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Easy, Tiger! Ok, ok... No, Max, elephants DO NOT have hooves...   
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Mea Nui (aka Max) dear Heart ... you came to AWAD before me, and many others ... unburden your heart ... tell us how we can help you ... do not leave us floundering in the darkness of your displeasure and disdain.
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I have just been reminded that it was a year ago that I signed up here.
A year to the day. Happy Anniversary!
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MaxQ, when a newbie: I am feeling rather like an oafish gatecrasher, ... asking questions that were answered months ago. MaxQ today: I demand a refund! it was a year ago that I signed up here, and I STILL haven't received a definitive answer to the question that I asked way back then.
If we let our genial genie out of the bottle, it would truly be a fiasco.
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Here is Max's first post, from August 12, 2000, @ 5:05:32: Does anybody know fiasco came to have its common meaning in English? How does a word for a type of bottle or even "fare fiasco," "to make a bottle," come to mean an abject failure? TIAhttp://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=3476In response, tsuwm posted a link to a couple of possible answers, but noted that the answer was not clear: http://latin.about.com/library/wordstories/blfiasco.htmand William said: i've heard somewhere that it came from problems in the italian wine industry. so many more bottles of certain wines were sold than made (and i believe still are sometimes) that a fiasco came to mean a situation where rules had no effect.My own sources are also conflicting: from Etymological Dictionary of the English Language: FIASCO, a failure, break-down in a performance (Ital - Late L). From the Ital. phrase far fiasco, to make a bottle; also, to fail, to break down (reason for this unknown; perhaps it means that the empty bottle fails to please). Torriano, ed 1688, has: fiaschi, bottles, flaggons; also, an interjection of admiration, as papae in Latin. Origins A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English says: fiasco, a flask or bottle (esp of wine), hence -- ?from "dead marines" and smashed bottles -- a crash, esp a resounding or ludicrous failure: via F, from It, fiasco, bottle, crash of Gmc origin. The "failure" sense may have an independent origin: it comes, in F, from faire fiasco, from It far fiasco, to make a failure, and this It fiasco is not certainly the "bottle" fiasco. Dictionary of Word Origins says: The making of a fine Venetian glass bottle is a difficult process -- for it must be perfect. If, in blowing, the slightest flaw is detected the glassblower turns the bottle into a common flask -- called in Italian, fiasco.And, Why You Say It says: Long ago, Venice became a great center of the glass trade. Her craftsmen developed the now-standard goblet made up of bowl, stem, and foot. They also imitated semiprecious stones in the color and texture of fine ware. Many pieces were so prized that royal inventories listed them along with gold and silver vessels. In addition to costly ware, Italian artisans produced great quantities of the common flask -- which in some dialects was know as a fiasco. Flaws frequently developed in the process of turning out fine pieces. Glass was too expensive to throw away; even damaged, a hunk of it could be reheated and turned into a fiasco or two. So many inexpensive flasks were the result of bungling that the glass blower's term came to indicate any type of failure. At least, that is maybe the most believable of half a dozen theories offered to account for the rise of a distinctive and elusive word. ===== So, dear Max, the origin of fiasco might stay lost, along with the meaning of the giant heads on Easter Island and the point of crop circles. But happy anniversary anyway. Those who have followed you here remain in awe.
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In a fable, a judge rules a poor student must pay the wealthy merchant accusing him of theft with the sound of coins for the smell of cooking fish. Pray, dearest Max, what funds would you be re'd and how might we pay you?
***
summer sea shore tempts to say, the fiasco was the letter in it.
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Sparteye, if you are making mega-bucks for the use of your legal mind, I do declare you deserve it and more! Great detective work!
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August 12 will be a red letter day from now on, It is nancyk's birthday and MaxQ's sign-up anniversary on the board.
A decade from now we will be telling tales around a campfire at our 10th Wordapalloza and somebody will start with "remember that fateful day, August 12, 2001 when MaxQ threw a doozy of a tantrum? It sent Sparteye to hurriedly don her detective gears, then pore through skeins after skeins of "threads" until she came up with the cause of the tantrum. She then scurries to her piles of word books to find the answer to this confounded query that is so upsetting our MazQ and then she rides her motorized scooter back to her computer all the while praying that MaxQ doesn't hurt himself throwing this mega-tantrum around, while she scrambles to scan all the anwers that will satisfy the great tantrumming MaxQ ...It was the mother of all FIASCOS, I tell you!
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MaxQ threw a tantrum
MaxQuerulous? MaxQuordlespleen?
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Oh, wordcrazy, that was GREAT! HA! And Sparteye--grand, just grand. Kudos and thanks.
Happy Anniversary again, my sweet Max.
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a judge rules a poor student must pay the wealthy merchant accusing him of theft with the sound of coins for the smell of cooking fish.
Was the judge, by any chance, named Ooka, of Yedo? Or does the teller use any name he likes?
well, I remember it as Ooka
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<<Was the judge, by any chance, named Ooka, of Yedo?>>
Might have been, I don't remember. Why?
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a comprehensive video recording of Wordapalooza  Ask caradea But can you not be there, Max? I was really hoping you might be with us, too.
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I have a book with stories about a Japanese judge named Ooka, and that story was in it. I wondered if the name used was variable.
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I've heard the same story, but with a rabbi instead of a judge. (I doubt that the rabbi was Japanese).
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Amazing work Sparteye, you have rescued us from Max's disdain!
So there is your answer, Max, as clear as glass! And a very Happy Anniversary to you.
Now about Wordapalooza ... ya *gotta' make it, Max ...
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But can you not be there, Max? I was really hoping you might be with us, too.
and
Now about Wordapalooza ... ya *gotta' make it, Max ...
Hear, hear!!!!
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I have a book with stories about a Japanese judge named Ooka, and that story was in it. I wondered if the name used was variable.
Ooka sat en banc on a case involving a recipe for egg custard. The plaintiff thought her recipe had been stolen. The three-judge court decided to have a cookoff to decide the case. The picture in the paper showed the judges looking down at the concoction, and was, of course, cutlined Ooka, Flan, and Colleagues
TEd
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GReat to see you back, TEd! Can I have the subtitled version now please?
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"Ooka, Flan, and Colleagues" - A re-incarnation of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie?
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re-incarnation of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie?Excellent, Dr. Bill. I never would have made the connection; in fact, I puzzled over it for quite a while. Now, I wonder how many of the younger Board-ers are saying "Who, who and who???" I, of course, have only read about Kukla Fran and Ollie . And if you believe that...
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Pray, dearest Max, what funds would you be re'd and how might we pay you?Well, we could spot Max a huge handicap for Hogwash!
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Kukla is, of course, Russian for puppet. Or something like that.
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In reply to:
In a fable, a judge rules a poor student must pay the wealthy merchant accusing him of theft with the sound of coins for the smell of cooking fish.
I am reminded of the story of Nasruddin and the soup. Nasruddin was given a duck by a visitor from the country, and he made soup with it. A few days later somebody came to Nasruddin's house and said "Have you got any of that soup? I'm a friend of the man who gave you the duck." Being a hospitable soul Nasruddin gave this new visitor some soup. A few days later another visitor appeared. "I'm a friend of the friend of the man who gave you the duck." Noblesse oblige and all that, so Nasruddin gave the visitor some soup. A few days later yet another visitor appeared. "I'm a friend of the friend of the friend of the man who gave you the soup." Well hospitality is one of the prime virtues in that part of the world, so Nasruddin sighed inwardly and ladled out some more soup. After a few more days had passed a friend of the friend of the friend of the friend of the man who gave Nasruddin turned up. Nasruddin said nothing but disappeared into the kitchen and then came back with a bowl of what looked and tasted like dishwater. "What's this?" his guest spluttered. "It's the soup from the soup from the soup from the soup from the soup from the duck the friend of the friend of the friend of the friend of your friend gave me."
Bingley
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Bingley is reminded of the story of Nasruddin?
A wise man, the Mullah Nasruddin. It was, I believe, he who when visiting a strange city, asked of a shopkeeper, "Do you know who I am?" When the shopkeeper responded that he did not, the Mullah Nasruddin replied, "Then how do you know that it is I?"
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Ok, Max, here's the "definitive" answer on fiasco from Merriam-Webster's Buzzword for kids:
The Italian "fiasco" refers to a round-bottomed, straw-covered bottle traditionally used to hold inexpensive wines. The phrase "fare fiasco" literally means "to make a bottle," but it is used in Italian as an expression for "to fail." No one knows for sure how this meaning came about. One theory claims that it started when a famous 17th-century comic actor gave a performance involving a bottle. The performance was supposedly so bad it led to the expression meaning "to fail." No evidence supports this story, so, as the Italians would say, don't let it "hang the bottle on you"—that is to say, don't let it trick you.
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So am I to take it fiasco is not derived from the automobile named Fiat? (Blinking innocently...)
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