voluntaryXchange

“Blowing Smoke Up …” Etymology

The phrase “blowing smoke up your ass” came up in conversation the other day.

I wondered what the source of that was.

Of all things, it’s literal: they used to actually blow tobacco smoke through a tube inserted into the rectum.

In the 18th century, before they had solid medical ways of determining if a non-responsive body was actually dead, this was one of the methods they used. Apparently your body would react to this even if you weren’t conscious.

I can only imagine.

Technorati Tags: blowing,smoke,etymology

Paid vs. Payed

Which is correct, paid or payed? Most people will say paid; some would say that payed is archaic, or never correct. Microsoft agrees: as I write this, every occurrence of payed is getting flagged for misspelling.

I disagree.

Payed absolutely has 2 correct uses, as in (see here, here, or here):

• I payed out a length of rope.
• I payed out a bead of caulk.

And there seems to be some disagreement on this, but some sources agree that this is OK too :

• I payed a visit.

The meaning in all 3 of those is that you released something that you had (rope, caulk or time), voluntarily but somewhat deliberately.

But, I teach economics and finance, and I think there’s a fourth meaning.

Suppose you buy (partial) ownership when you invest. As in buying stock instead of making a loan. When you do this, you may earn returns, but you give over the right to distribute the returns made from your investment to the manager of the investment. They do not have to release those returns back to you in full or on a regular basis.

So, since this is their discretion, I think "dividends are payed out" not "dividends are paid out".

Technorati Tags: payed,paid,dividend,returns

New Words and Phrases

It’s a good longread, although exceptionally pretentious: a 1978 article from The New Yorker on Johnny Carson.

Here’s the big words I learned (or at a minimum re-exposed my weak memory to):

• Solto mortale: a potentially lethal jump
• Molto simpatica: I never did find a definition for this, but I believe in Italian it would be used in reference to a woman who was “easy on the eyes”.
• Vide supra: I wasn’t able to track this down exactly, but I think it’s along the lines of “see above”
• Mutatis mutandis: a phrase I should know but have clearly forgotten, meaning “everything that needed to be changed, has been changed”.
• Echt: the real thing (the opposite of ersatz)
• Sodality: a fellowship or association

From a different article, an interview with Bernard Connolly, I picked up this one:

• Demos: the population of members of a society that bases itself cooperative culture rather than kinship; the set of citizens who feel they share values.

Technorati Tags: johnny,carson,new,yorker

Learning Some New Words

Best of the Web Today used preantepenultimate in a sentence. So check this out:

• Ultimate means last
• Penultimate means second-from-the-last
• Antepenultimate means third-from-the-last
• Preantepenultimate means fourth-from-the-last
• Propreantepenultimate means fifth-from-the-last

Technorati Tags: penultimate,antepenultimate,preantepenultimate,propreantepenultimate

The South Doesn’t Go As Far North As It Used To

Interesting The Washington Post piece on where the border between south and north is.

At least in Virginia, it ends in Richmond, or a little bit further north.

There’s a great quote from JFK about D.C. (that was new to me):

[Washington is a] city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Technorati Tags: south,north,mason-dixon,jfk

A Grundle of Time

A student (BH) used the phrase “a grundle of time” in office hours today.

As I get older, I like words more. Not so much words, but etymology - stuff like whether you say pop or soda.

So I looked up grundle. I went to Urban Dictionary first, because it's clearly a slang word (warning: no images, but the concept underlying the definition is NSFW).

Then I went to Wiktionary. And check out the first item – a grundle is a contraction of group and bundle used in Utah.

There’s an awkward social situation in the future of some native Utahn who goes to the coast and uses grundle conversationally.

Technorati Tags: grundle,utah

New Word for the Day: Portolan

Portolan is an adjective describing a chart: specifically, one used by sailors showing landmarks and wind directions.

You see these a lot in discussions of trade prior to the advent of the steam engine.