[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

I'm single because I was born that way.

Mae West

 

Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.

Ivy Compton-Burnett

 

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Mark Twain

 

A four-hundred-dollar suit on him would look like socks on a rooster.

Earl Long

 

Don't be humble... you're not that great.

Golda Meir

 

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and
then beat you with experience.

Mark Twain

 

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Bated breath

 

The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it's common these days to
see it written as baited breath. Examples in newspapers and magazines are
legion; this one appeared in the Daily Mirror on 12 April 2003: "She hasn't
responded yet but Michael is waiting with baited breath".

 

It's easy to mock, but there's a real problem here. Bated and baited sound
the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside
this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost
inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the
unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it means "reduced,
lessened, lowered in force". So bated breath refers to a state in which you
almost stop breathing as a result of some strong emotion, such as terror or
awe.

 

Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice,
in which Shylock says to Antonio: "Shall I bend low and, in a bondman's key,
/ With bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, / Say this ...". Nearly three
centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: "Every eye fixed
itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon
his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the
tale".

 

For those who know the older spelling or who stop to consider the matter,
baited breath evokes an incongruous image; Geoffrey Taylor humorously (and
consciously) captured it in verse in his poem Cruel Clever Cat:

 

Sally, having swallowed cheese,

Directs down holes the scented breeze,

Enticing thus with baited breath

Nice mice to an untimely death.

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Cop

 

Half a dozen explanations at least have been put forward for this one,
including an acronym from "constable on patrol". It is also said to come
from the copper badges carried by New York City's first police sergeants
(patrolmen were alleged to have had brass ones and senior officers' silver);
it is almost as often said to refer to the supposedly copper buttons of the
first London police force of the 1820s. Both these stories seem about
equally unlikely.

 

The most probable explanation is that it comes from the slang verb cop,
meaning "to seize", originally a dialect term of northern England which by
the beginning of the nineteenth century was known throughout the country.
This can be followed back through the French caper to the Latin capere, "to
seize, take", from which we also get our capture.

 

The situation is complicated because there are - or have been - a number of
other slang meanings for cop, including "to give somebody a blow", and the
phrase cop out, as an escape or retreat. Both of these may come from the
Latin capere. But it's suggested that another sense of cop, "to steal",
could come from the Dutch kapen, "to take or steal". There's also "to
beware, take care", an Anglo-Indian term from the Portuguese coprador, and
phrases like "you'll cop it!" ("you'll be punished, you'll get into
trouble"), which could come from the idea of seizing or catching, but may be
a variant of catch.

 

But the "seize; capture" origin for the police sense seems most plausible.
So, policemen are just those who catch or apprehend criminals. And a copper
is someone who seizes, a usage first recorded in Britain in 1846.

 

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In the Durango desert, in Mexico, there's a creepy spot called the "Zone of
Silence." You can't pick up clear TV or radio signals. And locals say
fireballs sometimes appear in the sky.

 

Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.

 

Hot water is heavier than cold.

 

Only one satellite has been ever been destroyed by a meteor: the European
Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.

 

According to security equipment specialists, security systems that utilize
motion detectors won't function properly if walls and floors are too hot.
When an infrared beam is used in a motion detector, it will pick up a
person's body temperature of 98.6 degrees compared to the cooler walls and
floor. If the room is too hot, the motion detector won't register a change
in the radiated heat of that person's body when it enters the room and
breaks the infrared beam. Your home's safety might be compromised if you
turn your air conditioning off or set the thermostat too high while on
summer vacation.

 

Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and
introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular
telephone.

 

The wick of a trick candle has small amounts of magnesium in them. When you
light the candle, you are also lighting the magnesium. When someone tries to
blow out the flame, the magnesium inside the wick continues to burn and, in
just a split second (or two or three), relights the wick.