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AWADmail Issue 731

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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

Foul-Mouthed Parrot May Be Used as Evidence in Murder Trial
Washington Post
Permalink

Is This the Right Moment to Correct Someone’s Language?
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Permalink

Wife Cake and Evil Water: The Perils of Auto-Translation
BBC News
Permalink

From: Peter H. Desmond (taxhombre gmail.com)
Subject: vermeil

The berry-shaped organic product kermes was used as a dye by medieval vintners to make red wine redder. As I wrote in Harvard Magazine, “Some Harvardians may want to raise a toast when they learn that the word is the source of our word ‘crimson’. A possible caveat: kermes consisted of the swollen abdomens of female insects that infested the scarlet oaks of southern Europe. Another round, anyone?”

From: Bert Porter (via website comments)
Subject: vermeil

This seems to be a case of etymology coinciding with entomology.

From: Kimberly Battista (kim battistaillustration.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--vermeil

I also wanted to add that vermilion has an anatomical reference.

“Teal Blue” was the official color of my organization in the Army, the old Army Security Agency, which went out of existence in 1976. There were more arguments among members over which shade of blue was teal blue than any argument over the work we did (which was highly classified). Maybe it was because color was something we could talk about in the open, while we couldn’t talk about our work.

From: William Stanley (valcouns earthlink.net)
Subject: Teal

My new car company called it teal, but the DMV didn’t have that in their computer, so my car was blue. I didn’t care.

From: Ellen Blackstone (ellenblackstone gmail.com)
Subject: teal -- the collective noun

I can never think of teal -- the ducks -- without recalling the collective noun for a group of teal. It is “spring” and it suggests both the sound and the action of several teal taking flight -- a spring of teal! More such collective nouns can be found here.

From: Serge Astieres (serge.astieres gmail.com)
Subject: Ponceau

Ponceau brought me back to my childhood: I used to do model kits and tried to paint figures of Napoleon army soldiers. The uniforms have vivid colors and I remember a dragoon having a jacket with ponceau flaps. It was difficult to reach the exact color until I found an obscure (and now deceased) small paint company offering such color. I had to pester my parents so they could send a check and I could receive the “right” color. I still have the small Ponceau bottle with the dried remains somewhere in my attic... Thanks for the memories.

From: David Calder (dvdcalder gmail.com)
Subject: ponceau

It is interesting to note that coquelicot, the more common word for the poppy, Papaver rhoeas, also means a bright red. Famously painted by Monet in Les Coquelicots, it is also called the Flanders poppy, the first living plant to flower after a Great War battle left behind a devastated area. As such, it became a symbol of life defeating death. It became the Anzac poppy, worn on April 25th every year at commemorations in Australia and New Zealand.

From: Nicholas Clifford (clifford middlebury.edu)
Subject: Taupe

For what it’s worth, the Prompter (a tenor role) in Richard Strauss’s marvelous opera Capriccio, is identified as Monsieur Taupe, and at least in the DVD version that I own, is portrayed by a small man who spends much of his time blinking -- like a mole, of course.

From: Juliet Ezeilo (juliet242 gmail.com)
Subject: Sepia

Thanks for today’s word, sepia! Always reminds me of Wole Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation!

From: Dennis Lynch (dlynch1 nyc.rr.com)
Subject: Cuttlefish

Ah yes, the cuttlefish. “A ten-armed marine mollusk differing from a squid in that it has an internal calcified shell.” Fifty years ago in high school Latin we had to memorize that definition. We were reading some of Pliny’s letters and the teacher went to the topic of the ink the Romans used when writing on papyrus. Whenever I read the word cuttlefish, this definition immediately and automatically comes to mind. And, yes, it did show up on a quiz.

From: Bob Wilson (wilson math.wisc.edu)
Subject: Meanings of sepia

Sepia in connection with photography has additional meaning beyond just being a color. In traditional monochrome photography the “print” image consists of metallic silver (where there is a dark region, finely divided silver appears black) suspended in a coating on paper.

But, although silver is much more stable than the dyes making up a color image, it can fade as it is affected by chemicals in the air, on fingerprints, etc., such as sulfur compounds.

Sepia is used not as a dye but as a chemical that converts part or all of the silver chemically to silver sulfide, which has the color we associate with sepia toned prints. That is even longer lasting than plain silver, so many of the very old photographs we still can enjoy are ones that were sepia toned.

From: M Henri Day (mhenriday gmail.com)
Subject: Re : vermeil

“Natural is good. Usually. Arsenic can be natural too.” Indeed, and everything we do, including that which is most “artificial”, is done according to natural laws -- there are no others. We cannot allow ourselves to be deceived by the curious notion that all that is “natural” is good for us; rather we have to examine the matter in detail.

From: Dharam Khalsa (dharamkk2 gmail.com)
Subject: Anagrams of this week’s words

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

You might have emissions nocturnal
While dreaming of girls with hair vermeil,
But if there’s no stopping
The man with that topping,
We’re in for damnation eternal.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

The color vermeil is bright red.
It is made of vermiculus dead.
In your saute or stew
There’s no red number two
But ground insects that go in its stead.
-Gigi Pagani, San Rafael, California (gigi4cats gmail.com)

“I really don’t look good in teal,”
In the mirror said Ally McBeal.
“If I sleep with the judge,
His decision might budge,
But in this I could lose my appeal.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

The soirée held boundless appeal,
Dom Perignon flowed through the meal.
It was all glam and glitzy,
The guests were quite ritzy,
While the hostess looked fetching in teal.
-Judith Marks-White, Westport, Connecticut (joodth snet.net)

She wore a cute cape of ponceau.
and carried a chic portmanteau
filled with cookies and cakes
that for granny she’d baked.
The rest of this story you know.
-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

She wore a brief dress of ponceau
with a neckline that plunged very low.
She’d heard what they said
‘bout the lady in red
and thought,”that’s how to find me a beau.”
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

There once was an antelope,
Who couldn’t cope, and he’d mope,
Wished his coat was teal,
Or a bright vermeil,
Instead of a boring taupe.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

In the old days a Borgia was Pope
Who did not like the cardinals in taupe.
Soon there came a decree
Saying “Red is for me,
And will cheer up Lucrezia, I hope.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Said the movie fan, thrilled to the core,
to the film reel found under the floor;
“Though you’re tattered and sepia,
Of course I will keep ya.
They don’t make ‘em like you any more.”
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

The actress from Ethiopia
Had curls in shades of sepia.
Wherever she went
She dazzled each gent
Who, in her, found his utopia.
-Judith Marks-White, Westport, Connecticut (joodth snet.net)

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Colorful puns

Look for a blood moon on the vermeil equinox.

During duck season, I hunt teal I bag my limit.

He put his Rolex in ponceau he could make his house payment.

My lot in life is twish and taupe.

“I’ll be sepia in all the old familiar places.”