Jonathan Winters is priceless in the movie.

Beyond that,  I hope the above six words tell a story all on their own. The big W   of course is  WordPress.  It’s the web’s favorite blogging platform bar  none.

And by the way, I believe it was Hemingway who is said to have used just six words to create the world’s  shortest piece of fiction:  Baby shoes for sale, never used.

Litany. This short, compact word has trailed after me all my life for no apparent reason.  It seems to follow me around. Perhaps, it’s I that is  attached to the word. Whatever, it’s one of the few words that always stayed with me. It’s a word about which I never have to say, I used to know that!

The very sound of the word litany, has  always, conjured up a weird mix of impressions:  headache, punishment, boredom, tedium, and exasperation.  Nonetheless, I did not ever let go of the word. Why was I so drawn to it?

Having acquired my vocabulary of English language mainly through the solitary act of reading, and it was an excellent range of reading list, all the aforementioned impressions,  just piled up in no order. There was little in my personal life to base my understanding of the word.  At one time or another, each one of those sensations came to me via the word Litany as found in books. However, learning the story and history of the word formally was a wonderful discovery worthy of an abecedarium.

Litany is related to Liturgy.  Liturgy is religious and hence dear to me. In liturgical context, litany is prayer.  Litany becomes prayer in a round about way.

Litany is not just any prayer. In church usage, it specifically refers to utterances made by the group leader, and replied to with repeated utterance of a fixed answer by  congregation. The priest may say a number of different prayer words, but the congregation responds with the same phrase over, and over.

It is the repetition that makes it a litany. Hence, it also means repetitive incantation even in a non-interactive, secular context.  A chanting of repeated utterances, of course,  could be about any sentiment: a wish, a curse, a spell or simply a prayer. In classical Greek (litanos) it simply and directly means to entreaty.

The Christian tradition has a number of Litanies. Historically, only a few are approved for popular use. The most wonderful example is the classic Catholic Litany of the Saints. A performance of it can be seen in the clip from the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

An equally lovely rendition, but in English, can be found here.    Not to draw too fine a point,  you can see the Latin version is truly incomparable.

In the early years of Christianity, Litany also meant a procession taken out by  adherents to proclaim and parade their faith, especially on days special to those who had not yet converted!

By virtue of the emphasis on repetition, or repetitive utterances, Litany has come to mean to catalog, to list, to complain, to be incessantly boring, and to be tiresome.  US poet-laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem entitled Litany. He recited it publicly to much delightful reaction, watch:

The poem Litany that Billy Collins recited can be  read here.

In colloquial usage, Litany of Complaints is the most familiar expression, and conveys it all.

Those feeling particularly like a besieged teenager, no matter what the real age may be, will enjoy this long list, Litany of Don’ts.

Thus ends my litany of tribute to this lovely word of lament and supplication.

Enjoy.

Usage of the term Mendicant is steeped in antiquity,  and as it stands today the word finds equivalent expressions  in almost all cultures. That’s  how familiar mankind  is  with  the practice of austerity, and vows of poverty. In fact, the word is as old as begging itself,  and if online definition is to be trusted, it is as old as human physical deformity itself!

The word comes to us fairly unchanged from the Middle English, via Old French, whence it traces back to Latin:  mendum means physical defect. Mendicant, in the original sense,  is someone physically defective, and hence incapable of earning a livelihood, is cast out, and who resorts to begging.

Mendicant seems to have become synonymous with begging very early on.  In subsequent centuries a vow of poverty and a life of voluntary begging became an added meaning. It was in that sense that we have religious Order of Mendicants, the legendary St. Francis of Assisi being one. Mendicancy is also a recognized aspect of Hindu asceticism, Buddhist monastic life, and certain strains of Islam such as Sufi Dervishes.

In the case of the Siddhartha Gautama, The Lord Buddha, mendicancy was anything but a defect – physical or otherwise. For verily he was a man perfect in all ways. Even if he was deficient in an earthly way. He gave up, abdicated, the throne he was to sit upon. He gave up a wife that loved him. He gave up a son that he begot.  His abdication of earthly life was complete, while he meditated on the meaning of attachment. He was, indeed, the complete mendicant!

Siddartha Gauthama - The Buddha

Buddhist lore has it that the prince Siddhartha Gautama spent decades as a mendicant, having given up crown, queen and child. Eventually he became The Buddha, the Awakened One, while meditating under a banyan  tree. The purported tree is located in the village of Gaya, in  Bihar State of India. The village came to be known as Bodh Gaya, the tree  was known as Bodhi tree. The actual tree claimed to be the One,  receives millions of visitors a year.

Buddha’s teachings spread far and wide, mostly to the east if India. In the lands of  its birth and early growth, Buddhism is virtually synonymous with mendicancy. Religious cannon aside, the Buddha is beloved of  all Asians.  I don’t know what  language the following video is in  but  it is a tribute to the embodiment of mendicancy:

Religious mendicants are given a variety of names such as Sadhu in Jainism, Sanyasi or Bairagi in Hinduism, Friar in Christianity during the Middle Ages,  Bhikkhu in Buddhism,  Takahatsu in Japanese, Fakirs in Islam of the East, and so on. Whatever, mendicants motivated by the religious impulse are the same: simple living, disavowal of property, seeking alms and a contemplative existence. Here is an interesting cultural artefact.

In England, the abolition of debtor’s jails and the Poor Laws, led to a new form of mendicants flooding the urban areas in search of food, shelter and clothing, as depicted in these stark images.  But we live in a democracy now,  contemplative idlers are not that well tolerated. Everyone must work first, and then hope to retire. Mendicancy is out of style, or is it?   The noble practice of high thinking and low living now masquerades as something else in our post-industrial age.

Beatniks,  hippies, the modern day Road Scholars, Starving Artists  and Hell’s Angels,  the Hobo and the Rastafarian,  all belong to the mendicant tradition. One might even argue that the waitresses waiting for the casting call, and the cabdrivers with film scripts under the seat, in a way all are mendicants in search of a personal Nirvana.  No wonder Tolkein said, Not all those who wander are truly lost. After all, not all human beings can set out on a journey of epic caliber as did Ulysses or Rama.

Mendicant of Modern Times

An absolutely wonderful little poem called  Let me no more a Mendicant by Arthur Colton can be found in The Little Book of Modern Verse, read it here.

I stumbled upon this image of palm-writing as part of an uncredited collage at a terrific site, a group blog on art called The Selector. Give that site a visit, it’s super!

Over the years, aided by some quiet meditations upon Our Kind Lord Buddha, I  gained an insight into my own affinity for words, and believe that I now understand my love for the word Mendicant. It is the short vowels, the gentle non-harsh consonants, the easy roll of uncluttered syllables, they all combine to result in a certain ease of pronunciation.  Austerity of sound and structure derived from a brevity of breath.  A subliminal consonance of form and function, whereby the word conveys  in the means of  its utterance what it connotes in the spirit of its meaning.  Possibly I am reaching, but then what else does one do with words, if not meditate upon them and their affect on you?

Peace!

Blue Moon  has  long been a favorite expression, since before I even knew what it meant much less how it came about. Now, I  always liked the Moon, and who doesn’t, and then blue happens to be a favorite color of mine.  The more I got to learn  about Blue Moon, the more I enjoyed liking this amiable phrase. I suppose the simple fact is that this term appealed to me on some deeper level.  It’s possible I just liked the way it sounded.  The gentle oo-ooh sound of vowels nestled amongst labial consonants was oddly comforting, almost infantile.  The point is, it is possible to like words without knowing what they meant. Such is the lure of language!

Blue - The color of God

Blue per se, is a wonderful word and color.  Some of you may have noted my fondness for the term Prussian Blue, already discussed.  Now,  for a Hindu, unrepentant or otherwise, the color blue has several poetic, and solemn, echos. Simply put:  ‘Tis the color of God! One of the great writers of our time Salman Rushdie, spent several wonderful passages discussing why Blue indeed is the obvious choice for the color of God. These lovely pages of writing, occurring half way through the middle of the novel Midnight‘s Children are highly recommended.  It is a matter of  fact that I was in love with  Blue even before I knew of God!

Blue is the color of Krishna and the color of Nilgiri Mountains (and the  Smokey Mountain Range). As I also learnt  later in school, it’s a  color of the River Nile.  Blue is also the color of ash, the color of Shiva, Neelakantha,  so named for the depictions of  the poison laden blue-throat of  My Good Lord Shiva. Images which I first absorbed with  wonderment and vividness from the  picture posters found in the stalls lining the temple streets in the  days of  my distant past.

The moon, of course, defined the nights of my childhood. Dinners on roof-tops under inky-blue sky lit by moon and stars; sleeping outdoors under the moon; flying lantern kites in moonlight, or  just loafing about the streets under  moonlight. A favorite children’s magazine published in a dozen Indian languages and English is named after the moon, Chandamama.

While I don’t quite recall when I fell in love with the expression Blue Moon, I am sure I heard it long before I knew its meaning.  As I learnt more, my love was cemented.

Blue Moon is rarely blue, and can in fact be even red. It occurs 7 times in a 19 year period. February is incapable of hosting one, and some years boast double blue moons!   The math and the physics of it all have fascinated nerds and nitwits alike. Phrases such as blue moon and  ‘once in a blue moon’  figure in lyricism ranging from Shakespeare to Country crooners.

Blue Moon is a moveable feast!

The Farmers’ Almanac gives descriptions of the enchanted names given to specific full moons that occur in each month of the calendar: Wolf moon, Harvest Moon, Snow Moon, etc.,  read here.  Some wonderful pictures of Blue Moon can be found here. Interactive Astronomy Pages, a fun website, and a labor of love no doubt, has a special page devoted to a clever Blue Moon date calculator.  Other good discussions can be found here,  here and  here.

It does not matter whether you believe Blue Moon should refer to the second full moon in a calendar month, or a third full moon in a season, or regard it a non-specific event of astronomy, just thinking about  Blue Moon is a wonderful way of  connecting with our sense of time and space.  Wondering about it, and focusing upon it, grounds us in a reality, and  helps us realize the make believe of  the time measurements we call clock and calender. Blue Moon connects us to a cosmos that is unceasingly amazing, mysterious and bountiful. Eventually, meditations upon the Blue Moon, connect us to the Self and to Creator. Indeed, what else is the true purpose of Word!

Much as I love to wax eloquent about Blue Moon, I must admit the best line of adoration of this charming celestial event belongs to someone else. To wit:

Blue Moon is different from the monthly or seasonal moon names as it isn’t restricted to a time of year. It is a movable feast.  -  Philip Hiscock.

A final thought on this Movable Feast:

How sad it is that so enchanting a word has somehow got caught up with so dark a mood as Blues. No wait, I shouldn’t have said ‘sad’. I should say, how odd that  Blue so lovely a color and a word when made plural yields a word so different in meaning and shade:  Blues

(More on Blues later and elsewhere)

This 'lead' is actually Graphite!

Plumb Bob was so called because it could swing and come to a steady straight drop down when checking the plumbness of a vertical surface, and because the original heavy weight was a conical piece of Lead, or Plumbum it’s classical name from Alchemy. Lead is one of seven metals known to alchemists, and as a heavy weight that drags one down is aptly represented by the same symbolas denotes the planet Saturn, the master of Duty and Destiny. The lead in pencils is not, of course, the element Lead but Graphite, an allotrope of Carbon. But, Lead was used in lead pencils in olden days, which was why it was called a lead pencil in the first place! Naturally, it’s the use of lead or plumbum in water pipes that gave us words such as plumbers and plumbing. Knowing the hazards of lead poisoning  and the use of plastic and copper, should we still call those men and women Plumbers?  Should we call them Pipists  or Hydro-Flo Technicians?

Tool Upright, Plunge Downright

So, here we have an ancient piece of a clever device, thousands of years of old, and undoubtedly universal in usage, known in European languages by the original coarse metal Lead, also well known to people of yore. The name of the base metal gives rise to the name of the device, the use of the device by masons gives rise to the implication of being upright and straight. Finally, this quality of being unwavering, ie a Plumb Bob that stands still and does not bob, gave rise to the human quality of  being unflappable, what we today call cool, or aplomb. Remember though, that we humans knew all of this long before we gave the word Gravity to the force that makes the plumb bob useful at all. That’s right, Plumb Bob was around before the apple fell on Sir Issac Newton. How is that for empirical knowledge! All this reminds me of what a man on a train told me once. There is an American expression, it seems prevalent in the South,  which goes somewhat like this:  That man is straight up as the Six O’clock Hour. I have not verified that such expression exists, if doesn’t, it should. If only since I can’t stand the digital clocks!  What do you think?”
An aside:  Operation Plumbbob was the code name of a series of nuclear tests in the Nevada desert:

Update: A recent headline in L.A. Times blared: Lead levels plummet in young children. It made me smile, and I hoped that the writer used the word plummet deliberately.

I always loved saying  Prussian Blue, it made a wonderful sound in my mouth,  and I pronounced it as a single, continuous word:  prussianblooo.. The labial sounds p and b that began each word, and the transient, unrolled RR make it sound soft and hushed like someone whispering a special secret. Or, at least that’s the way the phrase sounded to me, long before I even knew what it actually meant.

I had fallen in love with the phrase Prussian Blue during high school days. Back then, I had similarly fallen in love with Lapis Lazuli, Terracotta, Alluvial Soil, Elopement, Blueprint, Osmosis and several others. Some I liked for euphony, others for what they conveyed to me at an intuitive level.

My love for the term Prussian Blue began with my fondness for chemistry – the mystery of it all – the hidden powers of liquids and powders, the subtle changes in colors, the sudden transformations of materials – that is, the sheer transformational nature of things.

Chemistry days also found me in awe of Bessemerization, Blast Furnace, Allotropy, Plumbum, Hydragerum, Cuprium and, of course, the Periodic Table, wherein I had a special soft spot for Rare Earth Metals.

Prussian Blue.

I liked the term long before I saw the actual color swatch. First thing I learnt, that it was the first modern pigment resulting from Industrial Revolution. Till then, stains and pigments came from natural substances like earth, plants and flowers. Prussian Blue was the first pigment color chemically discovered. Once discovered accidentally during tests with Iron Oxides, its use spread like wild fire, or like a blitzkrieg if you will.

Artists and painters greeted it with great cheer. Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, all used it. Before long it was the source of choice for all shades blue. It’s been used in typewriter ribbons, carbon papers and to treat insect bites.

Prussian Blue or Ferric Ferro-cyanide (and related formulae) is an insoluble crystalline powder used as basis for pigments of various shades of blue-green.  The molecule has a cuboidal structure seen in this model.   It became famous as the main dyeing agent for the early German army uniforms, hence the name. It’s early history is a remarkable confluence of the serendipity of discovery, the explosion of applications and opportunities in manufacturing. A terrific tale which I did not know when I first fell in love with the term.

Remember Laundry Blue?

Another little known use of this substance is laundry blueing. It makes white cotton fabric come alive. Laundry Blue is used extensively in India and nearby Indic countries. The brand name Robin Blue comes to mind.
The dirt and grime ground into cotton fabrics gets a last send off with Laundry Blue. White saris, shirts, pants, dhotis etc. are given a final soak in blue solution, after they have been washed regularly first. The whites come out less dull and more bright than otherwise. Prussian Blue is the basis for a number of commercial Laundry Bluing brands. In other countries nasty bleaching agents are used, more effective, less benign. However, in some sections of the US, Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing is quite popular.

It was not until Biology Days in college that I learned that Prussian Blue was used as a ‘stain’ to colorize tissue sections for study under microscope. Iron granules soaked up Prussian Blue and showed up blue-green while the cell nuclei stained ruby-red due to the counter-stain Safranin O. I liked those colors, the tissue sections looked so pretty, it was almost sad to think they were diseased!  Photomicrographs of iron particles in bone marrow revealed by Prussian Blue stain can be seen here.

Any Googler worth his or her salt will tell you, Prussian Blue is also the group name of two teenage white girls from Bakersfield, California who sing songs in honor of White Pride and White Power. Lamb and Lynx Gaede, along with their manager-mom April Gaede are quite a sensation. Famous for being infamous, or simply unfairly defamed for voicing a view. How the choice of Prussian Blue came to be their group name is not entirely clear.

(Caution: Strong Language in the video below)

It is a fact however, that Prussian Blue, the powder, is the residue left behind in the metal canisters used by the Nazis in gas chambers. Zyklon-B, after it releases cyanide gas, leaves behind a faint coating of crystalline blue residue which is basically ferric ferro- cyanide. One of the more unforgettable scenes from movies of the Ninetees is one from Falling Down, when Michael Douglas character is given a gift of used zyklon canister by the survivalist storekeeper. Watch,

What do I think of the teeny-bopper white-power girls, you wonder? Lynx and Lamb are young, their mom is a bit odd. Someday the girls will grow up and come into their own and form opinions about the world and humanity, may be their current bloom will fade a bit by then or grow into other shades. Not all little jihadists grow up to be real shahid, no?

Till then they have better company in this British band of bluesy-rock, they too call themselves Prussian Blue – evidently they are more Blues, less Prussian, hear them here.

Here is a real irony. The real Prussian Blue the chemical is quite non-toxic. On the contrary, it is approved by FDA for treating radioactive contamination by Cesium and Thallium, and works on the principle of ion-exchange. The US actually maintains strategic national stockpiles of Prussian Blue for Radiation Emergency. Who is the main supplier? A German company, of course!

Albeit, I still love the term Prussian Blue.

More on the word Albeit elsewhere.

Thus we have Blue Beard, the serial killer and, Red Beard the killer pirate of the middle ages.

The famous pirate Red Beard is said to be a man named Khair-ad-din, or Khyr-Ud-Dean, (meaning literally Purity of Faith) . He became famous for piracy in the mid 15th Century along the coast of North Africa. He is credited with bringing areas covered today by Libya, Tunisia and Morocco into the Turkic empire of the Ottomans.   Khyr-Ad-Din himself is said to have been born on the island of Lesbos, and inherited the monicker from his dead older brother Baba Arudj or Baba Orus. Saying the name Baba Orus rapidly,  might have resulted in it sounding like Barbar+Rossa, which to the Italians may have conveyed the sense of a reddish heard hair. Muslims had been known to tint their beards red with henna. Khairuddin Barbarossa was the feared brain behind the massive effort to terrorize the Christian vessels passing the seas nearby. He organized pirate groups into militia, piracy coves into citadels, swore by his Turkish masters and helped bring Barbary Coast under Ottoman authority. These Brothers Corsairs have inspired numerous accounts, biographies and lots of fear and fascination.

Not only did the Barbary pirates plunder and pillage Christian ships sailing from Adriatic to the Atlantic, they also took men, women and children prisoner, sparing the lives of only those who converted to Islam. A few were allowed to go free if ransom were paid, but many became slaves, harem girls, laborers or cannon fodder in Ottoman military exploits.

A key event in the rise of Barbarossa was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to Mehmet II.  This, of course, led to search for newer trade routes, to Columbus sailing forth,  the discovery of America, and eventually over a few centuries we come full circle with US Independence, the formation of Marine Corps and the Barbary Wars — To the Shores of Tripoli. Now,  how amazing is this history!!

Two of the most famous persons held as Barbary slaves, and subsequently became legends were:  Miguel de Cervantes and Saint Vincent de Paul.

This Barbarossa is not be  confused with the 12th Century Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the 3rd Crusade, whose name inspired Operation Barbarossa – code name for Nazi Germany’s plans for invasion of Soviet Russia during World War II. Twenty million people perished in that sad war, but it sped up the collapse of the Nazi Germany:

See also the post Barbary Wars.

The word Hinglish is an easy shorthand way of referring to usages that are odd, hard to follow or otherwise perculiar to people who are Indian, Hindu or native speakers of Hindustani.   As  label  Hinglish has more of a socio-political value rather than  literary or even linguistic.  For there is not one singular Indian English but and an English spoken distinguishably oddly by people of each major different Indian language.  Hindi by political default and historic perforce, is the main culprit. Naturally, English spoken by natives of India sounds way more like their mother tongue than like real English (whatever that is), or like the sociologist’s Hinglish.  But, don’t tell that to New York Times, but that’s a rant of another dialect!!

Few regions of India bowdlerize English the same way. The same applies to different ethnic or social groups.

Muslims in India, and perhaps elsewhere have a very hard time  in pronouncing any English word the starts with the letter S combined with a consonant. Thus, school, small, snoring, stamp, spade etc. are all pronounced with a, pardon me, pronounced emphasis on S as a sound. E-scool, E-small,  E-snoring, E-stamp, E-spade etc, etc.  This problem with the letter S+consonant is similar to Arabian Peninsular issues with the letter L followed by a vowel.

Those who watched the movie Lawrence of Arabia (a masterpiece only David Lean could have sculpted), may have noticed the Arab difficulty in saying Lawrence, more often it was El Awrence.

Indians living in Bombay have a hard time using verbs in ways other than -ing.  Their verbs are always, ending with an  – ing.  For writing this you will surely be pardoning  me, no?   Bombayites are always going, coming, doing and sitting and so on. A single sentence can have numerous -ings.  I will be just sitting only while you will be going there to be waiting for me to be doing something you will be wanting me.

South Indian problems with English language range from confusion between the sounds  V and W, to perplexity with the sounds of F and Ph. Southerners also enjoy, int their own native languages,  a variety of sounds sibilant: four separate letters in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada: s, S, sh, Ss.  There is trouble inevitably, not only in pronunciation, but also in transliteration.

Hinglish is really a simple and simplified label of derision, of the heavy accented, lilting speech. At the core, it really is English words pronounced in nativized syllables across the sub-continent. As such it might be called Indian English or Inglish as the joke has it. Funny, because once you call it Inglish, you can’t tell it apart from the sound of the word English. Hence Hinglish.

More later and elsewhere.

It’s not just sufficient to describe someone as cold, dispassionate or uncaring. The temps had to be brought down further to the freezing level.

Thus we have Freeze+Android, yielding Freezoid, a chilly repulsive person. Not surprisingly, in this case the reference was to a woman.  Was she really cold or just cold to that person, well a different matter altogether. How would a man with similar trait be described?  Does this word work for both gengers?

I think that Freezoid is a good word: simple and practical and easily understood.

Anyone disagree?

The Barbary Coast, along North Africa, including the shorelines of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, was the haven for Muslim marauders on vessels for centuries before America became a nation. After the American Revolution, British protection was not available to the ships of the new free nation.  Muslim pirates roamed the seas plundering merchant  vessels, even raided the coastal cities of England and Ireland for women and child labor, and established white slavery across the Mediterranean.

Thomas Jefferson was president when America took on the task of dealing with these pirates in what came to be known as the Barbary Wars.

It is the campaign against Tripoli that gave impetus to the birth of the US Navy, and the Marine Corps. It’s due to the early victories in the Barbary Wars that  From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, is the beloved hymn of the USMC:

Those early wars also gave us such wonderful things as the Corps motto Semper Fidelis their long, stylish ceremonial side-arm sword, the Mamluk Sword, and several other great and grand Marine Corps traditions. Great heroes of the period include Stephen Decatur, Ruben James, First Lieutenant O Bannon who raised US flag over Libyan coast.

When you really think about it, the roots of 9/11 go far, far back. What’s old is new again!

The word Barbary itself comes from Barbarossa, Red Beard, a title given, or given to self, by one leading pirate by the name Khair-ad-din.  According to lore,  he is said to have inherited the nickname Barbarossa, Italian for Red Beard, from his older brother, Baba Oruc also a thug of his times. Amazing that the brother’s real name  and the nickname given to him, words in different languages sounded so similar to peoples of the time.

An interesting fact is that among people of tht region there exists a tradition of dyeing one’s heard with henna. Muslim men of a certain age loved to redden their beards, young men even line their eyes with dark paint. Beard was  tinted either to cover up greying or simply accent it, or equally likely to ape the European seamen who tannned and bleached to look ruddy,  and reddish in hair. Of course, Barber and Berber mean the same in some languages, including Turkish.

Other words are connected here.  Berber, fiber or frizz, is also used for a type of carpet. Whether Berber people who also make such carpets were so named due to many of them having beards, is not certain. Suffice to note the deep intertwining between beard, hair, fibers etc all in the word berber or barber. Barber added to Rossa to make a Red Beard, which may or might not have been dyed with henna.

Why all the fuss about a beard being red? Ferocity, of course.  A flash of red color is supposed to deliver a strike of fear. Much like adding red color to food is said to be more appetizing since it is reminiscent of a fresh kill. Henna was readily available for coloring.

Some believe Berber and Barber are also related to Barbarian but, that’s another story!!

See also the post Barbarossa.