Macaroni Feather

I’m sure that just about everybody has heard the song “Yankee Doodle” and are aware of the phrase, ”stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni”; but I doubt many know what it means.  I happened across this, and thought it would be fun to share.  Macaroni is an 18th-century British term that refers to rather extravagantly dressed men, and is derived from the fact that they developed a taste for macaroni, which wasn’t well known in Britain at the time.  The use of the term in the song indicates a belief that Yanks were so unsophisticated that they would belief a feather in their caps would be considered macaroni.

I Wish They’d Stop Sanitizing History

Recently, I heard that a publisher is going to change the word “nigger” to “slave” in Huckleberry Finn, and my thought is that they missed the point.  Mark Twain was controversial, heck, he still is; the fact that he didn’t want his autobiography published until 100 years after his death speaks to that.  I think Twain had a better grasp of the controversy than the publishing house making the changes seems to think, and, by changing the words, the book will probably lose some of its impact.  If people are so offended by a word that they won’t read a book because of it, than maybe those people should think about that, and what it says about them.  (They also might not want to read the KJV of Deut. 23:2 for a different offensive word.)  Starting down this road of censorship seems like a bad idea to me.

Another thing I heard about on the news was that the House of Representative’s reading of the Constitution left out the ‘slaves being counted as 3/5′ passage.  It’s almost like they’re trying to rewrite history.  It makes me wonder what else they left out, and what they’ll try to leave out as they write new laws.  Beyond the fact that the people who wrote it were setting guidelines, I get the feeling that the people who pushed for the reading of it were mostly just trying to waste time.  And leaving parts out seems to point to a selective view of history.  Looking at how it was and how things have changed can be a valuable lesson.  Ignoring history doesn’t make it go away.

Enthusiasm Gap

If I never hear that word again, it will be too soon.  I hope it’ll be on that list of ‘banned’ words that comes out at the end of the year; it’s definitely been overused enough to warrant it.  Euphemistic enthusiasm?

An Attempt at an Answer

I recently ran across this question:
Could each man define beauty slightly differently;
And if so, how do we ever communicate?

But this question could be generalized
One could ask it of any word
How do we understand each other
Especially if we hear something other than what was said?
Or interpret the words differently?
Is a glass a cup?
Is a coke a soda, or even a pop?
Is a Frisbee a baking dish,
Or is it a throwing disc?
Does someone want a Kleenex,
Or will any facial tissue do?
And what about a Band-Aid;
Will any adhesive bandage suffice?

Words evolve and change,
Both in spelling and in meaning,
But not all people accept these changes at the same rate.
Carol means kingly,
Yet many women bear that name;
Most don’t know or don’t care about this,
But there are some who still oppose that use.

Many words could be added to this list;
In fact, most words probably could,
Especially the more abstract ones.
But most people who share a common language
Also share a common understanding of it.
They may not agree perfectly on word meanings
But they agree closely enough to be able to communicate;
Even if different buzzwords might set each of them off.

Is Facilitate Really That Complex?

Yesterday I used the word ‘facilitate’ in my poem, and the spell check program said that it was a “complex expression” and suggested that I use either “ease” or “help” instead.  But, I don’t think “ease sleep” or “help sleep” would sound as good as “facilitate sleep” does.  And I don’t really see why it’s considered to be a complex expression; but, even if it is, it says what I want to say better than the suggestions given.  If it had suggested “assist sleep” [apparently "assist" is too complex as well], then I may have considered changing it.  But, it still would have been a hard choice because facilitate really does encompass what I wanted to say very well, and I would have been hard pressed to use a different word.

What Resolution Is

Resolution can mean to make a decision, but it can also refer to the sharpness of a computer-generated image, among other things.  So, it strikes me as funny when people talk about making resolutions; I mean, I know what they mean, but I still find it a little funny.

Discrimination is Discrimination; Prejudice is Prejudice; Racism is Racism

I’m sure most of you have heard about the “reverse discrimination” case in the Supeme Court.  First of all, I don’t like the term for a couple of reasons.  One reason is because I balk at the addition of the word reverse; discrimination is discrimination regardless of which direction it goes it.  The other is that discrimination is simply determining the differences between things.

A better term, in general, might be prejudice, because it is judging before knowing the facts.  But in this case, that doesn’t really apply either.  A better term might be racism, because it actually deals with ancestry.  But, ultimately, I guess I can understand the use of the word discrimination, because the white firefighters were being discriminated against because of their race.

Istanbul and Other Name Changes

My post yesterday got me thinking about name changes.  I knew that Istanbul had been Constantinople and Byzantium; and I was vaguely aware that it’d had other names, but I didn’t really think about it very much.  And, before I’d heard the song, I didn’t know at all that New York had once been New Amsterdam.  But, then again, there are a lot of cities that were renamed, especially when they were taken over by another group of people with a different culture and all.  There are also places like Peking/Beijing and Bombay/Mumbai that seen to just have pronunciation shifts or a dialectical differences.  This is actually the case with some of the different names for Istanbul.