BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:WORDS,WORDS

***Kickapoo Native American people of the Algonquian family, 1722, from native /kiikaapoa/ which is sometimes interpreted as “wanderers” [Bright]

wigwam (n.)1620s, from Algonquian (probably Eastern Abenaki) wikewam “a dwelling,” said to mean literally “their house;” also said to be found in such formations as wikiwam and Ojibwa wiigiwaam and Delaware wiquoam.

from THE ONLINE ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY

****

RALPH WALDO EMERSON & THE FIRST USE OF THE WORD CHINAMAN

When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1854, “The disgust of California has not been able to drive or kick the Chinaman back to his home “ – a sentence cited today by the Oxford English Dictionary as the first recorded American Use of the word Chinaman – the New England sage Seemed well informed about the events in the Wild West. White Californians’ resentment and Discrimination toward the Chinese were indeed on the rise. Yunte Huang. Charlie Chang: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) **

“You can taste a word.”

   Pearl Bailey
**
If Mr. Gladstone were to fall into the Thames, it would 
be if a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, 
it would be a calamity. 

Benjamin Disraeli, on the difference between misfortune 
and calamity

**

ON ZELIG AND  CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC-INFUNDIBULUM

…the name Zelig has since entered the vocabulary, but is always used to designate a secondary property of the creation. It is frequently employed to denote someone who appears everywhere , at popular events, alongside the rich , the famous , a ubiquitous non-entity. But the primary meaning of “Zelig” should be when one searches for a word  to describe one who keeps abandoning his position and adopting the new popular one.

Woody Allen , director of the movie Zelig ,
In his autobiography Apropos of Nothing
**
 CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC-INFUNDIBULUM

        

KURT VONNEGUT’s “ term for an imaginary region in outer space where time-warped travelers could miraculously be present at hundredsn of historical events and places simultaneously. The Joycean portmanteau expression has a respectable
etymological pedigrees, according to the O.E.D. :
chrono, time; synclastic, a curved surface  with the
same curvature in all directions; infundibulum, a
funnel.”

Neil Hickey. Adventures in the Scribbler’s Trade
(Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2015)

**

FROM ENGLISH TO LATIN


Once, the hardened leader of the local SWAT team asked me 
for a Latin version of his team’s credo. “The strength of 
the wolf is in the pack, the strength of the pack is in 
the wolf.” I told him: “Robur gregi in lupo, robur lupo in grege.” He thanked me and then said the nine most comforting words a SWAT team leader could say to anyone: “Let me know if you ever need a favor.”

Christopher Francese. “A Degree in English” in The New York Times (May l5, 2009).

SHAKESPEARE AND THE ROLL OF THE DICE

“Shakespeare would have called …loaded dice fulhams 
named 
for the Thames-side community which was then 
rumored to be the seat of a brisk trade in illicit dicing.”



Ricky Jay. Dice (NY: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2003