Word of the day: malarkey

From a New York Times editorial:

Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. would not sit still for a parade of misleading and often blatantly untruthful descriptions of the state of the economy and the Republican prescriptions for it. Though his grins and head-shakes were often distracting, he did not hesitate to interrupt and demand an end to “malarkey.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it:

Humbug, bunkum, nonsense; a palaver, racket. (Usually of an event, activity, idea, utterance, etc., seen as trivial, misleading, or not worthy of consideration.)

One might say that malarkey is Irish for bullshit, but that would be malarkey. The OED notes that “A surname Mullarkey, of Irish origin, exists, but no connection is known between any person of that name and this word.”

Live-blogging the debate

You go, Joe Biden.

Fall Peanuts

[Peanuts, October 8, 1970. Click for a larger view.]

I’ve had the October 7, 2004 reprint of this strip taped to the side of a reading carrel since, well, uh, 2004.

Other Peanuts posts
Milk bottles
Schulz’s Beethoven

Red Rose Irish Breakfast

An excellent tea with a deep, strong flavor and not a trace of bitterness. Better than Twinings Irish Breakfast, and cheap.

All tea posts (Pinboard)

Bicycles, streetcars, annular systems

Justin Hollander cautions against ditching “good old paper,” pointing out that the merits of such once-passé technologies as bicycles and streetcars have of late been recognized anew. I’m reminded of the trope of the “annular system” in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. One example from the novel: telephone users who take to videophones return at last to “good old voice-only telephoning.”

And about words on paper: when Elaine and I were browsing in an excellent used-book store a couple of weeks ago, we noticed that every other customer — and there were many — was a young (or younger) adult, digging the pages.

Related reading
All paper posts (Pinboard)

Mitt Romney debates himself

Yes, the candidates disagree: Mitt Romney debates himself.

Word of the day: apotropaic

A wonderful word from the Greek: apotropaic. It has something to do with turning, yes? But what? Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate has the etymology: “Greek apotropaios, from apotrepein to avert, from apo- + trepein to turn.” That which is apotropaic is “designed to avert evil,” to turn it away. It’s curious and fitting that the thing averted forms no part of the word itself. Speak no evil.

Apotropaic got me thinking about apo-, which has a range of meanings: away from, off; detached, separate; formed from, related to. Thus for instance, apocalypse, to uncover, disclose. And I now see that word in a new way, as I recall that the name Calypso in Homer’s Odyssey is related to the verb kaluptein, to cover. Keeping Odysseus on her island, removed from human culture, Calypso is a concealer, a burier.

Wikipedia has a page on apotropaic magic, with photographs of painted eyes averting evil. I got thinking about apotropaic during a trip to a museum, where I saw the word in a description of an ancient Greek drinking bowl.

Sniffing out word origins

“I found myself wondering recently whether the word odor has negative connotations or not. This led me to write a list of other nouns pertaining to that sense we exercise with our noses”: Daughter Number Three investigates the origins of words that name smells and finds a clear pattern.

An afterthought

If I were Boing Boing, the title of the previous post might’ve read like so: Hardee’s commercial likens young women, virgins to breakfast meat. No reply yet from Hardee’s or the advertising agency responsible for the commercial. (I’ve called them both.)

Hardee’s pigmeat commercial

How strange to hear the guitar and voice of Bo Carter (1892–1964) in a commercial for Hardee’s Bacon Bacon Biscuit (link’s gone). Carter, a member of Mississippi’s ultra-musical Chatmon family, was an exceptionally fleet guitarist, a capable singer, and a composer of what might be called single-entendre blues: “Ants in My Pants,” “Banana In Your Fruit Basket,” “Pin In Your Cushion,” “Please Warm My Weiner,” “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me,” and many, many more. A few fragments of Carter’s 1931 recording “Pig Meat Is What I Crave” serve as the soundtrack for the Hardee’s commercial. But this song is not about bacon. Stephen Calt explains (and in the process, corrects the Oxford English Dictionary):


[Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009).]

Does Hardee’s understand what Carter was singing about? Given the company’s history of hyper-sexualized advertising, perhaps they do.

Hardee’s customer-response line: 1-877-799-7827.

[Bacon Bacon Biscuit: yes, we love our freedom.]