Language
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I cannot think of a word that has undergone greater change during the course of my lifetime than the plain monosyllable "hack." "Hack" entered my language, like much of my early vocabulary, through the medium of baseball. "He took a good hack at that fastball;" "he's up there hacking away." A hack was a hard…
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A matamata is a species of turtle found in South America. It's odd looking, even for a turtle. The word matamata is an example of a reduplicative. It is of unknown etymology. A kurgan is a tumulus or mound erected over a grave, at first in the southern Asian steppes (4th century BCE) and…
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Calipash is the "gelatinous greenish material found underneath the upper half of a turtle's shell." Perhaps this word is well known to turtle-fanciers, but it's brand new to me. Calipash is "esteemed as a delicacy" but should not be confused with calipee, which is a fatty gelatinous light-yellow substance found immediately above the turtle's lower…
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Turkeys, I was recently surprised to learn, come in two distinct species. The familiar one is the "wild turkey", Meleagris gallopavo, the big bird that in broods of twenty or so, wanders around my house and garden, eating seeds, insects, acorns and apples and occasionally leaving behind a fancy feather or two. They're new to…
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I first heard the word "spatchcock" at a Thanksgiving celebration some four or five years ago. The turkey, I was told, had been "spatchcocked." To be absolutely honest, I thought someone was pulling my leg. To my pure and undefiled ears, the word "spatchcock" sounded more than a little obscene. Certainly not something that a…
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I grew up in a baseball-saturated world. The radio voices of Red Barber and Connie Desmond were the water in which I and my family and my neighbors swum. It was therefore natural that I early absorbed the vocabulary of baseball and that many words carried baseball meaning to me long before I recognized their…
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We watched a Netflix series called Feel Good. I suppose that the series title must be taken ironically, because throughout the first two seasons, not one character seemed to feel even slightly positive or healthy. Just about everyone was miserable — their unhappiness usually linked to romantic or more specifically sexual dissatisfaction. The program introduced…
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Regular readers of this metablague know that Dr. M. has resumed his study of Italian. Foolish say some, but heroic say others, because to try to master a language when one is an octogenarian is truly daunting. However, native speakers of English, even older ones, can, if patient, slowly acquire Italian. Its sounds are similar…
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I've just learned a new word that and I'm trying to figure out how to work it into the conversation. Some sample usages: "Have you pandiculated today? How often?" "I'm not pleased when you pandiculate at the dinner table." "There were a bunch of kids at the museum today, and half of them were pandiculating."…
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Sometime during the hippie period, say the early 1970s, I was driving the big green Dodge station wagon solo from who knows where to somewhere else, and as was my custom in those turbulent days, I picked up a hitchhiker — a mighty scrawny young guy. He seemed to be in bad shape — underfed…