[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by
the majority who participate.

Thomas Jefferson

 

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see
it tried on him personally.

Abraham Lincoln

 

Folk who don't know why America is the Land of Promise should be here during
an election campaign.

Milton Berle

 

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Douglas Adams

 

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Oscar Wilde

 

We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have
exhausted all the other possibilities.

Winston Churchill

 

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Mosey

 

More commonly spelled as mosey, it's a classic word of old-time Westerns -
"Well, I'll just mosey down to the corral". It means to walk or move in a
leisurely manner and is folksy and informal nowadays in North America. A
typical usage appears in Peter Jenkins's A Walk Across America in 1979: "I
made plans to walk down to see Governor Wallace, especially since he told
anybody who wanted to talk to him to just mosey on down to the capital."

 

The experts scratch their heads over the source of this word. It's possible
to trace it back to the 1820s in the eastern states of the USA. The Oxford
English Dictionary suggests tentatively that it may be linked to British
dialect terms. One is mosy, a variation on mossy, which might be applied to
hair or overripe or decayed vegetables or fruit, presumably from their
mouldy appearance; it can also be used of a person befuddled through drink
or who looks foolish or stupid for any reason. The word survives in
Newfoundland English, where it's used of the sort of weather that one
British radio and TV weather forecaster describes as misty and murky. The
other candidate is muzz, of obscure origin, which has meant to study hard or
intently, to loiter or hang about aimlessly, or to make someone muzzy or
confused. The OED is puzzled by yet another possibility, to mose about, from
South Worcestershire dialect, recorded only in the English Dialect
Dictionary at the end of the nineteenth century, which is glossed as meaning
to go about in a dull, stupid manner.

 

Out of that glorious muddle of meaning, we might guess that there was once a
British dialect word, variously spelled and pronounced, one of whose senses
is much like that of "mose about". As so often, there's a problem. The
earliest appearances of mosey suggest to the OED's editors that it might
have meant "to go away quickly or promptly; to make haste", though the first
examples don't seem to read like that. If it's true, then a link with the
British dialect words is less likely.

 

The OED's entry doesn't mention another possible source, given in several
works, though equally tentatively - that it might be a shortened and altered
form of Spanish vamos, let's go. If so, this would make it a relative of
vamoose and would fit with the earliest sense of moving fast. There seem to
be good phonetic reasons why a shift from vamos to mosey is unlikely and the
earliest recorded examples - from the US east coast - are far from the area
of Spanish influence in the 1820s.

 

Other theories are way out on the margins. Eric Partridge suggested in his
Name Into Word in 1950 that it might derive from the slouching manner of
itinerant Jewish vendors, so many of whom were named Moses or Mose or Mosey.
Others believe that it originated in the name of Moses because of the
Biblical flight of the Jews into Egypt and their wandering for 40 years in
the wilderness. Neither story survives scrutiny.

 

Short answer: we can't be sure where it comes from.

 

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What general introduced chicle--the main ingredient in chewing gum--to the
United States?

A: Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, while he was living in exile
in New York City more than 30 years after he guaranteed himself a place in
American History by storming the Alamo. He enjoyed chewing unflavored chicle
and brought it north with him.

 

What eating utensil was first brought to America in 1630 by Massachusetts
Bay Colony governor John Winthrop, who carried it around with him in a
specially made, velvet-lined leather case?

A: The fork.

 

What did the Wrigley Company do to promote its chewing gum nationwide in
1914?

A: It mailed Doublemint gum to everyone listed in U.S. phone books.

 

What percentage of the grains used in making bourbon must be corn?

A: 51 percent.

 

What was Charles Elmer Hires originally going to call the drink we now know
as root beer?

A: Root tea--but a friend convinced him the name would discourage sales.

 

Vichyssoise--the cold potato and leek soup--was first created in 1917 by
chef Louis Diat. Do you know where?

A: In New York City--in the kitchen of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where Diat
was head chef.

 

Who introduced standardized level measurements to  recipes?

A: Fannie Farmer.