August 2008 Archives
Painterly Terms: impasto;
craquelure; cleavage;
(line/reline (moating, weave impression); aqueous cleaning; pentimento; inpainting (overpainting,
raked)
Shade and Shadow: Tenebrism (chiaroscuro);
sombrero (somber, ranchero);
skiamachy; ascian (harmattan, amphiscian, Periscian); squirrel;
umbra (penumbra); gnomon (skiagraphy)
Eponyms Once Again: silhouette;
Barbie doll; klieg
light; ritzy;
Raffles; Zelig;
Icarusian
Gulliver's Travels and other Swiftisms: Lilliputian;
Big-endian; Brobdingnagian
(unit bias); senectitude;
Laputan; yahoo;
ad infinitum
Painterly Terms
Have you ever
felt ignorant and uncultured while attending a museum of fine art? Here are
some words you can drop.
“Pasta,”
such as spaghetti, lasagna, etc., is named for Italian for paste, and that same paste-word
gives us today’s painting-word.
impasto – laying on paint thickly so that
it stands out from a surface
Impasto is a key plot point in Daniel
Silva’s recent novel Moscow
Rules. Protagonist Gabriel Allon is a word-class restorer of Old Master
paintings and, on the side, a reluctant agent and assassin for the Israeli
government.
“Would you like to tell me why
you’re forging a Cassatt?” asked Sarah Bancroft. …
“You’re going to sell it to Elena
Kharkov.
“Ask a silly question.” she leaned
forward and scrutinized the canvas. “Watch your brushwork on the hands,
Gabriel. It’s a bit too impasto.”
“My brushwork, as usual, is
flawless.
“How foolish of me to suggest
otherwise.”
But Elena
is too knowledgeable, and she spots the forgery. Nonetheless she buys the
painting! Much later:
Gabriel took the phone from her
grasp and asked how she knew the Cassatt was a forgery.
“It was the hands.”
“What about the hands?”
“The brushstrokes were too impasto.”
“Sarah told me the same thing.”
“You should have listened to her.”
Men!
Always thinking they know best!
Feel free
to toss in today’s term when you can’t think of anything else to say about an
old oil painting. It is certain to apply, for almost ever such painting
displays it. How useful!
craquelure – fine cracks in surface of old
paintings
Our two
quotes, from the same source as yesterday, use this word in the contexts of
restoration and forgery respectively.
So perfect was his mimicry of Poussin that it was
impossible to tell where the painter’s work ended and his began. He even added
faux craquelure,
the fine webbing of surface cracks, so that the new faded flawlessly into the
old.
“Why are you baking the Cassatt?”
Just then the kitchen timer chimed softly.
Gabriel removed the canvas from the oven and allowed it to cool slightly, then
laid it faceup on the table. With Sarah watching, he took hold of the canvas at
the top and bottom and pulled it firmly over the edge of the table, downward
toward the floor. Then he gave the painting a quarter turn and dragged it hard
against the edge of the table a second time. He examined the surface for a
moment, then, satisfied, held it up for Sarah to see. Earlier that morning, the
paint had been smooth and pristine. Now the combination of heat and pressure
had left the surface covered by a fine webbing of fissures and cracks.
“Amazing,” she whispered.
“It’s not amazing,” he said. “It’s craquelure.”
The
delightful Ms. Kristin Lister, conservationist at the Art Institute of Chicago,
has generously provided several conservation terms. All thanks to you, Kristin!
cleavage – separation of paint layers
It’s hard
to find a picture, amid the many for another type of “cleavage”! Here’s tenting at bottom right.
You’ve
seen cleavage on old house-paint. It may lie flat (blind or flat
cleavage) or pop up in a bulge called a blister. And you can easily
spot tenting cleavage or tenting on a painting, where the paint lifts
up in little tents. Kristen notes, “Often the canvas beneath has shrunk
slightly and there is no longer room to set the cleavage down, unless the
canvas is stretched lightly.”
What
causes cleavage? A source explains, “… the surface layer … completes the drying
process relatively quickly. The dry upper paint then retards the process by
denying sub-surface layers access to oxygen. The complete drying of thick oil
paint may take several years. The unevenness of drying creates stress within
the paint structure that can lead to cracking and cleavage where paint peels away from the
priming.”
A
conservator can cause visible damage when he/she lines or relines a canvas (adds another layer of canvas
behind it, for stronger support).
weave
impression (or weave
emphasis) – a damage (irreversible?) that frequently occurs with lining.
During lining the paint is heated up and softened, and the weave of the canvas
can be pressed into the paint, ruining the original texture of the brushwork.
moating – another type of damage during
lining. The impasto can be flattened by the process, often pushed down with a
moat around it.
From the
web-announcement of this restoration (ellipses omitted):
The main priority for treatment of the nearly 200-year-old
oil paintings was to undo a conservation treatment the paintings received in
1967. The cause for concern was what conservators call a "dramatically
enhanced weave impression."
This means that the canvas threads became too clearly visible from the
presentation side of the paintings.
Records show that a conservator in 1967 lined the
paintings because they were at risk of flaking. The flat surface of the
[lining] pushed out the threads from the back side of the canvas, flattening
the topography of the back of the canvas and creating the enhanced weave impression on the front.
Imagine if
you will a toddler with a smudged face. Mother wets her fingers at her mouth,
and uses the wet fingers to wipe away the smudge.
Kristin
informs me (if I understand her correctly) that professional art-conservators
have a euphemism when they use the same solvent. They could hardly admit to it!
aqueous
cleaning – when the conservator uses spit to clean grime from a
painting
pentimento – a visible trace of the artist’s
earlier version, showing through when the upper layers of the paint have become
translucent with age. (In effect, the “painting behind the painting”, showing
where the artist “changed his mind” and changed his work.)
The
figurative usage is much more interesting than the literal one. I’ll give an
example of each.
[Galway] is one of the fastest-growing urban centers in
–
Restorers were guided by the surviving pentimento of the Italianate Garden's symmetrical
plantings.
–
We take
"pentimento" directly from Italian, and the etymology merits a note.
● The peni- part refers to being sorry (as in “penitent”
and “repent”), and is akin to “pain”.
● the ment part: Is it:
––– "-ment"
as an ordinary noun-making suffix (as in “refinement”), so pedimento
means “sorry-ness”?
––– or
“ment” meaning “mind” (as in “mental), so that “pedimento” means “sorry
mind”?
The
dictionaries mention only the former, but I incline to the latter.
inpainting – “filling in” lost or faded areas,
with new paint
(overpainting – when the restorer gets carried away
and paints on top of original paint passages, instead of just where a piece of
paint is missing)
Gabriel had completed a restoration of the painting
[several years earlier]. His work had held up well. Only when he cocked his
head to create the effect of raked
lighting could he tell
the difference between his inpainting and the original.
– Daniel Silva, The
English Assassin
Bonus
word:
raked – slanted; oblique; coming in at an
angle
Shade and Shadow
Our theme
this week will be “Terms of Shade and Shadow”. A few will be ridiculously
obscure, which seems apt, since “obscure” is related to our shadow-words. (It
comes from an ancient root *(s)keu- "to cover, conceal", and the
same root led to the Greek for “shadow”, from which in turn come some of this
week’s words.)
To begin,
a “shade-word” that also fits last week’s “painterly” theme (and what’s more,
fits our recent “oxymoron” theme too). But since it has already been a
word-of-the-day a few years ago (see here),
I’ll give you an additional painterly shade-word.
chiaroscuro – the interplay of light and shade
in drawing and painting; a work stressing that interplay
[Italian chiaro ‘clear, bright’ + oscuro ‘dark, obscure’. Hence, an oxymoron.]
tenebrism – a style of painting in which most
of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by
a beam of light
In that painting, as in others, Rembrandt makes dramatic
use of the chiaroscuro, the interplay of light and shadow.
–
Another outstanding master of chiaroscuro was Rembrandt, who used it with
remarkable psychological effect in his paintings, drawings, and etchings.
– Encyclopedia Britannica
Two
examples of chiaroscuro: Rembrandt’s Denial
of Peter, and Education of
the Virgin by Georges de La
Tour.
Here are
familiar two words that come from Latin sub
umbra “under shadow”. You can
see the connection.
sombrero – a broad-brimmed hat, of felt or
straw, typically worn in
somber – dark; gloomy; or fig.: melancholy; dismal (also, serious; grave)
The wooden figures of the saints, found in even the
poorest Mexican houses, always interested [Father Latour]. … At [Mary’s] …
left, … a saint wearing the costume of a Mexican ranchero, velvet trousers
richly embroidered and wide at the ankle, velvet jacket and silk shirt, and a
high-crowned, broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero. He was attached to his fat horse by a
wooden pivot driven through the saddle.
– Willa Cather, Death
Comes for the Archbishop
Federal aviation investigators this morning are at the somber scene of the small plane crash at a
shopping-center parking lot.
– Daily News Tribune (MA), August 13, 2008
Bonus
word: ranchero – a ranch owner; a rancher
The roots
of today’s word mean “shadow combat”.
The word
is very rare, which seems a shame, because every sense of it names something which
would be quite useful to have a word for.
I say “every sense” because the meanings you’ll find, in dictionaries
and in actual usage, are … well, if not “all over the lot”, let us say
“somewhat varied”. I’ll list several.
skiamachy (or sciamachy or sciomachy)
–
1. sham fighting; a mock contest
2. futile combat; “tilting at
windmills”
3. futile “argument” caused by
misunderstanding of terms used
4. contentiousness; “argument for the
sake of argument”, at least on one side
I’ll let
the quotes speak for themselves: an old one, followed by the most recent I can
find, from 2004.
But pray, countryman, to avoid this sciomachy, or imaginary combat with words, let me
know, sir, what you mean by the name of Tyrant.
– Abraham Cowley, A
Discourse Concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell
He [Lockhart] knew little, and could have cared nothing,
about those who became the objects of his satire. Exquisitely cruel as it often
seemed, it was with him a mere skiomachy.
Certain men and women were stuck up as types of certain prejudices or delusions
and he set to knocking them down with no more feeling about them, as individual
human creatures, than if they had been nine-pins.
– Andrew Lang, Life
and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
P.S. The Scanning Imaging Absorption
SpectroMeter for Atmospheric Cartography (which
measures trace gases in our atmosphere) was named SCIAMACHY.
Someone had a strange sense of humor!
Another
obscure word, again based on the Greek skia for “shadow”.
ascian¹ – an inhabitant of the tropics
(where, twice a year, the sun is directly overhead, and so one casts no
shadows)
[Greek a- “not; without” + skia “shadow”]
Traveling
to
The next day was a half Harmattan,
which made the natives don warm wrappers … . We, un-Ascians, delighted in the cold, dry air,…
throwing off the negativity of the humid plain-heat.
– Richard F. Burton,
Bonus
word:
harmattan – a very dry, dusty winter wind,
blowing from the
¹ Related obscure words:
amphiscian – same as ascian
[in the tropics, shadows fall north at one time of the year, south at
another; amphi- = “both; on both sides”]
periscian – an inhabitant
of either of the polar regions
[shadows there revolve around them as the sun moves round; peri- = “around”]
After two
days of hyper-obscure words, let’s take a familiar one, again from the skia sense of “shadow”. The ancient Greeks
called a certain a familiar animal skiouros, or “shadow-tail”, and the word has
come down to us as squirrel. How apt! Having learned this, I get special
smile whenever I see a squirrel, thinking of it as a little “shadow tail”.
Perhaps you will too.
Is
“squirrel” pronounced with one syllable, or two?
A squirrel to some is a squirrel,
To others, a squirrel's a squirl.
Since freedom of speech is the birthright of each,
I can only this fable unfurl:
A virile young squirrel named Cyril,
In an argument over a girl,
Was lambasted from here to the
By a churl of a squirl named Earl.
–
One more
musing. The word squirrel came into English from French, after
the Norman conquest of
Why did we
lose that term? It seems odd, since Old English is the source of almost all our
ordinary names for animals that were familiar in old
There are
names to distinguish darker, full shadow from adjacent partial shadow. (See
note for how these can arise.¹)
umbra – complete shadow (with blockage of
every part of every light source)
penumbra – 1. a partial shadow (blocked from some
but not all light sources and their parts) between regions of complete shadow
and complete illumination.
2. figurative extension:
a. an adjoining region in which
something shades off into lessened intensely [the penumbra of the downtown]
b. something that partially covers,
surrounds, or obscures
… the penumbra of filthy air that so often hangs over
– New York Times, Aug. 1, 2008
Note: Penumbra is often used to mean simply “aura”
[the penumbra of fear surrounding Saddam], which I
think is erroneous.
¹ Park your car in your garage, headlights shining on the
rear wall. You stand between the headlights, casting shadows right and left
onto the wall, one from each headlight. If you are close enough the wall it
will have a darker shadow directly in front of you, the area your body screens
from both headlights.
A single light-source can give the
same effect if it has significant length, like a fluorescent tube, since a
shading object can be placed to block the all of the tube or part of it.
Let’s look
at sundials.
gnomon or gnomen – the piece in a sundial that casts
the time-indicating shadow [the relevant edge of that piece is the style]
[Greek gnomon ‘indicator, carpenter’s square’.
Related to to know.]
Even if not the slightest other part of the creature be
visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen projecting from the surface.
When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, …
this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon
the wrinkled surface, ..."
– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Bonus
word: skiagraphy – telling time by sundial
By the way, gnomon has another meaning: the figure [blue
in this illustration]
obtained by cutting a parallelogram [red in the illustration] off the corner of
a similar but larger one.
Eponyms Once Again
Our new
theme of "Eponyms" begins with one more shadow-word. An early, 1801
quote used this shadow-word along with its older synonym.
Skiagrams, simple outlines of a shade, similar
to those which have been introduced to vulgar use … under the name of Silhouettes.
silhouette – a profile or shadow-outline of
the human figure, filled in of a dark color
from
Etienne de Silhouette, the French minister of Finance in 1759, who, to
replenish the treasury, exhausted by the costly wars with
Do you
remember the old song Silhouettes,
by Frank C. Slay Jr. and Bob Crewe?
Took a walk and passed your house, late last night;
All the shades were pulled and drawn, way down tight;
From within, the dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade.
Oh what a lovely couple they made.
Put his arms around your waist, held you tight;
Kisses I could almost taste, in the night;
Wondered why I'm not the guy whose silhouette’s on the shade.
I couldn't hide the tears in my eyes.
Lost control and rang your bell. I was sore.
“Let me in or else I'll beat down your door.”
When two strangers who had been two silhouettes on the shade
Said to my shock, "You're on
the wrong block.”
Rushed out to your house with wings on my feet;
Loved you like I'd never loved you my sweet;
Vowed that you and I would be two silhouettes on the shade;
All of our days, two silhouettes on the shade.
Barbie
doll – a blandly attractive but vacuous young woman
[from the
doll]
It sets you up to be treated like a Barbie doll that he can control.
– Sherry Argov, Why
Men Love Bitches
Luckily, the caller wasn't her ex-husband or his sickening Barbie doll of a wife calling about the kids.
– Lisa Jackson, Left
To Die
The Barbie
Doll itself is the product of a mother’s perceptiveness. Before Barbie the
dolls that girls played with were typically infant-dolls or young-child dolls.
But Barbara Hadler, as a
young girl, enjoyed putting her dolls into adult role in her play. Her mother
Ruth noticed this, conceived the idea of grown-up doll, and sold the idea to
reluctant execs at Mattel, where her husband was a co-founder.
It seems
to me that today’s word is most often used in the figurative sense noted below.
Nonetheless, I’ve found no dictionary that gives anything but the literal
meaning.
klieg
light – 1. a powerful carbon-arc lamp, used
especially in making movies (It produces an intense light, and made it possible
to shoot movies indoors.)
2. figuratively: intense and unpleasant scrutiny
[after
brothers John H. Kliegl and Anton Tiberius Kliegl, German-born American
lighting experts]
Two weeks ago, Albert Harris was a respected professor … who
labored in obscurity. Then he wandered into the klieg light of media coverage, and his life hasn't
been the same. His e-mail box is full of messages damning, some threatening,
the 64-year-old prof.
– News & Observer (
[Senator Joe] Biden's megawatt grin illuminates the room
like a klieg light, and soon his lyrical rhetoric has the
crowd in a reverential hush.
– CBS News, Dec. 20, 2007
ritzy – elegant; fancy
[after the Ritz hotels, established by César Ritz (1850–1918), Swiss hotelier]
Note: I’d
say the word implies a smug superiority, “looking down one’s nose”. The
dictionaries do not mention this.
The first dog-eared picture was of a society-type woman.
Brunette. Thirty-eight or so. It appeared to have been taken at some sort of
ball or ritzy dinner dance.
– James Patterson, See
How They Run
As long as
we're talking about the world of the ritzy …
Raffles – a ‘gentleman thief’; an educated or
upper-class man who engages in discreet larceny [Wordcrafter note: perhaps it
also means one who thus steals from the upper class?]
[Arthur J. Raffles, fictitious hero of
English writer E. W. Hornung (1866-1921). I picture the sort of fellow who, in
a movie, might be played by Cary Grant]
A raffles raider who targeted toffs'
– Daily Record (
Dressed in a crumpled suit, the
softly spoken man blended perfectly with other academics in a hushed reading
room of the Welsh national library. The one thing that set him apart went
unnoticed – a scalpel. It was only after the professorial figure returned the
four ancient atlases he had been quietly perusing, politely thanking librarians
for their help before leaving, that the true nature of his visit emerged. Under
the pretence of studying the work of early map makers, the visitor had
squirreled their works away, probably into secret pockets hidden in his
clothing.
The theft was one of a series of
clandestine raids on libraries across
– The Independent, May 18, 2002 (ellipses omitted)
The quotes
for today’s word give the flavor more than the definition can, and they show
why this word is more useful than you might imagine from the definition alone.
Zelig – a chameleon-like person always
manages to be present everywhere
[after
Leonard Zelig, hero of the 1983 movie Zelig by Woody Allen]
… he [Bayard Rustin] was like the Zelig of the civil rights movement -- there
he was in
– Bennett Singer in
As the Kennedy administration took office in 1961, [Duane]
Andreas became the Zelig of
– Kurt Eichenwald, The
Informant: A True Story
I had a word
in mind for today, but today’s newspaper changed my choice, because a single
sentence there presents us with three eponyms! We have the non-word the writer
used by mistake, the fancy word he intended, and the name of that sort of
error.
Recall the
Greek fable of Icarus, who
flew and fled from an island prison on wings made of wax, but flew too close to
the sun, and fell to a watery death when his wings melted.
Mr. Obama's descent from his Icarusian heights earlier this spring reflects a
shift in this race that has nothing to do with race.
– Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2008; Page A20, col. 1-2
Icarusian – flying too high to be sustained
[used in the quote]
[Not a
valid “word”, according to OED. ‘Icarian’ was probably intended. But it wouldn’t
quite fit, because the author does not mean to imply ‘dangerously’ high or
‘ruinously’ high.]
Icarian – soaring too high for safety;
applying to ambitious or presumptuous acts which end in failure or ruin (a
previous word-of-the-day)
malaprop – ludicrous misuse of a word,
especially by confusion with one of similar sound. [In my judgment, it must be
a misuse in a failed attempt to be erudite]
[Mrs. Malaprop, character in a who was prone to such errors (i.e. "contagious countries" for "contiguous countries"). A previous word-of-the-day.
Gulliver's Travels and other Swiftisms
Those who
know Swift’s book Gulliver’s
Travels (1726) may perhaps
smile at my ignorance. As a youngster, I never happened to read it. And as an
adult I never considered reading it, thinking that it a children’s book. I was
mistaken, of course. The book is a wickedly biting satire.
Swift
invented names for the various creatures and places that Gulliver visited, and
many of those names have become "words". This week we’ll look at
those words, as well as a few other Swiftisms.
On his
first voyage, Gulliver is blown off-course to the
Lilliputian – very small in size; also, of trifling importance
[The term
implies smaller than normal,
I’d think. If something is expected to be small – a bacterium, for example –
you wouldn’t call it Lilliputian.]
– Guardian Unlimited, Jan. 26, 2008
Awkward lilliputian keys … make this $1199 mini-PC hard to
use.
–
In a poem
I recall but cannot find, parodying Hiawatha,
a women tells how she hates suburban cocktail-parties. She’d love to join the
men’s conversations, which she finds substantive and interesting. Etiquette,
however, dictates otherwise.
But I’m stuck here with the ladies,
Where the talk is all domestic
And the drinks are Lilliputian.
Speaking
of trivia …
In
politics, do you sometime feel that opponents are arguing over trivial matters?
So too, the world of Lilliput was bitterly divided over the grave issue of
whether one should crack an egg at its big end, or at its small end! (For a
brief, witty account of that Big-endian/Little-endian violence, see Miss
Manners, the noted etiquette advisor.)
Big-endian – a party in a long and vehement
dispute over a trifling matter [his opponent is a Little-endian.]
Different experts [on Shakespeare] give us different
answers. The one that would interest us most would be Shakespeare’s – and, not
surprisingly, there are Big-endians and Little-endians who claim to have got inside the
dome-like head, and to know his thoughts.
– E. A. J. Honigmann; Shakespeare:
Seven Tragedies Revisited [etc.]
[At] the
– Chicago Tribune, Aug 27, 1989 (ellipses omitted)
How sad
that such useful terms have fallen into disuse. Doubtless you’ll display your erudition
by dropping them into you own discussions of the
(There’s
little danger of any confusion with the specialized meaning that these terms
have in computer-programming!)
Gulliver’s
first voyage gave us a term for “tiny; miniature”. His second gave us a term
for “huge”.
Brobdingnagian – gigantic; immense; enormous
[Gulliver's
second voyage leaves him shipwrecked in Brobdingnag,
where everything is huge. A man was “as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and
took about ten yards at every stride,” and the 9-year-old girl who befriends
Gulliver was “not above forty feet high, being little for her age”.]
[on overeating:] Paul Rozin found that serving sizes in
– Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (ellipses omitted)
Bonus
Term:
unit
bias – the tendency to think that a unit of some entity is the
appropriate and optimal amount
Why does
today’s word fit our ‘Gulliver’ theme? Simply because it was first used in a
1796 take-off of Swift’s work, entitled A
Modern Gulliver’s Travels. It’s not common word, but interestingly, in the
past decade or so it has been used much more than in the previous two centuries
combined.
senectitude – old age; elderliness
[from the
same root as senile and senior]
There are several questions that remain answered as I
approach senectitude. Senectitude is 20 years older than you are, no
matter how old you are.
– Reporter-Times (
… his fortune is made back on earth giving television
testimonials for laxatives, rheumatism medicaments, diapers and walkers. If
those images are unsettling, please to remember the old saw that senectitude is not for the faint of heart.
– Nicholas von Hoffman, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 1998
Gulliver
meets the Laputans and their subject peoples, who are ridiculously impractical
and always lost in thought. [My personal favorite. For those who wish, I’ve put
some amusing Swift excerpts below.]
Laputan – absurdly impractical or
visionary, especially to the neglect of more useful activity
[defending
Inventions and ideas poured into the Government by the
hundred. … One suggested the poisoning of the river Seine where it left Paris;
another the ‘decomposition’ of the air surrounding the Prussians; another the
loosing of all the more ferocious beasts from the zoo – so that the enemy would
be poisoned, asphyxiated, or devoured. [etc.] … The Paris Press was
particularly susceptible to the most Laputan projects, and a great clamour was
aroused in the papers.
– Sir Alistair Horne, The
Fall of
[a critique of art-critics:]
… a solemn Laputan game whose object is to ratify the
countercultural status of a given artist and thereby justify his (or her)
prompt entry into the cultural pantheon.
– Time Magazine, May 31, 1999
From Swift:
“It seems the minds of these people are so
taken up with intense
speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of
others, without being roused. Persons who are able to afford it always keep a
flapper, gently to strike the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear
of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise
employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to
give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in
cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and
bouncing his head against every post.”
Such men make inattentive
husbands, so it’s naturally that their wives “are exceedingly fond of
strangers.” The ladies can indulge, “for the mistress and lover may proceed to
the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be without his flapper at his
side.”
University researchers pursue wild projects. One “has been eight
years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be
let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.” Another seeks “to reduce
human excrement to its original food”. [Interesting recycling!] “I saw another
at work to calcine ice into gunpowder. There was a most ingenious architect,
who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof,
and working downward to the foundation.”
But at least one notion may be viable. It’s proposed “to
tax those qualities for which men chiefly value themselves; the rate according
to the degrees of excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to
their own breast.” In others, a
tax on sex. “The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites
of the other sex, and the assessments, according to the number and nature of
the favours they have received; for which, they are allowed to be their own
vouchers.” Would any man admit that he owed but little tax?
In his
final voyage Gulliver visits a land where the dominant creatures are
intelligent horses, wise and calm, and the humanoids are inferior. (Sort of a
“Planet of the Apes.) The latter are “the most unteachable of all animals:
their capacity never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens.” In temperament
they have “a perverse, restive disposition”, and “they are cunning, malicious,
treacherous, and revengeful.” These brutish humanoids are called Yahoos, coining today’s word.
yahoo – a boorish, crass, or stupid
person
Multiple
short quotes show that it’s not quite as bad as the Yahoos in Swift.
●
It wouldn't be the first time some yahoo had called in a false alarm.
●
She just ups and decides to marry this paint-and-body yahoo.
●
Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, we are not at war, not yet, not
unless you and the president listen to the yahoos,"
warned the
●
All of the yahoos standing behind her were going to have
to take her orders, do what she said, when she said it. Oh, yeah!
[from Ridley Pearson, Killer
View; Barbara Kingsolver, The
Bean Trees; Joel C. Rosenberg, The
Last Jihad; and Fern Michaels, Collateral
Damage; ellipses omitted]
Our final
term of this theme is from Swift, but not from his Gulliver’s Travels. It’s from
his poem titled On Poetry(1733).
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad
infinitum..
Thus every poet in his kind
Is bit by him that comes behind.
ad
infinitum – endlessly; forever
[Latin,
‘to infinity’]
