Perambulate, perambulate, perambulate your craftTranslated into clear and simple English, our polysyllabic poem turned out to be Row, row, row your boat.
Placidly down the liquid solution.
Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically:
Existence is but a delusion.
These days my youthful adventure in oblique obfuscation and polysyllabic poetry has evolved into a challenging game of sesquipedalian Christmas songs. Here are 35 pompously inflated titles of verses that you hear and perhaps sing during the month of December. Name each tune. Your task is to translate each ponderous version back into its original, nonorchidaceous form.
Example: Cup-Shaped Instruments Fashioned of a Whitish Metallic Element = "Silver Bells"
For the answers, click here or scroll down.
© Richard Lederer
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for your fly-by-the-roof-of-the-mouth, user-friendly columnists to discourse on a subject as dear to our hearts as the American language -- why, we will gladly do so.
As American linguists, we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all words are created by human beings, that they are undeniably endowed with their creators' characteristics -- and that the three most important things in this world are life, liberty and the pursuit of wordplay.
So we hope you're at liberty in your life today to join us in this verbal Boston tea party to affirm the vitality and declare the autonomy of our humongous, bodacious American language.
John Adams was one of the first to lead the charge for American linguistic independence. In 1780 he called upon Congress to establish an academy for "correcting, improving and ascertaining the English language. . . . English," Adams declared, "is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age."
At the time Adams made that prediction, an obscure Connecticut schoolmaster was soon to become a one-man academy of American English. His name, now synonymous with "dictionary," was Webster. Noah Webster saw the untapped promise of the new republic, and, like a true-blue American, he capitalized on it. Beginning with his hugely successful American Spelling Book, first published in 1788, which sold more than 60 million copies, and culminating with his American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, Webster doggedly championed the American idiom.
In his "Dissertations on the English Language," published in 1789, Webster declared linguistic war on the King's English by declaring that, "as an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline."
In an 1813 letter, Thomas Jefferson echoed Webster and predicted that the vibrant young nation would need many new words. "Certainly so great growing a population," he wrote, "spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it answer its purpose of expressing all ideas. . . . The new circumstances under which we are placed call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore be formed."
Perhaps no one has celebrated this American dialect with more passion and vigor than the poet Walt Whitman. "The Americans are going to be the most fluent and melodious-voiced people in the world -- and the most perfect users of words," Whitman wrote in 1904. "The new world, the new times, the new people, the new vistas need a new tongue according -- yes, what is more, they will have such a new tongue--will not be satisfied until it is evolved."
Almost a hundred years later it's debatable whether Americans are "the most fluent and melodious-voiced people in the world," but there is no question that the American language is still evolving and we Americans are as linguistically creative as ever. Consider our invention, in the past 50 years of the likes of politically correct, quark, slam dunk, bad hair day, soccer mom, humongous, and sleazebag.
From the Age of Queen Anne, the British have thundered against what one of their magazines called “the torrent of barbarous phraseology” that poured from the new republic. The Monthly Mirror, for example, beat its breast over “the corruptions and
barbarisms which are hourly obtaining in the speech of our trans-Atlantic colonies.”
(Note the word “colonies,” despite the Treaty of Paris.)
The British playwright George Bernard Shaw observed, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” Returning from a trip through the United States, Shaw’s fellow playwright Oscar Wilde sneered, “We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.”
But our home-grown treasure, Mark Twain, put it all into perspective when he quipped about American English, as compared with British English: “The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company, and we own the bulk of the shares.”
© Charles Harrington Elster & Richard Lederer
At the end of the day the white man undertook to distribute the spoils, consisting of several buzzards and turkeys. He suggested to his co-hunter, “Either I take the turkeys and you the buzzards, or you take the buzzards and I take the turkeys.”
At this point the Native American complained, “You talk buzzard to me. Now talk turkey.” And ever since, “to talk turkey” has meant to tell it like (as) it is.
Let’s talk turkey about our Native American heritage. Suppose you had been one of the early explorers or settlers of North America. You would have found many things in your new land unknown to you. The handiest way of filling voids in your vocabulary would have been to ask local Native Americans what words they used. The early colonists began borrowing words from friendly Native Americans almost from the moment of their first contact, and many of those names have remained in our everyday language:
Animals: caribou (Micmac), chipmunk (Ojibwa), moose (Algonquian), muskrat (Abenaki), porgy (Algonquian), opossum (Algonquian), woodchuck (Narraganset), raccoon (Algonquian), skunk (Algonquian)Some of our loveliest place names began life as Native American words -- Susquehanna, Shenandoah, Rappahannock. Such names are the stuff of poetry. William Penn did not know "a language spoken in Europe that hath words of more sweetness and greatness." To Walt Whitman, Monongahela "rolls with venison richness upon the palate."Food: squash (Natick), pecan (Algonquian), hominy (Algonquian), pone (Algonquian), pemmican (Cree), succotash (Narraganset)
People: sachem (Narraganset), squaw (Massachuset), papoose (Narraganset), mugwump (Natick)
Native American life: moccasin (Chippewa), toboggan (Algonquian), tomahawk (Algonquian), wigwam (Abenaki), tepee (Dakota), caucus (Algonquian), pow-wow (Narraganset), wampum (Massachuset), bayou (Choctaw), potlatch (Chinook), hogan (Navajo), hickory (Algonquian), kayak (Inuit), totem (Ojibwa)
If you look at a map of the United States, you will realize how freely settlers used words of Indian origin to name our states, cities, towns, mountains, lakes, rivers, ponds, and creeks. Four of our five Great Lakes and 25 -- exactly half -- of our states have names that were borrowed from Native American words.
So much for talking turkey. Centuries ago, the Pilgrims found in America a wild fowl somewhat similar in appearance to a guinea fowl they had known back in England -- a fowl that acquired its name because it was first imported by way of Turkey.
Two of my favorite turkey parts are the snood -- the pendulous skin over the beak of the bird -- and the wattle -- the fleshy lobe or appendage hanging down from the throat or chin of certain birds, including the domestic turkey.
Turkeys are poultry, domesticated birds kept for eggs or meat. We owe our English word "poultry" to "poulet," a word used in early forms of French to mean "a very young chicken or fowl." That early French word developed from the even older noun "poul," which meant "a male chicken." Like many other words in both English and French, "poul" ultimately traces to a Latin word, in this case "pullus," which meant "the young of a chicken or animal." So as you can see, "poultry" is no spring chicken. It has been part of English since at least the 14th century.
Happy turkey day to all!
© Richard Lederer
A turning point in every day,The answer is noon. Half the word is on ("haste away!"), and half is no ("bids me falter"). Together they form a word that reads the same forwards and backwards.
Reversed I do not alter.
One half of me says haste away!
The other bids me falter.
A palindrome is a word, a "word row," a sentence, or a longer statement that communicates the same message when the letters of which it is composed are read in reverse order. Palindromes make us exult, "Ah ha!" "Oh, ho!" "Hey, yeh!" "Yo boy!," "Yay!" "Wow!" :Tut-Tut!" "Har-har!Rah-rah!" "Heh-heh!" "Hoorah! Har! Ooh!" and "Ahem! It's time. Ha!" rather than scratching your head like a dud, boob or poop and mumbling "huh?"
You are a palindromic child. Even before you were a tot playing with your sis and pup, you were the offspring of mom (a mama) and pop (a papa), or dad (a dada). And you are a special palindromic offspring because you are living in the fourth palindromic year of the past 11. You remember 1991, and MIM and MM -- possible Roman numeral representations of 1999 and 2000 and the last time that Arabic or Roman palindromic years will ever again occur consecutively. And now you've arrived at 2002. Don't hold your breath until the next palindromic - or calendromic -- year. 2112 won't be here for another 110 years.
In the loopy universe of plaindromes you'll find everything from the primordial MADAM, I'M ADAM (Adam's introduction of himself, in English, of course - how convenient - to Eve, the mother of all palindromes), to the epiphanous WON TON? NOT NOW, to the elegant A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL, PANAMA, to the political STAR COMEDY BY DEMOCRATS, to the hiply contemporary MEN, I'M EMINEM, to the sinister NO, I TAIL A TERRORIST, SIR - OR RETALIATION!, to the wifty, wiggy, loopy, lunatic GO HANG A SALAMI; I'M A LASAGNA HOG, to the astonishingly long yet coherent DOC, NOTE, I DISSENT. A FAST NEVER PREVENTS A FATNESS. I DIET ON COD.
Alistair Reid expresses what may be the very heart of the fascination for matters palindromic: "The dream which occupies the tortuous mind of every palindromist is that somewhere within the confines of the language lurks the Great Palindrome, the nutshell which not only fulfills the intricate demands of the art, flowing sweetly in both directions, but which also contains the Final Truth of Things."
Palindromania is not a disorder but, rather, an evolutionary, passionate effort to cobble letters into order and truth. I say "evolutionary" because I believe that in our species is evolving a heightened wonderment at and facility with the universe of letters. We are getting better at making the alphabet dance.
No wonder that palindromes are summus, palindromic Latin for "the highest, uppermost, the top" and anagrammatically exult, "SPLENDOR AM I!"
© Richard Lederer
The life of Robert Burns might have furnished the plot for a romantic novel. He was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage of two rooms at Alloway, near the southwestern coast of Scotland. His father was an unsuccessful farmer, and young Robert was assigned heavy work in the fields when he was only 11. The strain resulted in a progressive heart disease that was to prove fatal at the age of 37.
In 1786, Burns's life reached its low point. In despair over his poverty and the rejection by the woman he had hoped to marry, Burns resolved to emigrate from Scotland to Jamaica. He gathered together some of his poems, hoping to sell them for a sum sufficient to pay the expenses of his journey. The result was a small volume of poetry titled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, and its impact changed the course of English verse.
Burns bought his ticket to Jamaica from the 20 pounds he earned from the sale of his little book. The night before he was to sail he wrote "Farewell to Scotland," which he intended to be his last song composed on Scottish soil. But in the morning he changed his mind, led partly by some dim foreshadowing of the result of his literary adventure.
In the late 18th century, with its emphasis on elegance, style and refined manners, the rustic, simple lyrics of Burns seemed incongruous. But Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect took all of Scotland by storm and was universally praised by critics. The newly famous author was dubbed The Peasant Poet and The Plowman Poet, and he became instantly lionized as a natural singer and rustic philosopher. Ultimately Burns's work established him as the Scottish national poet and the primary bridge between the rational satire of the 18th century and the exuberant romanticism of the 19th. Perhaps the most renowned of Burns's poems is "To a Mouse," subtitled "on turning her up in her nest with a plow, November 1785." Addressing the "wee beastie," the speaker apologizes for destroying the mouse's nest. Gradually, the parallels between man and mouse emerge:
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,Almost two centuries after they were composed, the power of Burns's statement about the human condition struck a Nobel Prize winning American novelist. John Steinbeck crafted a simple and luminous story about two itinerant agricultural workers, Lenny and George, whose dreams of owning their own farm are crushed. He turned to Burns's statement "The best-laid schemes o' mice and men/Gang aft a- gley" (often go awry) and titled his novel Of Mice and Men. Now, two centuries after his death, Robert Burns sings to us in another special way, for one of his lyrics is the first that many of us hear each year. On New Year's Eve, when the clock strikes midnight, the song that many bands around the world often play consists of verses written by Bobby Burns:
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
For promised joy.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,As William Archibald Spooner never said, "Happy New Year! It's nice to have you near."
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld land syne?For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
© Richard Lederer
To celebrate the new year, I'm offering you brief definitions of words that have the sound noo, or occasionally n(y)oo, in them. Sometimes the word will contain the actual letters new, as in newspaper. In other instances, the word will have a different spelling, as in pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a 45-letter hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian word that means "black lung disease."
Okay, we'll start with words that themselves start with the sound of the adjective new. I'll lay some brief definitions on you, and you give me each word.
As an additional challenge, here are more words containing the sound noo or nyoo, but not at the beginning of the word:
Answers 1. nude 2. neuter 3. noon 4. noodle 5. noose 6. nutritious 7. gnu 8. newt 9. pneumonia 10. neurosis 11. nuance 12. nubile 13. neutron 14. nuclear 15. neuralgia 16. (Paul) Newman 17. (Isaac) Newton 18. renew 19. annual 20. insinuation, innuendo 21. Inuit 22. Chattanooga 23. Snoopy 24. snooty 25. snooze 26. sinew 27. innumerable 28. tenuous 29. ingenue 30. (Spiro) Agnew
© Richard Lederer
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