Showing posts with label eponyms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eponyms. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Sunday, July 11, 2010
July 11: Bowdlerize Day (Eponymous Verbs)
Today is the birthday of Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) a man who became infamous for his editing of Shakespeare. An Englishman, Bowdler studied medicine at Edinburgh but never practiced; instead, he took his scalpel to the plays of Shakespeare. His mission, according to Nancy Caldwell Sorel in Word People, was "to render Shakespeare fit to be read aloud by a gentleman in the company of ladies." His first edition of his ten-volume Family Shakespeare was published in 1818 (1).
After he finished with the Bard’s works, Bowdler devoted himself to expurgating Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Bowdler’s work became so notorious that his name entered the language as an eponym meaning "To expurgate prudishly." Typically eponyms begin as proper nouns and become general (lower case) nouns. Unusually Bowdler moved from being a proper noun to a verb: to bowdlerize, which means the process of censoring a work by deleting objectionable words or material.
Today’s Challenge: The Flesh Became Word
Given the definitions below, see if you can identify the Eponymous Verbs.
Each one began as the name of a real person.
1. To hypnotize or enthrall.
2. To execute without due process of law; especially, to hang.
3. To destroy most disease-producing microorganisms and limit fermentation in milk, beer, or other liquids by partial or complete sterilization.
4. To illustrate (a book) with drawings, prints, or engravings taken from other books, or to mutilate (a book) by clipping out its illustrative material for such use.
5. To treat (cotton thread) with sodium hydroxide, so as to shrink the fiber and increase its color absorption and luster.
6. To abstain from using, buying, or dealing with, as a protest or means of coercion.
7. To divide a state, county, or city into voting districts to give unfair advantage to one party in elections.
8. To murder by suffocation so as to leave the body intact and suitable for dissection, or to suppress quietly and unceremoniously.
9. To stimulate or shock with an electric current, or to arouse to awareness or action; to spur; startle (1).
Quotes of the Day:
-But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me. –Mark Twain
-The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. --Walt Whitman
Word of the Day: expurgate: To remove erroneous, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material.
Write: What proper name from today's newspaper is most likely to become a verb?
Answers: 1. to mesmerize 2. to lynch 3. to pasteurize 4. to grangerize 5. to mercerize 6. to boycott 7. to gerrymander 8. to burke 9. to galvanize
1 – Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. Word People: Being an Inquiry Into the Lives of those Person Who Have Lent Their Names to the English Language. New York: American Heritage Press: 1970.
After he finished with the Bard’s works, Bowdler devoted himself to expurgating Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Bowdler’s work became so notorious that his name entered the language as an eponym meaning "To expurgate prudishly." Typically eponyms begin as proper nouns and become general (lower case) nouns. Unusually Bowdler moved from being a proper noun to a verb: to bowdlerize, which means the process of censoring a work by deleting objectionable words or material.
Today’s Challenge: The Flesh Became Word
Given the definitions below, see if you can identify the Eponymous Verbs.
Each one began as the name of a real person.
1. To hypnotize or enthrall.
2. To execute without due process of law; especially, to hang.
3. To destroy most disease-producing microorganisms and limit fermentation in milk, beer, or other liquids by partial or complete sterilization.
4. To illustrate (a book) with drawings, prints, or engravings taken from other books, or to mutilate (a book) by clipping out its illustrative material for such use.
5. To treat (cotton thread) with sodium hydroxide, so as to shrink the fiber and increase its color absorption and luster.
6. To abstain from using, buying, or dealing with, as a protest or means of coercion.
7. To divide a state, county, or city into voting districts to give unfair advantage to one party in elections.
8. To murder by suffocation so as to leave the body intact and suitable for dissection, or to suppress quietly and unceremoniously.
9. To stimulate or shock with an electric current, or to arouse to awareness or action; to spur; startle (1).
Quotes of the Day:
-But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me. –Mark Twain
-The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. --Walt Whitman
Word of the Day: expurgate: To remove erroneous, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material.
Write: What proper name from today's newspaper is most likely to become a verb?
Answers: 1. to mesmerize 2. to lynch 3. to pasteurize 4. to grangerize 5. to mercerize 6. to boycott 7. to gerrymander 8. to burke 9. to galvanize
1 – Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. Word People: Being an Inquiry Into the Lives of those Person Who Have Lent Their Names to the English Language. New York: American Heritage Press: 1970.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
July 10: Clerihew Day
Edward Oz
Writes everyday because
English never fails to amaze
Just read today's post on Word Daze
Today is the birthday of Edmund Clerihew Bentley whose middle name became a form of light verse.
Bentley made a name for himself with a classic work of detective fiction called Trent's Last Case, but he is best known for the four-line verse form that bears his middle name: the clerihew.
The clerihew is a biographical form that begins with the subject's name (or at least contains the name in the first line). It is made up of two rhyming couplets (thus the rhyme scheme is AABB). The only other requirement of the form is that it should be light hearted or humorous.
Bentley's Biography for Beginners, published in 1905, was his first collection of verse. He followed this up with additional volumes of verse in 1929 and 1939.
Here are a couple of examples of Bentley's clerihews:
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
Today's Challenge: Terse Verse
Try writing your own clerihews.
-Write one about a friend, and use in a birthday card.
-Write about someone in the news.
-Write an autobiographical one as your epitaph.
-Write one about your favorite fictional character.
Examples written by Edward Oz:
Samuel Backman
Took on Superman.
It was a long night.
He forgot his Kryptonite.
Prince Hamlet was sad
Because his uncle killed his dad.
He talked to his father's ghost after dark.
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
Word of the Day: Terse (Adjective): Brief and to the point; effectively concise.
Quote of the Day: The art of biography is different from geography. Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps. -Edward Clerihew Bentley
1 - Brandreth, Gyles. The Book of Classic Puzzles and Word Games. London: Chancellor Press, 1985.
2 - Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature (Sixth Edition). New York: Macmillian, 1992.
Writes everyday because
English never fails to amaze
Just read today's post on Word Daze
Today is the birthday of Edmund Clerihew Bentley whose middle name became a form of light verse.
Bentley made a name for himself with a classic work of detective fiction called Trent's Last Case, but he is best known for the four-line verse form that bears his middle name: the clerihew.
The clerihew is a biographical form that begins with the subject's name (or at least contains the name in the first line). It is made up of two rhyming couplets (thus the rhyme scheme is AABB). The only other requirement of the form is that it should be light hearted or humorous.
Bentley's Biography for Beginners, published in 1905, was his first collection of verse. He followed this up with additional volumes of verse in 1929 and 1939.
Here are a couple of examples of Bentley's clerihews:
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
Today's Challenge: Terse Verse
Try writing your own clerihews.
-Write one about a friend, and use in a birthday card.
-Write about someone in the news.
-Write an autobiographical one as your epitaph.
-Write one about your favorite fictional character.
Examples written by Edward Oz:
Samuel Backman
Took on Superman.
It was a long night.
He forgot his Kryptonite.
Prince Hamlet was sad
Because his uncle killed his dad.
He talked to his father's ghost after dark.
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
Word of the Day: Terse (Adjective): Brief and to the point; effectively concise.
Quote of the Day: The art of biography is different from geography. Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps. -Edward Clerihew Bentley
1 - Brandreth, Gyles. The Book of Classic Puzzles and Word Games. London: Chancellor Press, 1985.
2 - Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature (Sixth Edition). New York: Macmillian, 1992.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
September 16: Eponymous Adage Day
Today is the birthday of Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990), the author of the book The Peter Principle. Peter was an education professor at the University of Southern California and the University of British Columbia, but he became famous in the field of business when he published The Peter Principle in 1969. The book is full of case histories that illustrate why every organization seems to fall short of reaching maximum productivity and profit. His explanation relates to the corporate mentality that promotes productive workers upward until they achieve positions beyond their ability to perform competently.
Peter's insights into the organizational structures of businesses were so well-received that The Peter Principle has gone well beyond just the title of a popular book; it has entered the language as an adage, immortalizing its creator. The American Heritage Dictionary records the following definition of the Peter Principle:
The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent (1).
Laurence Peter is not alone in the world of eponymous adages (a proverbial insight that is named for a person). If you've ever been a victim of Murphy's Law, for example, you know that certain rules for living have the signature of the person who first identified them.
Today's Challenge: An Adage by Any Other Name
See if you can match up each of the eponymous adages listed below with its correct definition:
Dilbert Principle
Parkinson's Law
Murphy's Law
Amara's Law
Hofstadter's Law
Stigler's Law of Eponymy
Ockham's Razor
1. Explanations should never multiply causes without necessity. When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.
2. If anything can go wrong, it will.
3. The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.
4. It [a task] always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
5. Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
6. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
7. No scientific discovery, not even Stigler's law, is named after its original discoverer (2).
Quote of the Day: A pessimist is a man who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. --Laurence J. Peter
Answers: 1. Ockham's Razor 2. Murphy's Law, ascribed to Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr. 3. Dilbert Principle, coined by Scott Adams, author of the comic strip Dilbert. 4. Hofstadter's Law, named after Douglas Hofstadter. 5. Parkinson's Law, coined by C. Northcote Parkinson. 6. Amara's Law, proposed by Roy Amara. 7. Stigler's law of eponymy
1 - American Heritage Dictionary
http://www.bartleby.com/61/4/P0220400.html
2 - List of adages named after people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adages_named-after_people
Peter's insights into the organizational structures of businesses were so well-received that The Peter Principle has gone well beyond just the title of a popular book; it has entered the language as an adage, immortalizing its creator. The American Heritage Dictionary records the following definition of the Peter Principle:
The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent (1).
Laurence Peter is not alone in the world of eponymous adages (a proverbial insight that is named for a person). If you've ever been a victim of Murphy's Law, for example, you know that certain rules for living have the signature of the person who first identified them.
Today's Challenge: An Adage by Any Other Name
See if you can match up each of the eponymous adages listed below with its correct definition:
Dilbert Principle
Parkinson's Law
Murphy's Law
Amara's Law
Hofstadter's Law
Stigler's Law of Eponymy
Ockham's Razor
1. Explanations should never multiply causes without necessity. When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.
2. If anything can go wrong, it will.
3. The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.
4. It [a task] always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
5. Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
6. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
7. No scientific discovery, not even Stigler's law, is named after its original discoverer (2).
Quote of the Day: A pessimist is a man who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. --Laurence J. Peter
Answers: 1. Ockham's Razor 2. Murphy's Law, ascribed to Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr. 3. Dilbert Principle, coined by Scott Adams, author of the comic strip Dilbert. 4. Hofstadter's Law, named after Douglas Hofstadter. 5. Parkinson's Law, coined by C. Northcote Parkinson. 6. Amara's Law, proposed by Roy Amara. 7. Stigler's law of eponymy
1 - American Heritage Dictionary
http://www.bartleby.com/61/4/P0220400.html
2 - List of adages named after people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adages_named-after_people
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