Vexillology

Words you may not have encountered.

Vexillology is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags. Do people make up words to justify their own activities? Is there a word for the study of blogging? If not (a) why not and (b) let's think of one.

Vexillology is derived from the Latin word vexillum, which refers to a kind of square flag which was carried by Roman cavalry. So we need a Latin word for blog. There isn't one, which I suppose means there were no Roman bloggers. Although you could argue that Pliny the Younger was a blogger, so I'm going to say that Plinyology is the study of blogging. Mr Google gives no results for plinyology, so I think I must be the first. Does that make me a neologist? I think that may also be a new word. So that's Nigel 2 Dictionaries 0; I'll get on to the OED in the morning.

The December 2020 updates to the OED include deliverology, apparently coined by British civil servants as a humorous, spuriously scientific sounding name for the process of successfully (or unsuccessfully) implementing policy and achieving goals in government.

Anyway, I'm interested in flags, so that makes me a vexillophile. I'm also interested in words, which makes me a logophile. dictionary.com calls me a word nerd. I'm OK with that. What else? I'm interested in jigsaw puzzles, as you know. Apparently that makes me a dissectologist. 

Who knew? More of this stuff throughout 2021.

Four Generals and an Admiral

Some years ago we lived in High Wycombe. Ever since, my sons and I have - with more or less consistency and enthusiasm - supported, or at least taken occasional interest in, the local football team, Wycombe Wanderers.

Gareth Ainsworth's seven years as manager of the club makes him the longest serving manager in the professional leagues in England. He works fantastically well with the players, using a group of long serving senior players, who he calls his "four generals", to create and maintain squad unity. Vital given that, having very little cash, the club has each year had to bed in a group of loan players.

The latest loan player is a 19 year old striker Admiral Muskwe, a Zimbabwean International from Leicester. I've never heard of anyone called Admiral although I often given that moniker to my friend Tony, in honour of his service in the Royal Navy (although not quite at that rank).

Apparently there was a burst of popularity for this name in the USA for a few years around 1900, perhaps due to the Spanish-American War, but close to zero since then. Admiral as a baby's name was ranked number 11,433 in 2017 according to babycenter.com, although number 394 in 1898. I found a site listing the 50 most popular baby names in Africa but no Admiral. Sadly, I have no further info. If you know of anyone called Admiral, please let me (and my hundreds of readers) know.

Other names which boomed in popularity after the Spanish-American War included Maine, Manila and Havana (all girls). Could have been worse, for example Guam.

I've not heard of anyone being named St Austell. Except for the Saint, of course.

Anyway, the boy played really well in today's 4-1 victory in the FA Cup. Here he is, speaking during the period last May when football was inactive.

What else did these designers and engineers build?

Gustav Eiffel, in addition to building a small tower somewhere, built various bridges for the French railways, notable the Garabit viaduct in the Massif Central region of France. He later became involved in the financial scandal of the Panama Canal.

George Ferris - George Washington Gale Ferris Jr - built a little wheel

for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He also designed and inspected railroad bridges, trestles, and tunnels, none of which were famous or spawned hundreds of imitations.

In addition to building steamships, railways, dockyards, bridges

and tunnels, Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and built a pre-fabricated hospital for use in the field in the Crimean War.

As well as taking a bath and shouting "Eureka", Archimedes designed a screw, to pump water uphill.

Leonardo da Vinci is known for well, doing everything.

Most remarkably, he died at the age of 67, when the average lifespan at the time was around 35. I guess he was just too busy to die.

George Stephenson built the first public inter-city railway line between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. His chosen rail gauge became a modern standard. Later in life he built deep coal mines using a technique called tubbing. And made a pile of money.

Elon Musk is most recently well known for space rockets which can land on their backsides but he made his fortune as founder of PayPal, when it was bought by eBay.

Charles Babbage is credited with the invention of the mechanical computer. He was also a writer; in his On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures of 1832 he exposed the restrictive practices of book publishers and called them a cartel.

Thomas Alva Edison is known for development of the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb, but he also collaborated with Henry Ford and David Firestone on the Edison Botanic Research Corporation, which was created to find a domestic source for organic rubber.

Clever people.

Seven pieces

Progress report on my Starry Night jigsaw puzzle. Today I fitted in seven pieces. Other than the first day making the borders, this is a daily record. Doesn't sound impressive? Believe me, this puzzle is a nightmare. No pun intended.

So far I have completed 194 of the 1,000 pieces. So 806 to go. At seven a day that would take 

days, meaning I would finish the puzzle on 2 May. However, there are many days when I don't do any pieces; I look at the jigsaw and give myself the choice of three options:

1. Persist until the end
2. Pack the puzzle up and tell MiceElf (who gave me the  puzzle) that I finished it and forgot to take a photo
3. Invite my friend Tony to bring his dog Lily round for a cup of tea, which will undoubtedly result in Lily leaping onto the coffee table and scattering the pieces all over the room (as happened once before)

Of course, maths would tell you that, for each piece added, the time taken to position the next piece would be increasingly less (because there is one space less to fill). So maybe before May!

So far, I have continued to pursue option 1. In my Cursing Van Gogh post in October 2020, I announced that "this puzzle is going to take me until Christmas to complete". I didn't say which Christmas.

7 Pieces is an album by American jazz composer and arranger Jimmy Giuffre in 1959. I couldn't find a recording of this album but here's Jimmy on tenor sax a year earlier:

I just love those harmonies.

There is a series of two books, the series called Seven Pieces, by Helena Field. It is described as a "A Reverse Harem Fantasy ". I can't imagine what that means. 

You should hear this

This from the Washington Post site today. It's excerpts from a telephone call from President Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Raffensperger's general  counsel Ryan Germany. You can read more details on the site at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html. There's a paywall but you can get a short-term free access - for five articles, I think.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty a giant egg sitting on a wall? No. ripleys.com tells us "According to a number of military historians, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon used by the Royalists during the English Civil War.

The conflict raged from 1642 to 1649, and in June of 1648, Humpty Dumpty was stationed on the walls of Colchester. It was one of several cannons erected to try and keep Parliament’s army from taking the city. The next month, however, the Parliamentary forces heavily damaged the walls beneath Humpty Dumpty with their own artillery. You can guess where this is going: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and broke into pieces."

The image of Humpty as an egg derives from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Nursery rhymes often cause dispute amongst historians as to their origins and meanings. Take this:

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row 

Some will tell you that Mary referred to Mary Tudor, silver bells to thumb screws, cockle shells to a genital torture device and the pretty maids were in fact lining up to be executed by the Halifax Gibbet (a guillotine). Perfect for your toddlers.

Others that the silver bells stood for Catholic Cathedral bells, the cockle shells stood for the pilgrimage to Spain and the pretty maids in a row stood for a row of nuns. Not much more suitable.

Why did our mothers teach us to recite this garbage?

I'm particularly averse to:

It’s raining, it’s pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed and he bumped his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning

Scary and depressing. Is this how kids see their grandpas?

Here's another particularly upsetting one:

Rock-a-bye, baby,
In the tree top.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all

Are they trying to tell us life is hard, and may well be short? I'm not even going to mention Jack and Jill. Or Miss Muffet. Or Solomon Grundy, a tale for pandemic times. Ugh.

But I'll end with a chuckle. This version of a rhyme is common:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the poor little doggie had none

This less so, but much more fun:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor daughter a dress.
But when she got there
The cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter, I guess!

Am I Benjamin Button, reverting to childhood?