Thank You, Authors
We
have countless authors to thank for coining some of the more colorful words in
our language. This week, let’s celebrate a few.
Jonathon
Swift brought us the word yahoo with the publication of Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Yahoo
referred to a race of backward, brutish people with hair on the backs
of their hands. Yahoo’s subsequent metamorphosis appears to be a bit of a
mystery.
Richard
Brinsley Sheridan coined the term malaprop in his play, The Rivals (1775). One of his characters
was inclined to abuse her metaphors, coming up with such gems as, “He’s the
very pineapple of success!” Her name was, of course, Mrs. Malaprop.
Oddly
enough, James Joyce brought us the word quark in Finnegan’s Wake back in 1939. Joyce gave it no particular meaning,
beyond the possible meaning of cheer,
in the line “…three quarks for Muster Mark,” but the sound of the word appealed to
physicist & linguist Murray Gell-Mann, who applied quark to fractionally charged
subatomic particles in 1964.
Dr.
Seuss’s 1950 picture book If I Ran the
Zoo brought us the word nerd, an odd creature one might want
to put under lock and key. Here’s another word that has grown & changed since
its birth. The changes don’t appear to have been tracked carefully. I guess
some of us word nerds must have been snoozing.
Good
followers, any thoughts about quarks, yahoo, malaprops
& nerds?
I knew about Yahoos and Mrs. Malaprop, but I did not know that nerd and quark came to us via James Joyce and Dr. Seuss (what a great duo: can you imagine them as a comedy team?) Thanks for the weekly enlightenment!
ReplyDeleteI don't know why more of Dr. Seuss's wonderful words have not made it into our lexicon, actually. Why don't we have wockets and zowers wandering around. Or...maybe we do. Thanks for the fun thoughts!
ReplyDeleteThat unknown was actually me. Don't know what made me a temporary unknown. Kinda creepy!
ReplyDeleteHi Anne & Christine,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you both. Christine, maybe we should coin a word for this phenomenon. Have you been denamed? Have you experienced identiloss? Have you been anonymified?
quarks, yahoo, malaprops & nerds?
ReplyDeleteQuarks besiege us all, particularly in the nerdle of the night when Mr. and Mrs. Malaprop are getting it on (and wrong). Ergo, one must yahoo to one's Knight errant for salivation (or is that salvation?). Howmsoever, I have for lo these many decades believed that a knight errant was a stupid, buffed- and be-armored guy who was prone (or supine) to slipshod, and thus error-filled, work. In truth, I find out in this my dotage, that the stupid, buffed- and be-armored cuss is on an ERRAND. He easily we are bemused.
---Steve of SKFigler.com
Oops! HOW easily we are bemused.
ReplyDelete