Templars and Triskaidekaphobes (fear of 13)

 
"It’s a terrible day for triskaidekaphobes"Adeel Hassan writes for the New York Times — "people scared of the number 13 — and friggatriskaidekaphobes, [people] who fear 13, but only on Fridays. Another term for a fear of Friday the 13th is paraskavedekatriaphobia."

And there's more to the freaky-friday story, but here's the fun poop-scoop for now:

Boss - old French for “a swelling tumor”

Cajole - french for “chatter like a jay” or, be enticed into a caged

Apricot - Arabic for “early ripening (peach)”

Ginko - Japanese for “silver peach”

Saskia - "protector of humankind" in Dutch, or “valley of light"

Zero - an Arabic symbol & cipher for “naught” or empty space. Nothing.
(Also a character in the best Wes Anderson film ever - The Grand Hotel Budapest. . . )

Diatribe - "employment (by Plato) for critical dissertation", or more simply: "the wearing away (of time)"

Apocalypse - Greek "from the good spirit"

Musk - one of the various root words means “testicle” from muska-s (Persian). The testicle may have resembled the mouse “mus"

Testicle “bear witness to male virility” a strange combo of testis “witness” and testament”

Croon - “to bellow like a bull” . . . mountain oysters anyone??? 

Fantastic - from Greek phantazein: “to make visible”

Crucial - Francis Bacon’s reference to the cross roads, derived from "Crux".

Spud - a short or stumpy person. . .

(a spud peeling spuds, hah!)

Bombastic - inflated

Protocol, literally means “first glue” in Greek

Quack - “ignorant pretender” but derived from a shortened form of quacksalver: prattle

Bachelor - young knight (training in arms)

Mausoleum - from Persian King of Caria, Mausolos Satrap. His “magnificent tomb” was built by his wife (and sister!) Artemesia. It was one of the seven wonders of the world.

Cappadocia in Turkey, hold many of these tombs.

Pigin = pidgeon, an English bastardization of the Chinese word for “business”. And they certainly are industrious business people. Last time i traveled to Costa Rica, they had liquor stores there - in the middle of Central America's jungley NOWHERE!

Epiphany - festival of the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles

Fascination - act of bewitching

Pattern - from patron, in the sense of a master giving an example for disciples to copy.

Now for a fascinating pattern in history - its often a misrepresentation of a special date (Friday the 13th) that gets an new sugar coated wrapper (as in the fabled Paul Revere Ride during the Civil War) and this moment the horror associated with Friday the 13th (not even mentioning the Paris incident). I won't go on any further, because this image summarizes the origins of not a word but a modern historic lore -

Right-o Folks,
May the Tao be with you,
Glutenous Gluteus

A Menagerie of Misleading Words!

The noun HOME means what you think it does, while the term homing originated around 1765 from pigeon used as carriers.

Darjleeling - Tibetan for “diamond island”

Insurance - 1550’s word meaning “engagement to marry”

Happy - "favoured by chance"

Pariah - a "drummer" (at festivals in India, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes was to play the drum. . . unlike in America where to be a drummer means great rewards of pussy and free coke).

Avid - "greedy"

Placid - "to please"

Diamond - the hardest metal, in Latin: “adiamantem,” which i find to be a familiar term used to define the ficticious metal which fused into Wolverine to make his bones unbreakable. X-Men and Latin connections, who would have thought!)

Astrolabe - "star taken"

Numinous - "divine approval expressed by nodding the head"

Dork - "penis" (slang for dumb)

This next one is great because a) its a slight segue from dork, to a word reminiscent of a certain Steve Martin film and b) we may be able to see its first incarnation (or invention) in a song popularized in O, Brother Where Art Thou?

. . . Jerk - American carnival slang of uncertain origin, maybe meaning “tedious and ineffectual person," as in the 1935 song "Big Rock Candy Mountain". The lyrics go: "where they hung the jerk that invented work”. . . hmmm, sounds right to me.

Heretic - comes from Greek, meaning “able to choose.”

Educate - "bring out (of ignorance) and lead forth."

Plane - possibly from Greek “pelanos,” meaning the sacrificial cake offered to the gods. Commonly spread out on an altar perhaps.

The best comes in last - here ya' are

Chow - California slang for food, stemming from chow-chow; from Chinese pidgin English for cha (tsa) meaning “mixed." Just like a Chinese dog breed called “cha,” which may be called as-such because mixed breeds of dogs were mutts, right, and mutts were easily identified as food for consumption. Right?

Hangin' Out - in Outter Space

   
     "Hang" is a 13th century verb "to suspend." Further on in the 15th century its a noun for "a curtain; sling."
   
      Furthermore, to be suspended in one's thoughts is a psychological fixation known as a “hang up”. But one can also “hang-up” the phone and have a "hang-nail".

       Yet further, we can hang someone for a lynching and completely 180º from that violent action we have a craftsman who learns a new skill by “getting the hang of it.” And, if your hot to trot - try this little diddy a carpenter once told me:

its all about the angle of the dangle,
relative to the heat of the meat,
causing the size of the rise,
and the mass of the ass,
to expand all dimensions of extension.
Thus, the throb of the knob,
is proportional to the bootie of the cutie..... 

    Which could lead us to assume this fellow is either a consumer of nasal spray Viagra (a plain dick-head) or he is possibly “well hung”.

     Opposite once again, we have“hang-dog,” a despicable person. Of which you may be if your go the Federal Courts and the jury cannot decide about your crime so they are a “hang jury” at a standstill.    
     But innocently kids “hang around”, "hang out",  and in England sometimes “hang an arse.” Also, there's “hang fire,” hang-loose, and let it "all hang out", man.

    But to end on this odd etymology i will say two things: Hang (pronounced 'hong') is the name of a Vietnamese friend of mine and hang is also a modern sound instrument from Sweden (the hang drum) which is basically a 4th dimensional inspirational form of alien technology passed down to us sub-consciously and subliminally in musical form.

Really, look at that thing!

Now for the "Poop"

    I really wanted to title this post "The Nitty Gritty" but after looking up that phrase it was not all that much worthwhile for a meaningful beginning. Being not much more than a reference to Jazz players who tweaked this lingo from "finely ground corn". Thus we may have heard Fats Waller shout out a hundred years ago, "Hey Tuba Skinny, what's the nitty-gritty today?!"

    POOP, however not only an ignoble eye-catching (and fly catching) grand title, but also a fun etymology. So lets get started!


Poop - "the stern of a ship" where the steering of gears would maneuver the vessel. Recently becoming a military term regarding the necessary facts needed to command and captain the ship. So poop means "up-to-date-information" and much like the nitty-gritty you can say, "give me the poop, please".

Desire - an Old French phrase de sidere, "from the stars”

Youngster - "young-star"

Sky - is a simple Norse word meaning "a cloud". How's that for a paradox.
(May i remind you all of a previous post about "clouds" which literally means "rocks")

Cathedral -from kata-hedra: “the down face of a geometric solid”
 
Geek - "a croaking sideshow freak"
  
Ambulance - “walking (hospital)"

Bizarre - "handsome, brave," and as EtymologyOnline insightfully comments that it is perhaps from Basque bizar meaning, "a beard" because the history of bearded Spanish soldiers making a strange impression on the French to the point of influencing the development of this word.

Lazarus - Hebrew for “God has helped”



F.U.C.K. – well the rumors about this take on English's most popular four-lettered word are more interesting than the facts. Legend goes that it was an accronym describing the Biblical wisdom a person would possess for being intimate with another and thus, “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”. . . . F U C K.

Horizon - "a bounding circle"

Graffit - "to scribble" (originating from "ancient wall inscriptions found in the ruins of Pompeii!")

Mustard - "new wine"

Mayonnaise - named in recognition of Mahon, seaport capital of island of Minorca, captured by France 1756 after the defeat of the British defending fleet in the Seven Years' War.


Peewee - "a small marble"

Further acronym speculations about the etymology of NEWS: "north, east, west, and south"



Colossus - unknown in origin however first used by Herodotus when describing giant Egyptian statues.

Astronaut - a "star sailor"


Demiurge - "public worker"

Attitude: used "originally in 17th century as a technical term in art for the posture of a figure in a statue or painting; later generalized to "a posture of the body supposed to imply some mental state”.(EtymologyOnline.com)




To close this entry, here is a most perplexing word humour of which i don't know what to make because its referenced in a few cultures all with similarly strange meanings.
Middle English for "fluid or juice of an animal or plant," or Latin for "body moisture".

In ancient and medieval physiology, "any of the four body fluids" (blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy or black bile) whose relative proportions were thought to determine state of mind. This led to a sense of "mood, temporary state of mind," first recorded 1520's.
(EtyologyOnline.com).


OkiDoki, stay healthy my friends. Be happy. And don't wet yourselves with too much humorous laughter. 

Hope you enjoyed the poop.
See you on the far side in the sky.

Copacetic Mountain Dew!

Thuggery - from the Hindu word thugee meaning "a religious system of assassination practiced by the Thugs."

Fellow - a “money lay”

Aldebaran - Arabic meaning "the follower (of the Pleiades)"

Copacetic - Hebrew word meaning "all with justice"

Mountain dew - "inferior whiskey"

Gigolo - "dance hall woman"

Pagoda - "divine temple of the idols"

Ziggurat -  "to be high"

Paradise - “a walled enclosure”

Jupiter - "Father Jove" (aka JOVIAL)

Golem - shapeless mass (hump of clay brought to life)

Jubilee - "ram’s horn"

Demiurge - a "public worker"

Procyon - "before the dog" (rising before the star Sirius)

Berserk - old Norse for “bear skin”, or bare naked!

Weird - “to turn wind”

Noble - a highborn who is in the know

Collude - "play together"

And three short stories behind 3 harmless words:

O.K. - "oll korrect". As WtymOnline says: "1839, only survivor of a slang fad in Boston and New York c.1838-9 for abbreviations of common phrases with deliberate, jocular misspellings (such as K.G. for "no go," as if spelled "know go;" N.C. for "'nuff ced;" K.Y. for "know yuse"). In the case of O.K., the abbreviation is of "oll korrect."

Altar - Latin for "high" and arguably refering to the elated trance state one aspires to reach when up upon the spiritual alter in the classic sense of worship and dedication to the faith or religion of choice. Thus, your perception and state of existence becomes ALTERED when you sincerely set foot on the alter.

Likewise, Entrance is the entryway through a church doorway, which ultimately leads to the individual becoming ENTRANCED by the ceremonies to follow (whether in a authentically enriching fashion or more often these days a indoctrinating manner).


That's all for now folk.
See you in the FarSide.