So is Palin Goose or Charlie?

A short piece at dcexaminer.com takes a look at the history and current state of maverick. Usually pieces like this are eager to provide an easy story that sounds reasonable. And they're often much too easy to be true. Those are called folk etymologies.^†

But this story keeps it together and gives a decent history.

In the 1860s, Samuel Maverick was an indifferent herder who refused to brand his cattle. When cowboys would see his unmarked cows wondering the countryside, they'd say, 'Oh that's a Maverick.'

Compare that to the OED entry:

< the name of Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-70), U.S. politician, and the owner of a large herd of cattle in Texas in which the calves were unbranded.

Also relevant to the story of this word: the use of an emerging derivation

It seems the family's biggest confusion is not that McCain links himself to a liberal family (We have some Republicans in the family now admits Mrs. Maverick) but that he hasn't done anything very mavericky.

Mavericky is an adjective that is formed by the derivational adjective suffix -y. It's been making the rounds. SNL used it amusingly in its VP debate sketch

Tina Fey (as Sarah Palin): With Barack Obama you're gonna be payin' higher taxes. But not with me and my fellow maverick. We are not afraid to get mavericky in there and ruffle feathers, and not got to allow that. And also too: the great Ronald Reagan.

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† We could say a lot about the different types of folk etymology. Two major types: 1) Explicit: a false story about the history of a word. Explanations like the claim that posh is an acronym for Portside Out Starboard Home; or that fuck is an acronym meaning for unlawful carnal knowledge or fornication under carnal knowledge or fornication under command of the king; or that hooker (prostitute) is related in origin to Civil War general Joseph Hooker —all false. 2) Effective: a morphological analysis that mistakenly connects words just because they sound or look similar. These might not be explicitly noted but they often affect pronunciation (as Geoff Nunberg suggests that a folk etymological connection to words like molecular and particular has effected the pronunciation 'nuk-yu-ler') or meaning (as jejune has been connected to the idea of youth probably because of resemblance to juvenile while the true etymology connects it to the sense of emptiness by fasting).

Google's grasp grows

One of Buffy's favorite comedy bits is David Letterman's Great Moments in Presidential Speeches. After a particularly funny one tonight she remarked that she wished we had recorded it.

"Wouldn't that be great to have them on tape?" she opined/asked.

Without thinking about a website mismatch I responded: "You could just go on YouTube and google all of them."

I know Google bought YouTube but I'm still quite sure I said it without a capital 'G' or the trade mark symbol (™).

[BTW Update:
Yeah yeah I know that this use of google as a verb is common. It was just because I used it expressly in connection with another website that it flicked my attention.
]

Why I otter!

Let's stick with regional issues. A friend recently sent a note saying

I want to know if you've heard of any other names for the ice treat I'm eating in my profile picture.

What kind of ice treat is she eating you ask? Well...Freeze Pops or Freezie Pops or Freezer Pops or Flav-Or-Ice or Mr Freezie or Mr Freeze or Otter Pops. (There is an unfortunate polysemy with one of those.)

I had never heard Otter Pops. It was provided by one of our West Coast representatives. I assume the playfulness of otters has something to do with the name. You know--how they play around in the water like little kids do in the summer. Running up and down the Slip 'n Slide. Taking breaks to enjoy their regionally named flavored ice treat.



Any other suggestions for why they're named so? Any other names you've heard of?

Word games

I've married someone who loves words as much as I do. She is more dedicated to nurturing her vocabulary than anyone I know. When we began dating I noticed a laminated page on her wall, full of words and definitions. She would just sit and memorize. She gets about seven word-of-the-day emails every day. Rarely do the emails give a word she doesn't already know. It's not that they send easy words (like impudent prescience subservient or mutability) - they send weird and obscure words: conquian vilipend drawcansir verjuice...

When wooing her I was as reliant on a thesaurus as Christian on Cyrano.

And even with her lexi-lust I can't get her interested in phonology. I start to tell her about my latest realization or theory (I've stumbled on more of the former than I have formulated of the latter) and her eyes begin to dart past my shoulder to the clock. She gives a tight closed-mouth smile and begins to blink quickly. When I look away for a second I suspect she rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath.

It's the same reaction I give her when she begins to talk about the latest Nicole Richie gossip or the latest news about how Angelina and Brad are going to save the world.

Our interests do converge on word games (I'll differentiate word games from language games which I will discuss in my next post).

We share an early memory of sitting in my office playing Boggle even before we were dating (That's about 1st base in the Seventh-day Adventist culture). She has never won a game of Boggle but she is leading in the Scrabble series. When we play Balderdash she regularly knows the definition and doesn't have to make one up. And then there are the non-competitive games. One of us will come up with a category and we take turns coming up with appropriate items. I've decided to include such categories occasionally as a post. Nothing polemic. Nothing provocative. Nothing controversial.

Here's a list that has been augmenting for years. But because of my terrible memory and since I've not written down the items I have to start from scratch.

Words that are accepted as common nouns/verbs that were originally brand names:
kleenex
frisbee
xerox
jet-ski
band-aid
coke (down south)
cuisinart (for food processor - the popularity of the FoodTV and epicureanism is teaching people to recognize alternatives to this brand - slowing down or even reversing the process of genericism).
kodak (just like the previous - almost dead since the 80s because of Fuji's quality and now digital photography).

See - I'm starting to rely on marginal candidates to the list. I'll post more in the comments section as I think of them. That is if you don't beat me to it.

Do You Sudoku?

We find words that enter common usage with little examination. It's usually a case of very specific meaning and frozen application. take for example sudoku. People hear this word and find out about the puzzle and leave it at that. This is probably a case of altered and focused interest. In this case the puzzle enters our sights and we ignore the reasons and history behind the label.

These are often proper nouns. And just like names of interesting people, we're more interested in getting to know the person and so we ignore the name.

But because it's a recent introduction and it's still the topic of much conversation there are bound to be many discussions alighting on the meaning of this word. We look and we find nothing too interesting. It's a shortened form - 数独 - of the Japanese "numbers for when you're alone" - 数字 独身. It's a brand name that would be loosely translated to "number alone" or "number singly." I'll choose to translate it as number solitaire. Makes sense to me (this is not based on any knowledge I have about Japanese; it's just my reasonable assumption given what information I've found out there).

I won't yet admit that I'm addicted to the game - but once I realized that I didn't have to actually count, and that game could just as easily be played with shapes or colours (though nine colours would be hard to manage visually) my math panic subsided and I tried a few. I was okay trying to complete one puzzle a day - until my sister suggested this site: http://www.websudoku.com/ . Now I'm developing a dependency on racing against the clock - and all other racers.

It's a wonderful site because it times every game and allows you to see how your time compares to the average of all players on the site while also keeping your average. My best time so far is 4:27. (game #5,548,314,839 ) not too bad - it put me in the 80th percentile. But that's on the easy level and I'm sure there are several people who don't take the easy level too seriously. I imagine I'm doing well only when compared to elementary school kids and soap opera fans. My average time over 25 "easy" games is over ten minutes.

The USER average time for a "hard" puzzle: 12 minutes 26 seconds
MY time on a "hard" puzzle: 38 minutes 24 seconds

That puts me in the very select bottom 3rd percentile.