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October 27
Dylan Thomas, who was born on October 27 in 1914, would have found it dramatic and moody that the Boston Red Sox won their first world series since 1918 on this day in 2004. “Do not go gentle into that doomed championship series,” he might have said. When the Red Sox committed four errors in Continue reading
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Rantipole
In “Great Expectations”, the main character, Pip, has an older sister who’s not the nicest person. At one point she calls Pip “young Rantipole.” This wasn’t a very kind description, because a “rantipole” is a person who’s “wild, disorderly, reckless, or badly behaved.” The word “rantipole” has been around since the mid-1600s, and nobody is Continue reading
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Not Pantaphobia
In the classic holiday TV show “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Lucy Van Pelt (sitting behind her “5-cent psychiatrist” kiosk) suggests that Charlie Brown (the patient) might have “pantaphobia.” Once Lucy explains that pantaphobia is “fear of everything”, he enthusiastically agrees. At least with as much enthusiasm as Charlie Brown ever musters. However, astonishing as it Continue reading
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Limitrophe
Nowadays English is the most international of languages. Airline traffic control worldwide is conducted in English, and so is diplomacy, for the most part. But in the 1700s, the most international of languages was French. They didn’t have much use for air traffic control back then, but diplomacy was definitely conducted in French. Diplomacy being Continue reading
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Born today: John Basset and Abbey Aldrich
The lives of extremely wealthy people are often kept under wraps, probably in part because just being extremely wealthy imposes a certain risk. After all, when American gangster Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said “because that’s where the money is.” (Note: he almost certainly didn’t say that, but it makes the Continue reading
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October 25th Birthdays
How old do you think video games are? Would you believe…65 years? William Higinbotham, who was born October 25, 1910, invented Tennis for Two, an analog computer game using a video display, in 1958. If you’re in the US, you’ve heard the legend of Paul Bunyan, the superhuman logger. They have a similar legend in Continue reading
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October 25
Today is the 156th birthday of John Francis Dodge, one of the founders of the Dodge Brothers Company — you can still see their name on cars today. But their first efforts in the automobile industry weren’t in building cars. When they started the company in Detroit in 1900, they only made parts. They were Continue reading
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October 26
October 26 is notable for several things, but in the US in the early 1800s the most notable might have been the completion of the Erie Canal in 1821. It was a very big deal back in the day; a 363-mile-long waterway connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. It meant that you could Continue reading
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Suffixology
Academic fields of study are generally named by creating a compound word based on Latin or Greek roots. There are the “-ologies,” like “geology,” where the suffix comes from the Greek root “logos,” which means “to speak.” If you’re in one of those fields, you’re qualified “to speak of it.” Then there are the “-onomies,” Continue reading
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Cantankerous
Finding mistakes and sloppiness in areas where you reasonably expect some quality control to operate can make you grouchy. Bad-tempered. Cantankerous even. And that’s exactly what happened to “cantankerous” itself. The word seems to have come from the Middle English word “conteckour,” which meant somebody who starts quarrels. It was considered slang for a very Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
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