When James Chambers and his colleagues discovered a new myxobacterium in North Wales in 2020, they noted that they’d found it near Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, the village with the longest name in Europe.
So they named it Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis.
chevelure
n. a head of hair
abditive
adj. hidden
protreptic
n. a writing intended to exhort or instruct
revolute
v. to imbue with revolutionary spirit
For Histiaeus, when he was anxious to give Aristagoras orders to revolt, could find but one safe way, as the roads were guarded, of making his wishes known; which was by taking the trustiest of his slaves, shaving all the hair from off his head, and then pricking letters upon the skin, and waiting till the hair grew again. Thus accordingly he did; and as soon as ever the hair was grown, he despatched the man to Miletus, giving him no other message than this — ‘When thou art come to Miletus, bid Aristagoras shave thy head, and look thereon.’ Now the marks on the head, as I have already mentioned, were a command to revolt.
— Herodotus, Terpsichore
advigilate
v. to watch carefully; to keep vigil
cunctation
n. lateness; delay
vagarious
adj. roving; wandering; characterized by vagaries
mundivagant
adj. that roams around the world
Letter to the Times, Aug. 24, 2001:
Sir, Some years ago when I lived in Livingstone, Zambia, I received a letter from Lusaka, the capital, correctly addressed but weeks late.
Among the numerous back stamps the envelope had collected in its travels the last was Livingstone, Canada, with an inscription ‘Try Livingstone, Zambia’.
The letter had also visited Scotland and New Zealand.
Yours truly,
David H. Walton
Crowland, Peterborough
Names of the Mad Hatter in various translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
That last one’s in Middle Welsh. Though Lewis Carroll’s novel abounds in wordplay, rhymes, quotations, nonsense, homophones, logical twists, and Victorian allusions, it’s found its way into 174 languages and more than 9,000 editions around the world. Zongxin Feng of Tsinghua University in Beijing wrote, “Of all Western literary masterpieces introduced into China in the twentieth century, no other work has enjoyed such popularity.”
In an 1866 letter, Carroll had written, “Friends here [in Oxford] seem to think that the book is untranslatable.”
(Jon A. Lindseth, ed., Alice in a World of Wonderlands, 2015.)
A tiny detail that I hope is true: In Time in World History (2019), historian Peter Stearns writes that before watches became affordable, some European soldiers “took their own roosters with them so they would wake up on time.”
In the 13th century, in England’s Worcester Priory, an anonymous scribe worked at inserting interlinear notations into Old English manuscripts. Though his identity has been lost, his shaky, leftward-sloping handwriting is so distinctive that he’s noted among scholars more than 700 years later. He’s known as the Tremulous Hand of Worcester.
The cause of the tremor is uncertain, but its identifiable character has shed light on the evolution of the language and on the ability to read Old English in this period. “For us at least,” writes literary scholar Christine Franzen, “his infirmity was fortuitous — if his hand had remained steady and unchanged throughout his glossing career, it might have been impossible to distinguish the layers of glossing, but as it is, we can watch his methods and knowledge develop along with his tremble.”
(Christine Franzen, The Tremulous Hand of Worcester, 1991.)
In Maps Are Territories (1989), David Turnbull offers this as an example of a map that “can only be understood within the cultural specifics of the circumstances that it portrays.” It’s a Chippewa land claim presented to the U.S. Congress in 1849. The rightmost figure is the totem of the chief, who is of the Crane clan. Following him are members of allied clans — Martens, Bears, Man-Fish, and Catfish.
“To the eye of the bird standing for this chief, the eyes of each of the other totemic animals are directed as denoted by lines, to symbolize union of views,” explained ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft. “The heart of each animal is also connected by lines with the heart of the Crane chief, to denote unity of feeling and purpose. If these symbols are successful, they denote that the whole forty-four persons both see and feel alike — that they are one.”
The line drawn forward from the crane’s eye denotes the course of his journey, and another line is drawn backward to a series of small lakes for which he is seeking the grant. The long parallel lines below the figures represent Lake Superior, and the small parallel lines that diverge from this represent a path from its shore to the villages and interior lakes where the Chippewa hope to live.
Schoolcraft wrote in 1851, “The entire object is thus symbolized in a manner which is very clear to the tribes, and to all who have studied the simple elements of this mode of communicating ideas.”
(H.R. Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Volume I, 1851, 416-417.)
From reader Ian Duff:
“It is easy to establish that the self-descriptive phrase ‘this phrase contains thirty-five letters’ is the only such one with a correct count. No equivalent is possible in French or German, but in Italian questa frase contiene XX lettere, where XX is a number in word form, again has only one solution.”
What is it?
forgettery
n. a faculty or facility for forgetting; faulty memory
ascesis
n. the practice of self-discipline
retrospection
n. the action, process, or faculty of looking back on things past
evanid
adj. liable to vanish
“King Darius, so as not to forget the harm he had received from the Athenians, had a page come every time he sat down to table and sing three times in his ear: ‘Sire, remember the Athenians.'” — Montaigne
Cato the Elder ended each speech with the phrase Carthago delenda est, “Carthage must be destroyed.”
Tertullian observed that a slave was stationed in the chariot of a triumphant Roman general to whisper in his ear, “Remember that you are human.”
A nomenclator was “a slave with a good memory who accompanied a public figure when he went out and whispered in his ear the name of anyone important he was about to meet.” (Anthony Everitt, Cicero)
Much later, Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign manager, James Farley, would keep a file on everyone Roosevelt met so that the candidate might later ask after a spouse or child. Modern politicians maintain “Farley files” for the same purpose.
Letter to the Times, June 23, 2000:
Sir, The shortest ambiguous sentence I have come across is a road sign found everywhere in New York. It consists of three words: ‘Fine for Parking.’
But I would not like to argue the point with a New York traffic cop.
Yours faithfully,
Millett
House of Lords
10/16/2023 UPDATE: From reader Brieuc de Grangechamps:
