h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"guardias suizos" were surely the Vatican guards, not Swiss troops?

Be that as it may - would they have worn moustaches whilst the local Spanish wouldn't. Especially as the Arabs they were aiming to drive out would more likely have had moustaches. Or am I imposing stereotypes as we have them today (Swiss Guard - clean shaven; Spaniards and Arabs - to a great extent with moustaches)

Unfortunately, it's a bit late to take it up with Raphael Lapesa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Lapesa

Leave French out of it. I don´t know about modern usage, but in the 60s "quelle barbe" translated as "what a lot of s h i t"

This is in reply to 16253 from ~jwf~

>>
Word Origin & History
bigot
1590s, from Fr. bigot (12c.), in O.Fr. "sanctimonious;" supposedly a derogatory name for Normans, the old theory (not universally accepted) being that it springs from their frequent use of O.E. oath bi God [...]
<<

This contains a contradiction, surely, since the 12th Century Normans would have said 'pardieu' or something similar, rather than 'by God'.

OED sorts it out a little

>>
Middle French bigot (French bigot) (noun) person who shows excessive religious zeal, a religious hypocrite, (adjective) showing excessive religious zeal (15th cent.), of uncertain origin, perhaps ultimately < either English by God at by prep. 2b or an equivalent expression in another Germanic language (although there is apparently no evidential basis for this supposition [...]
<<

>>
It is uncertain whether the Middle French word shows a direct connection with Old French bigot, attested in the 12th cent. as an offensive name given to the Normans (and also attested in both England and France as a byname, earliest in the 11th cent.). If not directly connected, it is likely that both words show the same or a similar ultimate etymology.
<<

The Normans persisted in speaking French, even in England, for quite a while, followed by Anglo-Norman for another while, before English reasserted itself.

>>
Private and commercial correspondence was written in Anglo-Norman from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
<<

--from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language

Cheers R-man!
Always good to have a variety of etymologocical options.
Or at least to recognise there are no absolute authorities.

Speaking of authorities, has anyone seen this new book;
and does it really answer all the questions it claims to solve?

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780701184575

Not sure Ill be able to convince my local library to buy it.
But Ill try!

~jwf~
(sorry about apostrophes and/or lack of them but I&#39;m online
at the library and can only access problematical Barlesque)

I haven't seen that book. But I do know who Ozymandias was.

I also know about the Ozymandias-writing competition.

And if I ask politely will you share this information?

~jwf~

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re.

Ridiculous, this research job now we have google.

The competition is also described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

The poet Shelley and his friend Horace Smith both heard the story about the base of a statue being found in Egypt with the name Ozymandias on it. (In fact, this is now usually given as User-maat-Re, and was a secondary name of Ramses II).

Shelley and Smith had a competition to see who could write the best poem about the pedestal. This is Smith's effort:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
'I am great Ozymandias,' saith the stone,
'The King of Kings; this mighty city shows
'The wonders of my hand.' The city's gone!
Nought but the leg remaining to disclose
The site of that forgotten Babylon.

We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chase,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

I love that exclamation mark! But the poem goes further than the more well-known one by Shelley in that it imagines a time when we will be long forgotten.

Yes, I know Shelley.
I didn't know about the competition.
And I still don't know about Fuller's book.
It sounds like it has the potential to be
a great reference for those obscurities that
take all the fun out of poetry for so many.


~jwf~

There was an extract in a recent Guardian/Observer. I'll see if I can find it, but it certainly didn't tempt me to buy. Thought it was low level and waffly.,

WWW.Guardian.co.uk/may/21/poetry puzzle
Hope that works

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/21/poetry puzzle
Sorry left some out

>> Low level and waffly! <<

And a bit snobbish too.

"The pleasure of solving such a puzzle... is part of what
reading a poem is. Which is why poets on the whole would
rather do the Guardian crossword than write lyrics for the
latest boyband."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/21/poetry-puzzles-john-fuller

Thanks for that!

~jwf~

That's a nice article.

Here's a question -- a puzzle really, since I know the answer. Can you answer without googling:

Why is lace (as in needlework) so called? And what has it to do with the word 'tawdry'?

Oo-oo! I know this one.

In the olden days of B&W TV our national broadcaster (CBC)
would fill unsold advertising space with little vignettes
about native wildlife, Canadian history and oddities of the
English language. Tawdry was one of those that seemed to be
used more often than most.

But I won't say just yet, because it's an interesting story
and well worth researching.


~jwf~

PS: One series of the above mentioned fillers was called
Hinterland Who's Who and many of these NFB shorts are
lovingly preserved on the Utoobies. Some have been modified
for comic effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fzURXpftMo

But the craft of lacemaking is a wee bit older than TV.

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Frohnauer_Hammer_%2815%29_2006-11-04.jpg&filetimestamp=20070114213734