The internet is filled with things. Here are some of them.
The Days of Shoddy, as the reader will readily anticipate, are the opening months of the present war, at which time the opprobrious name first came into general use as a designation for swindling and humbug of every character; and nothing more need be said to indicate the scope of this novel.But unfortunately that's not the whole story, as I've discovered reading author Steven R. Weisman in his 2018 book The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion. On page 148 in the chapter Anti-Semitism in the North and South he writes:
On the Union side, anti-Jewish prejudice flared over the role of Jews in businesses that profited from the war, often featured in news stories and cartoons depicting Jews as avaricious, disloyal, and greedy. These focused especially on poorly made uniforms made from shredded or discarded fiber known as “shoddy.” Shoddy became an anti-Semitic slur, so widespread was the assumption that it was Jews who produced such goods. “In the media, the theme of ‘shoddy,’ the purported manipulation of financial institutions, the alleged subversive complicity with the Confederacy, the supposed exploitation of military personnel by Jewish camp followers, and the claims of foreign intervention against the interest of the North continued unabated to plague the image of Jews,” the historians Gary L. Bunker and John J. Appel write.
Gloria Lockerman first appeared on The $64,000 Question on August 17, 1955. The nation sat enthralled as the 12-year-old [black] schoolgirl from Baltimore spelled “antidisestablishmentarianism” correctly on America’s most popular TV quiz show. On the morning after Gloria got the spelling correct, “antidisestablishmentarianism” was the most-uttered word in every office, factory and playground in the United States. ...(The blog post also contains an amazing 1955 letter-to-the-editor angry about the racist coverage of Lockerman.) Her fifteen minutes of fame may now be forgotten, but evidence of it remains, such as it inspiring The $99,000 Answer, an episode of hit sitcom The Honeymooners. Fresh off her win, Lockerman was invited to nightclubs (um, she was 12?), to state fairs, made an honorary teacher in her home town, and was featured in news reels which would have ran before movie films which played at the cinema motion theater houses. There's a hint she was questioned during the congressional investigations into quiz show scandals which ended up killing the genre by 1958 and boosting Ralph Fiennes' career forty years later.
In 1987, the Free-Lance Star printed a where-are-they-now type article on Gloria Lockerman. The article related: “...There was a slightly racist aspect to people’s fascination with her: This was before the civil rights movement gained momentum, and Gloria Lockerman was black. Her brilliance was in direct contrast to many Americans’ stereotypes of black people, and there is no question that in countless living rooms, amazement was expressed not only that a girl of her age could spell the word, but that a girl of her color could do it. ... The other fascinating thing is the aforementioned racial angle. Many a newspaper sentence began, 'Gloria, a Negro...'"
She explained to me that there is nothing she values more than her privacy. She gained so much fame in 1955 that, long ago, she decided it was enough fame for a lifetime. In that summer of ’55 she went from being a shy, brilliant student to an object of the country’s collective curiosity-both because she was so smart at such a young age and because the fact that she was black went against many Americans’ backward stereotypes of the intellectual capacities of black people during that era.
originally "top surface of a military rampart" (15c.), from a garbled attempt to adopt Middle Dutch bolwerc "wall of a fortification" into French, which at that time lacked a -w- in its alphabet.
The notion is of a promenade atop demolished city walls, which would be wider than the old streets. Originally in English with conscious echoes of Paris; in U.S., since 1929, used of multi-lane limited-access urban highways.
New Mexico received its name long before the present-day country of Mexico won independence from Spain and adopted that name in 1821. The name "Mexico" derives from Nahuatl and originally referred to the heartland of the Mexica, the rulers of the Aztec Empire, in the Valley of Mexico. Following their conquest of the Aztecs in the early 16th century, the Spanish began exploring what is now the Southwestern United States calling it Nuevo México. In 1581, the Chamuscado and Rodríguez Expedition named the region north of the Rio Grande San Felipe del Nuevo México. The Spaniards had hoped to find wealthy indigenous cultures similar to the Mexica. The indigenous cultures of New Mexico, however, proved to be unrelated to the Mexica and lacking in riches, but the name persisted.
In French, the phrase literally means “good liver.” ... a bon vivant is one who lives well. English speakers have used bon vivant since the late 17th century to refer specifically to those who subscribe to a particular kind of good living—one that involves lots of social engagements and the enjoyment of fancy food and drink.But I also found the linked blog post, which disagrees with that translation of Lebenskünstler. It is an article specifically about the inherent difficulty in translating Lebenskünstler into English, quoting the juicy bit here:
A Lebenskünstler is a person that manages to deal with problems in life in a positive and artful way. They have mastered the Lebenskunst (art of living). This is a very philosophical term, which was already developed in Roman times (ars vivendi in Latin). But in short, it means that by self-awareness and self-reflection, you manage to understand yourself and manage with any and every situation in life.Is there no English word for that? The author suggests hedonism, a word coming from the Greek word for pleasure, but which now fully means "self-indulgent." Hedonism carries too much negative connotation for me to accept it as a translation for Lebenskünstler.
Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers on what she calls "The Glad Game", an optimistic and positive attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak it may be.Curiously, the dictionary always capitalizes Pollyanna but Wikipedia does not. A mark of this word's recent entry into our language, perhaps.
The word epicure is currently associated with indulging the appetite, but that is a long way from the teachings of the man to whom we owe the word. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus taught a philosophy of simple pleasure, friendship, and a secluded life. He believed in the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure for him equated with tranquility and freedom from pain—not the indulgence of the senses. However, detractors of Epicurus in his own time and later reduced his notions of pleasure to material and sensual gratification. When epicure entered English in the 16th century, the philosophy of Epicurus had been trivialized, and so the word became synonymous with “hedonist.” Later use carried the notion of refinement of palate that we see in the word today.Relating all this above language trivia will be sure to make you an instant hit at parties and soirées. Indulge me one last excerpt:
As is typical for words that have been borrowed from modern French, soiree in English signifies the fancy version of a simple “party”: an evening event that is formal or refined in some way.
Now, there’s a term you don’t hear anymore! The “college widow”! Once a byword for a predatory vamp, the college widow is an extinct American species.The rest of the article is worth reading, too, especially this pull from the now-defunct blog Paper Pop:
I’ve read various definitions of the college-widow meme, which appears regularly in books and films from the first half of the twentieth century, and was de rigueur in any discussion of campus life. In some cases, these characters were portrayed as literal widows—young women who’d known the marriage bed and were hungry for young collegiate flesh. But more often, the term seems to have applied to a townie—or grad; at any rate, a woman hanging around—who dated men in successive senior classes, and were subsequently “widowed” with each passing graduation.
Filmmakers had to assure us that our heroes were healthy, red-blooded American men, who would never resort to all that Brideshead Revisited stuff that was rumored to go on at many an all-male campus. Obviously in the 1910s–1940s (the heyday of this trope), prostitution couldn’t be depicted on screen, so our protagonists couldn’t get their kicks that way. Once the Hays Code came into effect, adulterers must be punished. And for a hero to seduce an unmarried young woman would be caddish. So the college widow served as an effective outlet for all of our heroes’ wants and needs (and those of the writer): it proved the protagonist was straight, sexually desirous and desirable, and yet still a gentleman. Of course, the trope began to be played for laughs even more often than it was played straight, in movies like Horse Feathers [Marx Brothers' parody of this meme]. With the rise of co-education and the fall of the production code, the college widow found herself expelled from campus in favor of flirtatious co-eds.I should've known sexism was involved.
It is located on private ranch land and was named by the original owner, C.J. Babbit, in the 1880s. He was not, alas, as poetic as [the man who named the similar-looking Sunset Crater]. The bowl-shaped crater and the black spatter on the rim reminded this earthly person of a pot of excrement, and the name stuck. Mapmakers couldn't bring themselves to spell out the name, so it became "SP" – probably the only volcano in the world to be called after a rude acronym."Shit Pot". "SP" stands for "Shit Pot."
"In 1893, the residents of what was then known as Swauger's Station decided to change the town's name. Mrs. Rufus F. Herrick consulted a Wiyot elder to find an appropriate indigenous appellation. The Indians actually called it katawólo 't.
A joke was played on Mrs. Herrick. The elderly gentleman told her that it was hó wiwItak. This does not translate as 'beautiful place at the end of the river,' but rather 'Let's have intercourse!'
She interpreted the last part of the phrase, in baby-talk fashion, as Loleta. And thus she suggested 'Loleta' to the residents of the town, which they accepted."
multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots.
How many languages aren't here? Well, there's almost 5000 living languages listed in Ruhlen's volume; I have numbers for about 83% of them, so there's at least a thousand more. (If the math doesn't seem to work out, note that I have plenty of dialects and conlangs not included in Ruhlen's list.) There are about 200 languages with more than a million speakers, all of which are in the list.
No, really, it says so on the big wiki, saying she "was voted 'Most Talkative' in the 1961 school Hoss Election." This bold claim is referenced to my opening link, which now only exists in the waybackie. Although whether the archived page claims such is uncertain; images did not survive the archival process and only text persists. Midler is (in text) listed as being on the 1961 school newspaper staff, if that matters to you Bette aficionados.
But me and this lost Hawaiian WRX enthusiast in 2004 both want to know, what in the high hell is a hoss?
Midler grew up and went to school on Oahu, Hawaii, and while the islanders mix a good amount of Hawaiian language into their daily lives, the word hoss doesn't sound very Hawaiian to me. And yet, some quick a-searchin reveals that whatever a 'hoss election' is, it definitely is an island thing. In 2007, columnist for the Honolulu Advertiser Lee Cataluna ran a couple color articles on this topic. On June 24, 2007 she realized "that hoss is an exclusively Hawai'i phenomenon" defining them as beginning at least by the 1960s: "We all get the concept. Most high schools in Hawai'i have them at the end of the school year. You know, Best Dressed, Most Athletic, Cutest Smile, Most Likely to Succeed ..." before asking her readers, "Somebody has to know. What is a hoss election, anyway?"
A month later, Aug 26, 2007 she gets her answer when Larry and Henriette Valdez share their 1959 yearbook photo as winners under the banner "Horse Elections." She quotes Larry as saying, "Prior to 1960, it was a 'Horse' Election ... a blue ribbon for First Place, Red for Second Place, Yellow for Third Place. We only had Blue Ribbon categories for Most Likely to Succeed, Best Looking, Best Dressed, Best School Spirit, Most Athletic, Most Talented and Most Comical."
But is that correct? Hoss and horse kinda sound similar, especially if you talk with a cowboy accent or a fan of 1959's Bonanza, that old Western TV show where Dan Blocker played rancher Eric "Hoss" Cartwright, a large-but-friendly main character.
The internet abounds with various groups' hoss election results, but few of them delve into the origin of the term. I think it may be best summed up on this beautiful Angelfire page from 2003 (complete with an actual MARQUEE tag, omg I love it) for Kauai Community College's Filipino social club's "HOSS Elections" where they state: "No one knows for sure what HOSS really stands for or what it means."