Where Do Words Come From? – Interregnum

An interregnum, noun, (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of discontinuity or “gap” in a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next (coming from Latin inter-, “between” and regnum, “reign”).
The term has been applied to the period of time between the election of a new President of the United States and his inauguration, during which the outgoing president remains in power, but as a lame duck.
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However, it is not just a word. It is a period of time from Election Day to the new president’s swearing-in comprising 79 days, carefully bounded by law. The Interregnum period allots 35 days for the count and its attendant lawsuits to be resolved. On the 36th day, December 8, an important deadline arrives known as the “safe harbor” deadline for appointing the 538 men and women who make up the Electoral College. The electors then meet six days later, December 14, however, each state must appoint them by the safe-harbor date to guarantee that Congress will accept their credentials. The controlling statute says that if “any controversy or contest” remains after that, then Congress will decide which electors, if any, may cast that state’s ballots for President.
On December 14 the electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia must cast their ballots for president and those votes must arrive in Washington by December 23. The next important day is  “the 3d day of January,” when the newly elected Congress is seated. Finally “the sixth day of January,” is when the House and Senate meet jointly for a formal count of the electoral vote.
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Many things can go awry during this time frame as we are now discovering. However, there are procedures to follow in all of those cases. This “Interregnum” time is one of the most important days in our country as it is not just a word but a process to ensure the peaceful transfer of power to the incoming President!

Words That Matter – “Turn the Other Cheek”

We’ve all heard the phrase that when someone attacks you verbally or physically, you should turn the other cheek. It the phrase came originally from the Bible, New Testament, where Mathew, in his gospel (5:39), wrote that Jesus said, “When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.”
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In Mathew’s time a master would discipline a servant by striking him on the right check by hitting the back of his right hand across it. But if that servant turned his left cheek the master would be judged powerless because it was physically impossible to use the right hand to strike the servant’s left cheek! Whether or not the master wanted to strike the servant again, his authority was diminished by his servant’s gesture. That is the lesson of nonviolent resistance that this gospel passage teaches.
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In this aged of escalating tensions where violence seems to be the first option individuals take, here is what Pope Francis said: “When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promoters of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions.” We have a very modern image from the peace protests of the 60s where John Lewis’ is being beaten and dragged and he did not respond with violence. An image contrary to the news reporting these days of  ongoing police brutality, looting, and gun violence!

The Pandemic Creates a New Word

We’ve all seen the ads on tv or listened to them on radio, companies who start out with praising our “heroes”, talking about protecting us, or advising us on what to do in order to remain safe. Then at the end you see their logo or hear their name and realize it was just another ad. Here is the definition I’ve come across that’s been created for this sly way to promote products in the pandemic days:
disastertise—to contort a simple message about drive-through lanes or beer delivery to paint a company as public servants during an extraordinary moment.
My next posting will elaborate on this and how it’s just another trick to get you to buy their products.

Where Do Words Come From: Bubble Wrap

Now that the holidays are over we’re left with tons of packing materials. Ever wonder how Bubble Wrap came about? It started as a decorating product. Alfred Fielding and Marc Shavannes tried making 3D wallpaper in 1957 by creating sheets of trapped air. It never caught on. Fielding realized that what they had come up with could very well be used as next-generation packing material. In 1960 he founded the Sealed Air Corp. They trademarked the name “Bubble Wrap” and the rest is history!

How we got the word “impeachment”

This week’s blog entry comes from the NYTimes “Your Friday Briefing” newlsetter

Today, the word impeachment is associated with the most powerful public officials, but the Latin word it evolved from, “impedicare” (meaning “to fetter, to fix shackles on the feet; to hinder”), evokes a prisoner.

Old French turned it into empechier, from which sprang the Middle English empechen, meaning to physically hinder something (“an impeached ship”) as well as to bring a formal accusation.

Senator William Blount in 1797 became the first American politician to face impeachment, for plotting with the British.

The first recorded use of impeachment in the English Parliament occurred in 1376 with the removal of Baron William Latimer. Having created other levers of accountability, Parliament held its last impeachment in 1806 and now considers the procedure obsolete.

But the term had already been written into the U.S. Constitution. Benjamin Franklin pushed for its inclusion because he feared that the alternative to the legal removal of a corrupt official would be assassination.

Congress first held an impeachment in 1797 with the trial of William Blount, which was, until now, its only impeachment inquiry concerning foreign policy.

Blowing the Whistle

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about a “whistle-blower” in the news. Ever wonder where the term comes from?

This week’s blog entry comes from the NYTimes “Your Friday Briefing” (9/27/19) a newsletter that I subscribe to:

The term “whistle-blower” owes its origin to a 19th-century English toolmaker named Joseph Hudson, the inventor of referee and police whistles.

The first whistle used in a soccer match was probably an early model made by Mr. Hudson in 1878, and he invented an even more piercing whistle for Scotland Yard in the early 1880s. Soon after, in both sports and on the streets, blowing a whistle became a signal that a situation needed urgent attention.

“Whistle-blowing” as a metaphor sporadically appeared in literature in the 20th century, including in works by P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler.

While whistle-blowers have existed in the U.S. from its founding, the term itself is relatively new to the political lexicon, appearing to enter the mainstream around 1970.

Soon, the consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader put a more positive spin on the term with the phrase “responsible whistle-blowing,” which eventually led to the passage of the U.S. Whistleblower Protection Act — a piece of legislation that’s playing a role in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

Where Do Words Come From? “Alien”

When we hear or see the world “alien” the first thing that usually comes to mind is an outer space creature like ET. Next the concept of “strange” as in “this is an alien food recipe might pop into our minds.” It also used to refer to anyone not born in the USA.

Today that last use of the word has mostly been substituted with immigrant or refugee. But the use of the word to refer to someone who didn’t live in your village, who was a stranger i.e not from your tribe or clan, goes back to Biblical times.

Thousands of years ago, written in the Hebrew Bible’s book of Leviticus, (the book that contained Mosaic Law to be followed) the Israelites were commanded by God to “Treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). And we are all familiar with the teachings of Jesus using the parable of the Good Samaritan (which has taken on a non-sectarian definition and become part of our language’s popular vocabulary) to broaden the definition of “alien” to mean everyone is your “neighbor” and worthy of help in time of need regardless of beliefs or background.

How we have strayed from that! How sad that we now see anyone who differs from us as “others”. How sad that we feel we can change our laws to exclude these human beings from being recognized as “neighbors” not worthy of the same standards we have codified in our “Leviticus”, the Constitution! Perhaps what we need is a REAL alien to visit us and show us how to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” (Leviticus 19:18) ET would you please give a call to our Nation’s “home” the White House and ask our President to “come home” to his humanity?

Where do words come from

A lot of apologies are being thrown around in the news these days: Presidential candidates apologizing for past attitudes or behaviors, men apologizing for their actions towards women, parents apologizing for scamming Universities in order to get their children accepted.

So what is meant by the word apology and the derivative word apologetics?

The modern usage of apology means asking for forgiveness. It’s another way of saying you’re sorry about some behavior that offended someone. However, the original usage meant to explain one’s behavior or to defend oneself. It came from the Greek word apologia which means to “speak in return, to defend oneself.” Quite the opposite from what the examples listed here were doing! Over time the usage of the word evolved into our common meaning of “I’m sorry.”

However, the word apologetics retains its original intent when it is used by religious and philosophical schools. We’re familiar with it mostly as a branch of theology charged with the defense of Christianity’s beliefs. It means defending one’s faith (or just explaining it) when a non-Christian asks for more information.

What I find intriguing about the contrasting meaning of these two words is that if one apologized for unwanted sexual advances, would a person who refused to say he did wrong and defended his actions be considered “apologetic?” He wouldn’t be defending his “Christian Faith” but in the spirit of the word’s meaning he would be doing as Socrates (explained in his Apology) did in his public trial, explaining why he was innocent of various charges! In fact, in a non-sectarian way, that is exactly what happens in a court trial with each and every case.

Emoji – Another type of “words”

Emoji, the 21^st century’s cousin to emoticons (remember those? The digital typographical ASCII characters created in the 1970s which looked like needlepoint and were meticulously created by combining standard alphabet characters from a keyboard) have created a whole language that now can be accessed directly from a keyboard like any character set. Ever wonder who creates them or how they are created? Does anyone control this “language” or can just anybody give birth to an emoji and put it out there in cyberspace?

An article in the July 2018 issue of Wired magazine revealed all of these mysteries along with presenting some fascinating facts about emoji evolution. Emoji are not emoticons. Though used in the same fashion and are similar in that they pictographic like Japanese or Chinese characters, they are really a Unicode based “typeface”. However, they were invented by Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese, in 1999 in response to Japan’s 250 character limit on e-mails. His emoji concept was a way to conserve space within those confines.

There are now more than 2,700 emoji and more get created every year. So who creates them and makes them accessible to you and me? There are two parts to this. Anyone can create an emoji if they know how. But for it to become public it must be submitted to “…the whims of the Sanhedrin of emoji – the Unicode Consortium.” Virginia Heffernan, Atomic Unit- the Delicate Art of Emoji, Wired July 2018

The Unicode Consortium’s chief task is to set the Unicode Standard, thus controlling the way text (typefaces) is encoded and represented in the world’s writing systems. There are twelve dues paying members, one each from: Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Shopify, Netflix, SAP, Huawei, the government of Oman, and UC Berkeley, as well as the governments of India and Bangladesh who have lower-level memberships. (She did not mention in her article how these entities were chosen to become its members.)

After an emoji idea (fully mocked up as to how it will look graphically) is submitted, it gets considered by the Consortium’s subcommittee. Then after lengthy debates within that committee it is rejected or added to the master list. Each year this gets submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee who will debate and vote on which ones will be approved.

There are a few constraints. Your emoji submission can’t represent a deity, a logo, or a specific person (living, dead, or fictional – sorry no Mr. Spock or Pres. Trump allowed!) Nor can it represent something illegal or “gross” or offensive. The submitter must also write a full proposal that includes speculative data as to frequency of use. As Virginia Heffernan writes in her article, “To regulate the development of a language is not, strictly speaking, the American way.” However she goes on to state, “…the regulation of emoji…serve as a singular example of how online communication might be supervised with rigor, generosity, and imagination.”

What the Rose Bowl Parade can teach you

The commentators are a wealth of knowledge of arcane factoids:

For instance, we’ve all taken a “Jitney”. Some are ferries, some are buses but have you ever wondered where the name came from? Back in the beginning of the 20^th century, it cost 5 cents to ride public transportation. A “jitney” was slang for a nickel. The name stuck for the short route transports even though today it costs a hundred times more to ride them!

And have you ever wondered what a group of butterflies are called? They are known as a “Kaleidoscope”.