A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1184

A.Word.A.Day

Home

AWADmail Issue 1184

A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Tidbits about Words and Language

Sponsor’s Message: “Scrabble on steroids, with a thieving twist.” One Up! -- where stealing is the name of the game. “My daily dose of dopamine.” A wicked smart Christmas gift. Game on!

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

Don’t Make English Official, Ban It Instead
The Web of Language
Permalink

An Unkind Policy for a Nonexistent Problem
The New York Times
Permalink

Trump Delivers a Pièce de Résistance in Defense of the English Language. Bravo!
The Palm Beach Post
Permalink

From: Craig Good (clgood me.com)
Subject: trimmer

Aviation has borrowed many terms from seafaring, including trimming.

A pilot has to trim the airplane for any given speed and configuration to relieve pressure on the controls. Almost every plane can trim for pitch. More sophisticated planes can also trim for yaw and roll.

Here’s a primer.

Craig Good, Vallejo, California

From: Charles Steele (c-steele onu.edu)
Subject: Trimmer

In the Divine Comedy trimmers (neutrals) were condemned to the periphery of the Inferno.

Charles E. Steele, Jr., Leyte, Philippines

Email of the Week -- Brought to you buy One Up! -- “Guaranteed to ruin Christmas.”

From: Jake Roulstone (canoeyawl hotmail.com)
Subject: Trimmer

In the summer of 1940 at age 15, my father John Roulstone worked as a trimmer in colliers unloading in Searsport, Maine. Trimmers shoveled coal from the edges of the ship’s hold to the center, ensuring the clam bucket could hoist full loads to the dock. The work was sporadic, grueling, and dangerous -- coal chunks rained down from above, fine coal dust filled the air, and safety regulations were nonexistent. Yet, in an era of scarcity, the opportunity to earn money was hard to pass up.

Despite the physical toll, the job was fleeting, lasting only a summer. After each shift, Dad would scrub off layers of coal dust with water heated on the stove, as his home lacked modern plumbing. He recalls the experience as harsh and unforgiving, but it was a means to an end. With war looming, danger was inevitable -- whether in the hold of a ship or on the battlefield.

Jake Roulstone, Aptos, California

From: Tim Gwynne (tim.gwynne icloud.com)
Subject: Words having nautical origins

It was only whilst reading the wonderful twenty-volume series of historical novels by Patrick O’Brian depicting life in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars that it became apparent to me just how many nautical terms have become part of everyday language. I am trying to guess which ones may appear in this week’s words.

Tim Gwynne, Battle, UK

From: Owen Yeasted (oyeasted hotmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--bilge

Thank you for including the link to the 2020 bilge dumping video from Deutsche Welle. To find that the equivalent of several Exxon Valdez disasters gets dumped deliberately into the ocean annually (more here) is, quite frankly, shocking. Your readers can help stop this trend by first becoming aware of the problem. Thank you for calling attention to this environmental hazard.

Owen Yeasted, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

From: Michael Poxon (mikethestarman gmail.com)
Subject: Uttering bilge

This reminds me of a former astronomer royal, Richard van der Riet Woolley, who in Jan 1957 decried space travel as “utter bilge” (he was clearly an ex-Royal Navy man). Just a few months (Oct 4, 1957) later Sputnik was orbiting the earth!

Michael Poxon, Norwich, UK

From: Jo Sanders (via online comments)
Subject: bilge

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the King insists on calling the Duke, who says his name is Bridgewater, Bilgewater.

Jo Sanders

From: Jim Tang (mauijt aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--nauseate

About 40 years ago, researchers studied motion sickness and determined that a victim’s reaction to pitching motion on the sea or in the air matched the reaction when a person ate something poisonous and suffered the same sort of visual input (think reeling and losing one’s balance). Thus, our response (say, vomiting) is merely an evolutionary reaction. A more timely example of nausea might be the reaction after hearing a certain speech to Congress. It’s less about the content and more about our visceral response to ingesting some vile poison. Like air sickness, the treatment of choice is to look to the far horizon, breathe deeply (in through the nose, out through the mouth), concentrate on a remembered happy place, and remember that this, too, shall pass.

Well, we can hope. But as I said, don’t hold your breath.

Jim Tang, Kula, Hawaii

From: William Politt (william.03281 gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--keel

Keel is not an exclusively nautical term. The vast majority of birds have a large raised keel (carina) extending the length of their breastbone (sternum) which forms the origin of large flight muscles. Those birds are collectively carinate (keeled); while their flightless distant kin are ratite (raft-like). The exception to the latter are the penguins, who are carinate. They are generally thought of as flightless, but they have evolved to “fly” through the water instead of the air. And who doesn’t love them?

William Politt, Weare, New Hampshire

From: Terry Stone (cgs7952 bellsouth.net)
Subject: More nautically-inspired definitions of keel

Keels also describe types of boats, such as the Tyne keel barge once used to carry coal or the square-rigged, single-masted Humber keel. In the US, long, cigar-shaped keels were seen frequently on the Mississippi River by Lewis and Clark as they began their voyage of discovery in 1804.

However, keel can additionally describe any keel-suggestive body or plant part, such as the carina of the trachea, a ridge of cartilage that separates the left and right bronchi, or the keel found at the base of any legume blossom and on the flowers of certain orchids.

All of these senses are nautically-inspired.

Terry Stone, Goldendale, Washington

From: Andrew Lloyd (knockroe gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--by and large

Ahoy‽ When we were growing up in the 1960s, we had a piano and on the piano was a truly wonderful model ship “The Princess”, one of three (with Duchess and Marchioness) which had been made for the daughters of my great grandfather John Craig, a Scots shipping agent. The Princess, a scale model gaff-rigged schooner about 800mm (about 2.5 feet for you Americans) from jib-boom to counter, was made in the 1880s in wood and canvas with tiny brass nails for the planking.

Occasionally, my father, a sea captain, would gather his crew brood into his study and put us through a catechism of parts, so that we knew words such as counter and boom. And that each part of a sail had specific names: edges (head leech luff foot) and vertices (i.e. corners: peak throat tack clew). It is of course vital that the parts of a working ship be minutely defined and the names internalised by everyone aboard. If a sail carries away in a storm at night, the captain and crew must communicate with each other precisely, speedily and possibly blindly if total disaster is to be averted. Fair winds and following seas ...

Andrew Lloyd, Borris, Ireland

From: Simon (simon.unshod gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--by and large

This reminds me of what is surely one of the most misunderstood lines of poetry. In Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, bemoaning various aspects of his ship, the Bellman “Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due east, That the ship would not travel due west.” This appears to be universally interpreted as the ship sailing backwards. However, Carroll surely knew that the direction assigned to the wind is the direction it blows from (an easterly blows from the east) while the direction assigned to a ship or some other conveyance is the direction in which it is moving. In other words, the Bellman was describing the unremarkable event of the ship running with the wind.

Simon, Ourimbah, Australia

From: Steve Smedley (stevesmedley sasktel.net)
Subject: Large

In Newfoundland and Labrador, “a large day” refers to a nice, warm, windy day that’s perfect, for example, for drying clothes on a clothesline.

Steve, Smedley, Regina, Canada

From: Mike Connor (frippcat gmail.com)
Subject: By and large

Thanks for nautical terms this week. When instructing the helm to sail as close to the wind as possible, a captain would often give the instruction “sail small”. Sailing too close to the wind is called pinching -- the sails luff (i.e. flap) and lose power.

Mike Connor, Linwood, New Jersey

From: Robert Nyden (robertnyden gmail.com)
Subject: Luther Burbank and weeds

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weeds. -Luther Burbank, horticulturist (7 Mar 1849-1926)

The irony of this is that if Luther Burbank had not messed with imported Himalayan blackberry seeds, the Pacific Coast states of the US would not be blanketed by an apparently ineradicable scourge of invasive blackberry vines.

Bob Nyden, Palo Alto, California

From: SarahRose Werner (swerner nbnet.nb.ca)
Subject: nautical terms

You wrote: “Long before cars, buses, and airplanes, there were boats.”

When I lived in Maine, I noticed that many towns had a section designated as the foreside. For example, Falmouth and Falmouth Foreside.

It took me a while to figure this out. From the point of view of someone arriving by boat, the “foreside” is the first part of the town they encounter. It’s the town’s front door.

In an era where roads were rough and sparse, boats were the way to go! This was especially true along Maine’s corrugated coast, where land routes between two points may be much longer than the distance as a crow flies -- or a boat travels.

SarahRose Werner, Saint John, Canada

From: Margaret (mafollis shaw.ca)
Subject: Thoughts of the day

Unlike the person from Toronto, I am not cancelling out AWAD. I have been a devotee for many years. You are so clever with Thoughts for Today, researched and presented so adroitly, to reflect the tumultuous times in which we find ourselves. You seem like a voice in the wilderness, and a beacon of hope that there are some people south of the 49th parallel who disagree with the current misguided and ignorant US government.

Here we are deeply hurt and angry to be treated like the enemy while a lying dictator is seen as a loyal partner. It is unbelievable and a source of deep concern for the peace of the world. My own personal response is to never visit the States again and to relentlessly seek out Made in Canada.

Margaret Follis, Vancouver, Canada

From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: keel and bilge

In this potentially dire scenario, a towering conifer keels over (lumberjack-aided), appearing to endanger our bookish bystander. Spoiler alert! the toppled pine crashes to the forest floor, landing well beyond our engrossed bibliophile, who’s unscathed. But the thunderous roar of its impact does shiver his timbers.

Trump is rewriting history, echoing Putin’s bogus talking points. He calls Zelensky a dictator, accusing him of starting the war. Trump knows that it was Putin who initiated his “military exercise” against Ukraine. But he is so enamored with and beholden to his pal Putin that he continues to perpetuate these bald-faced lies.

Alex McCrae, Van Nuys, California

Anagrams


	This week’s theme: Words having nautical origins Trimmer Bilge Nauseate Keel By and large	=	I eye risks in the wind, make the changes; mower Garbage Disgust Tie beam; overturn All in all
			-Dharam Khalsa, Burlington, North Carolina (dharamkk2 gmail.com)
=	Give in to get a win A rubbish ale, a worthless matter Make me sick Underside Generally, nigh	=	A timeserver Stagnant rubbish & water I make sick/ill, gag Underside Gee on the whole, mainly
	-Shyamal Mukherji, Mumbai, India (mukherjis hotmail.com)		-Julian Lofts, Auckland, New Zealand (jalofts xtra.co.nz)

Make your own anagrams and animations.

Limericks

trimmer

The MAGA Republicans say
That Vladimir Putin’s okay.
These trimmers disdain
Zelensky’s Ukraine --
Our allies they thus will betray.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

Our future has not been much dimmer,
As Trump makes our lives so much grimmer.
He cares not, you see;
Thinks only of “me”.
He’s just a pathetic old trimmer.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

As her egg was approached by his swimmer,
Her spirit grew dimmer and dimmer.
Melania, fretting,
Lamented begetting
The spawn of an amoral trimmer.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

bilge

Some precepts one learned back in school
Have value for life, as a rule.
But for Donald, it seems,
His delusional dreams
Make him claim: “That’s all bilge. I’m no fool.”
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

What bilge does the President spout;
Such nonsense he goes on about!
He’s spoken for hours
Of sharks and weak showers --
They’re critical issues, no doubt.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

All the chatter I hear from DC
Only makes me wish that I could flee!
It’s bilge, yes of course,
And it comes from a horse
Of a far different color than me!
-Bindy Bitterman, Chicago, Illinois (bindy eurekaevanston.com)

The State of the Union, I guess,
Would be that the country’s a mess,
With Trump, no surprise,
Just spouting all lies.
Full of bilge, though I call it BS.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“My mission in life I’ve fulfilled;
The whole government’s thoroughly bilged!”
Exclaimed Elon. “No rules
And no taxes! What fools
Repubs be! Now my lily I’ll gild!”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

nauseate

Did you hear Donald bluster and prate,
As our culture he did desecrate?
Our Commander in Chief
Is causing much grief,
And his smirk does indeed nauseate.
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

The movement of waves on the sea
Is something that nauseates me.
There’s never a chance
For shipboard romance --
I always feel foul as can be!
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

“Many foods tend my stomach to nauseate,
But I love this,” said Donald as laws he ate.
His pica did not
Stop him taking a shot
At a porn star to ask for a naughty date.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

keel

He authored The Art of the Deal
With advice how to lie, how to steal.
And now that vile man
Will do what he can
To cause our whole nation to keel.
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

“The ship’s keeling over!” cried Jack.
“It’s too bad that a lifeboat we lack.
You can float on this door
Till you’re taken ashore --
Remember me when you look back.”
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

Said the sea witch to Flotsam the eel,
“You and Jetsam must watch that ship’s keel.
In the storm if it flips
And a prince o’erboard slips,
With a mermaid I may make a deal.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

by and large

Some envious people do charge,
That my yacht is a gussied up barge.
And they point out with cheek
That its hull has a leak;
But it does stay afloat, by and large.
-Rudy Landesman, New York, New York (ydur36 hotmail.com)

Our President’s numerous flaws
Leave Democrats dropping their jaws.
A felon’s in charge,
And so, by and large,
He tends to ignore lots of laws.
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

As I near 94 and consider
My ultimate exit; this critter
In the White House right now
By and large won’t allow
Me to rest satisfied; no, I’m bitter.
-Bindy Bitterman, Chicago, Illinois (bindy eurekaevanston.com)

Now Donald put Elon in charge;
He’s the one running things, by and large.
And from dawn until dusk,
It’s Musk, Musk, Musk, Musk!
We’ll sink like a rickety barge.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

In Congress, a woman named Marge
Is a lunatic fool, by and large.
I’d love to amaze her;
Our Jewish space laser
Could do it, and I’d lead the charge.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Puns

“Rapunzel’s pregnant? Trimmer hair and banish her to the woods!” ordered the sorceress.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“Whaddya say I bilge-a a bunch of casinos, lose your money, declare bankruptcy, and run for President, wouldja donate to my campaign?” Donald asked his investors.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“Look at the way he nauseate all the bark off the tree!” said the excited child watching the beaver.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Her friend didn’t want any dinner, so Ellen told her mom, “Nauseate before she came.”
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

“My ‘usband ees reech and powerful, but weeth a woman ‘e ‘as no s-keel,” sobbed the anonymous caller to the DC Suicide Prevention Hotline.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“Some species of walla-by and large wombat are hunted by indigenous people for meat,” explained the outback guide.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

A full belly to the labourer is, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace. -William Cobbett, journalist, pamphleteer, and farmer (9 Mar 1763-1835)

We need your help

Help us continue to spread the magic of words to readers everywhere

Donate

Subscriber Services
Awards | Stats | Links | Privacy Policy
Contribute | Advertise