Watch Your Language: Papermints for the Mind

By Johnny Joe Gallagher

This fun book is about words: their origins, histories, surprises, colorful use and misuse. It may alter your mental landscape for several months or less.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462039753

Johnny Joe Gallagher

RESUME: (JOHN) JOSEPH GALLAGHER 6/1/11 Joseph Gallagher was born in Baltimore on June 19, 1929. He was ordained a priest for the Baltimore Archdiocese on May 28, 1955, and was granted early medical retirement in 1985. He served as an editor of the Baltimore Catholic Review from 1959 to 1966, and was Archdiocesan Archivist from 1957 to 1966. He taught at Baltimore’s St. Mary’s SemInary from 1967 until 1975, and lectured locally at Johns Hopkins University, Notre Dame College, and Loyola College. He taught at Oxford, England for Antioch International in 1977. His chief subjects were public speaking, philosophy, poetry and other literary topics such as "The Divine Comedy" and "Shakespeare’s Sonnets." He was translator and translation editor for "The Documents of Vatican II" (1966), and was executive editor for the bicentennial edition of "The American Catholic’s Who’s Who." He also privately published three books of poems, "Painting on Silence" (1973), "Statements at the Scene" (1998), and an 80th Birthday Collection (2009). In 1983 Doubleday published his book of memoirs "The Pain and the Privilege: The Diary of a City Priest." His book, "The Christian Under Pressure" (1970) was reprinted in 1988 as "How to Survive Being Human." In 2010 it underwent a second reprinting with a third publisher. In 1987 Sheed and Ward published his booklet, "Voices of Strength and Hope for a Friend with AIDS." In 1988 Christian Classics brought out a collection of eighty of his essays under the title, "The Business of Circumference: A Kaleidoscope." In March 1966 Triumph/Liguori Books published his "To Hell and Back with Dante." The 1999 second edition is entitled "A Modern Reader’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy." ver four decades the Baltimore Sunpapers carried 320 of his columns. Of these, The Evening Sun published 222 articles from 1953 to 1985--nearly half its lifetime. Since 1949 Baltimore’s Catholic Review published over one thousand of his editorials, columns, articles, and poems. He has published in half a hundred other publications, including The National Catholic Reporter, America, The Catholic Digest, The New York Times, and The New Catholic Encyclopedia, and A Modern Catholic Encyclopedia. Poems of his have appeared in the 1986/87 Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, and The Maryland Poetry and Literary Review (1989). He received a Master’s Degree in 1972 from the Johns Hopkins University Creative Writing Seminars. "Shakespeare's Sonnets Freshly Phrased," his most recent book, was published in March 2011.

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Copyright © 2011 by Johnny Joe Gallagher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-3974-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-3975-3 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/17/2011

Contents

Frontispiece

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Introduction

Random Harvest

Puzzlements

Minilogues

Double Plurals

Double Duty

Multiplicities

Ms Prince

Ms Herd

Ms Translations

Ms Chievous Printing

Ms Cellaneous Illuminations

Names

Word Travel/World Travel

International Sampler

Paronomasias (Puns Intended)

Books, Plays, Movies, Ads, Reviews

Church Bulletins

Headlines

Beneath The Headlines

Music

Verses

Sign Language

Kartoons & Kookies

& Burma Shavings

Prize Quotes

Are You Game?

Postface

Frontispiece

Typographical Humor

multi.jpg

[From The 1969 First Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary]

Acknowledgements

This volume is not adjustable, but in any case arguments against it will be found to be sound—and nothing but sound. Its charms and accuracies are solely the fruit of the author’s talents and exertions. All errors and blemishes are due to former friends and ill-advisors. Still, there are absolutely no copyright violations in these pages, and many of them will be removed in many of the many future editions bound to be printed.

* * *

Graphics by Colin Lidston

Photos by the author (without permission), except Sham Medicare by John L. Maningas

Papermint idea from Ernie Moncada

Gracias Especiales a Miguel Schmied, Ricardo Troy y Pablo Zilonka

Dedication

George Calvert, the father of Maryland and the first Lord Baltimore, was born in England; his estate was in Ireland; his motto was in Italian: Fatti maschii, Parole femine.

Now the Maryland State motto, these four words are variously translated and explained: e.g., (literally): Deeds masculine, words feminine; or (jocosely): Our machos are fat; our fems, on parole; (more seriously): Our deeds are strong; our words are gentle.

This book about words provides an apt occasion to honor some of the gentle and strong women who have enriched the life of the author.

Among those who have gone ahead: my Mother Nellie, Mary Gallagher of Wildwood, Josephine Jacobsen, Belva Thomas, Anne Williams and Sr. Bernarde Auth, SSND, who taught me to be an altar boy 72 years ago, and who died on 9/19/2011 —hours before the start of her 100th year.

Among the living: Kathleen Cahill, Gerardine Delambo, Ruth Eger, Tess Hoffman, Sally Jenkins, Laura, Noreen Lidston, Judy McGinn, Frances Mueller, Marita Podder, Eleanor Sprankle, and Sisters: Charlotte Kerr, RSM, Catherine Reichenberg, RSM, and Marie Sulpice, SSND.

Introduction

Looking At versus Looking Through

Twins named Thomas and Thomasina are being given a tour of the college they plan to attend. Their first stop is before a large antique window in the main corridor.

Initially they are both attracted by a game being played outside. A sportsman himself, Tom is totally absorbed by the scene.

Thomasina, growing less intent on the outside action, begins to notice the glass through which she is looking. She wonders about its age, its size, its cost, its frame, its tint, its thickness, its maker. In other words, its story.

In a similar fashion Thomasinas everywhere don’t just look through words; they also look at words. They are intrigued by the literal meanings of words, and their often colorful origins and interplay. She would notice when her aunt says: Come down when you’re up to it.

Toms would not be curious about the name Mary Johnson; but Thomasinas are bemused by a daughter whose name is John/son. They would also enjoy listening to country singer Keith Urban.

Toms might see the word subbookkeeper, and wonder whether there is really such a job. Thomasinas would hope there is, since the word contains four sets of doubled letters in a row.

May this book encourage every Thomasina, and help every Tom to get more in touch with his inner sister.

After all, their names both mean twin.

Wonder-Wounded By Words

The poet W.H. Auden said that he would prefer a would-be poet to say that he loved words rather than that he had some wonderful poetic ideas.

In any case there are certain words and phrases that have caught my fancy from youth onward. They seemed to be magical, words to conjure with.

Contee Castile Shampoo was right there at the top.

Individual words which have since joined that favorite: opalescent . . . turquoise . . . sapphire . . . rhapsodizing . . . imperial . . . bioluminescent.

Perhaps you know someone who says nothing but says it beautifully. How delighting to hear such a one described as a practitioner of the resonant vacuity.

Here are two other gems of which I have lost the meaning, if ever I knew it:

A collapse of the probability wave,

and

The Mohorovicic discontinuity.

Other conjuring phrases are:

Unindicted co-conspirator and

The analogy of improper proportionality.

A final verbal pet of mine is taboo malformation: it’s the process of twisting one word into another when the original word ought not to be spoken or spoken lightly. For example: gosh for God; heck for hell; darn for damn.

A Dynamite Discovery: Word Roots

Hamlet is the world’s most often produced play; and well-remembered is the melancholy Dane’s reply to the nosey Polonius, when the latter asks him what he is reading: Words, words, words.

Words are what we get superabundantly in life. We hear them, learn them, speak them, teach them, read them, even touch them with Braille.

My childhood home was not a literary one. I can recall seeing only two books within its successive walls: Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, and an unsuccessfully hidden sex manual with terrifying illustrations. And then there were my Father’s detective magazines with their lurid covers.

I don’t recall ever seeing a dictionary at home, but I must have encountered one in elementary school.

When I entered a high school seminary in 1943, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Fifth Edition [1936/1943] was a required text. That engaging volume became my literary Bible. More than six decades later I still have it, rebound in the early 50s.

Still evident are the fruits of my habit of putting a mark next to any word I looked up. (We had lots of enforced study time.) When I visited a page, I would revisit any word I had previously consulted.

I have since switched my allegiance to The American Heritage Dictionary and its emphasis on word roots. I have not used the 1943 volume regularly for a few decades. But I still cannot open it to any of its 1275 pages without seeing one or more check marks.

Along with enriching me with my very own personal dictionary, that mid-war year of 1943 started me on a six-year journey of Latin classes. Eventually I also studied four years of Greek, two of French, and two of German.

A pivotal moment in my life occurred in an early Latin class when I learned that mus was the word for mouse. My dictionary further revealed that muscle was from the Latin word musculum meaning little mouse.*

I was hooked for life. In a flash I realized that words had backgrounds and histories, and that many words had picturesque biographies, as well as illuminating and often unsuspected family links.

No longer did I wish to know merely what a word meant; I wanted to know why it meant what it meant.

I learned that words are like music