In his Table Talk, W.H. Auden says that La Rochefoucauld “simply says what one has always known.”
Robert Craft added, “Yes, but without him some of us would not have known that we knew.”
All Sides
“Conjugated nouns,” offered by Ohio State University linguist Arnold M. Zwicky in Verbatim in 1975:
I steal the keel. I stole the coal. I have stolen the colon.
They choose the hues. They chose the hose. They have chosen the hosen.
They mow the banks of the row. They mowed the banks of the road. They have mown the banks of the Rhone.
I do it with the buoys. I did it with the biddies. I have done it with the bunnies.
Mike Anglin took this up in Word Ways in 1988:
I tear the hair; I tore the whore; I have torn the horn.
I see the sea; I saw the saw; I have seen the scene.
I draw the law; I drew the loo; I have drawn the lawn.
I throw the bow; I threw the boo; I have thrown the bone.
I sink the mink; I sank the manque; I have sunk the monk.
I choose the booze; I chose the bows; I have chosen the bosun.
I weave the leaves; I wove the loaves; I have woven the love-ins.
I forsake the cake; I forsook the cook; I have forsaken the whole mess.
Philip M. Cohen added, “I scare for the mare; I score for the more; I have scorn for the morn.”
Credit
Dedication of P.G. Wodehouse’s 1926 book The Heart of a Goof:
To
My Daughter
Leonora
Without Whose Never-Failing
Sympathy and Encouragement
This Book
Would Have Been Finished
in
Half the Time
Appeal
Oh Lord, Thou knowest that I have lately purchased an estate in fee simple in Essex. I beseech Thee to preserve the two counties of Middlesex and Essex from fire and earthquakes; and as I have also a mortgage at Hertfordshire, I beg of Thee also to have an eye of compassion on that county, and for the rest of the counties, Thou may deal with them as Thou art pleased. Oh Lord, enable the bank to answer all their bills and make all my debtors good men, give a prosperous voyage and safe return to the Mermaid sloop, because I have not insured it, and because Thou has said, ‘The days of the wicked are but short’, I trust in Thee that Thou wilt not forget Thy promise, as I have an estate in reversion, which will be mine on the death of the profligate young man, Sir J. L. …g.
Keep my friends from sinking, preserve me from thieves and housebreakers, and make all my servants so honest and faithful that they may always attend to my interest and never cheat me out of my property night or day.
— John Ward, onetime M.P. for Weymouth, quoted in M.C. D’Arcy, The Mind and the Heart of Love, 1947
(This must be satire, but I haven’t been able to learn anything more about it.)
04/01/2025 UPDATE: Apparently the “prayer” was discovered among Ward’s papers after his death in 1755 — possibly he was condemning self-dealing in Parliament at the time. (Thanks to readers Brieuc de Grangechamps and Jon Anderson.)
Foreign Food
“Ingliz menuyu” presented to writer William Dalrymple at a family restaurant in Turkey in 1986:
SOAP
Ayas soap
Turkish tripte soap
Sheeps foot
Macaront
Water pies
EATS FROM MEAT
Deuner kepab with pi
Kebap with green pe
Kebap in paper
Meat pide
Kebap with mas patato
Samall bits of meat grilled
Almb chops
VEGETABLES
Meat in earthenware stev pot
Stfue goreen pepper
Stuffed squash
Stuffed tomatoes z
Stuffed cabbages lea
Leek with finced meat
Clery
SALAD
Brain salad
Cacik — a drink made ay ay
And cucumber
FRYING PANS
Fried aggs
Scram fried aggs
Scrum fried omlat
Omlat with brain
SWEETS AND RFUITS
Stewed atrawberry
Nightingales nests
Virgin lips
A sweet dish of thinsh of batter with butter
Banane
Meon
Leeches
“It was a difficult choice,” he writes. From In Xanadu, 1989.
Words and Music
Wikimedia user Tarquin points out that the natural rhythm of spoken language can be used to teach polyrhythms.
Above: The phrase “cold cup of tea,” spoken naturally, approximates a rhythm of 2 against 3.
Below: The phrase “what atrocious weather” approximates 4 against 3.
“Almost Too Ceremonious”
A gentleman walked up to another gentleman, who was standing before the fire in a Coffee Room, and immediately said, ‘I beg your pardon, Sir, but may I ask your name?’ ‘I am not in the habit, Sir,’ said the other man, ‘of giving my name to strangers, but, as you are so pertinacious, Sir, my name is Thompson, Sir.’ ‘Then, Mr. Thompson, Sir,’ said the first speaker, ‘now I know your name, I beg, Sir, to inform you that your coat tails are on fire.’
— Frederick Locker-Lampson, Patchwork, 1879
Steady State
OHIO reads the same sideways.
Roll Call
Remarkable names of real people, collected in the 1980s by John Train:
- Mac Aroni
- Cigar Stubbs
- Legitimate Jones
- Halibut Justa Fish
- Daphne Reader’s Digest Taione
- Halloween Buggage
- Eucalyptus Yoho
- Solomon Gemorah
- Asa Miner
- Carlos Restrepo Restrepo Restrepo de Restrepo
- Cranberry Turkey Breckenridge Jr.
- Demetrius Plick
- F.G. Vereneseneckockkrockoff
- Rev. Fountain Wetmore Rainwater
- Grecian T. Snooze
- July August September
- Lobelia Rugtwit Hildebiddle
- Tarantula Turner
- Theanderblast Mischgedeigle Sump
- Theodolphus J. Poontang
- Vile Albert
- Welcome Baby Darling
Buggage had a daughter named Easter.
Auteur
When James Cameron was serving as second unit director on Galaxy of Terror (1981), he was asked to film an insert of a severed arm that’s being eaten by maggots. The team made a fake arm, covered it with mealworms, lit the shot, and rolled the camera, but the mealworms didn’t move. “They looked completely inert,” Cameron said. “So I thought, well, what would happen if we put a little electrical current through these worms? Maybe they’d jump around a little more.
“So we get all ready to do the shot and two guys I knew who were producers had come up behind me to watch me work because they had heard I was doing some directing. I rolled the camera and when I said ‘Action,’ what they saw was two hundred mealworms all come to life. When I said ‘Cut,’ they stopped moving.
“This must have been tremendously impressive to two low-budget horror-movie producers. I’m sure they ratcheted up in their mind that if I could get a performance out of worms, I probably could work very well with actors.” They hired him that day to direct Piranha II.
(Robert J. Emery, The Directors: Take One, 2002.)