#48499
11/23/2001 5:53 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
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Mrs. Byrne includes "rhytiphobia n. -- a neurotic preoccupation with facial wrinkles."
I checked the term out on OneLook®Dictionaries, and only the Grandiloquent Dictionary entry came up, along with:
"redactophobia - ( ) A fear of editing or of editors"
and
"regiphobia - ( ) A fear of a king or kings"...
So, I went back to Mrs. Byrne, who provided this on kings:
"fitz n. -- a twelfth-century patronymic for royal bastards"
...so that raises a question to wrinkle out, if you don't have wrinkle phobias, what would be the patronymics for royal bastards from other centuries? Or: why is a royal bastard a fitz specifically in the 12th century?
Back to my in-depth research on babyroussas,
DubDub
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#48500
11/23/2001 6:08 PM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
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Was the name of JFK's Presidential yacht, and it brings to mind the story of how we knew what clothes to put on in the late fall when I lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Kennedy and his entourage were frequent visitors to those waters, and they were frequent hunters of the wildfowl that lived in the marshes. But there was no refrigerator on board, so they never took game unless it was going to be cold enough that they could hang the ducks out to keep cool naturally. When we heard their guns we knew it was time to put away the cutoffs and tee-shirts. If the Fitz shoots, wear knits.
TEd
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#48501
11/23/2001 7:03 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
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it appears that, once again, Mrs. B. has fallen victim to [benefit of doubt] space limitations:
[AF. spelling of OF. fiz (pronounced fits):—earlier filz:—Lat. filius son.
The form is due to the phonetic law in OF. that a palatalized l caused a succeeding s to become ts (written z).]
The Anglo-French word for ‘son’; chiefly Hist. in patronymic designations, in which it was followed by the name of a parent in the uninflected genitive. Some of these survive as surnames, e.g. Fitzherbert, Fitzwilliam, etc.; in later times new surnames of the kind have been given to the illegitimate children of royal princes. †Also in 12–15th c. used occas. in adopted AF. phrases, beau fitz = ‘fair son’; fiz a putain = ‘whoreson’.
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#48502
11/23/2001 7:34 PM
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Is that boat the inspiration for the popular song lyrics:
Like a Fitz over troubled waters, I will lay on me down...? down, fluffy feathers here used in ski jackets
DubDown feather head
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#48503
11/23/2001 7:59 PM
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Posts: 3,467
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No, it's actually about slackers:
I will lay on me duff.
And I will swear at anyone who calls me a good egg.
TEd
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#48504
11/23/2001 8:20 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Dear WW: here a a couple phobias I hadn't heard recently:
Now I'll bet all of you are wondering the same thing- What the hell do those things mean? Well, I'll tell you. Bear in mind that these all start with "fear of". Anuptaphobia- remaining single; Blennophobia- slime; Ecophobia- home; Laliophobia- speaking; Lilapsophobia- tornadoes; Mellisophobia- bees; Rhytiphobia- getting wrinkles; Septophobia- decaying matter; Stygiophobia- Hell; Phobophobia- fear itself.
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#48505
11/24/2001 2:04 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
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wwh: Have I got a list for all of us! Try this link and tread it with great trepidation, preferably on a dark and stormy night: http://www.phobialist.com/index.htmlOne phobia we don't have to concern ourselves with on WAD is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words. And, Keiva, I did not make this up! Best regards, Dub PS: Were there any other words for royal bastards?
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#48506
11/24/2001 5:40 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
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"redactophobia" - ( ) A fear of editing or of editors"What sayest thou, O High Priestess wow!?  I might admit to being a redactaphobe, but fear and loathing aren't quite the same thing. I hope you wrote good leads, wow. 
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#48507
11/24/2001 5:45 AM
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Posts: 4,189
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The Anglo-French word for ‘son’
I find this interesting, because mostly all the people with "fitz" surnames I've known have been Irish...Fitzpatrick, Fitzsimmons, Fitzgerald, etc. So I always assumed it was a Celtic appellation.
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#48508
11/24/2001 10:53 AM
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The fils/fitz connection is an interesting one.
Thank goodness Fitzpatrick, Fitzwilliam, and gang don't mean RoyalbastardofPatrick, RoyalbastardofWilliam, etc.--there sure would be a world of royal bastardry running rampant!
Clarification is all,
WW
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#48509
11/24/2001 2:52 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
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WARNING: food-related
do you know these?
aversion to food - sitiophobia
fear of mushrooms - mycophobia
dread of dinner parties - deipnophobia
fear of conversation at dinner - deipnosophobia
fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth - arachibutyrophobia
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#48510
11/24/2001 3:24 PM
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tsuwm: Talk about crossing threads!! I was posting the peanut butter phobia on the turkey thread and just came across it here, too. Great minds think alike! I can hear you groaning! Poor, tsuwm! I'm just your classic bathophobic.
Bathophobically yours,
DubDub
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#48511
11/24/2001 6:59 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661
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Were there any other words for royal bastards?
Pretender.
Clarification is futile,
LH
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#48512
11/24/2001 9:07 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
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Were there any other words for royal bastards?Sir, if they happen to become king. One really famous one was William the Conqueror. His mother was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise. "Fitz" became handed down as part of "ordinary" surnames, and its original meaning fell out of use. Generally in later centuries the bastard child simply took the mother's name. In some (many?) cases, the family was elevated in status by the royal getter of the bastards. Which made him or her, I suppose, a right royal bastard. Many of today's better known aristocratic families started that way ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#48513
11/24/2001 9:20 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
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WW-- Fitzroy-- comes to mind..
and yes whitman, Fitz has become an associated with irish names.. the pretty young thing entertains the king.. an then get pregnant.. bad form to have unwed mothers about -- retire them to the country.. or better yet, out of the country.. some nice rural estate in ireland.. the son (or daughter) raised far from court has less of chance of attemping to set himself up as a contender to the throne. ireland was far away.. and a good place if you where a king, to banish a former mistress to!
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#48514
11/24/2001 10:22 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
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One really famous one was William the Conqueror. His mother was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise.
Was Bill the Conqueror's mother's family the one that started the Samsonite suitcase industry?
Oh, never mind. Wrong family. I'm thinking of the Tanners of Valise.
WW
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#48515
11/26/2001 2:29 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
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"redactophobia" - ( ) A fear of editing or of editors"
What sayest thou, O High Priestess wow!?
The Good Sisters used to say "If you can't be good for love of God then be good for fear of Him."
My version is "If you won't take the time to write well for love of language, write well for fear of the Editor."
Old newspaper saying : "The reason editor has a capital E is the same reason God has a capital G."
OK Whit?
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#48516
11/26/2001 2:50 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
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It seems to me that editors are a subset of critics. Years ago I read an essay by George Jean Nathan in ;which he said: "Critics are like eunuchs, they can tell you how, but they can't do it themselves." The one exception I can think of was James A. Michener, who was an editor with Saturday Evening Post before he wrote Tales of the South Pacific.
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#48517
11/26/2001 9:22 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
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OK Whit?Yes, O " G"reat " W"ow, I shudder before you! (and your slashing pen!)
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#48518
11/26/2001 9:25 PM
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Michener was an editor?...what, did he E-X-P-A-N-D all the work he saw!!? 
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#48519
11/28/2001 12:13 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Whitty: wwh wrote, "The one exception I can think of was James A. Michener, who was an editor with Saturday Evening Post before he wrote Tales of the South Pacific (emphasis, mine)." Hawaii followed the tales, so Michener hadn't begun writing his 800+ page tomes. It would be interesting, however, to know whether any Michener redactophobes did, in fact, quake if Michener wrote, "Expand!" His own expansions were volcanic.
Now an editing question. Did I correctly parenthetically use "(emphasis, mine)"?
WW
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#48520
11/28/2001 1:26 AM
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I am unable to confirm my recollection of the Michener-Saturday Evening Post connection. But I did find a couple mentions of his having been an editor for a couple short stints. He was said to have been an orphan, subsequently "adopted" by his biological mother, although that could not be confirmed.They were so poor he had no sports equipment. At ages 17 he ran away from home. He worked in a travelling carnival Yet, if I remember correctly, he gave away over a hundred million dollars. A remarkable achievement in view of his early deprivation. A real life Horatio Alger hero.
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#48521
11/28/2001 6:22 AM
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But since Michener's writing style had a penchant for extended detail, I'm sure he was incorporating that into his work long before his big novels. I enjoyed the work of his I managed to read...most notably Tales of the South Pacific. But he did tend be be long-winded. The Drifters sat on my shelf, dying to be read for years. But everytime I scooped it up I looked at the length of it again and said, "Naaaaaaaa..." Leon Uris tomes (400-600 pg) were about my limit of endurance. Unless, of course, I was singling out a real classic. Which leads me to ponder an interesting question, Wordwindy...what's the longest book you've ever read, cover to cover? I can't come up with a quick answer, I'd have to think a bit. Maybe Dickens, maybe Moby Dick. (The Bible, of course, but I never read straight through it.)
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#48522
11/28/2001 10:20 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Whitty: I read the Bible cover-to-cover due to having been cabin-bound resulting from a blizzard in 1984, I think. I also read Ulysses with about as many pages in explanatory notes in 1975. Other long books read include Boswell on Johnson and Hawaii, which is the only book I've read of Michener's.
How 'bout you, Whitty, and the rest of you? What are some of the longest books you've read and lived to tell the tale?
Book regards,
WW
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#48523
11/28/2001 11:14 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460
addict
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addict
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Some years ago, I tackled (is that the right word?) Proust's Remembrance of times past which took me a year off and on. More recently -- a translation of Don Quixote. And I've nearly completed the complete novels of Iris Murdoch (which seem to get longer and longer).
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#48524
11/28/2001 1:29 PM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
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My longest has to be Atlas Shrugged. For Whom the Bell Tolls is pretty long too, I guess.
What about a series of books that aren't really separate but intended to be continuous? Lord of the Rings is like that, and Harry Potter I think. I haven't read the latter, but it's supposed to be 7 or 8 books long.
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#48525
11/28/2001 7:40 PM
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Posts: 2,605
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My personal: Chruchill's 6-volume history of the World War II.
BTW, Potter is planned as a series of seven books, the first four of which have been published.
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#48526
11/28/2001 9:05 PM
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I have but probably will never finish Will Durant's XI volume "The Story of Civilization". Because of my failing vision, not because of any fault of the writing, which I find very enjoyable. It takes up just under two feet of shelf space.
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#48527
11/28/2001 9:13 PM
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Posts: 2,636
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And so, of course, I have read all of Mitchner's books. I'm not sure if any one of those is the longest book I've ever read, but I do so like them when they go on forever.
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#48528
11/28/2001 11:14 PM
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Posts: 3,409
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#48529
11/28/2001 11:33 PM
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The Lord of the RingsYes, Jazzo! That would be it for me!...including The Hobbit as prologue. And I guess Atlas Shrugged would have to be yours, required reading for an aspiring architect! Alas, that was another intended but never embarked-upon long-read in my life...actually leafing through it a number of times trying to convince myself to get started. [edit: I had to fix a misspelling--embraked-upon for embarked-upon...but the typo coinage fits if you think about it. A subtle subconscious intention? ]
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#48530
11/29/2001 5:09 AM
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Posts: 3,065
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I also survived Remembrance of Times Past. Can't say I was much the wiser as to what it was about by the time I'd finished though. War and Peace was easier. Not having them both to hand, I can't say whether it was longer or shorter than Lord of the Rings. I've started Clarissa a couple of times but never got much further than about a third of the way through. I'm thinking of getting myself The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for Christmas.
Bingley
Bingley
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#48531
11/29/2001 9:04 AM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I am sitting here, green with envy at all of the books you've had time to read! I have a study full of books at home, very few of which I have read in full - I dip in and extract what I need for my work, and lay them aside until next time. I will, one of these days when I finally manage to retire, read some of them from cover to cover - I would love to get through the whole of E.P.Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, which is a classic (I've read about a third of it, but not in sequence!)
But I suppose I've not done too badly, over the years. - Lord of the Rings at least five times, all of Dickens novels bar Dombey and Son (scheduled for the Yuletide holiday.) Anna Karenina, biographies of a variety of British politicians, and an aborted attempt at War and Peace, which I must try again; all have figured on my reading list. My current long book, which is being read three pages at a time each night before I drop off to sleep, is Harrison Salisbury's 900 Days: the siege of Leningrad, which is fascinating, despite being very badly written.
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#48532
11/29/2001 1:14 PM
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Rhuby, Speaking of picking up and putting down a long one for a later time, Middlemarch is at the top of my list for that long read. When I picked it up, I wanted to savour it and hadn't the time. One day I will give it the time and focus I want to.
Anyone read She's Come Undone? That was a surprise unfolding as I read it. Was the central character Delores? Can't recall. But it was an interesting, somewhat long, but fast read.
WW
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#48533
11/29/2001 1:33 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I really must try Middlemarch, myself.
I've not heard of the other one, though - details of author, please?
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#48534
11/29/2001 3:13 PM
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#48535
11/29/2001 4:57 PM
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Posts: 13,858
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There are some wrinkles that cannot be ironed out. Years ago the comic strip "Dick Tracy" featured a villain named "Pruneface" whose face was a mass of wrinkles. The only condition I know of that could be responsible is rhagades, a dermatology lesion of late stages of an STD (acronym to spare the sensitive) with causative agent Treponema pallidum.
Maybe other participants can remember some of the other villains in the strip with interesting peculiarities.
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#48536
11/29/2001 5:04 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
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I wonder how the colloquialism "wrinkle" meaning "a useful innovation" came into being.
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#48537
11/29/2001 7:11 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
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good question Dr bill about why a wrinkle an innovation.. I would like to think it is because some one over the age of 20 came up with a good idea, and good ideas got associated with some one old enough to have wrinkles...
but it might have come out of the garment trade-- where there is a process called "shrinking the marker"
a marker is pattern lay out. because some pieces of a pattern are large (say the back of a jacket) and other small (the under portion of a sleeve) and because fabric comes in set widths.. there is a special skill called marker making. cutting table in the industry are often 10 or 12 feet long.. (3 to 4 meters) and layout to make best use of fabric.
but the marker maker might not work in the same building or city as the cutter and factory (the actual cutting and sewing would be farmed out to jobbers) .. so the marker would be copied onto tissue paper, and mailed to jobber . Somewhere along the way, some one discovered that you could crumple the tissue paper, and then smooth it out.. and if you did, you might find the marker is now 2 or 3 inches shorter.. (not much over a 12 feet.. but if you are cutting 10 layers, you have 30 inches.. and if you cut 10 layers 10 times -- now you have 300 inches.. (and most lots of cuts are in 1,000 units, not hundreds...)
and so a wily jobber could cut an extra 10 or 20 or more extra "pieces"-- which the he (she) could sell else where.. (off label)
the reduction in the size of the finished garment would be very slight.. less than 0.5%...
i don't know any where else where a "wrinkle" is a way of cheating..
an aside-- in NY (elsewhere?) if you say you have a "factory job" it means you work in a garment factory.
if you work in some sort of other factory.. you specify.. (a paper bag factory..) plain old factory work is always sewing.
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#48538
12/01/2001 2:36 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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I reviewed novels for the Otago Daily Times for a number of years. The literary editor of that august newspaper was an intellectual snob of the first water and flatly refused to read novels. I was continually schmoozing around his office looking for books to read and eventually I began to get them by the carton load. I wrote reviews for over 2000 books in seven years; about 200 of the reviews were actually published - which gives you some idea of the editor's values. Most of them wound up at the local library, although I probably still have some 30 or so that I kept. You got to keep all of the books on the condition that you sent back the copy of the reviews to the publisher. Which I did, religiously.
The vast majority of the novels fell into the mediocre to mindblowingly bad/boring range. One of the worst was Mitchener's Aztec. I picked it up and put it down, picked it up and put it down and on and on for weeks. Several times I was tempted to simply review it off the dust jacket, something I'm sure that Wow will agree is not exactly uncommon. However, I persevered and eventually finished it and wrote something like "will be interesting to those who like exhaustive historical detail of dubious quality and would rather not have to sift through too much of that boring plot stuff". When I sent the review back, the person at the publisher who was responsible for these things sent me a thank you note back with all the other NZ reviews of Aztec attached. They were almost ALL literal reproductions of the dust jacket blurb ... I'm still not sure exactly what the message there was meant to be.
The very worst book it fell to my lot to review was a self-published effort by someone whose name I mercifully forget. It was a science fiction-y type of thing and was deadly dull because of the hackneyed plot and was diabolical to read because of the turgidity of the prose. The distributor sent it to the paper asking that we have a look. My review was scathing, and I thought that the distributor would take a very dim view of it. Instead, I got a whole box of self-published efforts to review. Most of them were pretty bad, which is probably a tribute to the publishing house book selectors' capabilities. But that first one was the absolute and utter worst I ever had to contend with.
Having said all of that, however, there were many gems amongst the dross. And they were anything but hard work to read and review!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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