[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an
American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Virgil Thomson 

 

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to
dispense it.

Dick Cavett

 

Television has raised writing to a new low.

Samuel Goldwyn

 

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a
desk.

Ronald Reagan

 

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

Mark Twain

 

Fashion is something that goes in one year and out the other.

Unknown

 

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Haymaker

 

The Oxford English Dictionary's first example of this word is from 1912.
Here are a couple of earlier examples in American newspaper reports.

 

The next bout was the funniest ever. A little midget of a colored lad named
"The Rat" was put against a big black burly named Harvey Wilson. "The Rat"
was swifter than greased lightning and only his foot work saved him from
being sent through the roof from some of the hard haymakers sent at him by
Harvey - Spokane Press (Washington), 5 Apr. 1904.

 

Corbett then landed left and right short arm jabs to the jaw. He tried his
right hay maker but ran into a stiff right to the jaw. - Nevada State
Journal, 1 Mar. 1905.

 

This is not Gentleman Jim Corbett, the American professional boxer and
former world heavyweight champion, who had retired from the ring in 1903.
This was Young Corbett II, real name William Rothwell, who took the ring
name of Corbett in honor of the older man. He became the world featherweight
champion but lost to Battling Nelson in this bout. Reports of his fights in
the years immediately afterwards often refer to his haymaker swing as his
signature blow. This seems to have done much to popularise the term outside
the boxing fraternity itself.

 

Who actually named the blow remains unknown.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, there is some disagreement about the precise imagery
behind the expression, the usual one being a swing of the arm mimicking that
of the haymaker's scythe.

 

That's clearly the right idea but one or two British writers instead mention
the hayrake or two-pronged hayfork. That's because in British usage the men
with the scythes were mowers (as in "One man went to mow, went to mow a
meadow") and it's the men behind them who were the haymakers, who used these
other implements to drag the cut hay into windrows and turn it from time to
time to help it dry.

 

However, among people not connected with agriculture, haymaker has usually
been the generic term for anyone involved in haymaking, no matter his job
(the Collins Dictionary defines it comprehensively as "a person who helps to
cut, turn, toss, spread or carry hay") and US users were surely thinking of
a haymaker as a man with a scythe.

 

Another shift is that some dictionaries define a haymaker as a heavy or
forceful blow, without the implication of its being a swing of the arm.
Haymakers were brawny men and any blow from one of them would undoubtedly
have been powerful. But that wasn't the original idea. Now haymakers with
scythes are extinct, that characteristic swing seems to be slowly dying from
our collective memories.

 

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Where did the word cigar originate?

A: From the Spanish cigarro.

 

Who is credited with the introduction of tobacco to Europe?

A: Christopher Columbus.

 

Three of Columbus's crewmen during On Columbus's 1492 journey, three of his
crew are said to have encountered tobacco for the first time on what island?

A: The island of Hispaniola.

 

 

Spanish and other European sailors adopted the hobby of smoking what?

A: Rolls of leaves.

 

What French ambassador to Portugal, gave his name to nicotine?

A: Jean Nicot.

 

In 1542, tobacco started to be grown commercially where?

A: In America.

 

Where did the Spaniards establish the first cigar factory?

A: On the island of Cuba.