Man: Hello, my boy. And what is your dog’s name?
Boy: I don’t know. We call him Rover.
— Stafford Beer
Language
A Mouthful
In 1854, a correspondent wrote to Notes and Queries asking about the origins of this couplet:
Perturbabantur Constantinopolitani
Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus.
[“Constantinople is much perturbed.”]
He got this reply:
“When I first learned to scan verses, somewhere about thirty years ago, the lines produced by your correspondent P. were in every child’s mouth, with this story attached to them. It was said that Oxford had received from Cambridge the first line of the distich, with a challenge to produce a corresponding line consisting of two words only. To this challenge Oxford replied by sending back the second line, pointing out, at the same time, the false quantity in the word Constantinŏpolitani.”
Proteomics
Reader Eliot Morrison, a protein biochemist, has been looking for the longest English word found in the human proteome — the full set of proteins that can be expressed by the human body. Proteins are chains composed of amino acids, and the most common 20 are represented by the letters A, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, and Y. “These amino acids have different chemical properties,” Eliot writes, “and the sequence influences how the whole chain folds in three dimensions, which in turn determines the structural and functional properties of the protein.”
The longest English word he’s found is TARGETEER, at nine letters, in the uncharacterized protein C12orf42. The whole sequence of C12orf42 is:
MSTVICMKQR EEEFLLTIRP FANRMQKSPC YIPIVSSATL WDRSTPSAKH IPCYERTSVP CSRFINHMKN FSESPKFRSL HFLNFPVFPE RTQNSMACKR LLHTCQYIVP RCSVSTVSFD EESYEEFRSS PAPSSETDEA PLIFTARGET EERARGAPKQ AWNSSFLEQL VKKPNWAHSV NPVHLEAQGI HISRHTRPKG QPLSSPKKNS GSAARPSTAI GLCRRSQTPG ALQSTGPSNT ELEPEERMAV PAGAQAHPDD IQSRLLGASG NPVGKGAVAM APEMLPKHPH TPRDRRPQAD TSLHGNLAGA PLPLLAGAST HFPSKRLIKV CSSAPPRPTR RFHTVCSQAL SRPVVNAHLH
And there are more: “There are also a number of eight-letters words found: ASPARKLE (Uniprot code: Q86UW7), DATELESS (Q9ULP0-3), GALAGALA (Q86VD7), GRISETTE (Q969Y0), MISSPEAK (Q8WXH0), REELRALL (Q96FL8), RELASTER (Q8IVB5), REVERSAL (Q5TZA2), and SLAVERER (Q2TAC2).” I wonder if there’s a sentence in us somewhere.
(Thanks, Eliot.)
Oh
Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary of 1764 defines thunder as “a noise known by persons not deaf.”
Lingua Franca
In the 11th century, sailors in the Mediterranean developed a pidgin language to communicate with one another, a mix of Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, Occitan, French, Latin, English, and other languages in which they could conduct trade and diplomacy. Known as Sabir, it appears briefly in Molière’s comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme when the Mufti sings:
Se ti sabir
Ti respondir
Se non sabir
Tazir, tazir
Mi star Mufti:
Ti qui star ti?
Non intendir:
Tazir, tazir.
This means:
If you know
You answer
If you do not know
Be silent, be silent
I am Mufti
Who are you?
If you do not understand,
Be silent, be silent
The language persisted into the 19th century, and traces of it can still be found in modern slang and in geographical names.
In a Word
cimicine
adj. smelling of insects
hircinous
adj. smelling like a goat
suaveolent
adj. smelling sweet
alliaceous
adj. smelling like garlic or onions
puant
adj. stinking
macrosmatic
adj. having a well-developed sense of smell
Misc
- Mr. Peanut’s full name is Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe.
- Michael J. Fox is 10 days younger than Lea Thompson and 3 years older than Crispin Glover.
- Nebraska’s state slogan is “Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”
- Eight-letter words typed with eight fingers: BIPLANES, CAPTIONS, ELAPSING, JACKPOTS, LIFESPAN, PANELIST.
- “Memory can restore to life everything except smells.” — Nabokov
For Short
Dr. Dobbin, lecturing on physical education in Hull, England, condemned the practice of tight-lacing as injurious to the health and symmetry of the female sex, and jocularly proposed the formation of an ‘Anti-killing-young-women-by-a-lingering-death Society.’
This was gravely reproduced in other parts of England and on the Continent as a sober matter of fact, the Germans giving the hyphenated title thus: Jungefrauenzimmerdurchschwindsuchttodtungsgegenverein.
— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, The Book of Blunders, 1871
500 Entertaining Words
The 12th edition of The Chambers Dictionary, published in 2011, highlighted about 500 words that the editors considered especially entertaining. For the 13th edition, in 2014, they chose to remove the highlighting but inadvertently removed the entries entirely.
The missing entries have since been reinstated, but in the interval the publishers supplied a list of the missing words. Here it is.
(Thanks, Chris.)
In a Word
hippomachy
n. a fight on horseback