pass on the sad news. Maybe you can toast him.

Are you looking for some useful egg idioms?

If so, you are in the right place.

In this post, we are going to look at 27 idioms and how to use them in a sentence.

Let’s get started…

27 Egg Idioms & Phrases (Meaning & Examples)

1. As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs

• Meaning: to say that something is certain to happen.
• Use In A Sentence: After a month of living on his own, he will move back in with his parents. That is as sure as eggs is eggs.

2. To Be A Bad Egg

• Meaning: used to describe a person that is dishonest.
• Use In A Sentence: I could tell he was a bad egg from the moment I first met him.

3. A Curate’s Egg

• Meaning: used primarily in the United Kingdom to describe something that is both good and bad.
• Use In A Sentence: How was your day? It was a bit of a curate’s egg. The morning started off great, but the afternoon sucked.

4. A Goose Egg

• Meaning #1: Zero or nothing. It can also refer to something being a failure.
• Use In A Sentence: I got a goose egg on my project for not turning it in on time.
• Meaning #2: a bump on the head as a result of bumping into something.
• Use In A Sentence: I got a big fat goose egg on my forehead after running into the door.

5. A Rotten Egg

• Meaning: a bad person.
• Use In A Sentence: I had high hopes for Amy, but she turned out to be a rotten egg.

6. To Break One’s Egg

• Meaning: To score one’s first points in a game.
• Use In A Sentence: Finally, my team broke their egg by scoring a touchdown.

7. Chicken And Egg Problem

• Meaning: used to describe a problem in which nobody knows what caused the problems and what needs to be done to fix it.
• Use In A Sentence: This is not a chicken and egg problem. We know what caused the problem, we need to cut our spending by at least 25 percent.

8. To Have Egg On One’s Face

• Meaning: to be embarrassed or humiliated.
• Use In A Sentence: Be sure to follow the instructions. If not, you will end up having egg on your face.

9. To Kill The Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs

• Meaning: to ruin something that is making a person money or something that is making one successful.
• Use In A Sentence: Firing the best teacher at the school is like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It just doesn’t make any sense.

10. To Be One Egg Short Of A Dozen

• Meaning: used to say that someone isn’t very intelligent, crazy, or that person is mentally slow.
• Use In A Sentence: Be careful around Pearl. She has some crazy ideas. She is one egg short of a dozen you know?

11. To Lay An Egg

• Meaning #1: to fail. To perform poorly at something.
• Use In A Sentence: I really laid an egg in that board meeting. It is so disappointing. I have been practicing this presentation for months.
• Meaning #2: to laugh really hard.
• Use In A Sentence: Mary laid an egg when I told her what happened to me during the business meeting.

12. To Put All One’s Eggs In A Basket

• Meaning: to put all of one’s energy into one goal, opportunity, or venture at the risk of losing everything if that one thing fails to perform.
• Use In A Sentence: I really hope this online business works out. Be careful, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Maybe you should have a backup plan just in case it doesn’t work out.

13. To Walk On Eggs

• Meaning: To be extremely cautious about what you do and what you say. To proceed cautiously.
• Use In A Sentence: Tom is quite a hothead. The littlest things set him off. For that reason, I feel like I am walking on eggs every time I am around him.

14. You Can’t Make An Omelet Without Breaking Some Eggs

• Meaning: you can’t do something good/useful without causing problems for somebody else.
• Use In A Sentence: If we don’t cut our spending the company is going to go bankrupt. I know it is not easy, but we need to lay some people off. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

15. Butter & Egg Money

• Meaning: to earn extra money.
• Use In A Sentence: She has been saving up her butter and egg money for a while now. She really wants to go to Spain.

16. To Be A Hard Egg To Crack

• Meaning: a person or thing that is difficult to understand, deal with, or solve. It can also refer to someone that won’t divulge secrets easily.
• Use In A Sentence: She is one hard egg to crack. She won’t tell what she read in her sister’s diary.

17. A Wild Goose Never Laid A Tame Egg

• Meaning: something will not be different from where it came from. Just like we don’t expect a wild goose to lay a tame egg.
• Use In A Sentence: Peter is just like his father. Well, a wild goose never lays a tame egg right? Right!

18. What Do You Want, Egg In Your Beer?

• Meaning: a phrase used when a person wants something for free.
• Use In A Sentence: Your parents just paid for your new car. Why are you upset that they won’t buy you a new computer. What do you want, egg in your beer? If you want a new computer, go out there and work for it.

19. Go Fry An Egg!

• Meaning: to tell someone to leave you alone. To go away.
• Use In A Sentence: Go fry an egg! I am trying to study.

20. Egg-beater

• Meaning: a boat motor. It can also refer to a helicopter.
• Use In A Sentence: My egg-beater has been acting up recently. I think I am going to bring it down to the shop.

21. The Same Fire That Melts The Butter Hardens The Egg

• Meaning: the same situation will trigger different reactions in different people. For example, for one person the problem can make them soft/weak. While for a different person facing the same problem it can make them hard or stronger.
• Use In A Sentence: I was surprised by how they both reacted to getting fired. Matt just went off the deep end, but it seems like it really lit a fire under Susan. She has been working hard to get better ever since. Well, you know the expression, the same fire that melts the butter hardens the egg.

22. A Nest Egg

• Meaning: an amount of money that you are saving for the future.
• Use In A Sentence: Paul has a nice little nest egg he has been saving for his retirement.

23. A Good Egg

• Meaning: a person you can trust. A kind person.
• Use In A Sentence: Julie is such a good egg. Whenever you have a problem you can count on her to give you a hand.

24. Egg-sucker

• Meaning: a person that is always trying to flatter those that have more authority.
• Use In A Sentence: Dave is such an egg sucker.

25. Egghead

• Meaning: slang for someone that is stupid and not intelligent.
• Use In A Sentence: Monica is such an egghead. She installed it upside down.

26. To Egg On Someone

• Meaning: to encourage/urge someone to do something.
• Use In A Sentence: I don’t think he would have broken the law if his friends weren’t there to egg him on.

27. Can’t Boil An Egg

• Meaning: used to refer to someone who can’t cook.
• Use In A Sentence: Is she a good cook? Let’s just say, she can’t boil an egg.

There you have it! 27 useful egg idioms. Which one is your favorite? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-25

BETTER CALL THE CALLING OFF OFF

This morning I was listening to a BBC Radio Four program about methane and its role in the global warming. The anchorman pronounced the word as [`mEEthane] while all his guests in the studio preferred to say [`mEthane] – with short [e]. Feeling the discrepancy, the anchor added in passing: ”I say “MEEthane”, you say “mEthane” – it’s the same as  “You like potato and I like potahto, you like tomato and I like tomahto”. I heard the lines with “potato “and “tomato” respectively opposed to “potahto” and “tomahto” long before, but this time I have decided to do a research into their history.

The lines are from the song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” written by George Gerschwin and Ira Gerschwin for the 1937 film “Shall We Dance”, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as part of a celebrated dance duet on roller scates.  In the film, Fred (Peter P. Peters from Pittsburgh, PA, aka Petrov, a ballet star) and Ginger (Linda Keene, a well-known night club singer/dancer) have run off to Central Park to escape reporters who are after the story of their rumored marriage. Having decided to do a little roller skating, they take a break on a bench where they bicker about the pronunciation of “either” and “neither.” This leads, of course, to the two of them singing “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”  In the comments, attention is paid to the regional difference in pronunciation (American vs British). However, the message of the film is about class differences: at the time, typical American pronunciations were considered less “refined” by the upper-class.

The pair then dances to the melody on their skates. Here’s the lyrics and the YouTube video address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOILZ_D3aRg

Things have come to a pretty pass
Our romance is growing flat,
For you like this and the other
While I go for this and that,

Goodness knows what the end will be
Oh I don’t know where I’m at
It looks as if we two will never be one
Something must be done:

You say either and I say either,
You say neither and I say neither
Either, either neither, neither
Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto.
Let’s call the whole thing off

But oh, if we call the whole thing off
Then we must part
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart

So if you like pyjamas and I like pyjahmas,
I’ll wear pyjamas and give up pyajahmas
For we know we need each other so we
Better call the whole thing off
Let’s call the whole thing off.

You say laughter and I say larfter
You say after and I say arfter
Laughter, larfter after arfter
Let’s call the whole thing off,

You like vanilla and I like vanella
You saspiralla, and I saspirella
Vanilla vanella chocolate strawberry
Let’s call the whole thing off

But oh if we call the whole thing of then we must part
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart So if you go for oysters and I go for ersters
I’ll order oysters and cancel the ersters
For we know we need each other so we
Better call the calling off off,
Let’s call the whole thing off.

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-24

In September 2^nd issue of the Financial Times, Jonathan Ellis, the Director of Advocacy & Change Hospice, UK, writes about the coming reform of the British National Health Service. He refers to the article published earlier, on August 31^st (“Home deaths amid pandemic pressure on NHS”). The article informs about the continued high number of deaths at home, which is putting a huge strain on staff and resources in the end of lifecare. Jonathan Ellis says that very little is known about these deaths. Do people receive the right pain relief, nursing care or their families much needed respite care or bereavement support? The conclusion is that the government’s upcoming reforms must take this into account.

The concept of “respite care” was alien to me as a non-native speaker. Putting together the meanings of “respite” and “care” (those I knew) didn’t help much. The translation of the word-combination in the English-Ukrainian/Russian dictionaries – if translated back into English – sounds like “short-term care”, which was also far from explanatory. Only the Google search revealed the details of the concept: respite care provides a short-term relief for the primary caregiver. It can be arranged for just an afternoon or for several days or weeks. Care can be provided at home, in a healthcare facility, or at an adult day center, and it cannot be covered by the medical insurance. Small children can also become an object of respite care. In many cases, respite care helps the main caregiver avoid burnout. In Ukraine, people engaged in long-term looking after a bed-ridden or aged person, may also ask someone for help when they need to be away for some time. However, as an organized service, it does exist in this country.

One way or another, but I’m happy to have fished another cross-cultural linguistic unit – RESPITE CARE.

UNFESTIVE NOTES ON A FESTIVE DAY

September 1 is felt as a special holiday in Ukraine. The start of the academic year means much for families who rely upon education for the future of their children. I fell in love with teaching when I was a third-year student of a pedagogical institute. Two-and-a half years before that, I rejected any idea of entering a classroom and instructing little ones in English, to say nothing of “morally educating” them. Yes, even some fifty years ago, teaching was becoming less prestigious in Ukraine. That was not considered to be a “man’s job”. I dreamt of becoming either a journalist, or a translator, or a writer, or a diplomat – whatever. But not a teacher. However, when I started my practice teaching, I started liking pupils (and liked them more and more), as well as the very process of teaching which was inseparably linked with my own learning: you can’t teach without learning alongside.

I have never changed my mind since I was a college senior. But should anyone ask me now if I could recommend that a high school graduate choose the career of a teacher in this country, they would hear a categoric ‘no” from me.  Here are some of the reasons.

First: the salary. I do not know any other profession whose financial reward is lower than that of a teacher. A cleaner at school may get a higher wage than a teacher. It especially concerns teachers who are right after their universities. One of the reasons for their meager payment is that “older” teachers, who have worked in this school for a number of years, feel empowered to take over and teach additional “hours” (sometimes equal to a one-half pay unit or even the whole pay unit) at the expense of younger teachers. In the media, there are annual reports about teachers squabbling with one another in late August and early September for an additional paid load.

Second: the “anti-teacher atmosphere” in society. Several years ago, the then minister of education declared that pedagogical universities enrolled applicants with very low average grades. Hence, the reaction of parents: how can those whose knowledge at school is lower than average, teach our children? By and large, the parents are right, I think. In addition, the emotional intellect of such teachers cannot be too high either. They cannot balance the unavoidable requirements set for the class, and the empathy with their students, which is why they rule the classroom by shouts and commands. Students, on their part, are tech-savvy enough to videotape the “un-pedagogical” conduct of such teachers on their phones and upload the videos in social networks. The cases are widely covered by the official media too. Actually, it’s an unstoppable chain reaction, the end of which, as I see it, is the corruption of a teacher’s image and the degradation of teaching as a process.

A way out found by the bureaucrats in the field of pedagogy was to create the “New Ukrainian School” (the Ukrainian abbreviation sounding like NUSh). The idea was to turn school into a “school of joy”. There appeared lots of articles about education abroad – in Finland, Poland, Singapore, etc., where students are believed to be not overburdened with homework but are considered to possess good knowledge. Red paste is banned from using when mistakes in students’ notebooks are to be corrected (“the red color will impose an unnecessary stress on them”). Marks are not given in elementary school, and the assessment is done as commentaries: no digital evaluation is allowed. Earlier, elementary pupils were to be tested on how quickly they read (rated by the number of words they read per minute). Nowadays, the test for speed reading has been removed from the requirements. Removed was also the requirement to read. The parents demanded that calligraphy (fine penmanship) be not trained at all because at the present time pupils should be trained to type. The result is that when the pupils write something in hand, neither the teacher nor the pupils themselves can make out their handwriting.

The local educational authorities of the city with more than a quarter of a million inhabitants have announced that fifteen university graduates have been employed at the city’s high schools. Fifteen new teachers for more than thirty schools, when no fewer than a hundred are needed! The situation like this is all across the country. The Ministry of Education tried to find a recipe again: they allowed vacancies to be filled by anyone with higher education in the respective field of knowledge (mathematics, humanities, et al) – not necessarily with a specialized pedagogical training. But so far, I haven’t heard of many professionals with higher education rushing to teach at high schools.  

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-23

RENOVATING UNDER THE JOLLY ROGER.

Today, while surfing the Internet in search of firms/people who could renovate our apartment, I came across a comment that made me alert to a likely result of such search. A client was complaining of crooks (or was it only one crook?) who launched a website advertising renovation services – redecoration of rooms, plumbing, replacement of pipes, fixing leakages, etc. As soon as you ring up the firm, they promise their representative will come to estimate the size and the cost of the works to be done. The representative arrives, examines the scope of work and says that it’s next to impossible to do the work within the period the client wants (due to the shortage of the construction materials, or for some other reason), but you should pay UAH 50-100 (about $2-4) for his coming and the assessment of work.

The client’s strong suspicion is that the crooks may pretend they are a construction company. In actual fact, they only answer the calls, go to the addresses named by the callers and collect the money in the way described. One hundred hryvhias is not a big sum, and clients will hardly be involved in clarifying who are the construction workers, and what stands behind the name of their firm. However, when such “specialists” (or a “specialist”) visit ten places of assessment daily, they may be quite satisfied with some $40 they collect.

The situation rings a linguistic bell. The expression “to sail under false colours” is to use deception by assuming a false character in order to obtain some personal advantage. The phrase arose from the fact that pirate vessels tried to avoid detection by flying a false flag. The flag was “the Jolly Roger”. During the 200 years up to the mid-18^th century there were hundreds of pirates plundering wherever they roamed the world’s oceans. By the early 19^th century their power had been broken almost everywhere, except for an occasional junk or two which continued to plunder small craft in far-eastern waters.

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-22

Responsibility implies two major aspects: 1) a requirement to give account, to be answerable (as “the babysitter was responsible while the parents were away”), and 2) trust or dependence (“a responsible employee”). Doing your job and how you do your job are two different things, and personal responsibility is the differentiator. As a worker, fulfilling your job duties is one thing, but investing yourself in your work and holding yourself accountable to deliver your best results transforms the work you do and how your performance is perceived. 

Personal responsibility in the workplace is important because it becomes a major component of your personal character.

I like personal responsibility. I have always been after self-perfection, and this kind of responsibility makes me better.

At the same time, I cannot consider myself less dependable or trustworthy when the results of my work fall short of what was expected from me. Much depends upon the object I am working at. You cannot build a skyscraper with clay bricks, you cannot make a paralyzed person run a distance, you cannot teach a person if the person doesn’t want to be taught.

The idiom “to carry the can” is exactly about the responsibility of a teacher as this responsibility is understood in my country. That’s what I thought when I was analyzing the lexical side of this expression.

“To carry the can” [mainly British, informal] is to receive the blame for a misdeed or mistake for which others are responsible. The phrase which is still used widely in everyday life, was originally a military one, and referred to the person chosen to carry the beer cans to and fro for replenishing when they were empty. (A “can” was a nickname for a simpleton, during World War I). Those landed with such menial tasks were usually rookies (raw recruits) with insufficient experience to stand up for themselves, and they had no alternative but to do as they were told, so they were left to carry the can for others.

EXAMPLES:

• The public expects someone to carry the can for this national sporting humiliation. The Sun (2010)
• Hedge funds and short sellers play havoc with the share price, and the chief executive has to carry the can. Times, Sunday Times (2013)
• We are a luxury restaurant and if people have a bad experience, we have to carry the can.

Here is the list of synonyms for the phrase “to carry the can”, as it is given by the https://www.powerthesaurus.org/

take the rap

accept the blame

catch it

face the music

take the blame

accept responsibility

be the scapegoat

shoulder the blame

own up

be the fall guy

incur blame

get it in the neck

assume responsibility

take responsibility

take the responsibility

assume the responsibility

bear responsibility

be forced

bow to fate

get into a row

get it

get it hot

pay the piper

step up to the plate

assume liability

assume responsibilities

be in charge

be responsible

bear the responsibility

hold the baby

hold the bag

pay a price

pay the check

pay the consequences

pay your bills

pay the price

pay the bills

pin it on

shift the blame

shoulder responsibility

shoulder the responsibilities

shoulder the responsibility

suffer the consequences

take on responsibilities

take on responsibility

take on the responsibilities

take on the responsibility

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-21

IN THE PROCESS OF DELIVERY: BE WAITING.

Due to the Corona situation, visitors in Ukraine are barred from physically entering offices of local housing authorities, called ZHEK in this country. The ZHEKs are responsible for the provision of essential services, like maintenance of buildings, public utilities, they also deal with all sorts of dwellers’ complaints regarding this provision. Nowadays, any request or complaint is to be directed by phone. That’s what I did when it came down to replacing central heating pipes in my apartment. The matter seems to be urgent because the pipes are rather old and may start leaking – unpredictably – in any place. If that happens in winter, when the hot water circulates through the pipes, an emergency team (specially employed by ZHEK) is called to fix the leakage. I decided to address the problem two months before the central heating is on – to get all the pipes in the apartment replaced, so that not ring the emergency team several times in the coming winter whenever the ancient pipes start letting the water through.

The lady on the other end of the phone promised to arrange the replacement. Maybe not one of these days, though, because the plumber, she said, is still on a drinking spree and the welder was fired earlier for the same reason. A few days later I phoned again. I heard the same explanation and the same promise: in a couple of days. “Please, be waiting, we’ll come”, the lady said.

A few English idioms fitting the situation came to my mind: “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”, “The cheque’s is in the post” – “It’s going through the computer.”  All of them are a kind of polite rejection of what you expect to be done for you. However, the idiom that best fits my case is probably “IT’S IN THE PIPELINE”.  In the pipeline to be replaced?

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-20

ON ONE’S BEAM-ENDS

The idiom means “to be in a difficult or dangerous situation”. It comes from the days of the wooden sailing ships. The beams are the horizontal timbers, stretching across the ship, which supported the deck, and joined the sides. During gales and heavy sea, vessel were often thrown almost completely on to their side, to the point where they were on their beam-ends, with the beam in the upright position instead of lying horizontally, and the ship almost capsizing.

The direct meaning is cited in a 1773 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine ):”The gust laid her upon her beam-ends.” The figurative use came soon afterwards, in Captain Marryat’s The King’s Own, 1830: “Our first-lieutenant was… on his beam-ends, with the rheumatism.”

Two more examples:

“My brother’s on his beam-ends now that he’s lost his job – I might have to lend him some money so he doesn’t lose his house”.“Tell me the truth, doc – am I on my beam-ends, or do I still have treatment options available?

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-19

Here’s an example of the quiz from Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. One word was a complete alien for me: “lagniappe“. I procrastinated with my answer until the quiz told me that my time (10 seconds) was up:

Review Answers

• 1

Which is a synonym of secular?

nonreligious

• 2

Which is a synonym of queue?

line

• 3

Which is a synonym of relinquish?

surrender

• 4

Which is a synonym of lagniappe?

Time’s Up

correct: bonus

• 5

Which is a synonym of rectify?

correct

• 6

Which is a synonym of judicious?

sensible

• 7

Which is a synonym of juxtaposition?

contrast

• 8

Which is a synonym of shenanigans?

horseplay

• 9

Which is a synonym of sentiment?

     emotion

       10           Which is a synonym of jejune?

      childish

I looked up the word “lagniappe” in another online dictionary – The Free Dictionary by Farlex – which mentions the use of the word by Mark Twain (see below). In passing, the origin of the expression a “baker’s dozen” is indicated. The term “baker’s dozen” originated in the late 16th century and is apparently so called after the former practice among bakers of including a thirteenth loaf when selling a dozen to a retailer, the extra loaf representing the retailer’s profit (bonus, benefit).

LAGNIAPPE

1.A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.

2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. also called regionally “boot”

Examples of lagniappe in a Sentence

• the meal was served with a lagniappe of freshly made cornbread 
• the hotel threw in some free shampoo as a lagniappe

And this is how the Wikipedia presents the word

A lagniappe (/ˈlænjæp/ LAN-yap, /lænˈjæp/ lan-YAP) is “a small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase” (such as a 13th doughnut on purchase of a dozen), or more broadly, “something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure.”^[2] It can be used more generally as meaning any extra or unexpected benefit.^[3]

The word entered English from the Louisiana French adapting a Quechua word brought in to New Orleans by the Spanish Creoles.

Etymology

The Spanish occupation never became more than a conquest. The Spanish tongue, enforced in the courts and principal public offices, never superseded the French in the mouths of the people and left but a few words naturalized in the corrupt French of the slaves. The terrors of the calabozo, with its chains and whips and branding irons, were condensed into the French tri-syllabic calaboose; while the pleasant institution of ñapa—the petty gratuity added, by the retailer, to anything bought—grew the pleasanter, drawn out into [the] Gallicized lagniappe [emphasis added].

Lagniappe is derived from the South American Spanish phrase la yapa or ñapa (referring to a free extra item, usually a very cheap one). La is the definite article in Spanish as well as in French (la ñapa or la gniappe = the ñapa/gniappe). The term has been traced back to the Quechua word yapay (‘to increase; to add’). In Andean markets it is still customary to ask for a yapa (translates as “a little extra”) when making a purchase. The seller usually responds by throwing in a little extra.

Although this is an old custom, it is still widely practiced in Louisiana. Street vendors, especially vegetable vendors, are expected to throw in a few green chili peppers or a small bunch of cilantro with a purchase. The word is used in the Gulf Coast region of the United States and in other places with historic links to French Creole culture, such as in Trinidad and Tobago. The concept is practiced in many more places however, such as the Spanish-speaking world, Southeast Asia, North Africa, rural France, Australia, Holland, and Switzerland

Though the word is included in English dictionaries it is used primarily in the region influenced by New Orleans^] (and therefore Louisiana French) culture and so may be thought of as being more Cajun French or Louisiana Creole French than English. This is especially so since the spelling has been influenced by French.

Mark Twain writes about the word in a chapter on New Orleans in Life on the Mississippi (1883). He called it “a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get”:

We picked up one excellent word—a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word—”lagniappe.” They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish—so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a “baker’s dozen.” It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant buys something in a shop—or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know—he finishes the operation by saying—”Give me something for lagniappe.”

The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor—I don’t know what he gives the governor; support, likely.

When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans—and you say, “What, again?—no, I’ve had enough;” the other party says, “But just this one time more—this is for lagniappe.” When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady’s countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his “I beg pardon—no harm intended,” into the briefer form of “Oh, that’s for lagniappe.”

In Ireland, the term “luck penny” (or “luckpenny”) denotes a lagniappe

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-18

.

Good online dictionaries are more than dictionaries as they are traditionally understood. They include additional information about language development, daily grammar lessons, tests, they run columns of the type “This Day in History”, “Today’s Birthdays”, etc.

One of my favorites is “The Free Dictionary by Farlex”, which yesterday published a moving story (a real story!) about September 11, 2001. I can’t but re-post it.

Delta Flight 15 on 9/11. – DAY BRIGHTENER

TODAY’S FEEL GOOD STORY

(and it is true!)

It is almost 20 years since 9/11 and here is a

wonderful story about that terrible day.

Jerry Brown Delta Flight 15…

Here is an amazing story from a flight attendant on Delta Flight
15,written following 9-11:

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, we were about 5 hours out of
Frankfurt, flying over the North Atlantic.

All of a sudden the curtains parted and I was told to go to the
cockpit, immediately, to see the captain. As soon as I got there I
noticed that the crew had that “All Business” look on their faces.
The
captain handed me a printed message. It was from Delta’s main office
in Atlanta and simply read, “All airways over the Continental United
States are closed to commercial air traffic. Land ASAP at the
nearest airport. Advise your destination.”

No one said a word about what this could mean. We knew it was a
serious situation and we needed to find terra firma quickly. The
captain determined that the nearest airport was 400 miles behind us in
Gander, Newfoundland.

He requested approval for a route change from the Canadian traffic
controller and approval was granted immediately — no questions asked.

We found out later, of course, why there was no hesitation in
approving our request.

While the flight crew prepared the airplane for landing, another
message arrived from Atlanta telling us about some terrorist activity
in the New York area. A few minutes later word came in about the
hijackings.

We decided to LIE to the passengers while we were still in the air.
We told them the plane had a simple instrument problem and that we
needed to land at the nearest airport in Gander, Newfoundland, to have
it checked out.

We promised to give more information after landing in Gander. There
was much grumbling among the passengers, but that’s nothing new!
Forty minutes later, we landed in Gander. Local time at Gander was
12:30 PM!…that’s 11:00 AM EST.

There were already about 20 other airplanes on the ground from all
over the world that had taken this detour on their way to the U.S.

After we parked on the ramp, the captain made the following
announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, you must be wondering if all
these airplanes around us have the same instrument problem as we have.
The reality is that we are here for another reason.” Then he went on
to explain the little bit we knew about the situation in the U.S.
There were loud gasps and stares of disbelief. The captain informed
passengers that Ground Control in Gander told us to stay put.

The Canadian Government was in charge of our situation and no one was
allowed to get off the aircraft. No one on the ground was allowed to
come near any of the air crafts. Only airport police would come
around periodically, look us over and go on to the next airplane.
In the next hour or so more planes landed and Gander ended up with 53
airplanes from all over the world, 27 of which were U.S. commercial
jets.

Meanwhile, bits of news started to come in over the aircraft radio and
for the first time we learned that airplanes were flown into the World
Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in D.C. People were
trying to use their cell phones, but were unable to connect due to a
different cell system in Canada. Some did get through, but were only
able to get to the Canadian operator who would tell them that the
lines to the U.S. were either blocked or jammed.

Sometime in the evening the news filtered to us that the World Trade
Center buildings had collapsed and that a fourth hijacking had
resulted in a crash. By now the passengers were emotionally and
physically exhausted, not to mention frightened, but everyone stayed
amazingly calm. We had only to look out the window at the 52 other
stranded aircraft to realize that we were not the only ones in this
predicament.

We had been told earlier that they would be allowing people off the
planes one plane at a time. At 6 P.M., Gander airport told us that
our turn to deplane would be 11 am the next morning. Passengers were
not happy, but they simply resigned themselves to this news without
much noise and started to prepare themselves to spend the night on the
airplane.

Gander had promised us medical attention, if needed, water, and
lavatory servicing. And they were true to their word. Fortunately,
we had no medical situations to worry about. We did have a young lady
who was 33 weeks into her pregnancy. We took REALLY good care of her.
The night passed without incident despite the uncomfortable sleeping
arrangements.

About 10:30 on the morning of the 12th, a convoy of school buses
showed up. We got off the plane and were taken to the terminal where
we went through Immigration and Customs and then had to register with
the Red Cross.

After that, we (the crew) were separated from the passengers and were
taken in vans to a small hotel. We had no idea where our passengers
were going. We learned from the Red Cross that the town of Gander has
a population of 10,400 people and they had about 10,500 passengers to
take care of from all the airplanes that were forced into Gander! We
were told to just relax at the hotel and we would be contacted when
the U.S. airports opened again, but not to expect that call for a
while.

We found out the total scope of the terror back home only after
getting to our hotel and turning on the TV, 24 hours after it all
started.

Meanwhile, we had lots of time on our hands and found that the people
of Gander were extremely friendly. They started calling us the “plane
people.” We enjoyed their hospitality, explored the town of Gander
and ended up having a pretty good time.

Two days later, we got that call and were taken back to the Gander
airport. Back on the plane, we were reunited with the passengers and
found out what they had been doing for the past two days. What we
found out was incredible.

Gander and all the surrounding communities (within about a 75
Kilometer radius) had closed all high schools, meeting halls, lodges,
and any other large gathering places. They converted all these
facilities to mass lodging areas for all the stranded travelers. Some
had cots set up, some had mats with sleeping bags and pillows set up.

ALL the high school students were required to volunteer their time to
take care of the “guests.” Our 218 passengers ended up in a town
called Lewisporte, about 45 kilometers from Gander where they were put
up in a high school. If any women wanted to be in a women-only
facility, that was arranged. Families were kept together. All the
elderly passengers were taken to private homes.

Remember that young pregnant lady? She was put up in a private home
right across the street from a 24-hour Urgent Care facility. There was
a dentist on call and both male and female nurses remained with the
crowd for the duration.

Phone calls and e-mails to the U.S. and around the world were
available to everyone once a day. During the day, passengers were
offered “Excursion” trips. Some people went on boat cruises of the
lakes and harbors. Some went for hikes in the local forests.
Local bakeries stayed open to make fresh bread for the guests.

Food was prepared by all the residents and brought to the schools.
People were driven to restaurants of their choice and offered
wonderful meals. Everyone was given tokens for local laundry mats to
wash
their clothes, since luggage was still on the aircraft. In other
words, every single need was met for those stranded travelers.

Passengers were crying while telling us these stories. Finally, when
they were told that U.S. airports had reopened, they were delivered to
the airport right on time and without a single passenger missing or
late. The local Red Cross had all the information about the
whereabouts of each and every passenger and knew which plane they
needed to be on and when all the planes were leaving. They
coordinated everything beautifully.

It was absolutely incredible.

When passengers came on board, it was like they had been on a cruise.
Everyone knew each other by name. They were swapping stories of their
stay, impressing each other with who had the better time. Our flight
back to Atlanta looked like a chartered party flight. The crew just
stayed out of their way. It was mind-boggling.

Passengers had totally bonded and were calling each other by their
first names, exchanging phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses.

And then a very unusual thing happened.

One of our passengers approached me and asked if he could make an
announcement over the PA system. We never, ever allow that. But this
time was different. I said “of course” and handed him the mike. He
picked up the PA and reminded everyone about what they had just gone
through in the last few days. He reminded them of the hospitality
they had received at the hands of total strangers. He continued by
saying that he would like to do something in return for the good folks
of Lewisporte.

“He said he was going to set up a Trust Fund under the name of DELTA
15 (our flight number). The purpose of the trust fund is to provide
college scholarships for the high school students of Lewisporte.
He asked for donations of any amount from his fellow travellers. When
the paper with donations got back to us with the amounts, names, phone
numbers and addresses, the total was for more than $14,000!

“The gentleman, a MD from Virginia , promised to match the donations
and to start the administrative work on the scholarship. He also said
that he would forward this proposal to Delta Corporate and ask them to
donate as well.

As I write this account, the trust fund is at more than $1.5 million
and has assisted 134 students in their college education.

“I just wanted to share this story because we need good stories right
now. It gives me a little bit of hope to know that some people in a
faraway place were kind to some strangers who literally dropped in on
them.

It reminds me how much good there is in the world.”

“In spite of all the rotten things we see going on in today’s world
this story confirms that there are still a lot of good people in the
world and when things get bad, they will come forward.

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-17

This morning I have received another regular email “Word of the Day” from Webster’s Dictionary. Another seven words with examples picked up by the Dictionary’s editors.  The subscription is both interesting and useful. Even the vocabulary well known to the reader starts sparkling with details previously unnoticed. That concerns, to a considerable extent, the etymology which goes under the title “Did you know?” for each of the words. You may see for yourselves:

Word of the Day : August 14, 2021

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scuttlebutt

What It Means

Scuttlebutt is an informal noun that refers to rumor or gossip.

// After he retired, Bob regularly stopped by the office to catch up on the latest scuttlebutt.

 

Examples

“There’s always a bit of scuttlebutt when a talented chef leaves a popular restaurant to pursue another opportunity.” — Ligaya Figueras, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 29 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?

When office workers catch up on the latest scuttlebutt around the water cooler, they are continuing a long-standing tradition that probably also occurred on the sailing ships of yore. Back in the early 1800s, the cask containing a ship’s daily supply of fresh water was called a scuttlebutt (from the verb scuttle meaning “to cut a hole through” and the noun butt, “cask”); that name was later applied to a drinking fountain on a ship or at a naval installation. In time, the term for the water source was also applied to the gossip and rumors generated around it, and the latest chatter has been called “scuttlebutt” ever since.

Word of the Day : August 15, 2021

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undulant

What It Means

Undulant describes the rise and fall of waves, or things that move or have a form like waves.

// We followed the undulant green hills on our journey to the resort.

Examples

“Gilliam broke ranks with the movement—or extended it—in the mid-sixties, when he began draping vast unstretched paint-stained and -spattered canvases from walls and ceilings, creating undulant environments that drenched the eye in effulgent color.” — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 9 Nov. 2020

Did You Know?

Unda, Latin for “wave,” is the root of undulant, as well as words such as abound, inundate, redound, surround, and the verb undulate, which means “to form or move in waves.” The meaning of undulant is now broad enough that it could describe things as disparate as a snake’s movement and a fever that waxes and wanes.

Word of the Day : August 16, 2021

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bromide

What It Means

A bromide is a commonplace or hackneyed statement or idea.

// His speech had nothing more to offer than the usual bromides about how everyone needs to work together.

 

Examples

“A banal bromide like ‘trust the science’ helps neither science nor the public in the long run. The key is effective communication: neither proselytizing nor bland recitation of the facts.” — Cory Franklin, The Wyoming County (Pennsylvania) Press Examiner, 9 Dec. 2020

 

Did You Know?

After bromine was discovered in 1827, chemists could not resist experimenting with the new element. It didn’t take long before they found uses for its compounds, in particular potassium bromide, which was used as a sedative to treat everything from epilepsy to sleeplessness. By the 20th century, bromide was being used figuratively to apply to anything or anyone that might put one to sleep because of commonness or just plain dullness.

Word of the Day : August 17, 2021

tousle

What It Means.

Tousle means “to make untidy (especially someone’s hair).”

// Vic stood in front of the mirror and tousled his hair, trying to get a cool, disheveled look.

Tousle 

Verb

Tousle is a word that has been through what linguists call a “functional shift.” That’s a fancy way of saying it was originally one part of speech, then gradually came to have an additional function. Tousle started out as a verb back in the 15th century. By the late 19th century, it was also being used as a noun meaning “a tangled mass (as of hair).” Etymologists connect the word to an Old High German word meaning “to pull to pieces.”

Examples of tousle in a Sentence

Verb She tousled the little boy’s hair. his grandfather would always tousle the boy’s neatly combed hair

Recent Examples on the Web: VerbIn front of him was a woman with her face thrown up to the sky, her hands rising as if to tousle her hair.— Amanda Hess, New York Times, 11 May 2020Paired with Messika’s triangular diamond drop earrings, tousled waves by hairstylist Mark Townsend, and a bold plum lip courtesy of makeup artist Georgie Eisdell, the look felt effortless.— Janelle Okwodu, Vogue, 28 Oct. 2019

Word of the Day : August 18, 2021

defenestration

What It Means

Defenestration originally meant “a throwing of a person or thing out of a window.” Today, it’s more often used for “a usually swift dismissal or expulsion (as from a political party or office).”

// Michael’s annoyance at his alarm clock’s persistent drone led to its sudden defenestration from his eighth-floor bedroom.

 

Examples

“The drama would culminate in [Margaret Thatcher’s] … defenestration….” — Jeremy Cliffe, The New Statesman, 6 Jan. 2021

 

Did You Know?

These days defenestration—from the Latin fenestra, meaning “window”—is often used to describe the forceful removal of someone from public office or from some other advantageous position. History’s most famous defenestration, however, was one in which the tossing out the window was quite literal. On May 23, 1618, two imperial regents were found guilty of violating certain guarantees of religious freedom and were thrown out the window of Prague Castle. The men survived the 50-foot tumble into the moat, but the incident marked the beginning of the Bohemian resistance to Hapsburg rule that eventually led to the Thirty Years’ War and came to be known as the Defenestration of Prague (it was the third such historical defenestration in Prague, but the first known to be referred to as such by English speakers).

Word of the Day : August 19, 2021

winnow

What It Means

Winnow can mean “to remove people or things that are less important or desirable” or, generally, “to make a list of possible choices smaller.”

//The search committee is finding it extremely difficult to winnow the list of job candidates; many of them are highly qualified.

Examples

“Cast members apply for the positions. The field is winnowed down through interviews until the final two are selected.” — Dewayne Bevil, The Orlando (Florida) Sentinel, 30 June 2021

Did You Know?

Beginning as windwian in Old English, winnow first referred to the removal of chaff from grain by a current of air. This use was soon extended to describe the removal of anything undesirable or unwanted (a current example of this sense would be “winnowing out sensitive material”). People then began using the word for the selection of the most desirable elements (as in “winnowing out the qualified applicants”). The association of winnow with the movement of air also led to the meanings “to brandish” and “to beat with or as if with wings,” but those uses are now rare. The last meanings blew in around the beginning of the 19th century: they are “to blow on” and “to blow in gusts.”

Word of the Day : August 20, 2021

aghast

What It Means

Aghast means “shocked and upset.”

// Critics were aghast at how awful the play was.

 

Examples

“The men who gathered in Philadelphia to create the document were the elite of society. Most were wealthy and well-educated. They were large landowners and business people. They had everything to lose if their bid for independence failed. Many of their fellow elite remained loyal to England and King George and were aghast at the behavior of those who signed the Declaration.” — Gerry Mulligan, The Citrus County (Florida) Chronicle, 11 July 2021

Did You Know?

If you are aghast, you might look like you’ve just seen a ghost, or something similarly shocking. Aghast traces back to a Middle English verb, gasten, meaning “to frighten.” Gasten (which also gave us ghastly, meaning “terrible or frightening”) comes from gast, a Middle English spelling of the word ghost. Gast also came to be used in English as a verb meaning “to scare.” That verb is now obsolete, but its spirit lives on in words spoken by the character Edmund in William Shakespeare’s King Lear: “gasted by the noise I made, full suddenly he fled.”

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-16

WORD HISTORIES. TWO SCHOOLS

In William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the sad Jacques delivers the famous lines in Act II, Scene vii: 

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players…”

According to Jacques, man essentially plays seven parts in his lifetime: the helpless infant, the whining schoolboy, the emotional lover, the devoted soldier, the wise judge, the clueless old man, the corpse.

As a teacher, I was attracted to the “whining schoolboy”. That’s exactly what was said in the comedy: “Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel // And shining morning face, creeping like snail // Unwillingly to school”.

In the beginning, the concept of “school” was much more positive than Shakespeare’s description. In Greek the word “skhole” meant “spare time, leisure, rest, ease, idleness”. The indolent discussion of various topics was the favorite or proper use for free time in Athens or Rome. There was no special place for such discussions. Later, when the topics became more specific and the discussions more regular and focused, there were special buildings for such “cross-fertilization of minds” that received the same name: “schools”. The Greek word was borrowed first into Latin and then, practically, into all European languages.

The meaning of “school” as “students attending a school” developed in English in the 14^th century, the sense of “people united by a general similarity of principles and methods” – in the 17^th century (hence, “school of thought”). The term “school board” came into use in 1870, “school bus” in 1908, “school of hard knocks “( = rough experience in life”) was recorded in 1912.

As for the homonym “school” (= a large group of aquatic animals, especially fish, swimming together; a shoal”), it has a Germanic origin: West Germanic “skulo-“ was the source of Old Saxon “scola” (“troop, multitude”, West Frisian “skoal”, Old English “scolu” (= “band, troop, crowd of fish”), Middle Dutch “schole” ( = “group of fish or other animals”).  

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-15

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers some good tests and quizzes. One of them is “How Strong Is Your Vocabulary”. I regularly do the quizzes and here are some new words that I learned along the way in the latest set:

1. Redoubtable = formidable, arousing fear, awe; worthy of respect, honor: <he is a redoubtable fighter>.
2. Turpitude = depravity, baseness: <a beacon of morality in the sea of turpitude>.
3. Funambulist = a tightrope (or slack rope) walker. From Latin: “funis” = rope, “ambulare” = walk.
4. Bibulous = 1) given or marked by the consumption of alcoholic drink: <a bibulous fellow, a bibulous evening>; 2) very absorbent, as paper, or soil.
5. Noisome (not to be mixed up with “noisy”) = offensive or disgusting, as an odor; harmful, noxious, stinking: <noisome factory emissions>.
6. Captious = 1) hypercritical: <a captious scholar>; 2) intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: <a captious question>.
7. Trenchant = 1) forceful and clear, penetration: <a trenchant argument>; 2) caustic, cutting: <a trenchant wit>; 3) distinct, clear-cut: <the times were felt to require… trenchant distinction between good and bad, right and wrong>.

However, the most interesting word was “shibboleth”. I knew it earlier only in the meaning “a slogan, a catchphrase”. Here are some more meanings and a background.

• Shibboleth = 1) a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning, inappropriate or out of date; 2) a commonplace saying or idea; 3) a custom, practice or phrase that betrays one as an outsider and acts as a stumbling block to becoming a member of a particular class, profession, etc.

The word comes from Hebrew and, literally, means “ear of grain”. It is used in the Old Testament by Gileadites as a test word for the Ephramites , who couldn’t pronounce the sound “sh”.

In the story, two Semitic tribes, the Ephraimites and the Gileadites, have a great battle. The Gileadites defeat the Ephraimites, and set up a blockade across the Jordan River to catch the fleeing Ephraimites who were trying to get back to their territory. The sentries asked each person who wanted to cross the river to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites, who had no sh sound in their language, pronounced the word with an s and were thereby unmasked as the enemy and slaughtered.

Here is the relevant excerpt from the Book of Judges. The full account is in Chapter 12, verses 1-15:

12, 4 Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites, and among the Manassites.

5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, art thou an Ephraimite? If he say Nay;

6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Interestingly, it’s not so easy for non-Ukrainian-speaking people (Russians included) to pronounce the Ukrainian word “palianytsia” («flatbread»), which is usually pronounced by them as “paliani:tsa”. Hence, “palianytsia”is a shibboleth .

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-14

COVID-19 ENLARGES VOCABULARY

quarantini

Quarantini is a cocktail that you drink while in quarantine (when a person stays in a particular place for a period of time so that they don’t spread or catch a disease), made from whatever ingredients are available to you

‘But never fear: The Quarantini is here. The increasingly important specialty cocktail is one that anybody can make at home: It’s the drink you make with what you’ve got in your cabinets or freezer, and is best enjoyed with whomever you’re cooped up with – or perhaps a neighbor in need.’

NEW YORK POST 17TH MARCH 2020

It’s a familiar argument – this connected world, where we can see and keep in touch with people even though we’re not physically together, indeed often thousands of miles apart, fosters a society of isolated individuals who don’t value or need actual human contact anymore. But, as I write, when we’re in the grip of a global pandemic forcing us to stay physically distant from others, often even loved ones or family members, it seems that nothing could be further from the truth. Being forced to stay apart, rather than choosing to, is a game-changer. And so we’ve needed ways to lighten the mood, to ‘get through’ until we can see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Yearning for a face-to-face chat and throwing open the cupboards we ask: ‘Virtual drinks party anyone?’ – and thereby the quarantini was born.

A quarantini is a cocktail you make at home and drink alone or with members of your household during a period of imposed isolation. First popping up in the US, an original take on the quarantini was a cocktail made from martini and a vitamin C supplement powder, conveniently coloured an attractive orange and sometimes even coating the rim of the glass instead of the salt in a traditional margarita. If this all sounds a bit bizarre, thankfully the concept has quickly morphed into a refreshing cocktail made from whatever you happen to have in the cupboards, though characteristic ingredients are vitamin-boosting citrus fruits and comforting splashes of honey.

The quarantini is just one example of the inevitable lexical explosion that we’re witnessing as we navigate our way along the tricky path of the Coronavirus pandemic. Other light-hearted examples include quarantimates, describing people quarantined together,and quaranteens (also quaranteenagers), used both to describe young people in their teens to early 20s during the crisis period and as a tongue-in-cheek reference to babies born as a result of the Coronavirus quarantine. It remains to be seen whether these words will just be creations of the moment, quickly disappearing as the virus fades. Potentially less ephemeral, I suspect, are those expressions that will have had a lasting and serious impact on our lives. There are so many examples, but among the most prominent are social distancing – the closure of public spaces and the requirement to stay a safe physical distance from others in an attempt to suppress virus spread; furloughing or being furloughed – originally a term from US business English, but in the context of the crisis it’s now entering the global radar as a description of being officially required to stop work for a period of time because of suspended business activity; self-isolate (also self-isolation) – voluntarily staying at home because you’re vulnerable to infection or at risk of infecting others; and a nuanced meaning of lockdown – a period when people are ordered to stay at home either most or all of the time

‘vaxication’:

Gotta get away…

For those who get the shot and go.

Vaxication—a combination of vaccine and vacation—has increased in use as the COVID-19 vaccine has become more available to the public. The word is used humorously to describe the post-vaccination travel plans people are making.

A year living under the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge of new word coinages, many of them portmanteaus (e.g., like quarantine – see above), that suit our strange new normal.

As vaccines are made increasingly available to the public, and people get their so-called “Fauci Ouchie,” the faint promise of an end to the pandemic is on the horizon. Naturally, then, another portmanteau has arisen for what people plan to do once it is safe to travel again: vaxication.

Some newly vaccinated people will be ready to get on a plane and travel far from home — or at least as far as destination entry requirements allow. I have friends that have booked vaxications to Hawaii, Mexico and various Caribbean islands.
— Andrea M. Rotondo, The Points Guy, 19 Mar. 2021

While some experts believe that pent-up demand will have people rushing in large numbers to book “vaxications,” others, including Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, think the return to travel will be gradual, with people easing their way back.
— Tariro Mzezewa et al., The New York Times, 22 Dec. 2020

Vaxication combines vacation with vax, a word formed by shortening and altering vaccine (and a spelling which we find in other terms like anti-vax). The notion behind vaxication comes from the belief that people, anxious to get out into the world after a year of cabin fever, will fuel a boom for safe destination travel.

A travel-marketing firm claimed credit for coining the word:

Perhaps we will see vaccination vacation packages in 2021 or a trend tied to a term we have coined, “Vaxication,” to commemorate the first trip people take after treatment. In this way, the timing of vaccines is quite important to a recovery timeline.

It is very possible that vaxication won’t stick around as part of the language if we reach a point where the pandemic is far behind us. Then they’ll just go back to being any-old-excuse vacations again. Not that that’s a problem to us.

(Macmillan Dictionary, New Words)

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Some tasty morsels of English wisdom again!  The yardstick against which I measure them before deciding to enter them in the blog or not is their cross-cultural aspect: as a rule, they have got no correspondences in Ukrainian in the form as succinct and laconic as in English, or their have a unique origin due to the specifics of British life.

1. There comes the maxim THE BEST IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD. My life-long motto! Sometimes the proverb is reversed as THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE BEST. The proverb was borrowed from Voltaire’s Questions sur L’Enyclopédie (1770). You may come across it in Ukrainian too, but it sounds like a familiar quotation rather than a proverb.

In English there is also a wonderful quote belonging to the basketball player Timothy Duncan: “Good, better, best, // Never let it rest // Until your good is better, // and your better best”. Incidentally, another famous attributed to Tim Duncan is: “If you can’t fly, RUN, if you can’t run, WALK, if you can’t walk, CRAWL, but by all means, KEEP MOVING”.

• BETTER WED OVER THE MIXEN THAN OVER THE MOOR. First used in 1628 in Anderson’s “Proverbs in Scots”. As it was explained by the author of the collection, “mixon was the heap of Compost which layeth in the yards of good husbands”. Metonymically, the word acquired the meaning “a close neighborhood”, “the same locality”, while OVER THE MOOR, contextually, means “from a different place”, “from another village”. The latest example dates back to 2013: “Back then people tended to marry within their own ethnic groups – remember: ‘Better wed over the mixen than over the moor”.

• THE ARE NO BIRDS IN LAST YEAR’S NEST = Time has altered circumstances. The proverb came into English with the translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote by Thomas Shelton in 1620 (II.lxxiv). The exact translation version is as follows: “I pray you go not so fast, since that in the nests of the last yeere, there are no birds of this yeere. Whilom (=formerly) I was a foole, but now I am wise”.

• YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE COUNTRY BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE THE COUNTRY OUT OF THE BOY = A change of place or circumstances will not alter the fundamental nature of a person. Originally North American, it has generated a large variety of humorous by-forms (e.g.: “You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl). A synonymous proverb is WHAT’S BRED IN THE BONE WILL COME OUT IN FLESH.

• ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID, NEVER A BRIDE = used of someone who seems fated to be always the runner-up of second best. The version with OFTEN (“Often a bridesmaid, never a bride”) was popularized in a series of advertisements from 1920s onwards for the mouthwash Listerine, implying that the unfortunate bridesmaid’s problem was bad breath (see the picture accompanying this blog entry).

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THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES OF MICE AND MEN OFTEN GO ASTRAY

The words man and mouse have been used in alliterative association in:

– neither man nor mouse, to mean not a living creature, great or small,

– mouse and man, or mice and men, to mean every living thing.

The first known user of neither man nor mouse was the poet and writing-master John Davies ‘of Hereford’ (1565?-1618) in The Scourge of Folly (1611):

Against Flaccus the great House-keeper.
Flaccus, they say, doth keepe too great an house;
They say but sooth herein, his house is so:
But he therein keepes neither man nor mouse,
For there is meate for neither: so, they go
From him, though he doth keepe a house too great;
But it he keepes without myce, men or meat.

William Hawkins (died 1637) wrote:

– Præco: O yez.
– Drudo: He may cry O yez till his belly burst. But, for ought I see, heer’s no body to heare him.
– Lawriger: No body? That’s none of our fault. All may come if they will, Apollo keepes open sessions. Looke Præco, canst thou see no audience?
– Præco: Nor man, nor mouse.

The English poet Samuel Cobb (baptised 1675-died 1713) used the metaphor in The Mouse-Trap, a translation published in 1712 of a poem in Latin by E. Holdsworth (1684-1746):

So all are serv’d by Fates, who weave the Doom
Of Mice and Men upon one common Loom!

But it was the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) who popularised the metaphor in To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785:

Scottish English Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi’ bickering brattle!   I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee, Wi’ murd’ring pattle!   I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion Has broken Nature’s social union, An’ justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle, At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An’ fellow-mortal! I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen-icker in a thrave ’S a sma’ request: I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave, An’ never miss’t!   Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin! An’ naething, now, to big a new ane, O’ foggage green! An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin, Baith snell an’ keen! Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ wast, An’ weary Winter comin fast, An’ cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro’ thy cell. That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble, Has cost thee monie a weary nibble! Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble, But house or hald. To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble, An’ cranreuch cauld! But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me! The present only toucheth thee: But Och! I backward cast my e’e, On prospects drear! An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear!

Translation into Modern English Tiny, sleek, cowering, fearful mouse, O, what a panic is in your breast! You need not start away so hasty, With pattering noises!   I would be loath to run and chase you, With my murdering spade!   I’m truly sorry that my world, Has broken into your world, And justifies your ill opinion of men, Which makes you startle At me, you poor, earth-born companion, And fellow mortal! I doubt not that at times you may steal; What then? poor little animal, you must live! An occasional ear of corn out of twenty-four sheaves Is a small request; I’ll be blest with the rest of the corn, And never miss the ear you took! Your tiny house, too, in ruin! Its fragile walls the winds are strewing! And nothing, now, to build a new one, Out of densely growing grass! And bleak December’s winds are following, Both harsh and keen! You saw the fields were bare and desolate, And weary winter coming fast, And cosy here, beneath the wind, You thought to dwell— Till crash! the cruel ploughshare passed Right through your cell. That little heap of leaves and stubble, Has cost you many a weary nibble! Now you are turned out, for all your trouble, Of house and home, To endure the winter’s sleety dribble, And hoarfrost cold!   But, Mousie, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes of mice and men Go often astray, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy! Still you are blest, compared with me The present only touches you: But, Oh! I backward cast my eye. On prospects dreary! And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear!

Of Mice and Men, the title of the 1937 novella by the American author John Steinbeck (1902-1968)  refers to this poem. Although it deliberately misses out the end of the stanza, “Gang aft agley, / An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, / For promis’d joy!”, this is virtually the whole story: the shattered dream, the grief and pain instead of the fulfilment.

The clipped variant “mice and men” is often applied to a multitude of human beings (‘men”) who, under the blows of fate, are as feeble and helpless in this world as mice are. Actually, they are in the same category, mice and men. They are.

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ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER BLOG…

“Good Americans when they die go to Paris”.

The author of these words was THOMAS GOLD APPLETON (1812-1884), an American writer considered to be one of the wittiest of men in his time. The context for the words was wealthy 19^th-century Americans’ obsession with Paris as a fashionable destination. However, the 21^st century has altered the sense of the statement making it its own opposite, as it may be seen in the 2002 quote from Times Literary Supplement of 22nd March: “…like any other city… big, noisy crowded. You don’t have to believe that Paris is the place where good Americans go to die.” Being already more knowledgeable, we may add cases of terrorism and riots in the capital’s poorer districts.

“Another day, another dollar”.

Earlier, sailors were paid by the day: the longer the voyage, the greater the financial reward, which is why the original wording was “More days, more dollars.” The development “Another day, another dollar” looks more like a weary comment on routine to earn a living. It has also generated a quantity of by-forms, like “Another day, another deadline “(when deadlines are being postponed). When the Times mentioned the chess player Bobby Fisher being stripped of his title by Fide in 1975, it remembered earlier scandals during (or following) chess tournaments, and wrote: “Another day, another squabble”. Yours truly has also transformed to proverb to make it the title of this blog entry.

My next choice was a proverb which reflects the sea-faring status of the British nation:

“Any port in a storm” (= in a desperate situation, any place of safety is welcome). When compared to the hackneyed “A drowning man catches at a straw” the first proverb seems to me more exotic and, henceforth, more preferable.

And, finally: “An army marches on its stomach”

 = an army can only operate effectively if it is well supplied with food. The saying has been attributed to both Napoleon and Frederick the Great. As a former conscript soldier, I remember how much attention was paid to the food supply in the Soviet Army.

To cap it all, I’d like to come back to Thomas Gold Appleton I mentioned in the beginning. The date he was born was March 31, about which would later joke that he just missed being born an April fool. His birthplace was Boston, Massachusetts, and he once said (also about himself) that “Boston is a state of mind” and “A Boston man is the east wind made flesh”.

The writer spent much of his life traveling, and once describing his impressions he wrote: “More and more of what the world needs, and learns to value, is its vacation”. I think all of us, across the world, cannot but agree with this quip.

In April 1884, while in New York, Appleton developed pneumonia. Though he was aware he would die, Appleton was cheerful. “How interesting all this is,” he said. “It will be a new experience“.

Appleton died on April 17, 1884. His friend Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a memorial to him in The Atlantic Monthly: “The city seems grayer and older since he left us, the cold spring wind coming from the bay, harsher and more unfriendly.” He is buried in a family plot in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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The social and historical background of the proverb “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

The proverb has two meanings:

1. With limited tools, single-minded people apply them inappropriately or indiscriminately.
2. If a person is familiar with a certain, single subject, or has with them a certain, single instrument, they may have a confirmation basis to believe that it is the answer to everything.

The origin of the proverb can be traced to the old English expression “a Birmingham screwdriver,” that was jocularly used for a hammer. The expression 1) referred to the practice of using one tool for all purposes, and 2) it was usually used on delicate devices when a real screwdriver would be better. What was meant was the habit of a Birmingham inhabitant, i.e. simpleton who took a rather simplistic view of maintaining any device or object. In 1868, a London periodical, “Once a Week”, contained this observation: “Give a boy a hammer and chisel; show him how to use them; at once he begins to hack the doorposts, to take off the corners of shutter and window frames, until you teach him a better use for them, and how to keep his activity within bounds”.

The first scientific wording of the concept is attributed to an American philosopher Abraham Kaplan’s (1964): “I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

In 1966, the statement was repeated by an American psychologist Abraham Maslow: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”. Since then, this cognitive statement has been called the law of the instrument (after Kaplan), or the law of the hammer, Maslow’s hammer (= gavel), or golden hammer (after Maslow). Incidentally, “golden hammer” is contextually synonymous to “silver bullet”. In folklore, a bullet cast from silver is often one of the few weapons that are effective against a werewolf or witch. The term silver bullet is also a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a “silver bullet” that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections.

The opposite of the proverb “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is the proverb “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” meaning “there are many ways to achieve a goal”. It seems that originally the animal in question was a dog, as a seventeenth-century proverb is there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging. The murky thing is WHY should the cat have been skinned or the dog hanged. One clue may be found in the lines of the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin: «Из кота того сделали шапку, A ее износил наш дед» (“They made a hat out of that cat, and our grandfather wore it out”). Anyway, it’s another kind or sociolinguistic research requiring another “hammer” 🙂 .

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Idiomatic units that attracted my attention today contain the central word ALL.

• be all mouth (and trousers) = someone who’s all mouth and trousers talks or boasts a lot but doesn’t deliver. ‘All mouth and no trousers’ is also used, though this is a corruption of the original. The US analogue is: “…be all hat and no cattle”.

• all in a day’s work = (of something unusual or difficult) accepted as part of someone’s normal routine or as a matter of course:“dodging sharks is all in a day’s work for some scientists”

• all of = no less than, at least, as in “Although she looked much younger, she was all of seventy”. The word combination is often used ironically of an amount considered very small by the speaker or writer: “A development company … tore down five listed buildings, was taken to court and fined all of 675 pounds.
• all-singing and all-dancing = very modern and advanced, with a lot of additional features: “As long as you don’t expect the latest all-singing, all-dancing Japanese marvel, this camera is an excellent buy”.

The phrase was originally used to describe show-business acts. Ultimately, it may come from a series of 1929 posters which advertised the addition of sound to motion pictures. Thus, the first Hollywood musical was promoted with the slogan “All Talking All Singing All Dancing”. A modern example: “Each of the major independents launched an all-singing-all dancing graphics-oriented version last year”. Sometimes used humorously  to show that one thinks  a lot of these features are silly  or unnecessary: “.…the executive’s new all-singing, all-dancing website”

• be all that = be very attractive or good. 2002 Guardian: I can’t believe how she throws herself at guys, she thinks she’s all that
• not all there = not in full possession of one’s mental faculties (informally used): “Her aunt is very sweet but not all there (mentally)”.
• be all things to all people
• please everyone, typically by fitting in with their needs or expectations:“a politician running scared of the electorate and trying to be all things to all people“

• be able to be interpreted or used differently by different people to their own satisfaction:“multimedia is all things to all men“

This expression probably originated in reference to 1 Corinthians 9:22 “I am made all things to all men”.

• all wet (US) = mistaken, completely wrong.
• be all go = be very busy, active
• it’s all up with…= that’s the end of it, there’s no hope regarding it “it’s all up with our gung-ho globalization”.
• a bit of all right (Br)= a pleasing person or thing.
• It takes all sorts (clipped from the proverb “It takes all sorts to make a world”) = People vary greatly in character, tastes and abilities. Often used as a comment on what the speaker feels to be unconventional behavior. “It takes all sorts. You complain when people are too dull, you complain when they are too colorful”.
• I’m all right, Jack! = is a British expression used to describe people who act only in their own best interests, even if providing assistance to others would take minimal to no effort on their behalf. It carries a negative connotation, and is rarely used to describe the person saying it.

The expression was used in the title of the 1959 comedy film I’m All Right, Jack. It also appears in the lyrics of the 1931 song “Which Side Are You On?” by social activist Florence Reece and the 1973 Pink Floyd song “Money”, and is the name of a 2019 song by UB40 which satirizes people who do not care about the less fortunate.

• You can’t win them all (or: Win some, lose some) said to express consolation or resignation after failure in a contest

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Words and Their Stories. ATTRIBUTION.

The first known use of the originally Latin word “attribution” meaning “thing ascribed” in English was in 1598. Nowadays it is terminologically used in social psychology. In everyday usage it is replaced by “handier” words of the type “feature”, “hallmark”, “point”, “property”, “quality”, “touch”, “trait”, “peculiarity”.

It is interesting how this word is leaving the passive vocabulary stock and becoming “active” to the point of becoming first a “witness word” and then a “key word” of the epoch (“les mots clés” and “les mot témoins” belong to the terminology of the 19^th-century sociolinguists). I detected an instance of this development while reading a Financial Times article about the climate change: “Linking Climate Change to Extreme Weather”, FT (Europe), Friday, Aug 6, 2021, p. 15. The author asks questions: Is climate change to blame for recent thunderstorms and floods across the world? Or, maybe, the climate change makes these disasters just more likely? Does it make them worse?

Demand to answer these questions is intensifying for the work of the World Weather Attribution Initiative, a team founded in 2014.

“If the science of climate attribution becomes more accurate, the implications could be substantial. In particular, stronger (i.e., scientifically proven) attribution could fortify the legal cases that are already brought against companies and government seen as partly responsible for climate change. The challenge is considerable. It’s quite a tricky question to say how much more rain fell in floods due to climate change,” says Peter Scott, an expert in climate attribution at the UK’s Met Office.

The word “attribution” appeared three times in the above context. I am quite familiar with a couple of terms that contain the same root: e.g., “an attribute” (a lexical modifier of another word), “an attribution particle” (in Ukrainian «бач» — «Він, бач, не може». By using the attribution particle, we attribute the words we say to someone else, not to ourselves). Hence, I suspected there might be a terminological meaning of the word “attribution” in the area of climate change. So it was! A rapidly evolving science is CLIMATE ATTRIBUTION: establishing the most likely causes for the detected climate change with some defined level of confidence. Yes, I understand that a critically minded reader will ironically smile at the words “some level of confidence” in the definition of the climate attribution as a science. However, let’s not forget that it was the starting point of all budding sciences. With the perfection of the “tool box”, the results are sure to come into sight very quickly.

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Words and Their Stories

By Anna Matteo, VOA

This time we are going to talk about rabbits.

Rabbits, like many other animals, dig holes and complex underground passages, like tunnels, to build their homes. So, when rabbits want to go home, they must go down the rabbit hole. And that may lead to other holes, tunnels, and paths, or even other rabbit homes.

In English, we use the expression down the rabbit hole when we get so caught up in the search for something – like an answer to a problem – that we end up somewhere totally different.

The Internet is an easy way to get lost down the rabbit hole.

For this Words and Their Stories, my search for “down the rabbit hole” returned the video game “Down the Rabbit Hole.” The animation was so beautiful! I had to find out more about who drew the images for the game.

A few more clicks led me to a website about learning how to draw children’s books. Let’s talk about children’s books. Do you know there is a famous book festival in the Italian city of Bologna? After an hour and many more clicks, I found myself watching a YouTube video on how to make the meat sauce Bolognese.

In other words, I had fallen down a rabbit hole and wasted an hour. But, at least, I got an idea for dinner!

Here are some notes on usage.

We often describe what kind of rabbit hole we get lost in. For example, if you get completely overtaken by your research on climate change, you could say you “went down an environmental rabbit hole.”

There are many verbs that you can use along with “rabbit hole.” You can get lost, fall down or get stuck in a rabbit hole.

But where did this come from?

Well, the expression comes from the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll in 1865. Alice, the girl in the story, begins her adventure by falling and falling and falling down a very long rabbit hole. She falls slowly and sees things on the way down – strange things. And when she arrives at the bottom things only get stranger.

And that is another way we use this expression! It can describe a completely strange situation or an all-consuming situation. By all-consuming, I mean a situation where you lose touch with reality. You lose yourself a bit.

For example, once on a trip to Coney Island, New York, I got lost and ended up in a very strange place. There was a play going on and everyone was dressed up. A band was playing strange music and the lights were all different colors. I had definitely fallen into a rabbit hole! But this time it was Anna’s Adventures in Wonderland!

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WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

As I thought about what the best Word of the Month could be, I decided on “August”, and made a short research into the background of the name.

August comes from the Latin word augustus, meaning “consecrated” or “venerable,” which in turn is related to the Latin augur, meaning “consecrated by augury” or “auspicious.”

After Julius’s grandnephew Augustus defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra, and became emperor of Rome, the Roman Senate decided that he too should have a month named after him. The month Sextillus (sex = six, the first month of the year was what nowadays is “March”) was chosen for Augustus, and the senate justified its actions in the following resolution:

Whereas the Emperor Augustus Caesar, in the month of Sextillis . . . thrice entered the city in triumph . . . and in the same month Egypt was brought under the authority of the Roman people, and in the same month an end was put to the civil wars; and whereas for these reasons the said month is, and has been, most fortunate to this empire, it is hereby decreed by the senate that the said month shall be called Augustus.

Not only did the Senate name a month after Augustus, but it decided that since Julius’s month, July, had 31 days, Augustus’s month should equal it: under the Julian calendar, the months alternated evenly between 30 and 31 days (with the exception of February), which made August 30 days long. So, instead of August having a mere 30 days, it was lengthened to 31, preventing anyone from claiming that Emperor Augustus was saddled with an inferior month.

To accommodate this change two other calendrical adjustments were necessary:

• The extra day needed to inflate the importance of August was taken from February, which originally had 29 days (30 in a leap year), and was now reduced to 28 days (29 in a leap year).
• Since the months evenly alternated between 30 and 31 days, adding the extra day to August meant that July, August, and September would all have 31 days. So to avoid three long months in a row, the lengths of the last four months were switched around, giving us 30 days in September, April, June, and November.

Among Roman rulers, only Julius and Augustus permanently had months named after them, though this wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of later emperors. For a time, May was changed to Claudius and the infamous Nero instituted Neronius for April. But these changes were ephemeral, and only Julius and Augustus have had two-millenia-worth of staying power

The Old English name for August was Weodmonat, “weed month” (“weod” meaning “grass, herbs”). Middle English speakers inherited the name of the month of August, but it wasn’t until the mid-1600s that “august” (present-day pronunciation [o-‘gAst]) came to be used generically in English, more or less as “augustus” was in Latin, to refer to someone with imperial qualities.

Synonyms for august: dignified, distinguished, imposing, portly, solemn, staid, stately.

Antonyms for august: flighty, frivolous, giddy, goofy, silly, undignified.

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To have an axe to grind is to have a concealed personal interest in a matter – a selfless motive which can lead to personal gain or profit.  The phrase comes from a story told by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), the American statesman, writer, and scientist. When young, he was asked by a man who admired his father’s grindstone, how it worked. As young Franklin showed him, the man positioned his own axe on it and the more the boy turned the wheel, the more he praised him. Then, when the job was finished, he laughed at the boy, and walked off without so much as saying “thank you”.

To chance one’s arm is to take a risk, in the hope of obtaining some advantage or other, or trusting to luck something that one has never done before. The phrase is of military origin; it referred to anyone who broke the regulations and ran the risk of losing a badge on their arm. A non-commissioned officer for instance, if caught, might lose a stripe.

Backroom boys: those who works in anonymity in an organization while others take on more public roles. First used to describe the anonymous technicians and scientists who worked behind the scenes in the UK during World War Two. Lord Beaverbrook coined it in a speech in March 1941: “Now who is responsible for this work of development on which so much depends? To whom must the praise be given? To the boys in the back rooms. They do not sit in the limelight. But they are the men who do all the work. Many of them are Civil Servants.”

First used to describe the anonymous technicians and scientists who worked behind the scenes in the UK during World War Two. Lord Beaverbrook coined it in a speech in March 1941:

“Now who is responsible for this work of development on which so much depends? To whom must the praise be given? To the boys in the back rooms. They do not sit in the limelight. But they are the men who do all the work. Many of them are Civil Servants.”

The expression may date from earlier than 1941 as, by April 1942, it was the title of a comic film by the popular English variety artist Arthur Askey.

Note that a related word – boffin, also emerged around the same time, seen in this example from just at the end of WWII:

The (London) Times, September 1945 – “A band of scientific men who performed their wartime wonders at Malvern and apparently called themselves ‘the boffins’.”

A feather in one’s cap is a symbol of honour and achievement. The placing of a feather in a hat has been a symbol of achievement that has arisen in several cultures, apparently independently. The English writer and traveller Richard Hansard recorded it in his Description of Hungary, 1599:

“It hath been an antient custom among them [Hungarians] that none should wear a fether but he who had killed a Turk, to whom onlie yt was lawful to shew the number of his slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe.”

The Native American tradition of adding a feather to the head-dress of any warrior who performed a brave act is well known.

The figurative use of the phrase ‘a feather in his hat’ was in use in the UK by the 18th century; for example, in a letter from the Duchess of Portland to a Miss Collingwood, in 1734:

“My Lord … esteems it a feather in his hat, that …”

The children’s rhyme Yankee Doodle is the best known use of the phrase.

Yankee Doodle went to town,
Riding on a pony;
He stuck a feather in his cap,
And called it macaroni.

There are many versions of the lyric. It has been suggested that this version originated with the British forces in the American War of Independence, in an attempt to mock the revolutionary militia. ‘Doodle’ was 18th century British slang for simpleton (a.k.a. noodle) and ‘macaroni’ was slang for a dandy or fop. The latter originated with the Macaroni Club, a group of London aesthetes who were anxious to establish their sophistication by demonstrating a preference for foreign cuisine. The thinking behind the theory is that the Yankees were so stupid as to believe that putting a feather in one’s cap would make them appear fashionable.

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THE STUDENTS’ COMPANION.

WORDS DENOTING NUMBERS. A number of sheep> flock, a number of whales > school, herrings >shoal, fish caught in a net > catch or haul, asses>pack, horses of ponies driven together > drove, cattle or swine feeding or driven together > herd, birds, bees or insects moving together > flight, wolves or hounds > pack, geese> gaggle, bees or locusts > swarm, bees living in the same place > hive, horses kept for riding, racing, breeding > stud, lions, monkeys > troop, also: lions > pride, rooks > building, mules > barren, young pigs, dogs, cats brought forth at one birth > litter, fowls, ducks > poultry, wild animals > menagerie or zoo, people at church > congregation, listeners to a concert or lecture > audience, people collected in the street > crowd, people gathered together for some common interest > gathering/assembly/society, people who gather together to work for some cause or common interest > coterie, a number of disorderly people > mob/rabble/canaille, a number of savages > horde, singers in church > choir, artistes or dancers > troupe, actors > company, persons of the same race, character, etc. > tribe, people following a funeral > cortege, a number of beautiful ladies > bevy, soldiers > army/battalion/regiment, sailors manning a ship > crew, a number of workmen, prisoners, thieves > gang, jurymen engaged on a case > jury/panel, a number of judges > bench, directors of a company > board, a collection of poems > anthology, a collection of books > library, pearls > rope, flowers > bouquet, flags > bunting, drawers > chest, ships > fleet, ships protected by warships > convoy, dried plants > herbarium, trees > clump/wood/forest, hay piled together > stack, a number of houses in a village > hamlet, stars grouped together > constellation, a collection of eggs > clutch, a set of furniture or rooms > suite, a mass of hair > shock/fell, a collection of tools > set, a set of bells placed together for a tune to be played on them > carillon.

With these may be added: a bale of cotton, a tuft of grass, a sheaf of corn (of arrows), a hand of bananas, a group of islands, a crate of fruit, a crate of crockery, a field of athletes, a nest of shelves

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-3

THE NEW FIRST AID IN ENGLISH.

The following words are less known cases of the plural of nouns:

1. A die = a small cube marked on each side with from one to six dots and used in pairs in gambling or in various other games. The plural is DICE (the same plural form is used for the game of chance for which this die (the dice) is/are taken.

A die = a device used for cutting out, forming, or stamping material, esp.: an engraved metal piece used for impressing a design onto a softer metal, as in coining money. The plural is DIES.

• A genius = a person with exceptional ability, esp of a highly original kind. The plural: GENIUSES.

A genius = a) the guiding spirit who attends a person from birth to death; or, b) the guardian spirit of a place, group of people or institution; a demon, a jinn. The plural: GENII.

• A shot= an instant of shooting. Also: other cases of a countable nouns (in sports, <a ball or puck that is kicked, hit, or thrown toward or into a goal>( etc.). The plural: SHOTS

When used as an uncountable noun: a) the objects (called ammunition) that are shot from cannons and other old-fashioned weapons. Or, b) used in the meaning “a chance that something will happen or will be achieved” <The horse has a 12 to 1 shot of winning? And <It’s a 10 to 1 shot that he’ll be on time>. The plural: SHOT.

• A penny – The plural PENNIES – when you’ve got two or more coins each being a penny, and PENCE – when a coin or a sum is meant <a two-pence coin>, <he has ten pence in his pocket>.
• ‘A cannon” used a single gun has the plural CANNONS. In the meaning “heavy weaponry” (a collection of weapons) the plural is CANNON.
• DOZEN has the singular form when a group of 12 people or things are meant. In the meaning “large numbers of people or things, the form is that of the plural. Cf.: <two dozen eggs>, <people entered the park in/by the dozens>, or <the shop sells dozens and dozens of kinds of tea>.

THE GENDER OF ENGLISH NOUNS. In each pair of words, the first element stands for the masculine, the second – for the feminine gender:

Giant-giantess, marquis-marchioness, ogre-ogress, bachelor-spinster, cob (a male swan)-pen (a female swan), proprietor-proprietrix, sloven-slut, sultan-sultana, wizard-witch, drake-duck, hart (a male red deer)-hind (a female red deer), stag-hind, boar-sow, buck-doe, colt-filly, steer-heifer, bullock-heifer, stallion-mare, Billy-goat, Nanny-goat.

The reference book I use suggests the variant “governess” as a female opposite to “tutor”. I’d rather stay cautious using “governess” when the word “tutor” means “a private teacher”. I believe the word “tutor” can be successfully applied to both male and female teachers.

Another point of caution is the opposition “blackfellow-gin” – respectively meaning an Australian male and female aborigines. Though the words have been reclaimed to some extent by the aborigines to describe themselves, but their use by other groups is nowadays considered racially offensive. The same holds true with the opposition “a brave” (a native American warrior) and “a squaw” (a native American married woman). To say nothing of the opposition “Negro-Negress”. It was socially accepted half a century ago, which isn’t the case at present.

Some students of English treat as the masculine and feminine opposition kindred names of persons — of the type: Cecil-Cecilia, Charles-Charlotte, Clarence-Clara, Francis-Frances, Henry-Henrietta, John-Joan, Patrick-Patricia.

TITBITS OF ENGLISH-2

HOW GOOD IS YOUR ENGLISH?

Knowing how English place names originated is an indispensable precondition for a learner to “feel” the country. I’ve got a towel on which some sights of Sheffield are pictured. The borders of the towel are lined with sheaves. Is it because the designers of the towel are hinting that the origin of the city name is linked to sheaves of wheat grown in the field? Maybe, yes. Although, etymologists give a slightly different explanation: the original settlement later known as Sheffield, was located on the field at the River Sheaf.

Etymologies may be disputed, but some things are clear enough. When you look at the map of England, you’ll see dozens of geographical names. The following list represents the names of Old English, Latin, Celtic, and Dutch origin.  Which of the four elements can you recognize in the italicized parts of these place names?

Aberfan // Exeter // Margate // Lowestoft // Fosbridge // Avonmouth // Tamworth // Llangollen // Stockport //Sheffield // Caithness // Boscombe //Cromford // Inverary //Stanton // Leicester // Stratford // Lincoln

I’ll give the key at the end of the article. Meanwhile, here’s another list of some place names with explanations.

DOVER – from the name of the river on which it stands. The word “dwfr” means “the waters” in modern Welsh.

HASTINGS – OE “haesting ceaster” (the fortress belonging to the Hasting’s tribe).

SALISBURY – OE “salh” (willow), “burgh” (fortress).

BRISTOL – OE, in Middle Ages: BRICGSTOW  (a place by the bridge).

NORWICH – OE “north” + “wic” (trading centre, harbour).

WAKEFIELD – there exist two versions of its origin: a) a field owned by Waca (a proper name), and 2) from OE “waca” (festival) = an open place where a festival is held.

HOWARTH / HAWORTH – from OE “hoh” (high) and “worth” (enclosure).

BIRMINGHAM – OE, Beormin (a clan whose chief is a person named Beorma + “gaham” (home).

LEICESTER – OE, “leigh”, also “ligera”, “lede’ (name of a clan) + “ceaster” (fortress, fortification).

NOTTINGHAM – OE, “Notting” (originally, “Snots”) + “gaham” (home).  The initial “S” in “Snots” was lost in the 12^th century due to the influence of Anglo-Saxon French, to which the combination “sn” is alien.

LEEDS – in Anglo-Saxon times “Loidis”, later “Ledes” The Anglo-Saxonization of the Celtic name “Ladenses” (“people living by the quickly flowing river”) from Celtic “lato” – “run”. Two of the oldest roads in Leeds are KIRKGATE (=churchgate) and BRIGGATE (=the road towards the bridge). In place names with second parts “-thorp” and “-croft” these parts mean respectively “an outlying farm” and “a small enclosed field”.

BRADFORD – OE, “Bradeford” (the broad ford).

SCARBOROUGH – from the name of a Viking chief ”Skardi” (965) + Old Norse “borg” (a fortress).

HARROGATE – Old Norse, “horgr” (a heap of stones, a cairn) + “gata” (street).

BINGLEY—OE, from “Bynna” (a name of a person) + “leah” (woodland clearing).

MANCHESTER – the name Manchester originates from the Latin name Mamucium or its variant Mancunio. These names are generally thought to represent a Latinization of an original Brittonic name. The generally accepted etymology of this name is that it comes from Brittonic *mamm- (“breast”, in reference to a “breast-like hill”).

LIVERPOOL – OE, “liver” (thick, muddy) + “pol” (a pool, a creek).

As for the components of the place names listed at in the beginning, here’s the key:

1. Old English: Worth (farm), Combe  (a hollow), Ham (home), Field (clearing), Stan (stone)
2. Celtic: Aber (river mouth), Avon (water), Ex (water), Llan (church), Inver (river mouth)
3. Danish: Ness (headland), Gate (a way), Ford (estuary), Holm (river flat), Toft (farm)
4. Latin: Cester (camp), Strata (paved road), Port (harbour), Fos(sa) – (ditch), Col (colony)

TITBITS OF ENGLISH

At different times I received these books as presents from my very good friend in England. In a short gift note put inside one of the books, the friend wrote the following: “… When I was in primary school, we were brought up on these books, and as a teacher I have often used them as reference books. I thought they might serve you and your students as trusty companions too.”

I teach students no longer (at least, officially), so the best way of popularising these delicious morsels of English could be to read the books and upload the stuff that might be interesting and useful for readers. Let’s start.

EVERYDAY PHRASES.

1.”To go down the aisle” has been used, for many years, to imply getting married. It is a mistaken expression as brides do not walk down the aisle but along the central passage of the church known as “nave”. The aisles are on the left and right of the church, running parallel with the nave.

In the theatre, the phrase “to have them rolling in the aisles” means that the audience are laughing so uncontrollably at the performance that those near the passageways, of aisles, are almost falling “in stitches” out of their seats on to the floor.

2. “An albatross around one’s neck” refers to the guilt one has to bear, which may be with one for a long time, for something one has done wrong.

The albatross is a remarkable sea bird with an 11-14 ft (3-4 m) wingspan, which enables it to sail with and against the wind, without visible wing strokes, for half an hour or more at a time. These birds can circle the globe in eighty days. They make use of the Roaring Forties (a tract of ocean between roughly 40 and 50 degrees latitude south characterized by strong westerly winds and rough seas also : these winds) and other trade winds, only landing on remote islands to breed. They can live to over thirty years of age, although some are believed to have reached seventy.

According to nautical superstition, it was considered unlucky to kill an albatross as these birds were believed to embody the souls of departed mariners (see Coleridge’s well-known poem The Ancient Mariner, which tells the story of a sailor who kills an albatross. When this brings bad luck to his ship, the dead bird is hung round his neck by his shipmates as a sign of his guilt. Although he repents, and is eventually forgiven, his conscience continues to distress him. The albatross remains with him in spirit, his guilt weighs heavily on him, like a lead weight around his neck, eben though he goes from land to land warning others against the cruelty of killing God’s creatures.

3. “To upset the apple cart“. This phrase is first recorded in use in 1796. It was adapted for everyday use to describe the spoiling of someone’s carefully laid plans, or some unexpected intervention which leads to a state of disorder and confusion.

Until the 19th century roads were generally rough and streets were narrow. For country people, the mere act of getting themselves and their goods to market safely over considerable distances was quite an achievement. One can imagine how annoyed they must have been when the carts containing their precious produce were toppled over, particularly if they had perishable items such as apples, which would come damaged when scattered and ruin the hopes of a profitable sale.

OH, ENGLISH, MY LOVE…

This entry is going to be about professions, namely about those of a teacher and a translator. They were the professions I sought so eagerly in my youth, and the ones in which I have fulfilled myself.

When I was entering the English Language Department at the pedagogical institute in 1966, it was only because there was a “translators’ group” (section) there. At that time, I wasn’t particularly attracted by teaching, and I hoped – actually, as hoped all the ten students who made the group – to find a more interesting job after graduation: that of a translator. While the “normal” groups used to have about 20 weekly hours of English, we as “translators,” had 26 – six additional hours were Translation proper, and they were taught by lecturers who once had been interpreters but, with time, moved to “quieter waters” of university teaching. I loved their tutorials. Unlike other teachers, who made emphasis on communist ideology clad in English vocabulary, they selected original English and American texts for their practical lessons and focused on listening comprehension – recordings made by native speakers. I must admit that the texts and recordings were not altogether modern, but such authors as Oscar Wilde, James Aldridge, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck or John Cheever towered over many other men of letters in their countries, and they were also okay-ed by the Soviet censorship, so the “translators” exploited them to the fullest. The depth of the language into which we immersed thanks to our teachers generated our love towards and of the language. “Oh English, my love, oh English, my subject, to thee I always turn…” chanted we in chorus during the commencement while saying farewell to our alma mater.

I was sparked to love teaching when I was in my third year at the institute.  Then I had my two-month teaching practice at a secondary school. I knew English well, I had deep-seated respect for students and could impart my knowledge to them. The students loved their young teacher. I was basking in their love and was eager to remain in that capacity.

It so happened that I after working as a lecturer, with a PhD degree, for twenty years, I worked as a translator for another two decades. With both dreams materialized, I was really a happy professional.

As I see it now, the job of a teacher is all downhill. Poorly paid, the profession doesn’t attract those who are knowledgeable and ambitious. The average entry grade required for entering pedagogical universities in Ukraine is the lowest among all other higher educational institutions. It means that the applicants were far from the best at their secondary schools, and I’m convinced that a teacher will be no more demanding to his pupils than he was demanding to himself when he was a pupil (although, in our case, the feminine pronouns “she”, “her” and “herself” would sound more true to life when teaching is discussed, because most of the staff are women).  With online teaching and its further digitalization, the role of supervisors has been diminishing. TEACHING IS ON THE WANE.

The same tendency of a profession’s decay may be observed with translation. The ever-developing automated speech recognition, machine translation and voice synthesis make it possible to effect in the future not only the written translation but also the oral interpretation WITHOUT ANY HUMAN PARTICIPATION. It may be disputed how distant that future is, but the trend is very clear.

I’m not at all surprised at this turn of things. In the past, quite a number of jobs were taken over by technology or given the boot because they were no more in demand: chimney sweeps, lamplighters, clock-winders, milkmen, log drivers (Ukrainian: “бокораші”), elevator operators, linotype operators, switchboard operators, typists. At some point there existed in Britain such an exotic job as a knockerrupper: before the alarm clock was invented in the middle of the 19^th century, people could hire a knockerrupper to shoot peas at their windows or tap the glass with long poles, so the people didn’t oversleep for work. Town criers were in charge of screaming important news from street corners. There had been “stinky” jobs before flush toilets and sewage systems were introduced: “necessary women” (their function was to clear chamber pots in affluent people’s homes) or “gong farmers” who used to remove human waste from privies and cesspools.

Interestingly, the 19-century England saw “lectors” who would read some important pieces of information to a group of employees while those employees were busy doing the job assigned to them. Later the lectors were removed because, as it turned out, they distracted the people at work.

In my time, there was a mostly unpaid, though “honorable,” job in the Soviet Union – that of a “political information functionary” (my version of the Ukrainian “політінформатор” or “лектор товариства Знання”), whose duty was to “explain” the policy of the Communist party to less educated groups of people. For obvious reasons, the job went belly up.

Returning to the professions of a teacher and a translator, I want to say that, though being saddened at their decline, I’m not in despair. What will always remain with me, will be my love of English, the subject of my life.

Some Jocular Questions and Answers

Q: What do you say when you are comforting a grammar nazi? A: There, Their, They’re

Q: What is Black and white and read (red) all over? A: A newspaper

Q: “What letter of the alphabet has got lots of water?” A: “The C”

Q: “What letter of the alphabet is always waiting in order?” A: “The Q. (queue)

Q: What begins with T, ends with T and has T in it? A: A teapot.

Q: What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? A: Short

Q: How do you get ten English teachers to agree on the best teaching method? A: Shoot nine of them.

Q: What’s a teacher’s favorite nation? A: Expla-nation.

Q: Name a bus you can never enter? A: A syllabus

Q: Is there a word in the English language that uses all the vowels? A: Unquestionably!

Q: What is the longest word in the English language? A: Smiles (there’s a “mile” between the first and last letters)