Previously on this blog: a Calvin and Hobbes (of 2/16/15) in which we learn that (at least in comic strips) tigers have an extensive vocabulary for smells. In a comment on that posting, Steve Anderson noted the paucity of smell (and taste) vocabulary other than via analogical descriptions (“tastes/smells like old socks”). But now comes a paper from the recent AAAS meetings in San Jose. From the 2/21 Economist, the story “Scent off: Culture, not biology, rules the relation between smell and language”, which I’ll post here in its entirety, in case readers can’t get access to the Economist site.
Archive for February, 2015
Smell vocabulary
February 25, 2015fraug
February 25, 2015Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange:
Presumably Hilary Price’s intention was that the spelling FRAUG, pronounced [frɔ:ɡ], should represent a combination of FROG — pronounced [frɑ:ɡ] or [frɔ:ɡ], depending on your variety of American English — and FRAUD, pronounced [frɔ:d] for many American speakers, but [frɑ:d] for American speakers who level [ɔ:] and [ɑ:] in favor of the latter (the “COT-CAUGHT merger”: both these words are pronounced [kɑ:t], DAWN and DON are both [dɑ:n], and SHAW and SHAH are both [ʃɑ:]).
[Addendum: an earlier posting on frog and fraud has a Discover Card commercial that plays on a confusion between the two.]
Cops and DAs
February 24, 2015(About performances rather than language.)
Another note from the Oscars: on J.K. Simmons, who got an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (in Whiplash) I recognized him immediately as a regular on two different tv crime drama: as Dr. Emil Skoda, a police psychiatrist, who has appeared on three of the four incarnations of Law & Order; and as Will Pope, Assistant Chief of the LAPD, in The Closer.
I then reflected on the casting of these shows, and the enormous number of actors they consume — as regulars (playing cops, district attorneys, medical examiners, crime lab staff, defense attorneys, and judges) and in one-shot performances (as victims, suspects, witnesses, family members, etc.).
The one-shots are often well-known actors playing parts that run against their usual roles: recently in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit re-runs, dark roles for Dean Cain (Superman!) and comedienne Carol Burnett.
The regulars are also not infrequently recruited from successful careers of very different natures. To come: a number of tv cops and a couple district attorneys of this sort.
Ode to Almond Joy
February 24, 2015Today’s Zippy, with a candy-bar parody of Schiller’s Ode to Joy (An der Freude), used by Beethoven in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony:
(#1)
Almond Joy, Mounds, Mars bars! Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
From the Oscar watch
February 23, 2015I don’t watch the Oscars shows, but you can’t avoid being exposed to information about them and images from them. So this shot of host Neil Patrick Harris (apparently in an allusion to the movie Birdman) from yesterday’s show came my way:
(#1)
Shirtless, showing off his carefully tended body, and in snug briefs, showing off a nice but not extravagant package, in the fashion of underwear ads for many many years. This is the Neil Patrick Harris of, among other things, Doogie Howser, M.D.; How I Met Your Mother; and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
gormless
February 23, 2015Today’s One Big Happy, in which it turns out that Ruthie isn’t the only character who’s unsure about word meanings:
NOAD2 identifies gormless as informal and specifically British, so it’s no surprise that the adults don’t know what it means (though the appalling Avis takes it back to a putative noun stem gorm, which she treats as a mass noun (gormless ‘without gorm, lacking gorm’), though it could be a count noun (gormless ‘without gorms, lacking gorms’)).
Emulate the penguin
February 22, 2015Passed on to me by Eleanor Houck, this seasonal penguin story from channel 10 in Philadelphia: “Stay Safe on Slippery Sidewaks” by Greta Iverson, beginning
The trick to balancing on slick sidewalks is to “walk like a penguin.”
xx
lost
February 22, 2015Today’s Bizarro, continuing Piraro’s ambiguity theme:
PST lost of the transitive verb lose, used here in a specialized subsense of a ‘be deprived of’ sense. From NOAD2:
be deprived of (a close relative or friend) through their death or as a result of the breaking off of a relationship: she lost her husband in the fire.
This in contrast to an ‘unable to find’ sense:
become unable to find (something or someone): I’ve lost the car keys.
How do we work out that these two senses intersect in the cartoon?
Morning name: a playful portmanteau
February 22, 2015This morning’s name (which just popped into my head; I’m pretty sure I’d never seen or heard it before) was the playful Elrond Hubbard, which has been adopted by a fair number of people on the net — for instance, a fictional character with a Facebook account:
Elrond Hubbard is a renowned science fiction author and prophet. His mother was an elf and his father was an alien from a master race. He claims the face on Mars is of his father.
And in a Twitter account for @Elrond_Hubbard:
By truly believing in Scientology, you too can be an immortal Elf.
Tech talk
February 21, 2015Today’s Dilbert, in which the pointy-headed boss asks for investment advice:
The boss is fine with colorful figurative jargon in the investment world, but balks at the term diversification because of the spelling challenges it presents.