Weird Word Wednesday!

Tags

Albert Einstein, cleaning, Diet Pepsi, Greek, Groucho Marx, history, humor, rewards, vending machine, weird word, weird word wednesday

We have two loyal readers and the Greeks to thank for today’s Weird Word Wednesday. That word is paraprosdokian. 

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech “that sets us up to expect one thing, but ends on a surprising semantic twist.” Thanks to alphadictionary.com for that helpful explanation. Like this:

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

I experienced a paraprosdokian just this morning and didn’t even know it. It’s finally warmed up here in Wisconsin, so today I planned on opening up the basement door, hauling our junk outside, and vacuuming and sweeping the walls and ceiling. Sounds like fun, right? Wouldn’t you think all that effort deserves a little reward? Me, too.

So after my morning workout, I went to the vending machine to buy a Diet Pepsi. I thought about how dusty and tired I’d be after hours in the basement, and how refreshing a DP would be. I stuck my money in the vending machine – it spat back a nickel or two, but finally cooperated. I pressed the tab for a Diet Pepsi – kaching! – anticipating the satisfying thunk of the bottle falling into the tray below. But my only reward was a little red light that said “OUT OF STOCK.”

I pressed the tab a couple more times, just in case the machine was being ornery. No dice. I flipped the change lever. Once. Twice. No dice. I felt a mini black cloud coalescing over my head – the nerve of this machine to deprive me of my reward!

Bill Watterson

I gave up and lugged my gym bag home. When I started researching the history and uses of paraprosdokian I found the one that applied to me:

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Get how the twist is amusing? Groucho Marx used a paraprosdokian when he said “I had a wonderful evening – but this wasn’t it.”

Or Albert Einstein, who supposedly said ““The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Paraprosdokian comes from two Greek words, “against,” and “expectation.” There are even websites devoted to them, like this one.

This short clip shows how to pronounce this tongue twister. I’m off to clean the basement…

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Weird Word Wednesday!

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eating, food, grandma, humor, marshmallows, Thanksgiving, weird word, writing

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so I thought it would be fun to share a holiday-related word. Get ready, because it’s a doozy! Today’s Weird Word is:

Don’t choke on your turkey – it’s just the botanical term for marshmallow. Before I get off track, Althea officinalis comes from the Greek word althein, “to heal.”

Way back when, juice from the roots of the actual Marsh Mallow plant were cooked with egg whites and sugar. The resulting gelatinous mixture was then whipped and set to harden, making a candy that eased the pain of sore throats.

The marshmallows we eat now don’t contain any Marsh Mallow at all. They’re basically sugar, syrup and chemicals. But don’t tell my grandma that!

Sweet Potato Casserole

When Thanksgiving rolled around, she went all out – turkey, stuffing, cranberries, brown-and-serve buns with butter, apple pie, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie, and my all-time unfavorite, canned yams with browned marshmallows on top.

Can you say ack? Ack, ack, ack! 

Every time that dish rolled around, I fought the gag reflex. Something about the squishiness of the yams combined with the fake puffy sweetness of the toasted marshmallows just set me off.

And sure enough, one of my uncles would “conveniently” pass the dish around one last time and make sure he set it right in front of my plate, where it would torment me the entire meal. Was that a marshmallow winking maliciously at me??

Even now, I’m not a fan of Althea officinalis. When summertime rolls around and we make s’mores, I omit the marshmallows, virtuously calling them “Diet S’mores” and eating myself silly on chocolate. And when people toast their marshmallows long enough for them to turn black, it’s the Thanksgiving Gag Reflex all over again for me.

I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving – may your day be filled with family and food, and an abundance of health and good cheer. Just skip the marshmallows, please.

For those of you who thrive on Althea officinalis’s squishy softness, here’s the recipe for Sweet Potato Casserole.

 

 

Weird Word Wednesday

Tags

business, business meetings, creative writing, efficiency, exhaustion, humor, karoshi, meetings, weird word, work, workplace etiquette

Welcome to Weird Word Wednesday, a wonderful time when words highlight the folly in our lives.

Today’s word is karoshi, a Japanese word meaning “death caused by overwork or job-related exhaustion.”

This morning I was listening to Dave and Carole at 96.5 WLKH in Milwaukee. They discussed the Wall Street Journal‘s article “New Office Flashpoint: Who Gets the Conference Room?”

http://wklh.com/dave-and-carole/conference-room-conflict-101514/

Seems there are way too many meetings in corporate America, with all sorts of people abusing conference room privileges: they kick out underlings, overstay their allotted time, or take up temporary residence, treating the room as if it’s their personal office.

Sounds stressful, doesn’t it? Thankfully, all this isn’t causing karoshi in the halls, or at least not that I’ve heard of. But I can see how all this bad behavior could contribute to job-related exhaustion.

Is this your office?

Dave and Carole shared a statistic that said meetings shouldn’t have more than seven people and last longer than 90 minutes. That’s about 60 minutes too long for me!

The WSJ article went on to say that “senior executives are spending an average (of) 28 hours in meetings each week, and middle managers spend about 21 hours.” That’s enough to cause karoshi by itself!

In “5 Simple Steps to More Efficient, Effective Meetings,” Victor Lipman goes further, suggesting that preparation and a pared-down attendee list go a long way toward streamlining meetings.

My favorite item on Lipman’s list is #4: Don’t start one second late. Stragglers will soon get the idea that the world will keep spinning without them, and you’ll develop a reputation for promptness.

What kinds of meeting mismanagement is your office prone to?

Is this causing exhaustive karoshi?

Weird Word Wednesday!

Tags

Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes, children, Horologicon, humor, Mark Forsyth, monsters, snudge, weird word

Last Christmas, a dear friend gave me Mark Forsyth’s Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language. It’s delightful, filled with “the most extraordinary words in the English language, arranged according to what hour of the day you might need them.”

How handy!

I came across a word that reminded me of a stage our son went through when he was about two or three years old:

When bedtime arrived, he became concerned that somehow, monsters would slither from their lairs and ooze squishily under his bed. No amount of explaining or reassuring soothed him.

According to an article I found in Parents magazine, this is fairly normal behavior for toddlers, who “don’t always understand everything in their environment.” Parents are encouraged to be creative, which we were: I bought a can of rose-scented bathroom spray, printed out a photo of a monster I found online, and typed the words “MONSTER SPRAY” at the bottom. The whole thing got taped cleverly to the can, and we doused the underside of Steven’s bed with this gaggy concoction. Take that, monsters!

If only I had known, had owned Horologicon back then! Instead of the scary-sounding monster, I could have called this imaginary creature by its rightful name:

According to Horologicon, a snudge is “one that lurks under a bed, to watch an opportunity to rob the house.” (1699)

Our creativity seemed to work, because soon after, our son’s fears subsided and our Monster Spray found its proper home in the bathroom. The snudges were banished, and our son’s room stopped smelling like a flower shop!

by Bill Watterson

A Worried Weird Word Wednesday

Tags

children. writing, Dani Shapiro, parenting, raising children, weird word, Yiddish

I just finished reading Devotion, a memoir by Dani Shapiro. A friend suggested I read Shapiro’s best-seller Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life. I enjoyed that so much that I’ve been on a Shapiro kick, reserving more of her books at the library.

At the heart of Devotion is Shapiro’s quest to “find meaning in a constantly changing world.” Fairly heavy stuff, but Shapiro addresses the topic with a blend of humor, seriousness and examples from her life that clarify her journey.

Our Weird Word part arrives in chapter 88, after Shapiro shares – throughout several chapters – the agony of dealing with her son’s infantile spasms. Extremely serious, these spasms affected Jacob as an infant. Thankfully, medication saved his life, but now that Jacob is in kindergarten, Shapiro wrestles with letting go. Jacob can barely ride his bike down the block or kick a soccer ball with friends, when Shapiro’s hyper-vigilance kicks in, becoming a sort of uber Helicopter Mom whose constant presence is the only thing – she thinks – standing between Jacob and certain disaster.

It’s very understandable, but Shapiro realizes this excessive worry has turned a corner, becoming unhealthy.

“But still – I quietly worried,” she writes. “I zorged, a Yiddish word…which means ‘to create unnecessary anguish.'”

In the middle of a serious passage, I had to smile. There was my Weird Word Wednesday on the page. Zorged!

Raise your hand if you’ve zorged now and then….Yep, me, too.

It’s natural for parents to worry. It’s understandable that Shapiro would feel a sense of hyper-vigilance about Jacob’s well-being. But she realizes she’s doing him more harm than good when she crosses the line, her almost constant presence in his life an attempt to make sure nothing bad happens.

“Vigilance was essential. Vigilance was the only answer in the face of all that could possibly go wrong,” she writes. “Wasn’t it? I tried to make sure that my anxiety didn’t rub off on Jacob, but I’m sure it did.”

In other words, zorging wasn’t helping. At all.

The antidote, Shapiro found, was to live in the present moment. No zorging about what might – or probably wouldn’t –  happen in the future. And it was totally useless to worry about what already happened, because, well, it was over and done with.

How about you? Has zorging thrown a monkey wrench in your life? What have you done to get the monkey off your back?

 

 

 

The Sartorial Splendor of WWW

Tags

Coco Chanel, creative writing, dressing, fashion, grandma, humor, Paris France, snogly geared, weird word, well-dressed people

My grandma used to say that the older she got, the faster time went. I’m not ready for a rocking chair yet, but I’m starting to know what she means. Every two weeks, I stop at the credit union to get money for grocery shopping. The days between paydays seem to buzz by at lightning speed, two weeks passing by like two hours.

There I was again, waiting my turn in line. This time, people watching kept me occupied, particularly a couple ahead of me. What surprised me was the woman’s feet – she wore pink bedroom slippers, the kind with fuzzy fringe around the top. Really? Really? 

Yes, there they were – an article of clothing that shouldn’t have left the house. (I admit – I have issues with this, which you can read more about here.) It made me think of a word that perfectly describes how one should be attired when leaving the house, an 18th-century doozy:

Snogly geared

Courtesy Google books

Remember this stuff?

My grandma usually wore a dress, sensible shoes with square heels, and carried a purse with those bitsy metal nibs on the bottom. Her “unmentionables” consisted of a girdle, complete with stockings that clipped to its legs. If it rained, she donned a plastic bonnet to protect her hair, set with rollers and Dippety-do.

Grandma was snogly geared.

It’s easy to find people who are snogly geared, because they stand out. Today I saw a man wearing a handsome plaid coat, cuffed wool slacks and polished black leather dress shoes. He caught my eye, and I appreciated the time and effort he put into his appearance.

Last year, we went to Paris, France, where I saw snogly geared taken to an extreme. We were the last in line to buy subway tickets, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a transvestite, waving a champagne bottle in one hand, a glass in the other.

Her long black hair swished across her red satin dress, and a feather boa wound itself flimsily across her shoulders. I noticed strappy sandals on some rather large feet, but had to give her credit – her toenails were lacquered the exact shade of her dress.

She asked me something in French, and when I shrugged, she smiled and tottered away, ankles wobbling as she headed up the steps.

Indeed, she was snogly geared, dressed for whatever her day had in store. No slippers here!

I leave you with a thought from fashion designer Coco Chanel, who said “Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”

Coco Chanel, from biography.com

It’s a Miffy, Squiffy Weird Word Wednesday

Tags

Benjamin Franklin, creative writing, Downton Abbey, history, humor, Jane Franklin, miffy, patience, squiffy, weird word, writing

Book of Ages

Over the holidays, I spent a lot of time reading. Thanks to a suggestion by Paul Huard, blogger at “The Shout Heard ‘Round the World,” I read Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore. Jane was Benjamin Franklin’s sister, mother of 12 children, and writer of many letters to her famous sibling.

When Jane wasn’t busy making soap, avoiding a revolution, or raising her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she poured out ideas on paper, giving us a wealth of information about her life as it unfolded.

Not all her children reached adulthood, and as Jane aged, she became the caretaker of several. Her husband, Edward Mecom, was a saddler who left the family financially broke. Two of Jane’s sons went insane, and later, Jane took in boarders to make ends meet.

Isn’t it understandable if Jane became a little cranky sometimes?

When Josiah Flagg, one of Jane’s grandsons, contacted his famous great-uncle Benjamin, hoping for some help establishing a career, Jane, according to Lepore, was mortified.

“Tho he is my Grandson & I wish him well settled to something he can git his Living by I am Angry with him for his Audacity in writing to you on such an Acount,” Jane wrote to Benjamin. She accused Josiah of having “too Proud a Spirit to conform to the occupation he was Taught” and refused to recommend him.

Lepore said Jane was “uncharacteristically uncharitable.” Later Jane relented, writing apologetically to Benjamin:

“I am sorry you are as it were forced to bare the Burden of soporting my whol Famely,” Jane said. “He is the son of a Dear worthy Child; his sister was Remarkably Dutyfull & affectionat to me & I wish him well but should never consented to his throwing himself upon you.”

Lepore said Jane “regretted having been so hard on (Josiah), in her first, and miffiest letter.”

What a wonderful word! According to dictionary.com, miffy means “touchy; inclined to take offense.”

Who hasn’t been a little miffy from time to time, especially where errant children are concerned?

Let’s meet miffy’s partner for today, squiffy.

Alfred (r) as the bus approaches…

We have the wildly popular PBS TV show Downton Abbey to thank for this gem. In Series Three, Episode Eight, Lord Grantham waves the authorities off his property by throwing his footman, Alfred, under the bus, albeit in very upper crust tones.

“I’m very much afraid to say he was a bit squiffy, weren’t you, Alfred?” Lord Grantham says, one regal eye on the authorities, the other on hapless Alfred, who is forced to nod in mute agreement.

Squiffy means “slightly drunk,” and in this case, Alfred was nothing of the sort, even though he manfully shoulders the blame without flinching. One would think he’d have a right to feel miffy about this turn of events, but wasn’t.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “He that can have patience can have what he will.”

Royal Helicopter Mom Storms Weird Word Wednesday…

Tags

Austria, France, French Revolution, history, humor, Marie Antoinette, Marie Teresa, weird word, writing

I hear a lot about Helicopter Moms, those parents who hover over their children’s lives, micromanaging every play date and homework assignment. This isn’t a recent development, though. Stick with me as we learn more about this centuries-old bad habit…

I’m reading Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. It’s a nice look at the Austrian princess, born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna on November 2, 1755, the 15th child of Empress Maria Teresa and Emperor Francis Stephen.

The Emperor died in 1765, leaving Maria Teresa alone to find a husband for Maria Antonia, then 10. Our Weird Word Moment happens right around this time, as Fraser explains that “(Maria Teresa) allowed nothing, neither mourning nor Joseph’s promotion, to interrupt her sedulous policy of planning her children’s marriages.”

In this case, sedulous means “diligent in application or attention; persevering.” Hmmm…was Maria Teresa a Royal Helicopter Mom?

Back then among royals, marriage was serious business, more a means of cementing alliances between countries than finding a soul mate. Sure, love may have blossomed later…maybe…but that wasn’t the main ingredient of those marriages. According to CBC News, “personal affection and romance were secondary to…diplomatic and political reasons.”

Marie Antoinette

At the beginning of 1767, Maria Teresa had five daughters left to be married off. Fraser reports that she looked at Maria Antonia with “a critical eye,” noting the young girl’s crooked teeth, short-sighted eyes, and uneven shoulders. A system of “pelican” braces were installed to fix the first dilemma; the second received nothing short of a political spin: “short-sighted” was renamed “a misty look” and the uneven shoulders were remedied with clever padding.

Sedulously, Maria Teresa turned to the southwest, finding a mate for Maria Antonia in the form of the Dauphin of France, himself a sketchy prospect. Not his parents’ favorite, Louis Auguste was described as lacking in self-confidence, heavily built with a tin ear and myopic eyes.

These minor difficulties didn’t stop Maria Teresa. On May 16, 1770, when Maria Antonia was 14 and Louis Auguste was 15, the couple was married at Versailles. Fraser said an earlier marriage by proxy happened in April in Vienna.

Even though Maria Antonia, now Marie Antoinette, never saw her mother again, that didn’t stop Maria Teresa from continuing her sedulous behavior. Letters to her daughter prodded her on proper court behavior, how to handle Louis Auguste’s father, King Louis XV, and how to win over the French public. Not a letter went by without some sort of motherly/Queenly advice, helicopter parenting from afar.

“It’s not your beauty, which frankly is not very great,” wrote Maria Teresa in one letter. “Nor your talents, nor your brilliance (you know perfectly well that you have neither).” 

Ouch! Maybe Marie built the Petit Trianon, her beautiful estate on the grounds of Versailles to not only escape court life, but her mother’s stringent missives! We visited her getaway this September – compared to the over-the-top grandeur of Versailles, the Petit Trianon seems almost simplistic in its design. With only one story, the palace spreads out, rooms filled with light and beautiful furniture.

Living room at Petit Trianon

By 1793, both Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were dead, victims of the barbarity of the French Revolution. By then, the couple had learned to care for each other, having four children in the process.

And if she didn’t escape death, Marie Antoinette at least escaped the fate of her older sister, Maria Carolina. Their mother’s sedulous devotion to their marriage prospects resulted in Carolina marrying the “ill-educated but well-meaning” King Ferdinand.

“Although an ugly prince, he is not absolutely repulsive,” Maria Teresa attempted to console Carolina. “At least he does not stink.”

King Ferdinand

Weird Word Wednesday!

Tags

cheese making, food industry, hats, history, humor, religion, snood, strange word, turkey, weird word, writing

Welcome to Weird Word Wednesday! This gem was emailed by a young reader, and I’m glad she went out of her way to share with us. Today’s word is (drumroll, please…)

SNOOD

Snood

Officially, a snood is “the netlike hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman’s hair.” The word itself dates back to the 700s. Snoods traditionally have religious significance, worn as signs of modesty; in other cases, they served a practical purpose: they were an easy way to keep a woman’s hair from falling out in her face.

During World War II, fabric was rationed; as a result, hats weren’t the elaborate creations they had been at the turn of the century. Snoods came into fashion as a stylish hair covering that used less material, and could even be knitted at home.

Modern snood

Nowadays, snoods have been fashionably revamped. Some have “slid” from women’s heads, found around their necks instead. They make a fashion statement that I doubt women in the 700s even considered. I bought one from Lands’ End last year, and it makes our Wisconsin winters just a bit cozier!

Snoods still have their place in the technology and food industries They’re worn as head coverings in cheese making plants, and places where food is served. When I was a kid, the lunch ladies at my grade school wore snoods to protect us from accidentally ingesting any hair that fell into our tater tots.

Snoods are also an indicator of health – if you’re a turkey. That red, fleshy-looking piece of skin hanging over a turkey’s beak is, indeed, a snood. The snood turns bright red when a tom wants to attract a mate, changing to blue if the turkey is frightened. I’m envisioning toms with blue snoods being chased by angry females here! If the turkey isn’t feeling well, the snood turns pale.

So turkey or not, snoods definitely have their uses – here’s to happy Snood Wearers everywhere, and feel free to share any weird words you come across. I’d be glad to turn them into a feature for the next Weird Word Wednesday!

Weird Word Wednesday!

Tags

cultural differences, etiquette, friends, grammar, halch, handshake, hugging, restaurants, weird word

Welcome to Weird Word Wednesday! If you’re fortunate enough to live or work with a bunch of happy people, you’ll appreciate today’s weird word. Heck, today’s word just might pull you out of a funk if you give it a whirl!

Today’s great word is halch. It  means “to hug or embrace.” Our culture isn’t much for hugging at work, but I’ve noticed enough hugging in public to make me think that, overall, we’re a pretty happy nation.

We had dinner with friends recently at a wonderfully charming restaurant we’ve been to many times before. It was a while since we’d seen these great friends, so we halched as we greeted each other.

I’ve also seen groups of teenage girls, hugging like there’s no tomorrow, bouncing around with such enthusiasm that it’s enough to make me a little leery. Will I be pulled into their clutches if I get too close?

But which social situations demand a halch and when should we just settle for a handshake? Cultures around the world handle this differently, and here in the United States, it can get a little weird – I’ve been at events where I expected a handshake, but the person leaned in for a hug. This opens up a whole can of worms – just how long should the hug last? One arm or two? What if you’re the hugger and the huggee resists? It’s so much easier with family at Christmastime, isn’t it?

Sigh…all this thought for a simple halch! To sort it out, I did a little digging and came up with a source that’s pretty straightforward and sensible – at work, it’s best to stick with a handshake.

Lloyd’s excessive halching at the office created an awkward moment for Harold, who was unable to escape gracefully.

Here’s to halching – enjoy it in moderation!