BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: WORDS, WORDS, WORDS, #4

BACKSTAGE AT THE EARLE

…vaudeville was very proper. Backstage at the
Earle, the management had posted a sign: 

THE THEATER CATERS TO LADIES, GENTLEMEN
AND CHILDREN, VULGARITY WILL NOT BE 
TOLERATED. DO NOT USE THE WORDS HELL, 
DAMN,DEVIL, COCKROACH, SHIT, ETC.

Phil Silvers. This Laugh Is On Me, with Robert 
Saffron (Englewood, N.J. Prentice Hall, 1973.

**

Short story writer O’HENRY (William Porter) &
HIS LOVE FOR WORDS 

"And Porter liked arcane words – “vespertine,”
“mucilaginous,” “caoutchouc,” – and malapropisms:
 **
  “He wants his name, maybe, to go thundering
down the coroners of time.”
 

Louis Menand. “The Big Reveal” in The New Yorker
(July 5, 2021)
**

 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD VELCRO


“ Velcro: In 1948, the Swiss engineer George de Mestral 
took a nature hike and returned with his trousers (including, presumably, his fly) covered with burrs. After examining 
these prickly hitchhikers under a microscope, he noticed 
they had tiny hooks that clung tenaciously to the small 
loops of thread in his pants. Burr-eka! Inspired, he devised 
two strips of cotton fabric that stuck together because 
one had tiny hooks and one had tiny loops. He named his invention "Velcro," a combination of the French "velours" (velvet) and "croche" (hook). Soon the generic name "velcro" jumped into common parlance, where it ... well, stuck.”

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford,
Connecticut

**
 “
THE PLAUSIBLE IMPOSSIBLE

“The plausible impossible” is a term of art
unique to cartooning. It is what holds  Bugs
Bunny up when he runs off a cliff , traverses
A yawning chasm, and continues running on
the other side, completely ignorant of the
terrible fate that, except for a magical, momentary
suspension of the laws of gravity, should
have been his. It is the guiding comic principle –
at once thrilling and ridiculous – that lies at the 
heart of cartooning."


Mary –Lou Weisman. “Prologue” to Al Jaffe’s Mad
 Life (New York: HarperColliins, 2010)

ON FRIDGING

"In comics, the violent death of a woman as a
plot device in a story focused on a man was
 so common that women coined a term for it,
fridging. After the 1999 website Women in
 Refrigerators, documenting the plethora of
gruesome endings for female characters." 


Rebecca Solnit. Recollections of My Nonexistence
(New York: Viking, 2020)
**

WHO COINED THE PHRASE :”INNOCENT BYSTANDER"?

…Irving Cobb, rewrite desk, New York World, 
watched  a man who was shot while simply
walking along the street.Back in the city room , 
Cobb, nerves rattling, made the typewriter carriage 
jump up and down as he tried to figure out how
to describe it. Suddenly the phrase ‘innocent
bystander” jumped onto a page for the first 
time.

Jimmy Breslin. A Life of Damon Runyon (NY: 
Ticknor & Fields, 1991)
**

LIFE FORCE IN LANGUAGE


"I’ve gotten fond of the Chinese word “qi,” 
pronounced “chee,” meaning “life force,” (
plural: cheese), which my wife 
has used numerous times to whip me at Scrabble. '

Garrison Keillor

**
PAUL CELAN & THE WORD HEIMAT

“Celan lived in Bucharest for two years after the
war ended. Then in Vienna, moving in 1948 to
Paris, which remained his home – or would have
Done if he had believed in such a thing – until he
Died. ‘Heimat,’ he told Daive, ‘is an untranslatable word.
And does the concept even exist? It’s a human 
fabrication,: an illusion.”


Michael Wood. “This Happens Every Day” in The
 London Review of Books (29 July 2021)


**
A MISUNDERSTANDING


“In Manhattan, when actress Eve Arden 
announced that she would model a dress 
exposing her Popliteal Fossa, photographers 
came running, found themselves taking 
pictures of the back of her knees.”

   

Time. “Miscellany” (April 1, 1946)


**
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE


"The author Henry James once said that summer afternoon 
was the most beautiful phrase in the English language.
 Ray Bradbury liked the word cinnamon. Tessa Hadley 
has expressed admiration for cochineal."


From DICTIONARY.COM