Forgotten bygones

Searching for a snack at the college where I teach, I noticed a tin container labeled Kojak lollipops. To satisfy my curiosity, I asked the cashier, who was in his 20’s, whether he knew who Kojak was. His answer and that of my students that day, also all in their 20’s, was negative.  This generational ignorance in regards to the then famous non-smoking detective of 1970’s and 1980’s television made me consider how many names, brand and otherwise, have lost identity over time and no longer make sense.

For example, in choosing a car, one of the most important features is horsepower. I am sure that an average person in 1850 had an idea of how much a horse could carry but I strongly doubt that today anybody in the Western world could now produce a reasonable guess. By the way, one horse power is the strength required to more 500 lb. one foot in one second. Likewise, people generally store their insurance papers, some long-forgotten gum, a dried-up pen and maybe a screwdriver in their glove compartment.  It has been at least half a century since anybody drove with gloves and needed to store them.  Nonetheless, a glove compartment is still useful if inaptly named.

Some locations are also mislabeled.  Like men, women at restaurants do occasionally go to the toilet, euphemistically referred to as “going to the bathroom” or “going to powder my nose”.  However, I am convinced that they neither take a bath nor put powder on their face in that room. Still, those expressions are still used, maybe because saying “I need to take a pee” is a bit crude. Similarly, the use of the term “penitentiary” for prison ignores that the fact the term originates from an unsuccessfully and dangerous social experiment for the Puritans in the 1790’s. They thought that if criminals had enough time and solitude to contemplate their sins, they would become penitent.  Alas, prolonged solitary confinement too often leads to insanity and not the intended result.

Some people had their names become synonyms for objects. For example, if anybody asks for your John Hancock, they are asking you to sign.  Alas, it is not clear how many people know that Mr. Hancock was one of the signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence.  A shirley temple, a non-alcoholic drink made of ginger ale, grenadine and a maraschino cherry, is named after the famous child actress of the same name in the 1930’s, who served as an ambassador as an adult. However, who remembers that?

Lastly, the French have had a huge cultural and culinary influence on America. As an example, American troops serving in World War I brought home French fries and French postcards. The first, fried potatoes, were actually a Belgium specialty but they spoke French. So, the French stole the credit, to this day. The second, a synonym for erotic pictures, showed women in more clothes than you would see at an average public beach today.  Times have changed but the names has not.

 So, the next time you feel old and stupid because you cannot understand the jargon of computers, Facebook and tweeter, I suggest you take a look around, find some archaic term unobtrusively retaining its existence and ask someone from the current generation about it.  You still may feel old, but you will feel just as privileged in knowledge.

The Important Room

A euphemism is a nice word for a concept that society does not want to talk about openly, even if it must.  Examples of this are dying, often known as passing away, among others (cf. Monty Python’s Dead Parrot routine for the best exposition on the subject), cancer, otherwise known as a terminal disease, and sex with its hundreds of synonyms.

One peculiar area where most societies prefer to shade the truth a bit is that room in the house or outside of it where people carry out those important bodily functions sometimes known mathematically as 1 and 2 or dimensionally as big and small.  In English, it can be called a restroom, where I suppose some people actually rest, a loo, derived from an old French term, a WC, standing for water closet, which at least is always present in the room, a toilet, a word emphasizing the clean afterwards of the experience, the bathroom, which often does not include a bath especially in small apartments, and the ladies and mens room for restaurant, a possibly justified euphemism.  I would agree that it is much more elegant to ask the waiter where the ladies room is as compared to ask where to go pee.

French shares la toilette, la salle de bain, and WC with the English.  However, it adds the charming “le petit coin” meaning the small corner.   Given the size of many if not most French toilettes, the description is precise in terms of area if not purpose. 

Hebrew has its own terms:   השירותים (hashirutim) meaning “the services”; בית שימוש (beit shimush) literally signifying “the house of use”; and finally המקום החשוב (hamakom hahashuv), which can be translated as “the important place.”  The latter may not be specific in function, but it is accurate in terms of status. 

So, I will end this post to allow you to go to, you know, the important place.