words Archives - Page 2 of 8 - Ramblin' with Roger

Nog, nogg, noggin, nogging

the brain

Dan writes: For the next “Ask Roger:”

Is the word “noggin” derived from the word “nogg?” The implication that one has a wooden head… jammed in the wall with a nail through it?

This is actually an excellent question to receive. I learned that NOGG is the National Osteoporosis Guideline Group. Of course, it is “a multidisciplinary group including patient representation and professionals involved in the care of people with osteoporosis. It was established in 2007 to provide a clinical guideline for the management of men and women at high fracture risk, using the output from the FRAX calculator.”

I assume that a broken head is possible. Wait, wait, that’s the wrong usage. Nogg is a carpentry term for “a shave for shaping dowels and handles”.

Thus nogging:
(noun) One of a number of wooden pieces fitted between the principal timbers of a half-timbered wall.
(v.t.) To fill (a framed wall or partition) with small masonry, as bricks or stones.

Boozing it up

However, I’ve occasionally seen nogg, which my spellcheck does NOT like, as an alternative spelling of nog, as in egg-nogg. Nog is:
“any beverage made with beaten eggs, usually with alcoholic liquor; eggnog” or
“a strong ale formerly brewed in Norfolk, England.”
First Known Use of nog: 1693, in the meaning defined at sense 1. History and Etymology for nog: origin unknown

Nog was also a character on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Now, the definitions of noggin are:
1: a person’s head
2: a small mug or cup
3: a small quantity (such as a gill) of drink
The first known use of noggin was in 1588, or 1620–30, depending on the source; origin uncertain.

Noggin is a Nick Jr. cable channel “where kids learn with characters they love.” In the UK, there is a brain supplement called Noggin. This seems to gravitate towards the idea of “using your noggin” i.e. your brain, not just the head itself.

The colloquial sense of “head” (originally as boxing slang) is included in the same OED entry as “noggin” so, as Neil from a Facebook group dedicated to words surmised, maybe there was some slang notion of the head being like a bucket.

More interesting, and frankly more confusing to me, are articles about noggin as whatever this is from 2011. “The Bone Morphogenetic Protein Antagonist Noggin Protects White Matter After Perinatal Hypoxia-ischemia.” Yeah. “Perinatal HI was induced in transgenic mice in which the BMP antagonist noggin is overexpressed during oligodendrogenesis (pNSE-Noggin).” Does someone want to translate that into English?

Anyway, I’m finding a link between nog and noggin, in terms of alcohol or beverage, or the container. Nogg’s wood-related origin seems to have developed separately, as far as I am able to ascertain. Unless, of course, the bucket was made of wood, which it probably was.

Neil found for me a reference to nog or nogg as “a peg, pin, or cylindrical piece of wood, serving any of various purposes” is now “chiefly Australian and New Zealand.” As are so many of the definitions, it is also of uncertain origin.

In other words, I just can’t be certain of the linkage, because so many of the derivations are unknown.

Cornhole, tea lights – words I didn’t know

You Can Count On Me

My family was in a local bar/restaurant waiting for takeout. There were at least three televisions tuned to differing sports events. One was showing a competition from the American Cornhole League. No, I did not know that was a thing.

The competitors play by the rules of the American Cornhole Association, which sells “official cornhole bags.” There’s also the American Cornhole Association – ACO.

How do you score? “Bag In-The-Count (Woody): Any bag which comes to rest anywhere on top of the board. Each is worth one (1) point. Bag In-The-Hole (Cornhole): Any bag which is thrown through the hole or knocked through the hole by another bag. Each is worth three (3) points.”

I got home and asked my wife, “What was the name of that game in which they were tossing bean bags into a hole?” I had to look it up. When I would play it in a playground or someone’s yard, only the bag going into the hole counted.

Silent Night

At church on Christmas Eve, we usually have individual candles, which the congregation blows out after the lights come on and we sing Joy To The World. It was decided that the tradition wasn’t COVID safe. I thought we weren’t going to sing Silent Night at all. Instead, a bunch of tiny electric candles either were purchased or retrieved from somewhere.

In describing them to my wife and daughter, I described them as little electric votive candles. In fact, they have a very specific name: tea lights. I had never heard of that designation in my life.

What’s the name of that movie?

Sometimes, I have a difficult time remembering the name of movies when I find the titles unmemorable. The first movie I ever saw with Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney was You Can Count On Me (2000). Yet I have the hardest time remembering what it’s called and end up searching IMBD for one of the actors.

Worse is a 2014 movie about a character played by Jon Favreau who buys a food truck. The film shows the best-looking grilled cheese sandwich I’ve ever seen filmed. Yet I can’t remember the name of the movie. Oh, yeah, Chef, which is what the Favreau character was BEFORE he bought the food truck.

Similar to…

When I occasionally can’t up with a common word, I’m comforted that first, I think of a related term then work back to the one I want. For instance, if you were going to make dinner, you might need that list of food items. What’s that called? I might think Menu, which IS a list of foods. No that’s not right. Recipe. Of course.

Word debates: sheroes and herstory

Nellie Bly

Someone on a Facebook page that is about words asked a question. “Heard on NPR a discussion of heroes and sheroes. What’s wrong with heroine?”

Folks on the list replied that heroine is a diminutive for “hero” and may demean and trivialize the qualities of the women. They noted that words such as comedienne and poetess have fallen by the wayside. I remember that, in my lifetime, some people were trying to reintroduce the word authoress. For what purpose, I no longer recall. It hasn’t been embraced, fortunately, except as an “old-fashioned” word in some dictionaries.

The one word that has survived is the word actress. While I’ve often heard “actor” used for all performers, “actress” still is in the lexicon for awards, such as the Oscars and the Tonys. That is understandable. Getting rid of categories by gender might be someone’s idea of “equitable,” but one could reasonably believe that men would end up receiving the lion’s share of recognition.

Addictive

“Heroine” also has people thinking that it sounds very much like something else, which I’ve believed for a half-century. Even the Free Dictionary and others note this. “Not to be confused with: heroin – highly addictive narcotic derived from morphine: He had a hard time kicking heroin.” This I did not know: “The name heroin was coined from the German heroisch meaning heroic, strong. Heroin is stronger (more potent) than morphine.”

One objection to sheroes was this: “I just think it’s mostly patronizing. If a woman is a hero, she’s a hero. ‘Sheroes’ sounds like the Women’s Auxiliary of Heroes. It’s the ‘Hear Me Roar’ version of heroism.” I don’t hear it that way, but OK.

We can beat them, just for one day

Another noted all the female heroes we have had for decades. “Alice Stebbins, first American woman police officer hired in the 1910s. Loretta Walsh, the first woman to enroll in the military in 1917. A whole century earlier in 1815, Molly Williams was the first woman firefighter and I’m pretty sure women have been doing ‘everyday stuff’ since the beginning of time.

“I mean, sure, let’s go with sheroes but don’t excuse it thinking that women police officer/military/firefighter are some progressive new thing. That’s just the wrong narrative and honestly, most of my personal heroes are some (my mom and grandma for example) and a new word just seems unnecessary in my opinion.” Ah, but what of severe pushback are some of those women still receiving, particularly in the US military?

“Language is a social thing and if the majority decide to start using this kind of language, then my opinion becomes irrelevant. Let society decide.” Which, inevitably, it does. I really don’t have skin in that game. Maybe it’s because of the ease people are presently dubbed heroic, IMO. Though I’m rather fond of the Misty Copeland-inspired Barbie ‘Sheroes’ Doll.

Reform

On the other hand, I’m rather fond of herstory, though my spellcheck is not. Sure, women’s history IS history, just as black history IS history. But there are so many examples where it’s not as well-known as it should be.

I was particularly taken by a monument of several statues honoring journalist Nellie Bly opening on Roosevelt Island. It was created by sculptor Amanda Matthews. “In 1887, Bly went undercover as an inmate at the island’s asylum. Her report ‘Ten Days in a Mad-House’ revealed the deplorable treatment of women in the facility and prompted outrage and reform.” On the backs of the sculptures are engraved with the quote from Bly’s writings that inspired the selection of each subject.

“Matthews also made a sculpture of educator Nettie Depp. It will be installed next year at the Kentucky State Capitol. She said she made the statue after she discovered the state lacked sculptures honoring women.” The only female who had been honored with a statue in KY heretofore was a horse.

“‘Women’s history didn’t show up in our history books the same as men. It’s not written down as much. It’s not portrayed as much. So, we have to reach back into history, find this information, bring it into the 21st century,’ said Matthews.” And I would agree. For instance, I had never heard of Alice Stebbins Wells, Loretta Perfectus Walsh, or Molly Williams.

What do you all think of sheroes and herstory?

Middle Passage Descendants: Negro?

Afro-American? BIPOC?

“What Should You Call Middle Passage Descendants?” That’s the title of a recent article that Peter Feinman wrote in The Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education, which I receive regularly.

After an annoying, all-caps defense of his use of “HISTORICALLY ACCURATE TERMINOLOGY WHICH MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO READERS…” he discusses the historic use of the word Negro. This is not the first time he has tackled the subject.

He quotes Marc Lacey, the National Editor of The New York Times. “Everyone in this country who traces their ancestors back to Africa has experienced a panoply of racial identifiers over their lives, with some terms imposed and others embraced. In the course of a single day in 2020, I might be called black, African-American, or a person of color. I’m also labeled, in a way that makes my brown skin crawl, as diverse, ethnic, or a minority.”

Feinman’s primary point is clear. “The constantly changing name for Middle Passage people poses a dilemma for historians and museums… Do you use the historically accurate name from the time period of the people you are discussing – meaning the name they used themselves for self-identification – or do you use the name from the present and impose it on the past?”

With a capital N

Booker T. Washington called the Greenwood District of Tulsa, OK “the Negro Wall Street of America.”

In “What Thurgood Marshall Taught Me” by Stephen L. Carter, Yale School of Law (NYT 7/2021), he notes the first black SCOTUS justice “would answer that he’d spent his life fighting for the capital N in ‘Negro’ and wasn’t going to let a ‘bunch of kids’… tell him what he should call himself. Today we scarcely recall the titanic struggle over [the] capitalizing [of] ‘Negro.'” I had read about this, and it was indeed a BFD at the time.

Feinman quotes John McWhorter at length. “Yes, the word [Negro] should not be used to refer to Middle Passage descendants today, that would be ‘tacky.’ However, it is a historically-valid name that is not a slur.”

I was watching the PBS/Ken Burns series about Muhammad Ali. The boxer in fact did use the word Negro as an insult towards Floyd Patterson and other black boxing opponents that marketed themselves as the “real Americans”, presumably Christan. They would take down Cassius Clay, using a name the champ, who had joined the Nation of Islam, had by then rejected.

McWhorter wonders “What purpose does it serve to generate this new lexical grievance?… Does Black America … need yet another word to take umbrage at and police the usage of? Do we, in Black America, need fellow travelers — sorry, allies — to join us in this new quest, eager to assist in the surveillance out of some misguided sense that this is ‘doing the work’?”

Yes, we don’t need to change the names of the United Negro College Fund or Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Of course, we ought not to change the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. from “Negro” to whatever term is more “current.”

My take on present usage

When I was growing up, one of my siblings used to nag my maternal grandmother every time she’d talk about “colored people.” “What color ARE they, grandma?” “Black.”

I grew up with the term “Negro” which got stretched to silly comments about how my knee grows to more, er, problematic uses. So I was cool with black, even though, FOR YEARS, people would, unsolicited, say that I wasn’t really BLACK, but more a BROWN, and white people were more a shade of PINK… Please stop.

I remember being corrected over a sociology paper in college that I should use Black rather than black, the logic being that it’s replacing Negro. OK, if I’m using White, I’ll use Black. But if I’m writing white, I’m also writing black.

African-American

I know that African-American resonates with a lot of people. When I worked the 1990 Census as an enumerator, one choice was “Negro or black.” More than one respondent replied, almost defiantly, “African-American!” That’s fine. But the word, as well as the briefly popular Afro-American, never resonated with me. Over the last half-century, it’s been even more problematic.

1. It is a very narrow term. We’re talking about black people from sub-Saharan Africa who are Americans. So it doesn’t mean Charlize Theron, who is a white South African actress and a naturalized American citizen. Or the black terrorist during the Charlie Hebo incident, described initially by CNN as an African-American, when he was Afro-French. Or a number of black people in the US who aren’t Americans at all.

2. It has too many syllables, 7 (or 5) versus 1. Black History Month flows a lot easier than African-American…

That said, I prefer it to the newish, labored term BIPOC. In addition to sounding ugly, it works so hard to distinguish the Black experience of Middle Passage Descendants from the Indigenous experience of being pushed off their land, from People Of Color, who are Hispanics or East Asians or South Asians et al., as though THEIR experiences are all the same. Meh.

The George Rowan project

greegree

When I was in college, looking for a pseudonym, just in case, I mixed up the letters in Roger Owen Green. It came out as George R.N. Roween. George was obvious. When I was in high school, two of the guys I hung out with were named George. A young woman in our group started calling ME George, much to my irritation.

But linguistically, it sort of made sense. George and Roger both have R, O, G, and E. George Roween, though, sounded weird, so I changed it to George Rowan. There was a black syndicated columnist named Carl Rowan (1925-2000) who I used to watch on the news panel program Agronsky and Company.

Anyway, for my half birthday, plus a day, I decided to find all the words in Roger Owen Green, and define the ones I don’t know, generated by some website. The only 8-letter word is greegree, which is an African amulet

7 letters:
engorge greener regreen reneger renewer regorge regrown
wronger – One who wrongs someone. But NOT the comparative term for wrong

The six-letter words

erenow, which my spellcheck does not like. (archaic, literary) before this time; heretofore
gorger – yes, it is one who gorges. But it’s also the Romani term for non-Romani
nonego – anything not considered to be the ego or conscious self; a thing external to the mind.
nooner
orgone – a substance postulated by Wilhelm Reich, who thought it was present everywhere and needed to be incorporated in people for sexual activity and mental health

orogen – an extensive belt of rocks deformed by orogeny, associated in places with plutonic and metamorphic rocks.
regrew regrow renege renown
wonner – an inhabitant, an occupant (in British English, archaic); no wonder my spellcheck didn’t like it

The five-letter words

These will be good for playing Boggle
egger – one that collects the eggs of wild birds especially for gain.
error genre
genro – the elder statesmen of Japan who formerly advised the emperor
goner gorge green
grego – a coarse warm jacket or coat with a hood formerly worn by seamen
grown newer
ngwee – a monetary subunit of the kwacha (Zambia)

noone – Nonstandard spelling of no one. “Noone is formed in parallel to the formation of nobody, anyone, and everyone, but it is not preferred because of the doubled vowels creating a temptation to read and pronounce it as “noon” Noone reminds me of Peter Noone, the lead of Herman’s Hermits s.
owner renew reorg rewon roger
rowen – a second growth of grass or hay in one season
rower wooer wrong

The four-letter words

eger -from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English. (noun) An impetuous flood; a bore. (adjective) obsolete Sharp; bitter; acid; sour. My spellcheck hates this word.
enow – enough
ergo
erne – sea eagle
ewer – a pitcher with a wide spout; I used to know that one

gene goer
gogo – a discotheque, nightclub, etc., with go-go music and dancing. I always spelled it with a hyphen or as two words
gore
gorg – species of amphibian which were eaten alive by members of the Hutt species. They were available for seven wupiupi in the markets of Mos Espa on the planet Tatooine. (No wonder my spellcheck loathed this.) The Urban Dictionary: short for the word gorgeous

gree – mastery, superiority (Scotland); agree
grog gone goon gown gong grew grow
neer – an unpunctuated version of ne’er, for never. But it’s not in the Scrabble dictionary.
nene – the Hawaiian goose, branta sandvicensis, which was designated the state bird of Hawaii in 1957. (Which was before it was a state, but whatever…)
neon

nero – it’s black in Italian, and capitalized, it’s the fifth emperor of Rome
nogg – a shave for shaping dowels and handles.
none
nong – a foolish, incompetent person (Australian and New Zealand Informal); a Scrabble word.
noon

ogee – a molding with an S-shaped profile; a pointed arch having on each side a reversed curve near the apex
ogre
oner – something unique or extraordinary (British). Is it acceptable in Scrabble? Depends
ooer – (Britain) said to acknowledge a double entendre or something that sounds rude. NOT a Scrabble word
rone – (British English/Scottish) – a drainpipe or gutter for carrying rainwater from a roof. Most Scrabble sources say yes.

ween – (archaic) to hold as an opinion
weer – comparative of wee; 2 syllables
were wore worn wren

The three-letter words

egg ego
eng – the symbol, ŋ, that, in the International Phonetic Alphabet and in the pronunciation alphabets of some dictionaries, represents the voiced velar nasal consonant indicated in English spelling by (ng), as in the pronunciations of cling [kling] and clink [klingk].
eon ere
erg -the centimeter-gram-second unit of work or energy, equal to the work done by a force of one dyne when its point of application moves through a distance of one centimeter in the direction of the force; 10−7 joule. I actually DID remember this word from HS physics but I couldn’t remember the definition.
ern – alternative spelling of erne (see above)
err ewe gee gen geo goo

gor – interjection British Dialect. (used as a mild oath.) (used as an exclamation of surprise or disbelief.) Think OMG. Scrabbleworthy.
nee new nog non nor now oer one
ono – adj. Hawaii. Delicious; tasty.
ore owe own
ree – (agriculture, Scottish archaic) a walled enclosure for sheep, cattle, and pigs. OK for Scrabble
reg

reo – a language in New Zealand?
roe
roo – a kangaroo
row wee
wen – an abnormal growth or a cyst protruding from a surface especially of the skin
woe won woo

And finally

ee – an eye. Valid Scrabble word
en er ew go ne no
oe – a whirlwind near the Faeroe Islands
oo (obsolete) The Greek letter omega; any of four Hawaiian birds of the genus Moho, formerly classed with the honeyeaters and now believed to be extinct.
or ow re we
wo – A falconer‘ s call to a hawk; A call to cause a horse to slow down or stop; whoa; Archaic Variant of woe.