berserk

If you go berserk, you go absolutely flipping mental, which I’m currently trying not to do while dealing with a 2,790-page PDF which crashes every two seconds.

‘Berserk’ actually has very old roots – turns out people have been getting furiously angry with PDFs (or the equivalent) for a very long time. It comes from ‘berserker’, the name of a type of Norse warrior who fought with superhuman, savage strength while in a sort of frenzied trance. They dressed in animal skins, usually bear. And that’s where the name comes from – in Old Norse, ber- meant ‘bear’ and serkr- meant ‘shirt’ or ‘skin’. The excellently named Snorri Sturluson, a 13th-century historian, interpreted the meaning as ‘bare-shirt’, speculating that berserkers went into battle in the nuddy (or at least topless). But sadly this has been largely discredited. (Snorri obviously had the same problem as lots of other English speakers who ask others to ‘bare with me’ which has made me angry many, many times.)

The earliest surviving reference to the word ‘berserker’ is in Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem (one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry, the other being Eddic poetry) composed by another excellently named individual, Thórbiörn Hornklofi, in the late ninth century. Here’s a little snippet for you:

I'll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood,
Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated,
Those who wade out into battle?
Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle
They bear bloody shields.
Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight.

No mention of them being topless, sorry Snorri.

When I googled ‘famous berserkers’, one of the ones who came up was Ivar the Boneless. Sadly no one’s completely sure where the name comes from. It’s been suggested that he might have had a condition like osteogenesis imperfecta (also known as brittle bone disease), which makes the fact that he invaded both England and Ireland extra impressive. Another source says it refers to the fact that he couldn’t get it up, which is less so.

Also, he had a brother called Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye who sounds super fun.

This one’s for you, Snorri

botuliform

Shaped like a sausage. That’s what it means. Because the Latin word for ‘sausage’ is ‘botulus’. I can’t believe it’s not more popular. Now, you might be thinking that’s because it sounds like ‘botulism’, a rare but serious illness that attacks the body's nerves and causes difficulty breathing and muscle paralysis until your heart stops and you die. And you would be right.

SAUSAGE

Botulism was first identified in 1822 by someone called Justinus Kerner, a German poet and doctor. His doctoring was apparently better than his poetrying (the only one I can find is about a saw – yes, the things you chop wood with), and when lots of his patients started dying of a horrible illness that paralysed every part of their bodies, he realised they’d all been chowing down on cheap sausages. So he decided to call this new illness botulism, or ‘sausage disease’. He also rightly worked out that these sausages must contain a toxin which he called ‘botulinum’.

Fast forward to 1895 and a funeral in Belgium. Three of the guests at the wake drop dead from food poisioning (which cut out the middleman funeral-wise), and the culprit was found to be some ham they’d all eaten. The ham was sent to the University of Ghent where someone put it under a microscope and identified the bacteria whodunnit. And in a strange case of medical serendipity, it turns out the little bastards were sausage-shaped.

Turn that frown upside down with some biological warfare

Now called ‘clostridium botulinum’, this bacteria is so bloody lethal that it’s up there with anthrax as one hell of a biological weapon, causing almost instant death by paralysis. So surely it must be banned, right? Wrong. Because a little bit of instant paralysis can actually be a very good thing, at least if you’re a woman (or man – but mainly woman) of a certain age or a Kardashian. Because sausage poison has since been rebranded as, you’ve guessed it, botox. The world is a funny place, isn’t it?

PS: If you’ve ever wondered why sausages are sometimes called hotdogs, it’s because in 19th-century America many people believed sausages were made of, you’ve guessed it, dog meat. So they called them hotdogs. Simple, but gross. And hopefully not true today.

myrmecophilous

If you’re described as ‘myrmecophilous’, then you’re associated with, benefited by or fond of (hopefully not in a weird way) ants. It’s a scientific term that describes the positive relationships ants have with other species like butterflies, crickets, beetles and mites, all of which help them be good at staying alive (that’s the science). For example, butterflies belonging to the family Lycaenidae (which is almost 6,000 species worldwide), are myrmecophiles. In return for protection from predators, some caterpillars have developed dew patches, small button-like spots on their backs, that ooze a thick sugary fluid that the ants go nuts for, while others have a nectar gland that pumps out the same sweet goodness (sounds gross, I know). So the ants get their fix, and the caterpillars get bodyguards (even if they are all hopped up on sugar).

The word myrmecophilous has Greek roots. ‘Myrmec’ means ‘ant’, while the ‘phile’ ending comes from ‘philos’, which means to love. Like extremophile, galanthophile and lots of other nasty words we won’t mention here.

Okay, ant facts.

• There are over 12,000 ant species worldwide.

• The bullet ant is said to have the most painful sting in the world – it feels like being hit by a hammer. Just kidding, it feels like a bullet, obviously.

• A single ant can carry 50 times its own bodyweight. And they even work together to move stuff they can’t manage on their own.

• Ants can be found on every single continent except Antarctica, which is mental considering it’s the only continent that literally starts with ‘ant’.

• The biggest ants’ nest ever found is over 3,700 miles wide. Yep, you did read that right. Called the ‘Argentine Ant Supercolony’ (good name for a band), it goes from northern Italy through the south of France, and out to the western coast of Spain. Many ant experts think it’s actually much much bigger than this and stretches across the globe – that’s because Argentine ants from opposite sides of the world recognise each other (which I think basically means they don’t try to kill each other), leading them to think they all live in one utterly ginormous colony. Here’s hoping they don’t rise up and take over the world… actually maybe that would be better.

• I ate a stir-fry in a restaurant in Cambodia that had ants in it (as an ingredient – it wasn’t a really dirty restaurant) – although I didn’t realise until I was about halfway through. I thought they were saffron or something like that. It was very nice, but once I did realise, I couldn’t finish it.

tartle

‘This is…’

Picture the scene. You’re at a party (not that I ever go to parties anymore. But I do remember them. Vaguely). You’re making small talk with someone you’ve met a few times, but whose name currently escapes you. Then disaster strikes. Your partner/friend/someone else you know comes over to join the conversation. They both look expectantly at you, waiting for introductions. You hesitate just a bit too long. Panic… PANIC…!

Congratulations, you’ve just tartled.

This lovely Scottish verb is the act of hesitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name. It’s important to note that it’s the hesitation that ‘tartle’ is referring to here – not the act of bad memory itself. If you do this type of thing a lot, then you can be described as ‘tartlesome’.

Sadly ‘tartle’ hasn’t taken off as much as it should, so there’s not much info on its origins. It’s possible that it comes from an Old English word, ‘tealtrian’, which means to totter, shake, stagger or generally be uncertain.

So there you have it. Next time you find yourself trying to introduce someone whose name you’ve forgotten, just fill that awkward silence with ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve just tartled.’ And hope no one thinks that means you’ve broken wind.

Krampus

This one’s a bit of a cheat, because it’s a proper noun (but still a word). As it’s nearly Christmas, I’m hoping you’ll let me get away with it. Because tis the season for nightmarish shadowy figures who’ll, at best, whip you with a birch rod, and at worst, drag you to hell. Merry Christmas!

Krampus in action – LOOK AT HIS TONGUE (source)

In central and eastern Europe, Krampus is a horned hairy figure, usually brown or black, with cloven hoofs and a lolling tongue. He’s basically Santa Claus’s evil twin – the anti-Santa. According to myth, Krampus accompanies Old Saint Nick to doll out punishment to kiddies who’ve found themselves in the naughty section of that checked-it-twice list. He does that by whipping them with a bunch of birch rods, presumably on the bum, or some rusty chains. Ouch. Some stories say he then pops them in a basket, and drags the naughty children to hell.

Krampus’s name either comes from the Bavarian word ‘krampn’ meaning ‘dead’ or ‘rotten’, or from the German words ‘kramp’ or ‘krampen’ meaning ‘claw’. His origins are a bit murky, although he’s thought to have appeared around the 6th or 7th century CE – some clever anthropology bods think he actually pre-dates Christianity. He’s even got his own feast day, on 5 December, called Krampusnacht, which is the day before St Nicholas’ Day. People dress up as Krampus, drink too much, then run about trying to scare each other in something called the ‘Krampuslauf’ or ‘Krampus Run’. These events still go on annually in a lot of Alpine towns, and have even made their way to some American towns and cities, including Portland and San Francisco. There are also Christmas cards with him on, called Krampuskarten, which is fun to say out loud.

A genuinely scary Krampusnacht costume (source)

Krampus has recently made his way into popular culture, particularly in North American horror films. One of my favourites is, well, ‘Krampus’ starring Toni Collette and Adam Scott, which involves some excellent killer toys (including a particularly nasty child-eating clown) alongside some anti-commercialism messaging. And if you’re a fan of Inside No. 9 (which you absolutely should be), you’ll remember him from the exceedingly disturbing Christmas special ‘The Devil of Christmas’ (still available on BBC iplayer). Honourable mention also goes to the anthology horror film ‘A Christmas Horror Story’ where (a surprisingly ripped) Krampus has a full-on fight with Santa Claus himself. It also stars William Shatner – what more could you ask for?

All that’s left for me to say is ‘Grüß Vom Krampus’… or Greetings from Krampus. See you in 2023 for lots more word-related shenanigans.

proprioception

If I asked you how many senses we have, you’d probably say ‘five’, right? Taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch. But there’s actually another sixth sense, which has nothing to do with ghosts or Bruce Willis. It’s called proprioception.

(Before I get into this, I’m no scientist. So if I’ve got any details wrong in this article, please forgive me. And don’t shout at me.)

Proprioception, also known as kinaesthesia, is the sense that lets your brain know where your body is in space. Which basically means it’s how you know where and what your legs, arms and other extremities (stop it) are doing. You don’t need to look down at your feet to know where they are. That’s proprioception, right there.

So how does it work? Well, we all have cells called proprioceptors in our muscles and joints that process sensory information when our bodies move. And when we stretch our muscles and change the position of our joints, these cells send feedback to our brains, telling them where our arms, legs and body are at any given moment.

Without this sense, we wouldn’t be able to do anything much really. For example, if I have a gin and tonic, I don’t have to look at the glass as I move it to my mouth. That’s because my proprioceptors are sending information to my brain about where my hand is. I also don’t smash the glass into my own face (unless it’s the fourth or fifth gin and tonic), which is again thanks to my proprioceptive sense making sure my hand moves smoothly and at the right speed to get to my mouth.

Another good example is walking. You don’t need to look at your feet to lift them up, move them forward and put them back down again. That’s because proprioceptors send constant sensory information to your brain about where your hips, knees, ankles and toes are, and make sure you don’t fall over (most of the time). Proprioceptors are also constantly working in the background to make sure we use the right amount of force when we’re pulling or pushing something, and the right speed when we move our limbs. So we don’t end up breaking all the gin and tonics when we do a cheers, or punching people when we try to shake hands (unless we really don’t like them).

As a concept, proprioception has been around since 1557, where it was described by one Julius Caesar Scaliger (an Italian scholar and physician) as a ‘sense of locomotion’. In 1827, Charles Bell, a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist and philosophical theologian (and show-off, presumably), called it ‘muscle sense’. This was obviously deemed too easy to understand by the scientific community, and in 1906 the term ‘proprio-ception’ was coined by Charles Scott Sherrington, an English neurologist. This comes from the Latin word ‘proprius’, which means ‘one’s own’ or ‘individual’, and ‘capio’/‘capere’ meaning ‘to take’ or ‘grasp’. So it’s basically about grasping oneself in space. Which sounds like a sci-fi porn film, but you get the idea.

picayune

If something is picayune, it’s trivial or paltry. So you could say to someone ‘your opinions are picayune’ (if you’re mean and don’t want the person to realise). You can also use it as a noun, as in ‘our lives don't amount to a picayune in the grand scheme of things’. Which is depressing, sorry.

One silver Spanish real, from the reign of Peter I of Castile (1350–1369).

Picayune is a relatively modern word. In the 19th century, in Louisiana and other southern American states, a picayune was a small coin which wasn’t worth very much. Specifically, it was a Spanish half real – the real (meaning ‘royal’) was a Spanish unit of currency used for several hundred years after the mid-14th century. It was eventually replaced by the peseta in 1868.

The coin’s name comes from ‘picaioun’, a word that means ‘small coin’ in Occitan, a language spoken in French luxury cosmetic shops. I jest, of course (and apologise for the bad joke and product placement – although if anyone from L’Occitane is reading and would like to send me some free stuff, please do. I’m a particular fan of your hand cream) – it was spoken in Southern France. ‘Picaioun’ comes from the Occitan word ‘pica’, which means ‘to jingle’, as in the noise coins make when you have lots of them.

Just in case you don’t know what an aeroplane looks like (this might not be a Cessna though – no idea).

Further investigation into the word ‘pica’ led me to an eating disorder when people crave things that aren’t food. First described by Hippocrates way-back-when, in this context ‘pica’ actually has completely different etymology, and comes from the Latin word for ‘magpie’, a bird believed to eat anything.

This investigation then took me back to France (the internet is a wonderful thing) and one Michel Lotito, an entertainer who was famous for eating things that you shouldn’t. Known as Monsieur Mangetout (‘Mr Eat-All’), over the course of his 57-year lifetime, he ate 18 bicycles, 15 shopping carts, 7 TVs, 6 chandeliers, 2 beds, a pair of skis, a computer, a waterbed, 500 metres of steel chain, a coffin (with handles), 45 door hinges and even a bloody aeroplane (a Cessna 150, if you’re interested), which took him two years to get through. He was awarded a brass plaque by Guinness World Records to commemorate his abilities, and he ate that too. Lotito died in 2007 after a heart attack – and his death was apparently nothing to do with his ‘unusual’ diet.

ketchup

Think ketchup originated in America? Well, despite the fact that 97% of American households have a bottle of the red stuff in their kitchens, this condiment actually started life on much more exotic shores. The word ketchup comes from a Hokkien Chinese word, ‘kê-tsiap’, which was the name of a sauce made from fermented fish. (While any food with the word ‘fermented’ in it just doesn’t sound appetising, I think this was actually quite similar to soy sauce.)

So how did ketchup migrate? Well, it’s likely that British travellers brought ‘kê-tsiap’ home, before attempting to recreate it in their kitchens and anglicising it as ‘catchup’ (also ‘catsup’). The first written mention of ‘catchup’ is in ‘A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew’, a dictionary of English slang first published in 1698. It has over 4,000 entries and, frankly, sounds awesome.

At some point ‘catchup’ mutated into ‘ketchup’. And the first published recipe for ketchup appeared in 1727, in ‘The Compleat Housewife’, an incredibly popular cookbook by Eliza Smith which went through a massive 18 editions. Ingredients in Smith’s recipe included anchovies, shallots, vinegar, ginger and nutmeg, and involved shaking the bottle once or twice a day for a week before using it. A second recipe for ‘ketchup in paste’ appeared in 1732, written by one Richard Bradley (who was the first professor of botany at Cambridge University, and also published the first recipe with pineapple in it – hopefully it wasn’t a pizza). This still wasn’t the ketchup we know today though – the main ingredient was red beans, and there definitely weren’t any tomatoes in there. Other versions followed, often containing mushrooms (apparently Jane Austen was a big fan of mushroom ketchup), unripe walnuts (YUM) and oysters. At this point ‘ketchup’ was really just another word for ‘sauce’.

Despite having been brought to England in the 1500s from South America, tomatoes weren’t popular as people actually thought they were poisonous (possibly due to the lead from lead pewter plates leaching into them). So it wasn’t until around 1812 that the first tomato ketchup recipe appeared. James Mease, a scientist from Philadelphia, gets the credit for this, although he loses points for calling tomatoes ‘love apples’ (due to their reputation for being an aphrodisiac – which seems somewhat at odds with the whole poison thing, but never mind), which doesn’t seem very scientific, and sounds gross. A little start-up by the name of Heinz then introduced their recipe in 1876, and the red sauce we know today was born. Today Heinz is the best-selling brand of ketchup in the United States, with more than 650 million bottles sold every year.

I still don’t like it though.

haywire

If something goes haywire, it means it works erratically, in a crazy way or doesn’t work at all. We often use it when we’re talking about technology. That might make you think the ‘wire’ of ‘haywire’ is something to do with power-type wires (that’s the official technical term), but you would in fact be wrong. ‘Haywire’ actually has a much older meaning to do with… wait for it… hay.

Well, I didn’t say it was exciting.

People who deal with hay (farmers, I guess?) use baling wire – a thin, flexible metal wire – to bind together (you’ve guessed it) bales of hay. It’s a bit like duct tape, in that it’s used for all different types of quick and dirty repairs (see ‘The Martian’ by Andy Weir – and the Matt Damon-starring film – for the wonders of duct tape: ‘Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.’ I wholeheartedly agree). Some of the repairs baling wire is used for include ‘wiring gates shut, mending a fence, holding rickety machinery together and stuff like that’. This led to the expression ‘haywire outfit’, which appeared around the turn of the century. It referred to New England logging camps which used cheap temporary fixes (often involving baling wire) for repairing equipment, rather than doing it properly. Eventually the word ‘haywire’ came to describe anything that was flimsy or patched together, and then for attempts to fix things that went wrong.

Unlike duct tape, hay wire also has a reputation for being tricky to manage. That’s because, much like Christmas lights, wired headphones and my jewellery, it can get itself in a complete tangle without any outside intervention. It was probably this that led to ‘haywire’ getting the meaning of ‘crazy’ or ‘out of control’.

kowtow

If you kowtow to someone, it means you agree to do something a bit too easily, or in an obsequious way – AKA sucking up. It now has quite negative connotations, but in days gone by a kowtow was actually the ultimate way to show respect to a superior. It involved bowing or kneeling so low that your forehead was touching the floor (if I did this I wouldn’t be able to get back up again), or even lying fully prostrate on the ground. Apparently a kosher kowtow was three kneelings and nine knockings of your forehead on the floor – and if you can’t hear your skull hitting the ground then you ain’t doing it properly. Ouch.

Vietnamese graduates kowtowing to their teachers in 1897

The word ‘kowtow’ itself comes from Cantonese – it’s a combination of ‘kòu’ which means ‘to knock’ and ‘tóu’ which means ‘head’. In Sinospheric culture (which is a fancy-dancy term for countries in East and Southeast Asia that were historically influenced by China, like Japan and Korea), it was used to show respect for one’s parents and elders, superiors and religious big-wigs, all the way up to the Emperor of China himself. The Emperor wasn’t immune either – apparently he would do a kowtow (possibly not the right terminology) to the shrine of Confucius, and also to heaven (that was it though).

The kowtow caused an international incident in 1793 when Lord George (not Paul) Macartney*, the first British ambassador to China, refused to do a full kowtow to Emperor Qianlong (because, British). He went as far as removing his hat and bowing, but that was it. This pissed off the Chinese no end, especially as every other European ambassador had just got on and done it. The Brits agreed to do a kowtow only if the emperor would do the same to a portrait of King George III (yes, the mad one). Unsurprisingly that was a hard ‘no’. China then rejected every single one of Britain’s diplomatic and trade requests. All for the sake of a bow and not a kowtow. Also, MEN.

Macartney’s first meeting with Qianlong. Hope he sang the Frog Chorus

The term ‘kowtow’ arrived in English in the early 1800s, probably as a result of those failed trade negotiations. Within a few decades its meaning had changed to the ‘fawning’ verb we have today.

The kowtow tradition pretty much disappeared after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911–12. Nowadays in China it’s reserved for paying homage to ancestors at family burial grounds.

* Yes, it is spelled differently but I liked the Frog Chorus joke so I left it in.

boondocks

If someone lives out in the boondocks (also boonies), it means they live in the middle of nowhere. It’s generally an American term (the British equivalent is probably ‘the sticks’) and is usually used in a derogatory way to mean somewhere that’s considered backward or dull, AKA the basis for many a disturbing redneck-based horror film.

While boondocks might be a more popular word in the US of A, it didn’t originate there. It’s actually a term from Tagalog, the language that’s the base for Filipino, one of the official languages of the Philippines (obvs). That word is ‘bundok’, which means ‘mountains’. So how did it get from southeast Asia to Murica? Well, during the Philippine Revolution of 1896 to 1898 (when the Philippines fought for independence from 300 years of Spanish colonial rule), occupying American military forces adopted ‘bundok’, broadening its meaning to refer to the wild and remote country they found while fighting abroad. They then took it home with them as ‘boondocks’.

Tagalog is spoken as a first language by the Tagalog people (again, obvs), who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by almost everyone else who lives there. Taglish or Englog, a mixture of Tagalog and English is also widely spoken. In fact, it’s so prevalent that non-native speakers can be identified easily because they use pure Tagalog, whereas native speakers speak Taglish.

prosody

Image courtesy of Tshirt Superstar - Music

Prosody is a linguistic term – wait, don’t stop reading! – concerned with the way we say things. So basically it’s not interested in the actual words we use, but in the way we deliver them. To put it rather more romantically, it’s all about the music of speech – its rhythm (spelled that right first time, well done me), stresses and intonation (called suprasegmentals, fact-fans).

Prosody plays a really important role in communication because it gives us humans information beyond what the words in a sentence literally mean. In case you’re thinking WTF, let’s have a look at it in action.

Imagine someone says this to you:

Wow, this is a really great post about words, isn’t it?

Depending on the intonation and rhythm (nailed it again) this person uses, they could be saying that this really is an excellent post about words that’s packed with useful information. Or they might mean that actually it’s incredibly boring, and they wish they’d never come to this godforsaken website. It all depends on the delivery.

As you’ve probably gathered, prosody is particularly important when it comes to picking up on nuance, like if someone’s being sarcastic or not. It can also change the meaning of simple one-syllable utterances like ‘Ah!’ or ‘Ooh!’ to give them loads of entirely different meanings depending on how you say them. Don’t be smutty.

According to Charles Darwin, prosody probably predates the evolution of human language. That’s because even animals use it. For example, monkeys express their feelings using different tones: low ones for anger and impatience, and high ones for fear and pain.

Wow, this is a really great post about words, isn’t it?

cathedral

I live in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, which is a cathedral town. Not a city – contrary to what a lot of people think, a town doesn’t immediately become a city just because it has a big ole church in it. In fact, Suffolk doesn’t have any cities in it at all. It’s not alone in this – there are actually nine others which are also city free. Want to have a guess at which ones? Answers at the bottom of the post…

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral (photo by DAVID ILIFF. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0)

Anyway, I digress. A cathedral is called a cathedral because it contains a cathedra, which is basically a nice chair (or throne) for a bishop. Originally the Latin word cathedra didn’t have any religious connotations though – it literally just meant ‘armchair’, and was a term usually reserved for a chair specifically for ladies. I’m not sure what makes a chair female – maybe it gets paid significantly less than the men’s chairs?

The origins of ‘cathedra’ go way back to ‘kmt’ (you can tell that’s an old word because it doesn’t have any vowels in it), a Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘down’ or ‘with’. It’s thought that the Proto-Indo-European language, or PIE, was spoken from 4500 BC to 2500 BC (I told you it was old). This went into Greek as ‘kata’, meaning ‘down’, and soon fused with ‘hedra’, which comes from another PIE root ‘sed’, ‘to sit’. This created ‘kathedra’ for ‘seat or bench’. When words went from Greek to Latin, the ‘k’s often changed to ‘c’s (which is something to do with how they’re pronounced I think) – hence, ‘cathedra’. And with the Catholic church’s penchant for Latin, it wasn’t long before it made it into their lexicon (losing its femininity along the way, of course).

Time for Bury St Edmunds facts. Did you know…

1. The single largest witch trial in England was held in BSE in 1645. It led to 18 women being executed by famous witchfinder general Vincent Price, sorry Matthew Hopkins, sorry utter sexist bastard. The site of the trial is now a Premier Inn hotel, and the places where the witches were executed are now a garden centre and a golf club.

2. Bury St Eds featured prominently in Armando Iannucci’s film The Personal History of David Copperfield. Dickens himself stayed in The Angel Hotel in town three times during his life. You can even sleep in the same four-poster bed as he did in room 215 (although presumably they’ve changed the sheets since then).

3. Measuring just 15ft by 7ft, The Nutshell pub is officially the smalled pub in Britain. Opened in 1867, it has a mummified cat hanging over the bar which was discovered behind the walls during renovations. Mummified cats were often placed in the walls of newly built homes to ward off unwanted spirits back in the day. There are also several mummified cats in our local museum – I’m not sure why we love them so much here.

Some mummified cats (and mice). Sorry

So, did you guess the other city-less counties? They are: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Rutland (also Britain’s smallest county), Surrey and Warwickshire. Buckinghamshire was on the list until quite recently, but the Queen made Milton Keynes a city at part of the Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours, whatever they are.

extremophile

It’s another ‘-phile’ word this week, but there’s nothing to worry about, honest. An extremophile is an organism that thrives in extreme environments previously thought to be uninhabitable, for example under massive pressure or really bastard cold. These organisms not only tolerate these conditions – for many, they need them to survive. Extremophiles have been found 6.7 km below the Earth’s surface, more than 10km deep in the ocean at pressures of up to 110 MPa (which is a lot, apparently), in acid, in frozen seawater at -20°C and in underwater hydrothermal vents at temperatures of 122°C. The name is made from the Latin extremus meaning, um, ‘extreme’, and the Greek philiā which means ‘love’.

A tardigrade*. Doesn’t he look like he’s about to start singing ‘Always look on the bright side of life’?

Extremophiles are also normally polyextremophiles (‘poly’ meaning ‘many’), which means they can live in more than one shit place – for example, the deep ocean is generally very cold and also under high pressure. So that’s a double whammy. And most extremophiles are microorganisms, but not all – the tardigrade (which I thought was a made-up thing in Star Trek) is one example. Also known as a water bear or moss piglet (awwww), a tardigrade is a microscopic eight-legged animal that thrives in environments that would kill most other forms of life – on mountaintops including the Himalayas, at the bottom of the sea, in mud volcanoes (which are literally what they sound like) and even in solid ice. They can go up to 30 years without food or water, and have been on earth for about 600 million years, which means they pre-date the dinosaurs by a mere 400 million years.

Not long ago, some nice scientists chucked a load of tardigrades out into outer space to see what would happen. Not only did lots of them survive, but some of them even went on to have babies. And in August 2019, scientists reported that some tardigrades might be living on the moon after an Israeli lunar lander carrying thousands of them crash landed (although it’s since been reported that they probably didn’t survive the impact, booooo). Both of these things sound like the start of really good sci-fi horror films.

The name ‘water bear’ comes from the way tardigrades walk, which apparently resembles the way bears get around. The largest ones can get to a (still pretty tiny) 1.5mm, which means you can see them using a bog-standard microscope if you have such a thing.

Extremophiles like the tardigrade are proof that life can exist in many different forms, and that oxygen and water aren’t pre-requisites. In the words of well-known mathematician and chaos theory specialist Dr Ian Malcolm (AKA Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park): ‘Life, uh, finds a way.’

*Wikipedia says I have to credit that tardigrade photo with this horrible bit of text: photo by Bob Goldstein and Vicky Madden, UNC Chapel Hill – http://tardigrades.bio.unc.edu/pictures/ >https://www.flickr.com/photos/waterbears/sets/72157607218607395/ >https://www.flickr.com/photos/waterbears/2851666759/in/album-72157607218607395 (note permission below), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4747599).

cacafuego

The Cacafuego getting its arse kicked by The Golden Hind.

You might know a cacafuego – it’s a swaggering braggart or boaster. Even if you’re not a linguist you’ve probably guessed that this is a Spanish word. And it literally means ‘fire shitter’, from the old Spanish verb cacar (now cagar), meaning ‘to void excrement’, and fuego, which means ‘fire’.

Cacafuego first appeared in English in the early 1600s, and that’s down to Sir Francis Drake, English explorer, sea captain, ahem, slave trader, naval officer, politician and circumnavigator of the globe (show-off). He was also a privateer, which is basically a government-sponsored pirate who went around attacking foreign vessels and stealing all their treasure. One of the ships he captured was a Spanish galleon called Cacafuego. Okay, the ship wasn’t actually called fire shitter (shame) – this was a nickname given to her by her crew due to her impressive cannon fire and other weaponry. Her real name was Nuestra Señora de la Concepción or Our Lady of the (Immaculate) Conception, which isn’t half as fun.

On 1 March 1579, while doing the aforementioned circumnavigation of the globe, Drake’s ship the Golden Hind caught up with Cacafuego near Ecuador. Having heard that she was packed to the rafters (not sure ships have rafters but never mind) with goodies, Drake decided to capture her. Rather than reduce the Hind’s sails in daylight (as this might look suspicious), Drake trailed some wine barrels behind to slow her down and wait for night to fall. In the early evening he came alongside and, because there weren’t many English ships in the Pacific at this time, the Cacafuego was taken completely by surprise and surrendered without much resistance. Drake sailed both ships to the South America coast and, after nicking all the treasure, treated the officers on board to a nice dinner, some presents (sadly Wikipedia doesn’t say what these were) and letters of safe conduct before offloading them. So that’s nice. And it wasn’t long before cacafuego became a byword for a swaggering person – probably due to the fact that Drake made such short work of taking control of such a supposedly impressive ship.

gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is the manipulation of boundaries of electoral districts or constituencies to swing an election a particular way. A good example is when the 19th-century Republican Party split the Dakota Territory into two states instead of one. That’s because each state got at least three electoral votes, regardless of the size of its population.

The OG gerrymander

Gerrymandering is named after one Elbridge Gerry, an American founding father, politician and diplomat who was the fifth vice president from 1813 until he died in 1814. He was also the governor of Massachusetts. During his second term, Republican-controlled legislation created district boundaries designed to increase the party’s control of state and national offices. This lead to some oddly shaped legislative areas, including one in Essex County (a political stronghold for the rival party, the Federalists) that a newspaper said looked like a ‘salamander’ (obvs). They named it the ‘Gerry-mander’ after Elbridge who signed the legislation that created it.

It worked as well – the weirdly shaped district elected three Democrat-Republicans that year. Previously the county had had five Federalist senators.

It’s worth pointing out that apparently Elbridge wasn’t happy about this suspect map redrawing, even if he did still sign the legislation that made it happen. According to his biographer he was ‘a nervous, birdlike little person’ with a stammer, and a habit of ‘contracting and expanding the muscles of his eye’ (I can’t even imagine what that actually looked like). This makes him sound like he might have been bullied into it, but he was no stranger to not signing stuff – in fact he refused to put his name to the American Constitution because he thought the Senate it created could become too tyrannical. So perhaps he would have thought twice about signing that district-redrawing bill if he’d known that two-hundred-and-something years later his name would have become synonymous with this type of cloak-and-dagger political jiggery pokery.

(Gerrymander is an example of an ‘eponym’ or a word named after a person. Check out this post for lots more eponyms, including leotard, diesel and bloomers. Sounds like a party…)

(DISCLAIMER: My knowledge of American politics is shockingly bad. So apologies in advance if any of my facts or terminology are wrong.)

pognophile

Spoiler alert

Any word with ‘phile’ on the end immediately looks vaguely threatening, doesn’t it? Luckily, in this case, it’s fairly innocuous. A pognophile is someone who (hopefully in a healthy way) really likes beards. It has a pretty wide definition, and can include anyone who loves growing their own beard, beards on other people and even those who study beards (because apparently that’s a thing).

Etymology wise it’s quite a straightforward one. ‘Pogon’ is the Greek work for ‘beard’, while ‘phile’ is a suffix we put on the end of words to show that someone loves the thing that comes before it (if that makes sense). ‘Phile’ comes from another Greek word, ‘philos’ which means ‘to love’. If you’re scared of beards, you’re a pognophobe, poor you.

The longest beard in the world belonged to one Hans Nilson Langseth (born in 1846), a Norwegian man whose facial hair was a whopping 17 feet and 6 inches long (that’s 5.334 metres in new money). If you fancy having a go at beating his record you should probably get started now though – it took him 60 years to grow it that long. Apparently beard hair dies once it gets past about five feet. So you have to mat the dead hair at the end into dreadlocks to make it strong enough to keep growing. Ewww, I bet there was all sorts of crap in there. And somebody probably knows exactly how much crap there was in there, as the beard (sadly now sans Hans) is in the Smithsonian. You can see a picture of it in all its glory (and still attached to Hans) here.

biddy

We use the word ‘biddy’ to describe an old woman, usually in a derogatory way – ‘a nosy old biddy’, for example. Before I start getting cross about that (spoiler alert), here’s some etymology.

In the early 19th century, lots of Irish people were upping sticks and heading off to the US of A for a new life. Upper-class American families often paid for young women to make the trip, who’d then work as domestic servants to pay for their passage. In fact, this happened so often that these women came to be known as ‘biddies’, a shortening of ‘Bridget’, a popular Irish girls’ name. Which I think means it’s racist, as well as sexist. At some point it started being used to describe old ladies, which is where we find ourselves today.

(‘Biddy’ also seems to be a slang term for a chicken, although I don’t think that’s related to this meaning.)

Sadly, using a female name for a negative personality trait or as an insult still goes on today – the latest being ‘Karen’ for an entitled (usually) white woman who always runs to the manager to complain. There’s also a ‘Becky’, for a privileged, sheltered and unlikeable young woman (I believe the kids say ‘a basic bitch’). This one was made famous by Beyonce’s 2009 song ‘Sorry’ (‘Becky with the good hair’), but also appeared in Sir Mix-a-Lot’s 1992 hit ‘Baby Got Back’. In this case Becky was a lady with a big butt, which he liked very much and could not tell fibs about. ‘Stacy’ is another one – an unattractive woman who’s vain and rude, and only interested in sex (GOD FORBID). Worryingly, this one comes from incel culture, when men who live in their moms’ basements blame women everywhere for the fact that they’re celibate.

The only male equivalent I could find is a ‘Chad’. But predictably, this one actually has some positive connotations – a Chad is a sexually active Alpha male whose antics in the bedroom are never held against him. Then of course there’s the slew of other defamatory words for women with no male equivalent (or, if there is one, it’s often positive – like ‘spinster’ vs ‘bachelor’), most of which are related to sexuality. For example: cougar, gold-digger, bimbo, drama queen, slut, whore, nympho, tramp, slapper… I could go on. But I won’t, because it’s depressing.

peristeronic

No, I haven’t spelled (spelt?) ‘prehistoric’ wrong. If something or someone (god forbid) is peristeronic then it means it or they relate to or resemble a pigeon.

The etymology is pretty straightforward – the ancient Greek word for dove or pigeon is ‘peristera’. Both of these birds come from the columbidae family. We get a couple of nice words from that as well:

• ‘columbarium’ – another word for a pigeon loft or a dovecote (I wonder why pigeons get lofts but doves gets cotes? Seems a bit racist), and also any type of vault which has niches for storing urns in it

• ‘columbine’ – which means of or relating to a dove, in innocence, gentleness, colour and so on. It’s also the name of one of the stock characters in commedia dell’arte (a form of popular theatre from 16th-century Italy that Inside No. 9 used as a basis for an episode that most people – including me – didn’t understand).

Time for pigeon facts. Pigeons are monogamous and mate for life. Mum and dad pigeons share parental responsibilities equally, meaning they’re already far more evolved than most humans (and I bet there’s no gender-pay gap). They’re also pretty clever. Aside from their awesome navigational abilities – an Oxford University study found that pigeons use manmade landmarks as signposts and often fly along roads and motorways, even changing direction at junctions – they can apparently recognise all 26 letters of the English alphabet and solve problems (I think I need a pigeon assistant).

GI Joe. He’s not dead, he’s resting.

Homing pigeons were used extensively during the First and Second World Wars for communication and reconnaissance. In fact, pigeon USA43SC6390, AKA GI Joe, saved the lives of the inhabitants of an entire Italian village, and the British troops who were occupying it, on 18 October 1943. Air support had been requested to deal with German soldiers in the village (called Calvi Vecchia). GI Joe flew 20 miles in 20 minutes to deliver a message that the British 169th (London) Infantry Brigade had captured the village, arriving just as the planes were getting ready to take off to bomb the target. He saved the lives of at least 100 men. GI Joe was given the Dickin Medal (which sounds rude but isn’t) for ‘the most outstanding flight made by a United States Army pigeon in World War II’.

I’m not crying, I’ve just got something in my eye.

‘Feed the birds’ from Mary Poppins – the dirty old bird lady always makes me well up.

penthouse

You know what a penthouse is – the super-expensive apartment at the top of a block which has its own special key for the lift and amazing views (AKA something I’ll never live in). But why is it called a penthouse?

(Obviously there’s also a softcore porn magazine called Penthouse. If that’s what you’re interested in, you might need a different kind of website though – I’m afraid there’s only word porn here.)

Phwoarr, look at the views on that penthouse.

Well, it turns out penthouses haven’t always the purview of poshos. The word ‘penthouse’ has actually been around for about four centuries (so much longer than very tall buildings), and originally referred to any kind of outhouse or structure attached to the outside of a building. It comes from an Old French word, ‘apentis’, which means ‘attached building’ or ‘appendage’. This comes from a Latin verb, ‘appendere’, meaning ‘to hang something up’. That’s where we get other words like ‘pendulum’, ‘appendix’ and ‘depend’ (not ‘penis’ though, surprisingly).

In the 1300s, ‘apentis’ made its way into Middle English, dropping the ‘a’ somewhere along the way. It was still used to describe small structures with sloping roofs that were attached to other larger buildings though. People usually kept things like tools and animals in them, rather than super-rich celebs. Through a process called folk etymology (which is basically when we change a – usually foreign – word due to a mistaken assumption about its meaning, or mispronounce it so throughly and for so long that it becomes something else) the ‘is’ of ‘appentis’ became ‘house’.

It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that penthouse took on the meaning it has today. As is often the case, no one seems completely sure how. Rooftop units were seen as pretty undesirable before the invention of lifts, and people tended to stick machinery, and servants, in them. The publisher Condé Nast takes some of the credit for popularising rooftop living. In the early 1920s he bought a building in New York and had the top floor – originally the servants’ quarters – converted into a 5,100-square foot apartment complete with six bedrooms, dining room, drawing room and library, all arranged around a 23 by 43 foot ballroom. Structures like this were often called ‘roof bungalows’ which doesn’t sound half as grand as ‘penthouse’ – so perhaps that’s why they were rebranded. The architect Emery Roth might have been responsible for this – he designed many top-floor apartments with terraces and is credited by his biographer Steven Ruttenbaum as having called these penthouses.

The upshot of all this is that I’m pretty sure that next time you’re in your shed, garage or outside loo, you can legit tell people you’re hanging out in your penthouse.