Chicago means “land of smelly onions.”
That’s how the native Potawatomi described the swampy area next to Lake Michigan. French explorers picked up the name, and it stuck.
Language
Palindromes
Real-life palindromes:
- MALAYALAM is a language of southern India.
- EKALAKA LAKE exists in southeastern Montana.
- DR. (Michael) AWKWARD is Longstreet Professor of English and Afro-American Literature at Emory University.
In a Word
callipygous
adj. having beautiful buttocks
Coincidence?
ELEVEN PLUS TWO is an anagram of TWELVE PLUS ONE.
Irish Bulls
Three “Irish bulls” cited in Henry B. Wheatley’s Literary Blunders (1893). “We know what the writer means, although he does not exactly say it”:
- From the report of an Irish Benevolent Society: “Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year.”
- A country editor’s correspondent wrote: “Will you please to insert this obituary notice? I make bold to ask it, because I know the deceased had a great many friends who would be glad to hear of his death.”
- Quoted in the Greville Memoirs: “He abjured the errors of the Romish Church, and embraced those of the Protestant.”
“From the errors of others,” wrote Publilius Syrus, “a wise man corrects his own.”
“A Siege of Cranes”
Ornithological nouns of assemblage:
- a murmuration of starlings
- a desert of lapwing
- a parliament of owls
- a gulp of cormorants
- a pitying of doves
- a murder of crows
- an exaltation of larks
- a charm of finches
- a stand of flamingoes
- a watch of nightingales
- a rafter of turkeys
- a committee of vultures
- a descent of woodpeckers
- an unkindness of ravens
- a convocation of eagles
Who comes up with these? They’re wonderfully poetic. Also: a sleuth of bears, a shrewdness of apes, a flutter of butterflies, an intrusion of cockroaches, a bask of crocodiles, a skulk of foxes, a smack of jellyfish, a leap of leopards, a crash of rhinoceroses, a scurry of squirrels, a streak of tigers, a shiver of sharks.
In a Word
hipparchy
n. rule or control of horses
In Other Words
Twins Grace and Virginia Kennedy were severely neglected by their San Diego parents, attended minimally by a German-speaking grandmother. They saw no other children, rarely played outdoors, and did not go to school.
They were 8 years old when a speech therapist realized they had invented their own language:
GRACE: Cabengo, padem manibadu peeta.
VIRGINIA: Doan nee bada tengkmatt, Poto.
It was apparently a mix of English and German, with some original words and grammatical oddities.
Their father soon forbade their speaking it, saying, “You live in a society, you got to speak the language.” They learned English, but they still bear the emotional scars of their neglect: Virginia works on an assembly line, and Grace mops floors at a fast-food restaurant.
In a Word
batology
n. the study of brambles
An International Irony
In America, when both people on a date pay for their own meals, we call it “Dutch treat.”
The Dutch have another name for it.
They call it an “American-style party.”