Sushiesque

When dude meant the opposite

The first definition that the OED gives for dude, n. is not what you'd expect: it describes a person utterly antithetical to Jeffrey Lebowski.

1. A name given in ridicule to a man affecting an exaggerated fastidiousness in dress, speech, and deportment, and very particular about what is æsthetically 'good form'; hence, extended to an exquisite, a dandy, 'a swell'.

As in "The intense dudeness of Lord Beaconsfield."* As in—

[Evander Berry Wall] was called the best-dressed American in Europe, the King of the Dudes. He was reported to possess 285 pairs of pants, 5,000 custom-tailored neckties. It was rumored that he changed his ties six times a day. [...] Sometimes he changed into one of his crimson satin lounging suits to lead one of his chows, always named either Chi Chi or Toi Toi, through the streets of Paris.

It must be a splendid thing, to be King of the Dudes: addressing someone as "dude," you would be addressing him as your subject. Who, I wonder, reigns now?

*We are indebted to Rick for bringing this to our attention some months ago.

Learned & Noble

Excerpted below: some private correspondence in the wake of our query concerning the elusive N.S.D.U.N.S.P.H.I.

Fancy McCulture-Pants: There is only one mention of [American Name Society founder and probable N.S.D.U.N.S.P.H.I. member] Mr. Elsdon Smith in OASIS, in the papers of some dude named Learned Hand :

* 80-2 Smith, Elsdon C., 1946, 1950.
Attorney in Evanston, Ill., later in Chicago. Author of "The Story of Our Names" (1950) asking LH how his name may have affected his life; very amusing answer by LH.

Dick Umbrage: he is a famous mid-century US judge, responsible for the "Hand Test," a determination of negligence in tort law. he was one of the judges who shaped U.S. jurisprudence (for better or for worse) to evaluate the majority of civil law actions in strictly economic terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence

Sushiesque: the Hands were apparently way into adjectives-as-names: Learned had a cousin named Augustus Noble Hand (also a judge).

Dick: HE WAS THE JUDGE IN THE U.S. VS. ONE PACKAGE

Dick: i apologize for the enthusiasm.

Fancy: The enthusiasm was well founded...

U.S. VS. ONE PACKAGE

was about "immoral or obscene devices"

Dick: the defendent was a package of condoms!

Letters & Periods

It is a natural inclination of mankind to save trouble and time. With the rapidly expanding use of abbreviations, however, particularly during World Wars I and II, it is not too certain that any amount of time is being saved, especially for readers who insist on knowing what the letters stand for. Goodness knows what the Atomic Era will bring forth!

Edward Frank Allen, Dictionary of Abbreviations and Symbols (London: Cassell, 1949), purchased from McIntyre & Moore on Wednesday evening. (They're having a 50%-off sale in preparation for their move from Davis Square to dangerously close to my apartment.)

The following are some of my favorite entries from the D. of A. & S., after my first, brief perusal:

C.T.A.U. Catholic Total Abstinence Union.
M.A.O. Master of Obstetric Art.
Ms. Massachusetts.
N.S.D.U.N.S.P.H.I. National Society to Discourage the Use of the Name Smith for Purposes of Hypothetical Illustration (an American organisation).
P.P.C.L.I. Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
S.D.U.K. Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
S.M.C. Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers.
vaud. vaudeville.
V.O.P. very oldest procurable (whisky).
V.V.O. very very old (whisky).
Xper or Xr. Christopher.

See also: Two unfortunate acronyms.

Miss Teen Wordpower

disghibelline. v. 1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary: "To distinguish, as a Guelph from a Ghibelline." 2. One of many fanciful entries at risk as the OED gets some long-overdue revisions.

Buddhistenführer. n. A title bestowed upon the Dalai Lama by the German press, along with geistlicher Anführer ("sounds like a gang lord with some spiritual inclinations").

sudorific. adj. 1. Causing perspiration. Or, as the OED puts it, "diaphoretic." 2. One of ten definitions I couldn't guess in the process of "donating" a thousand grains of rice via the addictive charity/vocabulary quiz FreeRice.com. (Thanks, Lulu!)

Photograph: 1640 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.

V-I-C-H-Y-S-S-O-I-S-E

Thursday night at the Brattle Theatre, I competed in a spelling bee for the first time since I was on the Capt. Nathan Hale Middle School spelling team. I wish I could said that I finally fulfilled my destiny (cruelly thwarted, in eighth grade, because I hadn't realized that shammy and chamois were the same word) but I failed to fake my way through interferon or to win a dictionary from the Houghton Mifflin representatives who presided. But Aili and Leigh did better, and I high-fived with a drunk guy over bivouac (it's not just a temporary military encampment via 18th-century French, it's also a Jawbreaker album) and ran into plenty of librarians.

Turnout was fierce, and the bee ran past 11 o'clock—they had to add another round, to accommodate more (though not all) of the people who wanted to compete. That second round ended in a rash of excruciating science terms for which I lacked the necessary scientific or classical education. Drunk guy, stalling on one of these, asked for the language of origin; the exasperated judge said it was either Latin or Greek; drunk guy replied that there is a difference, you know; the Cantabrigian crowd agreed, loudly.

I took a video of the winner spelling the last word of the evening: quenelle, an small oval dumpling of ground meat or fish.

OED takes zombie threat seriously

Part XII of our educational series on zombies.

The June 2005 updates to the Oxford English Dictionary include new entries for the terms zombied, zombification, zombified, and zombify. The OED cites examples from such publications as Fangoria: "The aftermath of a meteorite shower zombifies most of the community."

Not-Dirty Phrase of the Day

"clasping buttresses"

Some Useful Phrases From Japanese In A Hurry

Moshi-moshi!
Hullo!

Anata to watashi-wa ii tomodachi desu.
You and I are good friends.

Anata-wa Shina-jin desu ka.
Are you a Chinese?

Hawai no dempo-ryo-wa ikura desu ka.
What is the rate for telegrams to Hawaii?

Mada sukoshi no niku-ga reizoko ni arimasu.
There is still a little meat in the icebox.

Tabako ippon kudasai.
Give me a cigarette, please.

Dandan toshiyori ni narimasu.
I am getting old.

Inu-wo utte-wa ikimasen.
Don't beat the dog.

Ano kottoya de kaimono wo shimasen-deshita.
I did not make any purchase at that curio shop.

Mai-nichi ame bakari futte kimochi-ga warui desu.
Because of the continual rain I do not feel nice.

Ii mono ga suki desu.
I like good things.

Boi-san, binsen to futo-wo motte kite kudasai.
Boy, bring me some letter paper and envelopes.

Ano inu-wa totemo kitamai desu.
That dog is awfully dirty.

Watashi-wa anata yori mo takusan motte imasu.
I have more than you.

(Moshi) anata-ga Eigo-wo hanashimasu naraba, wakarimasu.
If you speak English, I shall understand.

omigosh

With the latest update to the OED, one can now be an onanistically omnisexual ombudsperson.

Pants!

pants adj 1. inadequate, displeasing, or of poor quality. Possible origin: underwear, called "pants" in Britain.

Pants is also listed as "an exclamation of annoyance or frustration" in some online British slang resources. (In addition to pants, adjective, one resource also lists asspants, exclamation. At this point, the venerable OED lacks adjective, exclamation, and even verb.) Michael Quinion of World Wide Words writes:

Pants in British usage are not trousers, of course, but underpants, principally male. These intimate nether garments have long been a source of innocent merriment among pubescent youth, and this was just another example, in the tradition of the earlier exclamation knickers!, indicating contempt or exasperation. It appears in phrases like “it’s a pile of pants!” ([Radio 1 DJ] Simon Mayo’s catchphrase) and “it’s pants!” or “it’s absolute pants”, meaning that it’s a total load of rubbish. Later, we began to hear it from older people as in “My tomato crop was pants last year”. In phrases like “say pants to ...” it’s an injunction to wave goodbye to something considered outmoded, unwanted or unnecessary.

Britain seems to have cornered the market in undergarment-related slang words in the nineties, having popularised chuddies (as in “kiss my chuddies”).

(Props to former circulation comrade Paul, who keeps me current on what the Dr. Who board hipsters are saying.)