Definition: A tendency to express banal and obvious concepts pompously and loudly. Example: The practice of freedom, as for example on La Stampa, constitutes nothing more than the blasts of shareholder trombonism, by now reduced to a state of pure nostalgia, but hoisted as a club against dangerous and sulphurous revisionism. (Il Foglio; either my…
I often moan about how short Romance languages are on neologisms. Here‘s yet another list of Dutch innovations, of which I think boeddhabuikje -> budabarriguita, for a woman’s beer-belly, would work here with little explanation, although there’d be the usual hassle about compound nouns.
Experiment and experience both come from the Latin experiri. In Spanish experiencia can be used as a synonym for experimento–I think this is particularly true of the pre-C20th language–and something tells me I’ve read nineteenth century English in which the same applies. Experiential evidence is, however, in short supply. Regrettably, this is often the case…
Wondering idle & aloud whether the origins of that outrageous compliment “the dog’s bollocks” are to be found in a time when we appreciated the finer cuts of dog. Brewery De Klok (“The Clock”) in Zottegem in Belgium used to produce a beer called Poepentsoe. This means literally “the pig’s hole (ie posterior orifice)” but…
OED: A black, magnetic, isometric oxide of nickel and ferric iron, NiFe2O4, belonging to the spinel group. 1921A. F. CROSSE in Jrnl. Chem., Metallurgical & Mining Soc. S. Afr. XXI. 126/2 One of the most interesting mineralogical discoveries..in the Transvaal..is an extraordinarily rich nickel ore… This ore is as far as I am able to…
A semi-literate, a verbose nitwit, from Writer’s Block. Romance language speakers are nothing like as innovative or as welcoming of innovation as the Dutch.
The hash-crazed killer etymology we all know and love is, according to Nouvelle Langue Française (via Langue sauce piquante), a nonsense, invented in 1809 by a dilettante orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy. We should, instead, be looking to the Arabic, assas, guard.
One would almost suppose from nationalist eulogies that Aragón came from paragon. In fact it is a corruption of paraguas, umbrella, which, placed upside-down, clearly resembles the hydroelectric dams which the region so cherishes. There is a river Paragua in Venezuela, and in the City pressure is growing to rename that stately stream that with…
The inhabitants of Llobatera, Venezuela call stomatitis (sores and/or inflammation inside the mouth) “tener sapos en la boca”. I don’t know if this is related to having a frog in your throat, and I imagine there’s no way of finding out.