It Begins

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Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu–
Sing cuccu!

— English round, 1260

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

— Ezra Pound, 1917

The names of the 12 months can be anagrammed into these lines:

Merry, durable, just grace
My every future month embrace;
No jars remain, joy bubble up apace.

But poet and journalist George Ellis (1753-1815) summed them up this way:

Snowy, Flowy, Blowy,
Showery, Flowery, Bowery,
Moppy, Croppy, Droppy,
Breezy, Sneezy, Freezy.

| Language · Poems

Targeted Advertising

New York florist Max Schling once placed an ad in the New York Times that was written entirely in shorthand.

Hundreds of curious businessmen passed the ad on to their secretaries, requesting a translation.

The secretaries read: “When getting flowers for the boss’s wife, remember Schling’s Florist.”

| Language · Society

Formal Speech

A puzzle by Isaac Asimov:

What word in the English language changes its pronunciation when it is capitalized?

Click for Answer
| Language · Puzzles

Slow Maltreated Wailing

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William Gladstone was cursed with a well-balanced name, one that his political enemies found well suited to anagrams. The conservative-minded Lewis Carroll found that WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE can be rearranged to spell both WILD AGITATOR! MEANS WELL and WILT TEAR DOWN ALL IMAGES?

The prime minister might have shrugged this off as a coincidence — “wild agitator” might mean anything, after all — but a more painstaking student found that RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE spells I’M A WHIG WHO’LL BE A TRAITOR TO ENGLAND’S RULE.

Which is rather too specific to disown.

| History · Language

Curiosities of Idiom

Breaking both wings of an army is almost certain to make it fly; a general may win the day in a battle fought at night; a lawyer may convey a house, and yet be unable to lift a hundred pounds; a room may be full of married men, and not have a single man in it; a traveler who is detained an hour or two may recover most of the time by making a minute of it; a man killed in a duel has at least one second to live after he is dead; a fire goes out, and does not leave the room; a lady may wear a suit out the first day she gets it, and put it away at night in as good a condition as ever; a schoolmaster with no scholar may yet have a pupil in his eye; the bluntest man in business is generally the sharpest one; Ananias, it is said, told a lie, and yet he was borne out by the by-standers; caterpillars turn over a new leaf without much moral improvement; oxen can only eat corn with the mouth, yet you may give it to them in the ear; food bolted down is not the most likely to remain on the stomach; soft water is often caught when it rains hard; high words between men are frequently low words; steamboat officers are very pleasant company, and yet we are always glad to have them give us a wide berth; a nervous man is trembling, faint, weak, while a nervous style and a man of nerve is strong, firm, and vigorous.

— John Walker Vilant Macbeth, The Might and Mirth of Literature, 1876

| Language