Life in the Cheese Drawer

yesterday i called melissa to say hi and chat and all that good stuff. we were talking about something infuriating to both of us, and she said “and you know what really gets my goat?”

and i had to interrupt her well-formed rant because i was just like, where on earth did that saying come from?

so here’s your etymology saturday lesson!

the first time it was in print, it was in reference to a burst water pipe in 1909, about transferring water back and forth from the tub to a bowl and back again all night. that certainly would have been goat getting.

this is a relatively new phrase, as you can see from 1909, and one story is that it came from when goats were placed next to racehorses to keep them call. when people wanted to rig the race, some ill-mannered people would steal the horse’s goat, causing the horse to race poorly. but while that’s a nice story, it’s not widely accepted as the true source.

another idea is that the word goat was used as slang for anger around the early 1900s, which makes a little more sense.

yet another option is from the french phrase prendre le chevre, meaning take the goat, angering the owner. (i don’t like this one.)

i actually thought of this one while looking at various sources: a mispronunciation of goad. get your goad – like goading someone on.

or maybe we’re all just goat owners and we’d all be angry if someone tried to take away our goats!

we may never know the real origin, but i do like the slang idea. it was the idea that we all have an inner goat just waiting to get out there and be angry. so when something irks you, you get your goat out.

GOATS!

(hrrrmmmm i was going to link to a post i KNOW i did about the term scapegoat, but i think it was lost in the great blog migration. ugh! well, that’s another post, i guess!)

whoa. so my mom requested to know more about the term “doldrums” and a whole new weather world has just opened up!

we’ve all heard doldrums: a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression. i think it’s safe to say that we know that it’s related to ships and sailing and no wind. but here’s some super interesting background on the doldrums: it’s actually the region of the atlantic ocean that’s over the equator, where two sets of tradewinds meet, and conditions can be all over the place.

no wind. this is a low pressure area from 5°N to 5°S of the Equator. the winds are calm, which means there’s no way for ships with sails to get moving.

tradewinds meet. the doldrums are also know as the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) because of the tradewinds meeting. because of the two systems meeting, conditions can be all over the place.

it’s not good.this area of the ocean was to be avoided in sailing of yore. ships could be stranded for weeks and weeks, running out of provisions, not to mention scurvy, deliriousness, and cabin fever.

but why? this section is caused by the sun’s radiation. the heat from the sun on the equator causes the air to warm and then rise straight up instead of to either side. the tradewinds also meet here, converging and moving upward. hence, no wind to make you go. or really erratic wind! it could be nothing or it could be violent storms.

but what the heck are the horse latitudes?? the two areas above and below are known as the horse latitudes. spanish ships that were transporting horses to the colonies would get stuck in the horse latitudes, and because of the extra long voyage, the horses would die and get thrown overboard.

and it’s kind of unpredictable. the doldrums can change with the season, and it’s susceptible to the temperature of the ocean. sometimes it can double, one on the north and the other on the south side of the equator.

weirdly enough, the etymology of doldrum is surprisingly late, considering how many ships were out sailing the atlantic before the birth date of doldrums: 1803. could be that the word had been in use for some time but hadn’t been written down.

and, in a neat convergence (unlike those tradewinds), doldrum comes from the word “dulled” and “tantrum”.

the oldest written sample i found on an etymology site was in a poem: “if you’ve the doldrums or ennui (!), forsake the town and come to me.” (a marine picture)

in related news, it’s kind of amazing how much land is ABOVE the equator. and also how big the pacific ocean is.

what the heck IS a calling bird? aren’t all birds calling birds?

time for an etymology lesson!

turns out, the calling bird line in the 12 days of christmas song is a relatively new revelation. the line for 100+ years prior to its adoption was four COLLY birds.

the song was first published around 1780, which means it was probably a spoken poem or song long before that. and the first publications called the day four birds, colly/collie birds.

forget a calling bird – what the heck is a COLLY bird???

colly comes from old english for the cord coal – describing coal dust, the color of coal, etc. and in a 1565 translation of metamorphosis, here’s the line that described a raven:

as thou thou prating raven white by nature being bred, hadst on they fether justly late a coly colour spred.

but, where the four birds supposed to be ravens? more likely the colly bird in the song is supposed to be a blackbird.

BUT! the mystery doesn’t stop there. in the past, the line has also been four canary birds, four colored birds, and four curley birds. it’s even been a tole of birds?

good news bad news, though: in 1909, a tune was set in publication to the poem or song, and the calling birds were put in print. however, it took a while for it to catch on. it wasn’t until the mid 1900s that calling became the preferred word, and in the 1970s, it was the much more common word.

unfortunately, the calling bird is much more ambiguous than the colly bird! even the american ornithological society thinks it should be a colly bird. so let’s chalk this confusion up to frederic austin, whose musical arrangement we all now know, to not transcribing the song correctly.

and bring back the colly bird!

today’s word of the day: tenterhooks.

used in a sentence? “it’s safe to assume that all my readers are waiting on tenterhooks for the election results.”

so what’s the background on tenterhooks?

back in ye olde timey days, people would make their own woolen cloth. after it was woven, the cloth was still oily from the fleece (lanolin!) and dirty. it was cleaned and then it had to be dried in a certain way, or it would shrink – as those of us know who’ve accidentally thrown a wool sweater in the dryer.

but pre dryers, the cloth would be stretched out on a wooden frame called a tenter. and on the edges of the frame were hooks! hence, tenterhooks. i guess this could be a large-scale operation, with fields of wool-laden tenters oft seen by ye olde peasantry.

soon after the word became a word in the 14th century, on tenters became a phrase known for tension, unease, anxiety, or suspense. between the nervousness of keeping wool in shape and the tension of the stretched fabric, it’s an apt metaphor. also, sheep are skittish, so the whole operation was probably a lesson in patience.

i was doing a little poking around to see if there were some weird word origins for word wednesday, and i ran across “give the cold shoulder”, which we all know. like the silent treatment. passive aggressive ignoring. we’re minnesotans. we’re good at this.

but, turns out the origin also made me think of another minnesota thing: the long, minnesota goodbye. you know. ok, gotta go! but first, it was great to see you. do you want anything to take home? when will i see you next? gotta hug 40 people 3 times each. oh, maybe i can stay for another 15 minutes for some ice cream (my dad hahaha). yeah. we’re NOT good at goodbye.

the origin of giving the cold shoulder comes from medieval england when people would visit eatch other. when the host was like, hey, you gotta leave, now. s/he would give the guest a cold piece of meat from the shoulder of beef, pork, or mutton. it was actually a polite way to say “get out.”

so i can see where it’s a little similar, but also different? i would also like to know more. was the lunch meat a way of saying “hey i don’t like you that much you need to go”? or was it “ugh you offended me with this thing get out of my sight because i can’t look at you right now and i’m mad”? and did these medieval peeps give the cold cuts to their loved ones just whenever? can you imagine in the middle of a serious fight, a wife just starts flinging pieces of meat at her husband! or what if poor people just show up at houses so they can get some food?

this just opens up so many more things i want to know about this saying.

crapulous. what a great word!

not to be confused with crappy, crapulous is what your head feels like the morning after a long night of drinking. crapulous is a craptastic hangover.

of course it has roots in greek, from the work kraipale (not to be confused with crap, which has roots in german and has to do with detritus). romans took over crapulous and ran with it, using it to mean just being drunk.

and there are several variations: crapulent (a very cromulent word), crapulence, crapula (not to be confused with a cupola).

(now that’s a crappy cupola.)

this has been your word wednesday. let’s bring back crapulous!