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

"The three most important words in the English are wait a minute."
                   Sam Rayburn
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THE DRINK OF GRIEF

" Weed. Mary Jane. Chronic. There are dozens of slang 
synonyms for marijuana. But one of the strangest is 
the word pot. How did the word for a common kitchen 
instrument become slang for marijuana?
   The origin of pot has nothing to do with the culinary 
tool. The word came into use in America in the late 1930s. 
It is a shortening of the Spanish potiguaya or potaguaya 
that came from potación de guaya, a wine or brandy in 
which marijuana buds have been steeped. It literally means
 “the drink of grief.”

DICTIONARY.COM (April 20, 2023) https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGsmDtjTwg
ltGlZqQZzmnGVBLSD
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"When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when 
my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore 
Drive, it's called hospitality."
                               Al Capone
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ON BEING GYPPED
"The three-card monte probably arrived in Europe by way of gypsies, who fanned out west from the Balkans across the Continent during the fourteenth century , their bindles loaded with clever little takedown games that yielded a profit in the chaos of medieval streets and marketplaces -- hence the word gyp."
Alex Stone. Fooling Houdini. (New York: HarperCollins, 2012)
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Longest word in the Old Testament:

longest: Mahershalalhashbaz, 18 characters. Maher-shalal-hash-baz was a son of the prophet Isaiah. The name means "speed the spoil, hasten the plunder", and was given at the moment that the king of Assyria was on his way and would soon rob the Syrians (in Damascus) and the Israelites (in Samaria). Isaiah prophetised that that would happen before the boy Mahershalalhashbaz would be able to cry 'mommy' or 'daddy' —
 let alone pronounce his own name.
longest words, not name: evilfavouredness and lovingkindnesses, both with 16 characters.

Concordance to the Bible
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ON THE ORIGIN OF THE GOLF TERM 'BIRDIE'

"The word 'Birdie' was originated by American Ab Smith 
when he called his second shot 'a bird of a shot' after
 putting it 6 inches from from the par 4 hole in 1899."

Bartlett's World Golf Encyclopedia 

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“There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch 
too many of them together.”
                             Josh Billings
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THE ANSWER IS: JOSH BILLINGS
THE QUESTION IS: How does a person describe payments made
                 for selling jokes to comedians?
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ON QUACKERY

“The quack lived by his sales pitch, which combined the gleanings of scientific jargon with the most impudent 
medical hokum. The word quack itself (abbreviated from 
the original Dutch quacksalver, which means ‘one who 
quacks about the virtue of his salve”) and merely an
onomatopoetic attempt at imitating the fast-talking, 
juiced up idiom of the trade.”

                Richard Conniff in GEO (January 1983)
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secular/saeculum,

“The English word secular derives from the Latin word 
saeculum, meaning ‘the present age’. The history of this 
word’s career in Western thought is itself a parable of the degree to which the biblical message has been misunderstood 
and misappropriated over the years. Basically saeculum is 
one of two Latin words denoting‘world’ foreshadowed serious theological problems  since it betrayed a certain dualism 
very foreign to the Bible…
  Saeculum is a time word ,used frequently to translate the Greek word aeon, which also means age or epoch. Mundus, on 
the other hand, is a space word, used more frequently to translate cosmos, meaning the universe or the created order.”

Harvey Cox. The Secular City (Penguin Books, 1966)
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THE WILD BLUE YONDER?

“My father once asked me if I knew where yonder was? I said I thought yonder was another word for there. He smiled and said, ‘No, yonder is between here and there.’
This little story has stayed with me for years as an example of linguistic magic; it identified a new space – a middle region that was neither here nor there – a place that simply didn’t exist for me until it was given a name.”

Siri Hudstvedt. Yonder (New York:Henry Holt and Company, 1998)
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yonder (adv.)
"within sight but not near," c. 1300, from Old English geond "throughout, up to, as far as" 

Online Etymological Dictiomary

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THE LIGHT IS ANOTHER LANGUAGE

I have nothing up my sleeve.
In fact, I do not have a sleeve.
This poem conceals nothing,
Has nothing to hide,
Every word is out in the open
Where it can be seen,
Can be seen because light itself
Is another language.

Louis Phillips'
from The Domain of Small Mercies:
New and Selected Poems 2 (1963-
2015)New York: Pleasure Boat 
Studio (2017)


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