Search Results for: in a word

Artificial Night

https://books.google.com/books?id=Wx4uAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA56

It is true we do not often see the stars in broad daylight, but they are there nevertheless. The blaze of sunlight makes them invisible. A good telescope will always show the stars, and even without a telescope they can sometimes be seen in daylight in rather an odd way. If you can obtain a glimpse of the blue sky on a fine day from the bottom of a coal pit, stars are often visible. The top of the shaft is, however, generally obstructed by the machinery for hoisting up the coal, but the stars may be seen occasionally through the tall chimney attached to a chimney manufactory when an opportune disuse of the chimney permits of the observation being made. The fact is that the long tube has the effect of completely screening from the eye the direct light of the sun. The eye thus becomes more sensitive, and the feeble light from the stars can make their impression and produce vision.

— Robert Stawell Ball, Star-Land, 1890

01/17/2025 UPDATE: This is false. Reader Catalin Voinescu writes, “The stars aren’t obscured by the glare of the sun in the vicinity of the observer. That is easy to shield from. Starlight is overwhelmed by sunlight scattered by the bulk of the atmosphere — by the sky, in other words. While shorter wavelengths scatter more (which is why the sky appears blue), filtering out the blue is still not enough to make the stars visible during the day: red still scatters plenty. Only in wavelengths much longer than visible light is the scattering low enough to observe the stars: radio astronomers can make observations during the day, as long as they don’t point their dishes too close to the sun.” (Thanks, Catalin.)

| Science & Math

Call of the Wild

I heard the story — but I cannot verify it — that Marshall Lyautey (1854-1934) owned a parrot which incorporated these words in its vocabulary: What a beautiful evening! What a beautiful evening! and often repeated them in earnest.

Now one day the renowned soldier, on returning home, was greeted by the same interjection which seemed so in keeping with the fine evening. But what was his astonishment when he found himself before the spectacle presented by his bird. The parrot, which had spent the evening alone with a monkey, had been entirely defeathered by his everyday household companion. ‘What a beautiful evening! What a beautiful evening!’, in that context, took on a droll and ironic meaning.

— Elian Finbert, Les Perroquets Vous Parlent, 1975, quoted in George Gardner Herrick, Winter Rules, 1997

| Humor

Pianissimo

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benethom.gif

Jane Austen is to me the greatest wonder amongst novel writers. I do not mean that she is the greatest novel writer, but she seems to me the greatest wonder. Imagine, if you were to instruct an author or an authoress to write a novel under the limitations within which Jane Austen writes! Supposing you were to say, ‘Now, you must write a novel, but you must have no heroes or heroines in the accepted sense of the word. You may have naval officers, but they must always be on leave or on land, never on active service. You must have no striking villains; you may have a mild rake, but keep him well in the background, and if you are really going to produce something detestable, it must be so because of its small meannesses, as, for instance, the detestable Aunt Norris in ‘Mansfield Park’; you must have no very exciting plot; you must have no thrilling adventures; a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable, but you must not go much beyond this. You must have no moving descriptions of scenery; you must work without the help of all these; and as to passion, there must be none of it. You may, of course, have love, but it must be so carefully handled that very often it seems to get little above the temperature of liking. With all those limitations you are to write, not only one novel, but several, which, not merely by popular appreciation, but by the common consent of the greatest critics, the greatest literary minds of the generations which succeed you, shall be classed among the first rank of the novels written in your language in your country.’ Of course, it is possible to say that Jane Austen achieves this, though her materials are so slight because her art is so great. Perhaps, however, so long as the materials are those of human nature, they are not slight.

— Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Fallodon Papers, 1926

| Literature

Rough Crossing

Notable expressions of dismay made by Panurge during a tempest at sea in Gargantua and Pantagruel:

Ughughbubbubughsh!
Augkukshw!
Bgshwogrbuh!
Abubububugh!
Bububbububbubu! boo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
Ubbubbughschwug!
Ubbubbugshwuplk!
ubbubbubbughshw
bubbubughshwtzrkagh!
Alas, alas! ubbubbubbugh! bobobobobo! bubububuss!
Ubbubbughsh! Grrrshwappughbrdub!
Bubububbugh! boo-hoo-hoo!
Ubbubbubbugh! Grrwh! Upchksvomitchbg!
Ububbubgrshlouwhftrz!
Ubbubbububugh! ugg! ugg!
Ubbubbubbugh! Boo-hoo-hoo!

“My personal favorite, however, is the incredible-sounding ‘Wagh, a-grups-grrshwahw!’,” writes wordplay enthusiast Trip Payne. “Aside from its logological interest (eight consecutive consonants, albeit divided by a hyphen), the word simply does not sound anything like a wail could possibly sound. The ingenuity of Panurge to come up with such a fresh-sounding, imaginative exclamation — particularly under such pressure — is awe-inspiring.” (All these expressions are from Jacques Leclercq’s 1936 translation.)

(Trip Payne, “‘Alas, Alack!’ Revisited,” Word Ways 22:1 [February 1989], 34-35.)

| Language · Literature

A Lesson

John Alexander Smith, Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, opened a course of lectures in 1914 with these words:

“Gentlemen — you are now about to embark upon a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Some of you, when you go down from the University, will go into the Church, or to the Bar, or to the House of Commons, to the Home Civil Service, to the Indian and Colonial Services, or into various professions. Some may go into the Army, some into industry and commerce; some may become country gentlemen. A few — I hope a very few — will become teachers or dons. Let me make this clear to you. Except for the last category, nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life — save only this — that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.”

| Society

A Syntax Maze

David Morice posed this puzzle in the February 1989 issue of Word Ways. The following sentence is such a thicket of interrupting clauses that it’s difficult to divine its meaning. Who is accused, what’s the verdict, what are the crimes, and what’s the real name of the real criminal? “Let’s see you unChandler this one!”

Big Mike, when Susan, without whom he, whose rugged jaw, as he muttered, “Why did you, who committed, after you changed your name, though nobody –” but he paused, while he glared at her, even though Melissa thought, which seemed immaterial, for the courtroom, where the judge, before the verdict, whether Big Mike was guilty, though Melissa, since Ted no longer, however she, when Big Mike, because she blamed him, while the cops, who trusted, although they sensed, until Detective Jennings, against his better judgment, fell in love with the lady, her guilt, her innocence, held him at gunpoint, for her bank robbery, was picked up, played her cards, wanted to buy diamonds for her, murdered him with a dagger, or framed, could be decided, heard Susan’s surprise testimony, was packed with an angry mob, to the prosecuting attorney, of Ted as her real lover, in the witness stand, to catch his breath, “– seems to realize, from Melissa to Joyce, both crimes, lay your rap on me?” under his breath, was clenched bitterly, wouldn’t have been arrested, fingered him, was found guilty!

Click for Answer
| Language · Puzzles

Top Score

Corresponding with the Daily Mail in 1933, Compton Mackenzie presented two lists of the 10 most beautiful words in English. The first was phrased in blank verse:

Carnation, azure, peril, moon, forlorn,
Heart, silence, shadow, April, apricot.

The second was an Alexandrine couplet:

Damask and damson, doom and harlequin and fire,
Autumnal, vanity, flame, nectarine, desire.

In his 1963 autobiography he said that these lists had a “strange magic for me … a sort of elixir of youth.” See Euphony and Poetry Piecemeal.

| Language · Literature

Lost in Translation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carmen_1875_Act1_lithograph_Lamy_NGO1p736.jpg

Apocryphal but entertaining: Allegedly a Paris (or Genoese?) opera company provided this synopsis of Carmen to its English-speaking patrons:

Act 1. Carmen is a cigar-makeress from a tabago factory who loves with Don José of the mounting guard. Carmen takes a flower from her corsets and lances it to Don José (Duet: ‘Talk me of my mother’). There is a noise inside the tabago factory and the revolting cigar-makeresses burst into the stage. Carmen is arrested and Don José is ordered to mounting guard her but Carmen subduces him and he lets her escape.

Act 2. The Tavern. Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes, Zuniga, Morales. Carmen’s aria (‘The sistrums are tinkling’). Enter Escamillio, a balls-fighter. Enter two smuglers (Duet: ‘We have in mind a business’) but Carmen refuses to penetrate because Don José has liberated her from prison. He just now arrives (Aria: ‘Slop, here who comes!’) but hear are the bugles singing his retreat. Don José will leave and draws his sword. Called by Carmen shrieks the two smuglers interfere with her but Don José is bound to dessert, he will follow into them (final chorus: ‘Opening sky wandering life’).

Act 3. A roky landscape, the smuglers shelter. Carmen sees her death in cards and Don José makes a date with Carmen for the next balls fight.

Act 4, A place in Seville. Procession of balls-fighters, the roaring of the balls heard in the arena. Escamillio enters, (Aria and chorus: ‘Toreador, toreador, all hail the balls of a Toreador’). Enter Don José (Aria: ‘I do not threaten, I besooch you.’) but Carmen repels himwants to join with Escamillio now chaired by the crowd. Don José stabbs her (Aria: ‘Oh rupture, rupture, you may arrest me, I did kill der’) he sings ‘Oh my beautiful Carmen, my subductive Carmen …’

From what I can tell, the earliest date claimed for the opera performance is 1928, and this excerpt didn’t appear until 1966. No one anywhere makes any confident claim as to the writer.

| Humor · Language