Angles and Saxons and Jutes, oh my!

I have never played Wordle, a game invented by a man named Wardle (it's true). The other day on her blog, Rachel complained that the word of the day was one she had never encountered before. When she looked it up, the word turned out to be not even an English word but--gasp!--an Americanism (Rachel lives in the UK). A commenter mentioned that it had begun life as an acronym.

The word was snafu.

I have been familiar with snafu for at least 75 of my 82 years because my Dad served in the United States Navy during World War 2, which is where and when the term originated. The phrase the acronym represented is Situation Normal, All F***ed Up (expletive deleted because this is a family blog). At our house it was modified to Situation Normal, All Fouled Up because we didn't use gutter language.

Many Anglo-Saxon words one hears or sees in print nowadays never appeared in print when I was young nor were they uttered in public, but times have changed. Anything goes now because, as I see it, a great coarsening, a great deterioration has occurred in the last 60 years.^**

The Norman Conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, drove many Anglo-Saxon terms into disrepute and disuse as the Normans, who were French, imposed their culture on the inhabitants of Britain. They stayed verboten until fairly recently, and the re-emergence of the old terms has been, to my way of thinking, a great step backward.

I do not begrudge the English the reclamation of their own language, but to many in other parts of the world many words remain vulgar and unacceptable. I may be in a minority of 1, but if I ruled the world many words that just happen to be Anglo-Saxon in origin would be eliminated. Most of the words describe body parts and bodily functions or are derogatory epithets. You will never find any of them on my lips or in this blog. They include:

a-words (2)
b-words (4)
c-words (3)
d-words (1)
f-words (2)
m-words (1)
n-words (1)
p-words (3)
q-words (1)
s-words (2)
t-words (1)

TOTAL: 21

There are probably more.

If you found this post irrelevant, curious, shocking, intolerant, laughable, stupid, hopelessly old-fashioned, or some other combination of words of your own choosing, I don't care.

For the record, you are also entitled to your opinion.

^**I am aware that the Supreme Court of the United States in 1959 declared that such books as Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic Of Cancer, and Fanny Hill were not obscene but had redeeming social value. They are entitled to their opinion. It doesn't change mine.

Recent Triple Stumpers I Knew plus other topics

Who is Thor Heyerdahl?
What is Point Barrow?
What is jacuzzi?
What is Hong Kong?
Who is Calvin Coolidge?
What is Blithe Spirit?
What is sympathy?

If you do not watch Jeopardy!, these answers may seem easy but the clues are not always obvious. For Calvin Cooldge, for example, the category was "Vermont" (other answers in the category included what is skiing?, what is maple syrup?, what is Green Mountains?). This clue was a visual one, a photo of a house, while the emcee said, "In this house on August 2, 1923, this man was told that he was president of the United States." One contestant guessed William Howard Taft (who was president from 1909 to 1913). One contestant guessed Herbert Hoover (Coolidge's successor). One contestant guessed Warren G. Harding (Coolidge's predecessor). If one knew that 1923 was not a traditional inauguration year following an American presidential election it might have suggested that the former president died in office, an additional clue to figuring out the answer.

Thor Heyerdahl is the Norwegian who sailed on a raft from South America to the islands of Polynesia (it wasn't part of the clue but he wrote about his trip in the book Kon-Tiki). Point Barrow in Alaska is the northernmost place in the United States. Hong Kong is "a city in China whose name consists of two syllables that rhyme" (other answers in the category included the words hobnob and pinyin). What you might be offered in the play called "Tea And ________" is Sympathy. Blithe Spirit is the name of a play by Noel Coward whose title was taken from a description of a bird in a poem by Shelley.

Apparently no one ever had to read "To A Skylark" which begins 'Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert'.

On to other topics.

1. A recent addition to my list of pet peeves is people who call fentanyl fentanol.

2. Today, April 4th, turned out to be a red-letter day in the rhymeswithplague household; we finally took down the Christmas decorations (the Nativity scene on the foyer credenza, the Dickensian Christmas village of 15 homes and community buildings spread rhrough two rooms with lots of little wintry figures on several feet of cotton batting for snow). We've never taken this long before. This year is a new record. We did manage to remove the wreath from the front door in January.

3. Speaking of Christmas, one of my favorite Christmas carols is the 17th-century French carol "Quelle Est Cette Odeur Agréable?" which became the English carol "Whence Is That Goodly Fragrance Flowing?" even though Google Translate translates the original as "What Is That Pleasant Smell?"

4. In his sermon two Sundays ago our young pastor Justin stated that the King James Version of the Bible is the only English version that has Jesus saying "In my Father's house are many mansions" in John 14:2, that all the others have 'rooms' or 'dwelling places' or 'abodes'.

I immediately went into Reaganesque "trust, but verify" mode. To put it in a better light spiritually, St. Paul wrote that the Bereans "were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they...searched the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so".

When i got home I entered John 14:2 into Biblegateway.com and asked to see every English version. There were 62 entries (I counted) and eight (8) of them said 'mansions'. The one that surprised me most among the eight was the Douay-Rheims (the Catholid version) of 1582, which preceded the KJV by 29 years.

This has been another day/week in the life of yours truly, rhymeswithplague. You are now free to comment on any of these subjects that piqued your interest or to ignore them all.

Name That Tune! (nocturnal version)

I can't remember whether I told you this already, but if I did I'm about to tell you again.

God gives us songs in the night. It says so in the Bible, in the Book of Job (specifically, in Job 35:10).

I can't remember experiencing them when I was younger, but now that I am old it occurs frequently.

When I wake up in the middle of the night, often there is playing on my brain's radio station some old hymn that I knew when I was a young person, when I was singing in church using the old Cokesbury Hymnal. I may not have thought of it in years and years, such as this one:

"Thou, my everlasting portion,
More than friend or life to me;
All along my pilgrim journey,
Savior, let me walk with Thee.

Close to Thee, Close to Thee,
Close to Thee, Close to Thee,
All along this pilgrim journey,
Savior, let me walk with Thee."

Two nights ago I heard a full-blown orchestra and chorus performing from the Christmas portion of Handel's Messiah oratorio:

"For unto us a child is born,
Unto us a son is given,
And the government shall be upon his shoulder,
And his name shall be calléd
Wonderful! Counselor!
The Mighty God! The Everlasting Father!
The Prince Of Peace!"

Early this morning it was a simple little chorus that opened a certain evangelist's television program every week many years ago:

"Something good is going to happen to you,
Happen to you this very day,
Something good is going to happen to you,
Jesus of Nazareth is passing your way."

I could cite more but I don't want to bore you.

Maybe one has to be on the right wave length. You definitely have to have your receiver turned on with the volume up.

If what you hear in the middle of the night are Lady Gaga ballads or old chestnuts made popular by Ella Fitzgerald or early rock-ahd-roll hits from the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard, they might be coming from a different source.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying it's from Satan like the Church Lady (Dana Carvey) on Saturday Night Live. It could be easily explained by what you ate last night for supper (British, tea).

I recommend angel food cake.

I wonder as I wander

In his 1909 poem "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" T.S. Eliot included, not once but twice, these lines:

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."

I wonder whether, if T.S. (Tom to his friends) had lived in Rochester, New York, when he wrote his poem instead of in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a student at Harvard, he might have written the following instead:

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Lake Ontario."

In the same poem, he also wrote:

"I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me."

I wonder why I was unaffected by these lines when I was in my twenties but now that I am in my eighties I find them deeply moving, their poignancy causing my eyes to fill with tears.

On a more lighthearted note, I read recently that men have three hairstyles -- parted, unparted, and departed. J.Alfred Prufrock, take note.

I wonder on this, the vernal equinox, spring having arrived in the northern hemisphere today, March 20, 2023, at 5:24 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time), why the low temperature at my house this morning was 24°F (-4.44°C). It just doesn't seem right, somehow.

I suppose that since I am prone to wander (Lord, I feel it), I will probably continue to wonder.

‘You probably don’t care

...but here are a few of the "triple stumpers" (questions on Jeopardy! that not one of the three contestants could answer) during my absence from Blogland that I knew the answers to (British, to which I knew the answers).

Who is Jiminy Cricket?
What is Erewhon?
What is the Aral Sea?
What is thesis?
What is the Green Book?
What is I Love Lucy?
Who is Dr. Samuel Mudd?
What is drummer?
What is a duvet?
Who is Rembrandt?
What is The Thin Man?
What is Padre Island?

One of the clues mentioned Pinocchio's conscience. Another mentioned that an episode in this television series included the line "I'm your Vitameatavegamin Girl". Another mentioned Nick and Nora. These are all obvious to old geezers like moi. The most distressing silence to me personally, however, was the one following the clue "Thoreau wrote that if a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different this". I suppose I should not have been surprised, as I heard on the news recently that some universities are dropping their degree programs in the humanities and English.

Today is St.Patrick's Day so eat corned beef and cabbage and drink your green beer and wave your Erin Go Bragh flag if you are so inclined. It's a free country.

Our grandson's wedding took place in Alabama over the weekend and it was a glorious time for all concerned. I will not be including any photographs in the interest of family privacy, but many happy scenes are indelibly etched on the silver screen of my mind including one of the lovely Mrs. RWP and me on the dance floor.

Finally, eighty-two years ago tomorrow I took my first breath and have been breathing with regularity ever since. I hope to continue for some time.

I don't know whether I am back for good yet but I am back at the moment.

Real life takes precedence

I shall not be blogging for the next little while (British, an indeterminate period of time) because real life in the form of the weddings of two of our grandchildren, my 82nd birthday, our 60th wedding anniversary, the birth of our very first great-granchild, and who knows what else will undoubtedly be taking up gobs and gobs (British, a great deal) of my time, time usually spent creating posts, replying to comments, commenting on other people's blogs, and so forth (Latin, et cetera).

I feel it in my bones.

So I sadly bid you a temporary auf wiedersehen, adios, au revoir, sayonara, and as Tigger often said to Winnie the Pooh in movies produced by Disney Studios but not even once in the books written by A.A. Milne, T.T.F.N.

My fervent hope is that, as General Douglas MacArthur said 81 years ago this month, I shall return.

Time will tell.

The streak continues

"What streak?" I hear someone asking. Why, the streak of answers on Jeopardy! none of the contestants could answer but that I could:

What is philately?
What is a gaucho?
What is trial by ordeal?
What is Monday?
What is a clatter?
Who is Horatio Hornblower?
What is Pont Neuf?

Monday is the day of the week on which the United States Supreme Court begins its term every October. A clatter is the type of noise mentioned in "A Visit From St. Nicholas".

Full disclosure: I didn't know a single answer in the category "Rappers" in one episode and I also draw a blank most evenngs regarding 21st-century sports heroes, actors, actresses, films, TV series, music, and musicians.

Unfortunately, the century about which I know the most (the 20th) is rapidly receding into life's rear-view mirror and there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it.

At some point we ourselves will be only a distant memory to fewer and fewer people, and eventually we all will be completely forgotten.

On that cheery note, I wish you a good day today, a restful night's sleep tonight, and a brighter day tomorrow.

Maybe the next post won't be all about me.

One can only hope.

Memory verse for today: "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30)

P.S. -- Today is not only Texas Independence Day (from Mexico in 1836) but also my youngest grandson's 22nd birthday.