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Slavomír Čéplö (aka bulbul) wrote me as follows:

I have a mystery which I was hoping you or one of the Hatters might help me to solve. It involves a Church Slavic translation of a homily by John Chrysostom (see the attached edition by Reinhart). The text is quite trippy and even Reinhart has to admit he can’t figure out two parts (p. 169), of which the first one is the most interesting: чепито? in “и на чепитѣх(ь) | лежахꙋ ѻтроци, и ѻтроковице” apparently describing some sort of bed or sofa

Does this sound like a challenge worthy of the Hatters?

It does, and I am hereby posting it in the sure and certain hope that there will be an interesting discussion if not a convincing solution. Thanks, Slavo!

We don’t seem to have discussed cryptids here at LH, and I’ve just discovered a fine one, the almas, “said to inhabit the Caucasus, Tian Shan and Pamir Mountains of Central Asia and the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia”:

We were told that it had a flat face like that of a human being, and that it often walked on two legs, that its body was covered with a thick black fur, and its feet armed with enormous claws; that its strength was terrible, and that not only were hunters afraid of attacking it, but that the inhabitants removed their habitations from those parts of the country which it visited.

There are a couple of linguistically interesting features of the word; the first is that it doesn’t have a convincing etymology:

The term “almas” and numerous variants thereof appear in Mongolian, Turkic languages and Iranian languages.

Writing in 1964, scholar P. R. Rinčen says that “the origin of the old name is quite unknown … and it does not lend itself for translation in other languages”

The second is the impressive variety of “Other names” listed at that cryptid page:

Abnauayu, almasty, albasty, bekk-bok,
biabin-guli, golub-yavan, gul-biavan, auli-avan,
kaptar, kra-dhun, ksy-giik, ksy-gyik, ochokochi,
mirygdy, mulen, voita, wind-man, Zana

I wonder how they decide which are alternate names of the almas rather than creatures in their own right. (DNA tests are presumably unavailable.)

A few years ago I mentioned that RusTRANS was “actively seeking essays for a new, Open Access volume which is aimed at stimulating and consolidating scholarship about the global imprint of Russian literature in translation”; now the volume has appeared, as editors Muireann Maguire and Cathy McAteer explain:

[…] Our edited volume, Translating Russian Literature in the Global Context, studies how literature itself acts as diaspora. In this collection of forty-one essays by three dozen international scholars, we trace how, since 1900, Russian literature has been disseminated beyond its political borders; how individual Russian and Russophone authors are translated and emulated abroad; and how cultures and individuals from the Republic of Ireland to South Vietnam have absorbed Russian cultural influence, from Pushkin to Sholokhov. Our methodology is informed by both sociology and Translation Studies, relying upon Pascale Casanova’s concept of central and peripheral languages, Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital, Jeremy Munday’s microhistorical methodology, the focus on literary translators consolidated by Klaus Kaindl and colleagues, and David Damrosch’s erudite yet accessible comparatist analysis. National engagement with Russian literature varies with political as well as geographical climate; successful cultural integration is often pre-determined by the literacy of the target audience, and indeed by the nature of the transmission process – whether voluntary or compulsory, state-funded or profit-driven. Hence the definition of ‘Russian literature’ – and public attitudes towards it – alters sharply with time, place, and politics, as our contributors show.

Translating Russian Literature in the Global Context also explores an equally important issue, much harder to quantify: the influence of Russian literature on individual creative inspiration. This edited volume maps, for the first time, global connections between Russian authors (nineteenth-century classics, Socialist Realists, and even Soviet dissidents) and canon-shaping writers around the world, including Norway’s Knut Hamsun, Germany’s Thomas Mann, Greece’s Ares Alexandrou, the great Hindustani author Premchand and Japanese prose stylist Futubatei Shimei, through to modern-day award-winning authors like Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk and South Korea’s Bora Chung. Where Lahiri’s novel [The Namesake] traces the progress of Gogol the reluctant reader, we follow the (global) progress of Gogol the reluctant writer. How did a neurotically anxious fabulist, an ex-pat twice over (he left Ukraine for St Petersburg and St Petersburg for Rome, returning to the Russian Empire only to die), leave such a powerful legacy across so many continents? How could writers like Pushkin and Dostoevsky, their horizons restricted by the rigid social hierarchy and narrow politics of the Russian Empire, reach so far and touch so many readers? There are as many answers to these questions as there are nations where Russian literature is read today. This volume speaks for most of them.
[…]

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Today I learned one of the best animal names ever: noolbenger, ‘A small species of nocturnal marsupial, Tarsipes rostratus, of southwest Western Australia.’ It is apparently more commonly called a honey possum, but that’s not nearly as much fun. The OED has it (entry from 2003), with a more descriptive definition:

Chiefly Australian.

The honey possum, Tarsipes rostratus (family Tarsipedidae), a tiny marsupial with a long pointed snout and a prehensile tail that is restricted to south-west Australia and feeds exclusively upon nectar and pollen.

a1845 Nool-boon-goor. Aborigines of King George’s Sound. This little creature inhabits the smaller trees from the blossom of which..it is constantly extracting honey and minute insects.
J. Gilbert in Western Austral. Naturalist (1954) vol. 4 112
[…]

1955 Dainty and diminutive.., the honey-mouse or ‘nulbenger’..is what Gilbert White would have termed a seclusive animal.
C. Barrett, Australian Animal Book (ed. 2) viii. 39

2001 Honey Possum Tarsipes rostratus. Noolbenger… Unmistakable tiny animal with elongated muzzle.
P. Menkhorst & F. Knight, Field Guide to Mammals of Australia 90

Both Wikt and OED say simply that it’s from Nyungar ngulbunggur; my question is: is that word analyzable?

I enjoyed John McIntyre’s April 27 post:

My Facebook feed has been cluttered this week with people posting this remark attributed to the late Joseph Sobran: “In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high schools to teaching Remedial English in college.”

Let’s unpack some of what is in this.

First, a century ago, many fewer young people went to college at all, and they usually came from schools with curriculum designed to prepare for a college education. And, mind you, even then, scholarship was not necessarily pronounced. In the Ivy League colleges, the “gentleman’s C” was entirely satisfactory, because valuable connections and networking easily compensated for a mediocre education.

It is a mistake to equate the students of that era with the great surge after the Second World War of students seeking college educations for the first time in their families, a much wider range of students coming from public schools generally rather than selective academies. So this “gone from teaching” oversimplification ignores complex social and educational developments of the past seventy years. It is less an analysis than a slogan, a sneer at current students that overlooks the possibility that they might be at school to learn something.*

But at bottom the Sobran complaint is the tired conservative trope, repeated generation from generation, that there was a time in the past when people were smarter and more capable, compared to the degenerate present. Cicero complained that people were no longer speaking good Latin. Egbert of Liege bemoaned that “scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before” in the eleventh century. Jonathan Swift wrote in 1712 that people had so corrupted the English language that the Crown should establish an academy to regulate it. It was always better in the past, for those of us who recall it.

Posting the Sobran sneer does not make one a brave voice crying in the wilderness. It is rather, and merely, a badge of smugness.

I’m surprised he doesn’t point out what a vile creature Sobran was; perhaps he subscribes to the nil nisi bonum doctrine, but I don’t, so I’ll leave you with the sample quote “I won’t be satisfied until the Church resumes burning for heresy” and send you to Wikipedia for furthers and betters, as they say in Endeavour.

The Economist’s excellent Johnson column recently covered an important subject [back in 2018]: Women’s voices are judged more harshly than men’s (archived). It begins:

“In a World…”, a film from 2013, is about, of all things, the voice-over industry—specifically, the warm, masculine voices that lend a ponderous authority to film trailers and advertisements. Lake Bell, an actor, plays the daughter of a legendary voice-over man; she wants to break into the industry herself, but faces sexism at every turn. Ms Bell has a rich and deep voice of her own, but she is also a gifted mimic. A bubbly young woman with a squeaky high voice stops to ask her: “Do you know where I can get a smoothie around here?” Ms Bell expertly mimics her tone in reply.

The scene highlights two vocal features associated with young women: vocal fry and uptalk. Uptalk, as the name suggests, is the rising intonation that makes statements sound like questions? And vocal fry—often said to be typical of Kim Kardashian, an American celebrity—happens at the ends of words and phrases when a speaker’s vocal chords relax, giving the voice a kind of creaky quality (a bit like something frying in a pan).

From these descriptions, an alien observer would be bemused to learn that these harmless phenomena drive some people to scorn, or even anger. But they do. When Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her, some viewers were so infuriated by her speaking style that they denounced it on Twitter: “Christine Blasey Ford’s little girl voice…vocal fry, and uptalk worse than clubbed toenails down a chalkboard.”

After providing more background and explanation, it concludes:

There is no escaping the fact that some voices sound more pleasing than others. And there is no quick way around society’s belief that deep voices convey authority; men have been more powerful than women for all of known history. It may be good practical advice to tell women who want to get into the voice-over industry—or indeed others that have been historically dominated by men—to use firm and deep voices if they want to impress. They might also take care to avoid the distraction of vocal fry, while simultaneously ensuring that they don’t sound too mannish. Women, in other words, are required to walk a thin line when they speak in public, a no-room-for-error performance never expected of men.

There’s nothing new here for anyone who’s been paying attention, but the prejudice is so deeply rooted that occasional reminders are a good idea; even I, who have been aware of it for years, still have to battle an instinctive recoil from particularly “girly” voices on the radio or TV. ¡La lucha continúa!

Back in 2015 I linked to Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms to bring you the word neenish, but not only have there been quite a few updates since then (like the entry for that very word, under n) but the URL itself has changed, so I figure it’s time to repost it. Here’s the first entry on the A page:

acca

Michael Davie in ‘Going from A to Z forever’ (an article on the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary), Age, Saturday Extra, 1 April 1989, writes of his visit to the dictionary section of Oxford University Press:

Before I left, Weiner [one of the two editors of the OED] said he remembered how baffled he had been the first time he heard an Australian talk about the ‘arvo’. Australians used the -o suffix a lot, he reflected. Arvo, smoko, garbo, journo. But not all -o words were Australian, said Simpson [the other of the two editors]: eg ‘aggro’ and ‘cheapo’. I asked if they were familiar with the Oz usage ‘acco’, meaning ‘academic’. They liked that. I hoped, after I left, they would enter it on one of their little slips and add it to their gigantic compost heap – a candidate for admission to the next edition.

We trust that Edmund Weiner and John Simpson did not take a citation, since the Australian abbreviation of academic is not acco but acca (sometimes spelt acker).

The abbreviation first appears in Meanjin (Melbourne, 1977), where Canberra historian Ken Inglis has an article titled ‘Accas and Ockers: Australia’s New Dictionaries’. The editor of Meanjin, Jim Davidson, adds a footnote: ‘acca (slightly derogatory) 1, noun An academic rather than an intellectual, particularly adept at manipulating trendiologies, usually with full scholarly apparatus. Hence 2, noun A particularly sterile piece of academic writing.’ The evidence has become less frequent in recent years.

1993 Age (Melbourne) 24 December: The way such festivals bring together writers, publishers and accas, making them all accountable to the reader – the audience – gives them real value.

What a useful word! The OED is ignorant of it in all its forms, though they have acker ‘A strong or turbulent current in the sea; a flood tide (Obsolete); A current in a river, etc.; a ripple, furrow, or disturbance of the surface of water, a ‘cat’s paw’ (Now rare)” (“Of uncertain origin”) and acker ‘A piastre; gen. Usually in plural. Coins, banknotes, cash; money,’ for which the following amusing etymology is provided:
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I always enjoy Gary Shteyngart’s writing (e.g., 2004, 2011), and his latest New Yorker essay, “A Martini Tour of New York City” (archived), is no exception. The first paragraph:

Three years ago, as the pandemic was loosening its grip on the world, and as I started to recover from the aftereffects of a botched childhood circumcision that had returned to haunt me in middle age, I rediscovered the bottomless pleasure of a cold dry Martini. My emergence from both a global and personal health crisis plunged me into a daily Saturnalia. As restaurants reopened, I unhinged my jaw and left it open: suadero tacos dripping with lard; twisted knobs of dough crowning gigantic Georgian khinkali dumplings; the mutton chop at Keens Steakhouse that is made for sharing in theory, but not in practice—all fell victim to my appetites. And to help the food go down easy, I also consumed gallons of Willamette Valley pinot noir and hyper-local artisanal ales. Soon enough, my A1C levels were in the prediabetic range and I knew that action had to be taken.

From this I learned the word suadero ‘(cooking, Mexico) a thin cut of fried beef that is commonly used as a taco filling,’ “Possibly from sudadero,” and later on (“Matt and I followed up our drinks with some shishito peppers”) I learned shishito ‘A sweet Japanese pepper, a cultivar of the species Capsicum annuum,’ “Borrowed from Japanese 獅子唐 (shishitō).” I was familiar with khinkali dumplings (and have in fact eaten them), but looking up the Georgian word ხინკალი I learned that it is “ultimately borrowed from Avar хинкӏал (xinkʼal)” and that it gave rise to Armenian խինկալի (xinkali), which is “Folk-etymologically explained as խին (xin, ‘fat’) +‎ -կալ (-kal, ‘to hold’) or as խինալի (xinali), խնալի (xnali, ‘full of fat’).” Elsewhere he uses the term fat-washed, which Google tells me is “a clever cocktail technique that adds savory flavor to spirits. To fat-wash your alcohol, you just add a liquid like sesame oil or melted butter to a spirit at room temperature.” And for a bit of synchronicitous lagniappe, I offer this sentence: “The bacon of the devils on horseback set off a long Proustian moment as we recalled the Martini-accompanying bar snacks of yore, the pigs in a blanket, for example, that went so well with the Polo Bar’s Gibsons.”

A couple of years ago the indefatigable ktschwarz linked to Ben Yagoda’s 2011 Slate essay on why Americans think bumbershoot is British, but I suspect not many Hatters saw the comment, and although I did, I had entirely forgotten it and was freshly surprised when Ben linked to it on FB: “What? It’s not Britspeak?” said I (in my hypothetical internal monologue) and clicked through to read the very interesting details:

In my recent Slate article about Americans using more Britishisms, I wondered aloud, “Why have we adopted laddish while we didn’t adopt telly or bumbershoot?” More than one English person responded to this query with another: “Bumbershoot? What do you mean, bumbershoot?”

I told them I had always thought of this funny term for umbrella as one of those words, like cheerio and old man, that the stage Englishman is required to say. My wife had the same impression. But when I looked into the matter, I learned that we were apparently misinformed. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies the word as “originally and chiefly U.S. slang.” And the digital archive of the Times of London, comprising 7,696,959 articles published between 1785 and 1985, yields precisely zero hits for bumbershoot.

As late as 1933, there was no British association. That year the New York Times ran a short editorial praising bumbershoot as “a term that drips with poetry and magic” and referring to it as “the mystical name, the children’s name, for an umbrella.” (And can we lament for a second that the Times editorial-page prose style no longer drips with poetry and magic?) Some days later, R.A. McGlasson wrote a letter to the editor saying that the word was commonly used in his Dutchess County, N.Y. childhood 50 years earlier; another correspondent, Louis Margolis, reported he first heard it while “spending a summer on a Connecticut farm in New London County at the tender age of ten or eleven years.”

[Read more…]

In Anna Wiener’s New Yorker piece “How Perfectly Can Reality Be Simulated?” (archived), there is a mention of “the I’on Swamp, a former rice paddy on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina”; thanks to the magazine’s serif font, I could tell that it was “eye-on” and not “lon” (with an el), but the spelling threw me — I’ve never seen an apostrophe used that way. A little googling turned up Kyle Brooks’ 2017 post The I’On Swamp, in which he proffers the following explanation:

The early owner of the Clayfield Plantation was Jacob Bond I’On, which is where the current name for the swamp stems from. From what I could gather, most people called this swamp the Wappetaw Swamp during the 1700’s and 1800’s, and the name didn’t transition to the I’On Swamp until the 1900’s. As an interesting aside, this part of the Lowcountry spoke non-rhotic English in the 1700’s and early 1800’s, meaning that people born and raised in this region did not pronounce the “R” sound in words. Jacob Bond I’On’s last name is actually a modification of the name “Iron.” This name was modified to reflect how people were pronouncing the name, and the spelling stuck, both with the I’On family, but also the I’On Swamp.

Obviously that “Iron” story could be fake news, but it’s plausible and, for the moment, good enough for me. I wonder why they chose to use the apostrophe? It seems like “Ion” would be a natural and unremarkable rendering of the name. As it is, it looks as weird as de la O.