Category Archives: Linguistics

So, In Terms of Transgenderism…

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Transgression... and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beth Rigby, Sky News: This is an image we’ve seen a lot of recently, it’s a podium with a trans woman coming first and a biological women coming second and third. Do you think that’s fair, Ian?

Ian Anderson of Stonewall: So, sport by sport, people are looking at this. On elite sport, what you’re finding is that sporting body by sporting body is looking at this issue.

BR: Let me put it another way, how would you feel if you were number two and three in that scenario? Do you think that was fair?

IA: Well, I’m absolutely rubbish at sport.

BR: You know what I mean. How do you think this woman, this woman might feel about that?

IA: Yeah, so, I mean, everybody, we’re working our way through on this, this is, I mean, this is, I mean, how trans folk take part in elite sport.

BR: But this is a problem, isn’t it? Do you see this as a problem?

IA: So, I think it’s a problem in terms of the perception of the conversation.

[etc]

• “The Idiocy of Stonewall”, Julie Bindel

Give It Some Pivot

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, Linguistics, Mixed Metaphors and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hydrology, geology, acoustics and more combine in one magnificently muddled mixed metaphor:

When [Emily] Pankhurst ordered her followers to stop bombing the British state and start helping to arm it for the war effort [after 1914], it left some of the most radicalized to fall into “a feminist-fascist estuary formed in the crater generated by Mrs Pankhurst’s pivot from law-breaking insurgency to conformist cheerleading”. — ‘It’s a scary time’: Sophie Lewis on the ‘enemy feminisms’ that enable the far right, The Guardian, 21ii25

Among the baffling questions raised by the metaphor is this: Why “estuary”? It would make sense to say “[fall into] a stagnant and stinking feminist-fascist pool formed in the crater…” But estuaries aren’t stagnant and craters don’t create estuaries anyway. Rivers do when they flow into a sea or lake. What would the river and sea represent?

I’ve no idea. And I would find it very difficult to match that mixed metaphor without making it seemed contrived or confected. Mixed metaphors are a zen thing: for best effect, they’ve got to flow from the fingertips or float off the tongue without effort, welling up from a bottomless crater of bollocks like a meth-smoking bull in a china-shop riding a feral tsunami of unhinged imagery and clashing comparativization.

Drain Brain

by in French, History, Language, Literature, Quotations, Translation and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Eh bien, avant-hier 17 mars 1838, cet homme est mort. Des médecins sont venus, et ont embaumé le cadavre. Pour cela, à la manière des Égyptiens, ils ont retiré les entrailles du ventre et le cerveau du crâne. La chose faite, après avoir transformé le prince de Talleyrand en momie et cloué cette momie dans une bière tapissée de satin blanc, ils se sont retirés, laissant sur une table la cervelle, cette cervelle qui avait pensé tant de choses, inspiré tant d’hommes, construit tant d’édifices, conduit deux révolutions, trompé vingt rois, contenu le monde.

Les médecins partis, un valet est entré, il a vu ce qu’ils avaient laissé : Tiens ! ils ont oublié cela. Qu’en faire ? Il s’est souvenu qu’il y avait un égout dans la rue, il y est allé, et a jeté ce cerveau dans cet égout. — Victor Hugo, Choses vues: Talleyrand, 1838

And so, the day before yesterday, March 17, 1838, this man died. Doctors came and embalmed the corpse. They did this like the Egyptians, removing the entrails from the stomach and the brain from the skull. When they were done, having transformed Prince Talleyrand into a mummy and nailing this mummy in a bier lined with white satin, they withdrew, leaving the brain on a table, this brain that had thought so many things, inspired so many men, built so many buildings, led two revolutions, deceived twenty kings, had contained the world.

With the doctors gone, a valet came in and saw what they had left: Hey! they forgot that. What shall I do with it? He remembered that there was a sewer in the street, so he went out and threw the brain into the sewer. — Victor Hugo, Things Seen, 1838

RubbuR

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Ancient Greek, Language and tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Etymology

From Middle French tribade, and its source, Latin tribad-, from Koine Greek τριβάς (tribás), from Ancient Greek τρίβω (tríbō, “to rub”).

磨鏡

Chinese: 磨 grindstone; to sharpen + to delay | 鏡 mirror; lens

trad. (磨鏡) 磨 鏡
simp. (磨镜) 磨 镜

Pronunciation

Mandarin

(Pinyin): mójìng
(Zhuyin): ㄇㄛˊ ㄐㄧㄥˋ

Southern Min (Hokkien, POJ): bôa-kiàⁿ

Middle Chinese: ma kjaengH

Old Chinese

(Baxter–Sagart): /*mˤaj C.qraŋʔ-s/
(Zhengzhang): /*maːl kraŋs/

Verb

磨鏡, to grind mirrors; 2. (now chiefly Xiamen Hokkien, euphemistic) to have lesbian sexual relations

• from tribade and 磨鏡 at Wiktionary

Rhyme and Again

by in French, Language, Literature, Poetry, Quotations and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

From John Julius Norwich’s More Christmas Crackers (1990):

Holorhymes are whole lines which have the same sound but different meanings. For some reason, they seem to go better in French. Louise de Vilmorin gave me two beautiful ones:

Étonnamment monotone et lasse
Est ton âme en mon automne, hélas!

And

Gall, amant de la reine, alla tour magnanime,
Gallament de l’arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes.

This second one is by Victor Hugo.

Mot d’un Moucheron

by in French, Language, Natural History, Quotations, Translation and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Que me proposent-ils là, les imprudents ! Parce que j’ai remué quelques grains de sable sur le rivage, suis-je en état de connaître les abîmes océaniques ? La vie a des secrets, insondables. Le savoir humain sera rayé des archives du monde avant que nous ayons le dernier mot d’un moucheron. » — Souvenirs entomologiques de Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915)

— “What do they want from me, those imprudent ones? Because I’ve lifted a few grains of sand on the shore, am I ready to sound the ocean’s depths? Life has secrets, unfathomable secrets. Human knowledge will be erased from the world’s archives before we have the last word on a gnat.”

Summery Summary

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sun, n., The bright celestial object which is the chief source of natural light and heat on earth and appears to pass across the sky each day from east to west; the central body of the solar system, around which the earth and other planets orbit, and which by its changing position relative to the earth’s axis determines the seasons.

Summary

A word inherited from Germanic.

Cognate with Old Frisian sunne, sonne, senne (West Frisian sinne, North Frisian sen), Old Saxon sunna (Middle Low German sunne), Old Dutch sunna (Middle Dutch sonne, Dutch zon), Old High German sunna (Middle High German sunne, sonne, German Sonne), Old Icelandic sunna (in poetry), Gothic sunno, Crimean Gothic sune,

< a variant of the same Indo-European base as early Scandinavian (runic: Norway) solu (dative singular), Old Icelandic sól, Old Swedish, Swedish sol, Old Danish, Danish sol, Gothic sauil, and also Sanskrit svar (genitive sūraḥ), Old Avestan huuarə̄, ancient Greek ἥλιος, ἠέλιος (Doric ἀέλιος, Cretan ἀβέλιος; compare helio– comb. form), classical Latin sōl, Old Welsh houl (Welsh haul), Old Prussian saule, Lithuanian saulė, all in sense ‘sun’, and Early Irish, Irish súil eye. — Oxford English Dictionary

Coptic Optics

by in Aesthetics, Art, Color, History, Language and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Coptic Cross with abbreviation Ⲓⲏ̅ⲥ̅ Ⲡⲭ̅ⲥ̅ Ⲡ̀ϣⲏⲣⲓ ⲙ̀ⲪϮ standing for Ⲓⲏⲥⲟⲩⲥ Ⲡⲓⲭ̀ⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ Ⲡ̀ϣⲏⲣⲓ ⲙ̀Ⲫ̀ⲛⲟⲩϯ,
Iêsous Piekhristos Epshêri Emefnouti, “Jesus Christ, Son of God” (see Wikipedia)