éloi de noyon

Also known as Saint Eligius, the namesake of the hospital of the US television series St. Elsewhere (the nickname being a professional slang term for the practise of diverting less wealthy patients to poorly funded care centres and not in reference to the legendary surgery below), the patron most celebrated as protector of horses and those who work with them is venerated on this day, on the occasion of his death in 660 (*588). Chief counsel to Merovingian king Dagobert I, Éloi rose to prominence through virtuosity demonstrated in metalwork, richly framing members of the aristocracy and sepulchred dead with finery—also earning him the sponsorship of gold- and silversmiths, coin collectors and mechanical engineers—though reportedly eschewed any luxury himself and gave away all his wealth to the poor and used his court favour to distribute more alms. In his capacity as a blacksmith, Éloi once had to shod a recalcitrant horse who refused to cooperate. Convinced the horse was possessed by a demon, Éloi accomplished the task by miraculously dismembering each leg one at a time and reattaching them afterwards.

sanmitsu

Aligned with the prescription of our previous post, the language committee that has been nominating and selecting Japan’s buzzword of the year since 1984 (previously) has announced the above 3 C’s to avoid confined spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings as representative for 2020. Also in the running as an honourable mention was our friend Amabie, a mythical sea creature from the Edo era, held to be an omen for both suffering and prosperity.

die wörters des jahres

Collegially, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS, see previously) has selected a range of words for 2020. In first place is Corona-Pandemie and second is Lockdown, fourth is Black Lives Matter and seventh is Triage. The remaining six selectees, however, need a bit of unpacking and interpreting, we think. 

Verschwörungszählung refers to the conspiracy theory (Americans don’t have an absolute monopoly) that numbers of cases and casualties of COVID-19 are being inflated 

AHA—the three rules of keeping one’s distance (Abstand), practising good hygiene and wearing masks daily (Alltagsmaske) 

systemrelevant emphasises the importance of a regulated approach and clear and consistent messaging 

Geisterspiele are ghost games referring to the tournaments happening in empty stadiums 

Gendersternchen is acknowledging the new practise of using an asterisks to refer to male and female occupations, affiliations or offices instead of the generic masculine or to assign a job a sexual identity, Künstler/Kunstlerin (artist) to Künstler*in, with the ensuing debate about article and case agreement 

And rounding out the list is wish for continued good health in Bleiben Sie gesund!

hurri-mitanni

Via Everlasting Blört, we are directed to this remarkable choreography of a troupe of increasingly abstract virtual dancers in the streets of Istanbul created by Gökalp Gönen for the jazz stylings of Ilhan Ersahin’s latest single, the eponymous ‘Good News.’ These enthusiastic, unrestrained performances recalls these other whirling digital dervishes.

this article contains weasel words

Having been informed that the proper collective noun for a pack of ferrets (Mustela putorius furo, whose common name is from the Latin for furuttus, “a little thief whose males are called hobs and jills—with neutered and spayed equivalents jib, or hoblet, and sprite) is a “busyness” (see also), we are more delighted with an bonus lesson on ghost words and transmission errors. From the very real and well-documented examples of Merriam-Webster’s dord—given the definition with the utmost earnestness of density whereas it was D or d, the typesetter’s note abbreviation for the measure of said term and the spurious testentry said to rhyme ironically with pedantry and the more speculative examples of o.k. or the etymology of pumpernickel with Napoleon proclaiming a loaf as fit only for his favourite horse “C’est pain pour Nicole,” the venery term for the name of a group of ferrets devolved from busyness to fesynes to feamyng. Presented first in a public form during a presentation to the Philological Society of London, Professor Watler William Skeat coined the phrase ghost word and elucidated the audience with an example line from Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Monastery: “…dost thou so soon morse thoughts of slaughter?” A typographical, transcription error made the question more poetic than the author intended and this happy misprint of the intended word nurse prompting quite a bit of scholarship, variously explaining the use as an occurrence of verbification, anthimeria or that it was a case of a New Latin false friend, namely—mordere to bite—that is to indulge and placate those thoughts by gnawing at what’s gnawing at the character.

dispositive motion

Language Logs directs us to an interesting and precise bit of legal terminology encountered and highlighted in the court opinion rejecting the Trump campaign’s baseless challenge to the state of Pennsylvania’s election tally: upon information and belief. Identifying a claim or accusation made not from firsthand knowledge or observation but rather via hearsay that the petitioner believes to be true, it is invoked chiefly in dealing with contempt of court and perjury under oath, protecting the maker of the statement from outright lying in the process of bringing frivolous or nuisance cases to trial. The patience of the law has its limits, however.

8x8

regolith: British R&D company working on process to extract oxygen from lunar soil and using the by-product to three-dimensionally print a moon base—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

gentle giant: David Prowse, the British weight-lifter and character actor who played Darth Vader, has passed away 

person, woman, man, camera, tv: Sarah Andersen’s funny take on our future senility  

kung-fu grip: new research suggests that Neanderthals did not use their hands and thumbs in the same way as Homo sapiens 

 handkerchief flirting codes for post-humans: Janelle Shane (previously) trains a neural network on late Victorian courtship etiquette 

wilmarsdonk: the remains of a village in the middle of the Port of Antwerp, mostly vacated for the busy shipping hub’s expansion  

social harmony: queuing guests practise distancing on a length of music notation, producing a movement from Gymnopédie  

pareidolia, apophenia: brain neurons juxtaposed with galactic clusters connected by filaments of dark matter

b♮

The 1956 sponsored projector-reel short having fallen into obscurity until lambasted as an MST3K episode (previously) interstitial, airing first on this date in 1991 was meant to be shown during class assemblies to encourage budding musicians and was commission by the C.G. Conn company that manufactured and marketed a range of brass instruments.

The eponymous title character is short of an androgynous pixie that embodies the sense of fun in music with an additional biography in their 1957 circular Baton that was issued to American public school music programme teachers—“Mister B Natural is the spirit of music in everyone… a sort of LepreCONN who is always no more than an inch anyway from the fingertips of anyone. Mister B has a code, however, that prohibits him from showing himself for anyone unless he reaches out and calls for the spirit of music.” A withdrawn and reticent pre-teen named Buzz summons Mister B, whom through a range of magic, music and dance convinces him to take up the trumpet. Bruce “Buzz” Podewell (his own nickname, also appearing on Watch Mister Wizard and would have perhaps been familiar to the target audience) went on to become a professor of theatre and dance and taught for four decades at Tulane University in New Orleans. Mister B Natural was the last role of long time (“Knew your father I did”) Broadway and television personality Betty Luster.