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The Write Way 10 March 2006 Marco Polo Greetings, I was swimming later than usual one morning last weekend, when the early morning calm was disturbed by the arrival of a gaggle of kids. But they confined themselves to one end of our lagoon and all was well ... for a time. After a great deal of splashing and diving, they obviously decided they needed a more structured game, and I heard those fateful words float across the still surface of the water ... "Marco! Polo!"
For those of you not au fait with the complexities of this aquatic pastime, the rules are as follows: One person is "in" and he (or she) has to close his eyes and call out, "Marco!" The rest of however many kids are playing then dash around the pool calling out, "Polo!" until Marco touches one of them. Then that person becomes Marco and so it goes ... all day ... every day ... until school goes back. Despite my initial misgivings, I have to confess I enjoyed listening to all the familiar calls and laughs ... albeit it seems like only last week my two were playing this. Hmmm ... Yes, I know ... Albeit is one of those little words that sometimes causes problems ... OK ... who spotted the deliberate error in last week's newsletter? Ah ... well done! Yes, of course it should have been, "Whose turn to buy the bikkies?" Sigh ... I know no-one believes that old furphy about deliberate errors ... My excuse is that I started to write, "Who is buying the bikkies?" but changed mid-sentence to, "Who's buying the bikkies?"... with the obvious results. Just proves that you shouldn't swap horses mid-stream! Have you ever wondered about some of these odd expressions? Here's what my mate google turned up on this one: "Don't change leaders when they are in the midst of important projects. Probably originated in the United States. Used by Abraham Lincoln in his 1864 presidential campaign. The proverb is found in varying forms: Don't change horses in the middle of the stream." From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996). "A historian of Lincoln's era says that Mr. Lincoln was quoting an "old Dutch farmer." President Lincoln used the expression in "an informal address that he made to a delegation from the National Union League who had called to offer their congratulations upon his renomination for the presidency, June 9, 1864. Lincoln knew that there had been considerable disaffection with the conduct of the Civil War and that many loyal Republications felt that he had failed as the commander in chief. Hence, in his speech, he said, 'I do not allow myself to suppose that either the Convention or the league have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses whil crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.'" From "2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions from White Elephants to a Song and Dance" by Charles Earle Funk (Galahad Book, New York, 1993). This week's Little Something Extra has lots more idioms! And thank you to everyone who sent me suggestions for a book ... all are filed with your details, so if I use the idea, I can dedicate the book to you and send you a copy! And if you're looking for books for your home library, here are some suggestions. There's even a nifty search box where you can scour more than 70 million books! This week's quiz: Since we looked at some Aussie terms last week, let's see how many of these you can match. Column A contains the Australian/UK word, column B the US equivalent - fill in the blanks:
Here's a story about kids from Joanna: Little Johnny's kindergarten
class was on a field trip to their local police station where they saw pictures
tacked to a bulletin board of the 10 most wanted criminals. One of the
youngsters pointed to a picture and asked if it really was the photo of a wanted
person. Last week's quiz: catachresis, onomastics, arcane, isogloss, aphesis, ideography, apocope, syncope, fricative, vulgate 1. geographic boundary line delimiting the area in which a given linguistic feature occurs - ISOGLOSS 2. abbreviation of a word by omitting the final sound or sounds - APOCOPE (e.g. pud from pudding, exam from examination) 3. the common speech of a people; the vernacular - VULGATE 4. a continuant consonant produced by breath moving against a narrowing of the vocal tract - FRICATIVE (also speech sounds produced by forcing air through a constricted passage (as f, s, z, or th in both thin and then) 5. strained or paradoxical use of words either in error - CATACHRESIS (e.g. as `blatant' to mean `flagrant' or deliberately as in a mixed metaphor: `blind mouths') 6. known by only a few; secret - ARCANE 7. the loss of sounds in the interior of a word (as in fo'c'sle for forecastle) - SYNCOPE 8. the gradual disappearance of an initial (usually unstressed) vowel or syllable as in 'squire' for 'esquire' - APHESIS 9. study of the origins and forms of proper names - ONOMASTICS 10. representation of ideas by graphic symbols - IDEOGRAPHY Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time! Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK.) An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot! Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them). I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark. A Little Something Extra Here's a site that has more idiomatic expressions than you can poke a stick at. Some more Aussie idioms Word of the week: Irpe (n) a smirk; a fantastic grimace or contortion of the body This is one of those words that seemingly just arrived out of nowhere, since its etymology is listed as "uncertain" ... Make up a story to explain its origins ... and feel free to send it to me. I'm gullible ... I'll believe anything if it's said with conviction! Oxymoron of the week: pleasant irpe Here's a Latin phrase for those times when nothing seems to go right: Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni! [MAY trans-MEET-ay SOOR-soom, kahl-ay-DOH-nee] (Beam me up, Scotty!) Kind regards, Jennifer P.S. Want to donate to the upkeep of this newsletter? Here's how: 1. Pay by PayPal: OR 2. Click here to subscribe for a full year OR 3. Use your credit card on my secure order form. (You can also access the PayPal subscription link from this page if the link above didn't work for you. With PayPal, you can use your credit card, PayPal account or pay online using your own cheque account.) OR 4. Send a cheque (made payable to Jennifer Stewart) Copyright 2006 Jennifer Stewart Individual articles copyrighted by
their authors.
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