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An etymological query. Today's word is monesterous. In reading its etymology, I was struck by the similarity between "oistros" for gadfly/madness in monesterous and "Middle English oistre" in oyster. The two abbreviated etymologies are posted below. Any connection between them? They both have Greek ancestors... Where's a tsuwm, toute suite, when ya' need him? OysterETYMOLOGY: Middle English oistre, from Old French, from Latin ostreum, ostrea, from Greek ostreon. http://www.bartleby.com/61/97/O0209700.htmlMONESTEROUSCombining form mon- (one) from Greek monos, mono- + oistros (gadfly, madness).] http://wordsmith.org/words/today.htmlWordWalrus
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: I hate to say it, but I do not think this is one of your inspired guesses.
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Well, drat then, wwh...
...and here I thought the word was my oyster!
(I did look it up as far as I could, and it seems that oyster way back then in its earliest permutations came probably from words having to do with bony/osseous. Don't suppose there are many bony gadflies flitting about...)
WordWossified
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: I am quite possibly in error. I was expecting the Lord High Executioner, tsuwm to pronounce judgement. An ancient horrid joke about oysters. A Frenchman walked into an American restaurant, and saw an Irishman looking at a plate of oysters, with a puzzled expression on his face. So the Frenchman asked him "What's the matter?" The Irishman said "How do you eat these things?" "Like this!" and he slurped down one. The Irishman said: "Let's see you do that again!" The Frenchman, enjoying the naivete of the Irishman, gladly repeated the feat until the plate was empty. But the the Frenchman was puzzled by the way the Irishman kept looking at him, and asked:"Why do you look at me like that?" The Irishman replied:
Begorrah, I got them down, but I couldn't keep them down!" By which you can tell I don't like them.
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Carpal Tunnel
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wwh, I, too, am in hopes that the Grand Poohbah Walt Word will open this shell...
By the way, one time James Joyce left a bag of oysters on an uncle's stoop--apparently Joyce thought the uncle needed a bit of high-octane fuel to zap his libido...
Best regards,
WordWanna
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Carpal Tunnel
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If oysters increased the tilt of the kilt, they would have become extinct long ago.
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wwh: Once upon a time when traveling down to Florida, I read in some map notes about something called "The Turtle Mound" on the east coast of Florida. Seems it was a mound of oyster shells. I asked my father could we stop by and find out what was so remarkable about a mound of oyster shells, and he agreed. I couldn't imagine why this mound would have been mentioned in the map notes.
Anyhoo, when we arrived, we saw a huge hill covered with sand, palmetto, Live Oak, and millions of oyster shells that formed it cast there long ago by feasting Seminoles. There was a wooden footpath up the hill, and we hiked to the top. My dad, a man of few words, upon reaching the top, said, "Must have been horny rascals."
WordWalrus
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the old greek root of that bring us oyster also brings us ostracize--
i heard the story--(and other can say whether its true or not) that voting greek cities was done by counting the number of voters, and then at election time, a man would toss a small sea shell into a baskets (they had problems counting the shards, not chads.) for yea /nae, dem/rep, whig/tory what ever..
when some one had offened public sensability-- a vote would be called and if lost-- the man could be banished... shells used for voting led to some one being ostracized..
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: there used to be very large piles of seashells along the New England seashore, but they were used by colonists long ago to make lime mortar for chimneys.
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Well, wwh, the Turtle Mound oyster shells weren't used for any Seminole mortar that I've heard about.
We have an estate here in Richmond, Virginia, that was a bequest of James Branch Dooley and his wife, Sallie May. The estate, Maymont, during the period the Dooleys lived there, had a long magnolia-lined, oyster shell drive from Hampton Street up to the porte-cochière. The magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) are still there, heavy-limbed and aching with the passionate beauty they have born, but the oyster shells are no more. A crude asphalt lines the way now, and the magnolias most certainly weep for the loss. One of my fantasies is to imagine being carried along that drive in the moonlight peering through sagging magnolia limbs, and hearing the rush and crunch of wheels over shells, once served from the bounty of the Dooley's grand board. yeah, yeah, I know they didn't eat all those oysters, but it's part of my fantasy. Curiously, the Dooleys had no children.
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