The Ice Follies was the original skating extravaganza, having among its galaxy of stars such luminaries as the British beauty Belita, Richard “Mr. Debonair” Dwyer, and the Swiss skating duo Werner Groebli and Hans-Rudi Mauch, better known as Frick and Frack. Something like Siegfried and Roy with a sense of humor, in their signature move the “Clown Kings of the Ice” would skate at each other full steam and then, just as they were about to collide, short, stocky Frack would slide through the legs of tall, lanky Frick.
It brought down the house every time.
Frick and Frack got their shot at Hollywood stardom in 1943’s Silver Skates, a movie about a traveling ice show facing bankruptcy, and the following year’s Lady, Let’s Dance, an ice-skating musical. (Note that a lot of actors—and screenwriters—were off fighting a war at the time.)
Frack was forced to retire in the mid-fifties due to health problems, but Groebli skated on for decades as Mr. Frick, delighting generations with his patented “cantilever spread eagle” trick.
fris·bee n. A spinning circular disk used as a recreational device.
In the 1930s, a couple of drunk Yale students munched down a pie and started playing catch with the leftover tin plate. The game took off, and soon the whole campus was eating pies and playing the new sport. Their pastry of choice was made by Mrs. Frisbie’s Pies of Bridgeport, although it’s unknown whether this preference speaks to the quality of her pastry or the aerodynamics of her tins, which came embossed with the company name. To signal the receiver that a flying object was coming at his head (which, being drunk, he might not notice), the thrower would yell “Frisbie!” the way a soldier shouts “Incoming!”
Mrs. Mary Frisbie was likely amused by this tossing around of her plates; certainly, her bakeries were selling a lot of pies—eighty thousand a day in 1956. On the other side of the country there was a guy who would’ve envied her: Fred Morrison had created a disk designed specifically for flying, but no one was buying them. Trying to cash in on the UFO craze, Morrison released the Pipco Flyin-Saucer, then the Pluto Platter, which caught the eyes of the Wham-O corporation. Wham-O had recently created the biggest fad America had ever seen, the Hula Hoop, selling twenty-five million units in four months. They purchased Morrison’s designs, realizing why success had eluded him: His names all stunk. They soon learned there was already a better name for a flying disk—Frisbie—in a place where the sport was wildly popular. Wham-O decided to call their plastic version the same thing, but to trademark the name they changed the spelling to Frisbee. (Very tricky.)
The Frisbee wound up being Wham-O’s most popular and enduring product, but the word frisbee—however it’s spelled—rightfully belongs to us all, or at the very least to those of us who have ever played it wasted on the quad.
gal·va·nize v. To shock or arouse into action.
Luigi Galvani was a physician living in Bologna whose two seemingly diverse interests, physiology and electricity, combined into one after a spectacular accident.
One fine day in 1781, an assistant of the doc’s touched a metal scalpel lightly to a nerve in the hip of a frog Galvani had dissected and, to his amazement, the dead amphibian’s leg violently sprang to life. The other assistant swore it happened at the same moment he was cranking up sparks in the doc’s nearby electricity machine. They called their boss over, and, with Galvani wielding the scalpel, managed to repeat the effect. The “wonderful phenomenon” caused a brainstorm in Galvani. (The same assistant later stuck his chocolate bar into the doc’s peanut butter by mistake, but Galvani failed to see the possibilities of that delizioso combination.)
In a paper he presented in 1791, Galvani theorized that he had discovered a previously unknown electrical fluid produced in the brain that activated nerves and muscle. He called this force “animal electricity,” but the process came to be known as galvanism, a term coined by Galvani’s friend and intellectual rival, Alessandro Volta, who nevertheless disagreed with a key point of Galvani’s conclusions.
For the rest of the story, see voltage.
ger·ry·man·der v. To rezone voting districts to gain electoral advantage.
Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, offered his political credo at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. “The evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are dupes of pretended patriots.” As if to test the theory, in 1812 Governor Gerry signed into law a Massachusetts redistricting bill aimed at helping his Republican party pick up state senate seats, an intention made clear in the grotesque appearance of one particularly convoluted voting district.
The story usually goes that Gilbert Stuart (the artist who painted pretty much every portrait of George Washington you’ve ever seen) entered the offices of the Columbian Centinel, where a map of the infamous district was hanging. Stuart went up to it and scribbled a head, wings, and claws onto the oddly shaped district. “That will do for a salamander!” the artist said. “Gerrymander!” said the editor. The problem with this tale is that the drawing that made the rounds in Federalist newspapers was later discovered to have been drawn—with great care—by the lesser-known illustrator Elkanah Tisdale.
Whatever the truth, the editorial cartoon had its desired effect, and to prove that people aren’t total dupes (or at least back then weren’t), the citizens of Massachusetts voted Gerry out of office.
SUPERVILLAINOUS
From kryptonite to Clark Kent, the Superman comics have bequeathed much to our culture. Little known, however, are the lexical contributions made by a pair of the Man of Steel’s arch-enemies.
In the July 1958 issue of Action Comics (#242), writer Otto Binder introduced the evil intergalactic mastermind Brainiac. The villain shrank Metropolis and put it into a bottle, as he had done with other cities throughout the universe; Superman foiled his plan. With his lime-green skin, pink-and-white uniform, and short shorts, Brainiac was one of your less intimidating-looking supervillains. The word brainiac, an amalgam of brain and maniac, has entered the English language because, frankly, how could it not?
A few months after Brainiac debuted, another nemesis entered the picture in Superboy #58 (also written by the prolific Binder). Bizarro was the exact opposite of the last son of Krypton: His alter ego was Kent Clark, he belonged to the Injustice League, and his superpowers included freeze vision and X-ray hearing. He lived in Bizarro World, a square planet where life is the reverse of how it is on Earth. The word bizarro has come to mean an upside-down version of something or a creepy alternate reality, and was in part popularized by Superman überfan Jerry Seinfeld’s eponymously titled “The Bizarro Jerry” episode of his eponymously titled sitcom Seinfeld.
graham crack·er n. A type of cracker that is like a biscuit on its way to becoming a cookie.
Before South Beach, before Dr. Atkins, there was Graham.
The Graham diet is vegetarian but not vegan; it allows for moderate intakes of dairy products and eggs, but the menu leans heavily on fruits, vegetables, and fiber. The centerpiece of this diet is graham flour, a whole-grain product that is dark, unsifted, and coarsely ground. Although it sounds as if it could be the latest diet craze in America, the Graham diet was in fact the first. But unlike today’s dietary gurus, Sylvester Graham didn’t care if people lost weight; he just wanted to bring them closer to God.
A Presbyterian minister and self-styled “physiological reformer,” Graham created a dietary regimen that followed the ideals of the 1830s temperance movement and fought against what he saw as the evils of the Industrial Revolution. Graham railed against the dietary downside of consumer capitalism, denouncing chemical additives that millers put in flour to make it look more appealing. He promoted his whole wheat flour as a healthy alternative to a blanched product stripped of all its goodness, using it to create a digestive biscuit—the Graham cracker. Graham hoped his creation would help people avoid “stimulating” foods such as meat and spices, which he claimed produced gross amounts of lust in the body, and that his
diet would in general lead to less sexual activity, which he was against in all but the most extenuating of circumstances.
Traveling the country to promote his ideas, Graham met with as much opposition as he did support. When he spoke butchers and bakers protested—so much so that he needed bodyguards to accompany him. While known derisively as Dr. Sawdust for his fibrous flour, Graham was revered among temperance types. Oberlin College mandated the adoption of his diet among students and faculty, even firing a professor who refused to stop bringing his own pepper shaker into the dining hall.
grog·gy adj. Foggy in the brain, unsteady in the body.
TO CAPTAINS OF THE AQUADRON!
Whereas the Pernicious Custom of the Seamen drinking their Allowance of Rum in Drams, and often at once, is attended by many fatal Effects to their Morals as well as their Health, the daily allowance of half a pint a man is to be mixed with a quart of water, to be mixed in one Scuttled Butt kept for that purpose.
—order of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, commander of the British navy in the West Indies, August 12, 1740
At the time of the above edict, Edward “Old Grog” Vernon had just come off a career-making victory in the War of Jenkins’ Ear, during which he captured the Spanish possession of Portobello. Although this made him a hero back home, he was hardly Mr. Popular with the sailors under his command once he ordered their rum rations cut. Thankfully, the effect of the grog, as the tars called the diluted spirit in dishonor of their commander, was still sufficient to render the men into the state described in the above definition.
guil·lo·tine n. A beheading apparatus.
In 1784 at Louis XVI’s invitation the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin joined the commission to investigate Franz Mesmer; five years and a revolution later, Dr. Guillotin was elected to a rather different body, the Revolutionary Assemblée nationale constituante, where he proposed a method of execution that he believed to be both more dignified and, with its speedy efficiency, more humane. His suggestion was adopted, with vigor.
gup·py n 1. A species of fish native to the Caribbean, often found swimming through plastic castles.
This enduringly popular aquarium fish was named after the amateur Trinidadian zoologist R. J. Lechmere Guppy, quite possibly the most famous amateur Trinidadian zoologist of all time.
guy n. Am. slang: a way of referring to a male without having to call him a man.
In the wee morning hours of November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was arrested in a rented storeroom under the House of Lords that was suspiciously packed with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. Under torture, Guy confessed to being part of a Roman Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King James I, his family, and both houses of Parliament; he was hanged.
For over four hundred years, Guy Fawkes Day has been celebrated across the UK with fireworks and bonfires. On these crisp, late-autumn nights, children parade effigies of Fawkes through the streets chanting the nursery rhyme
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
the gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
to blow up King and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
to prove old England’s overthrow.
By God’s mercy he was catch’d
with a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King.
And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!
Upon reaching the great central bonfire, the kids toss “the guy” into the flames and then, if they are being traditional, follow it with an effigy of the pope.
Etymologically speaking, a guy came to mean someone of grotesque appearance, which came to include everyone, at least in America.
FIRST-NAME BASIS
Most first-name eponyms come from biblical characters, saints, or classical figures who are in general known only by a single name. In most other cases, words deriving from forenames are not eponyms but generic uses of common names—the more common the better—that tend to embody the everyman, or men, in the case of Tom, Dick, and Harry. True first-name eponyms are harder to come by, and even ones such as the above guy generally connote an average citizen, or one engaged in a profession, like the British bobby.
There are exceptions. A poindexter is a nerd, after the decidedly dorky cartoon character Poindexter (IQ: 222) of the Felix the Cat TV series. Yente Telebende was a loudmouthed busybody in Jacob Adler’s humorous essays about New York City’s Lower East Side; the Yiddish first name became a Yiddish eponym, which shortly entered English as yenta, meaning a gossip or meddler.
Pet names are often given to the tools of war, be they ships, swords, or guns. The word gun itself, in fact, comes from Gunhild, a female Scandinavian name. If that sounds odd, consider that the Germans called their World War I Belgium-bashing supercannon die dicke Bertha—Fat Bertha—after Frau Bertha Krupp, owner of the armaments firm where they were manufactured. Our boys called them Big Berthas, and the Germans they were fighting, Jerry.
Bestowing a nickname upon the enemy is a common practice during wartime, from the Confederate Johnny Reb to the Viet Cong Charlie. An uglier but related practice are slurs such as mick for an Irishman, guido for an Italian, and nancy boy for an effeminate male.
Then there’s sex. Men tend to be on a first-name basis with their penises, hence the terms dick, willie, and peter; condoms are jimmy hats or, in Britain, johnnies, where instead of horny you get randy and hanker for a right rogering. The sex of animals can also be told in a name. You have tomcats, a jackass and a jenny, and goats are divided into billies and nannies, the latter being a nickname for Anne or Agnes and also used to refer to long-term babysitters.
America’s favorite name to represent the man on the street is Joe, be it Joe Blow, Joe Schmo, Joe Six-Pack, average Joe, or Joe the Plumber. Joe shows up in a number of other places, such as with sloppy joes and as a synonym for coffee, but the first name most pressed into lexical service— by a factor of absurdity—is my own.
As a noun used with the article a, john means the client of a prostitute; put the in front of it and you’re talking about a toilet. In the past it had other meanings, among them a male servant, a policeman (shortened from “johndarm,” as in gendarme), and a kind of plant. There is John Bull (the personification of England), John Barleycorn (the personification of liquor), John Q. Public, John Doe, the Dear John letter, and John Dory, a fish who for hundreds of years happily swam the seas as a dory before mysteriously acquiring a Christian name. You have Johnny-come-lately, Johnny-onthe-spot, and Johnny Crapaud (a Frenchman). Then there’s Jack. A jack once meant a rough character, which is why those guys on the playing cards look so dodgy, but a jack was also a laborer, as in lumberjack, jack o’lantern (a night watchman), and jack-of-all-trades. By extension, a machine that replaced a worker was called a jack, like the device we use to raise things, which became a verb used in expressions such as to jack up and to jack off. In nineteenth-century America, the name came to be used as a form of address to strangers, as in, “Who you lookin’ at, jack?” “You don’t know jack shit” is an Americanism of later vintage. The Scottish variant Jock might be behind jockstrap and is certainly the reason a racehorse rider is called a jockey. The John phenomenon affects English via foreign words as well. In Venice the nickname Zanni is equivalent to Johnny; in the commedia dell’arte it was a generic name for any of the comedic male roles, those guys who acted zany.
We could go on, to jerry-rig, to jimmy a lock, to Jim Dandy, but let’s ask ourselves instead—Jim, Jerry, Joe, John, Jack—how come all these names start with a J?
hook·er n. Slang term for a prostitute; considered either vulgar or polite, depending on the company you keep.
Fighting Joe Hooker was a hard-living leader beloved by his men. A veteran of the Seminole wars
and the invasion of Mexico, he had trouble adjusting to civilian life, where his drinking and gambling wasn’t quite so well tolerated as around the battle camp, and so was happy when the Civil War came along and offered him a chance to get back into the fighting game.
At the disaster of Antietam, Hooker distinguished himself by fighting the great Confederate general Stonewall Jackson to a standstill. Then came the further disaster of Fredericksburg, during which Union commander General Ambrose Burnside (see sideburns) ordered more than a dozen assaults by Hooker’s brigade over the protests of Fighting Joe, who correctly recognized their inferior position. His troops fell in droves, and the never-shy Hooker called Burnside a “wretch” and his battle plan “preposterous,” helping to get the general fired and himself promoted.
Having suffered a succession of lamblike commanders, Fighting Joe was precisely the kind of man Lincoln was looking for. Upon Hooker’s appointment to the overall command of the Army of the Potomac, Union soldiers rejoiced. “May God have mercy on General Lee,” Hooker said, “for I will have none.” His modest plan for the spring campaign was to engage and defeat Lee’s army and straightaway march on the Confederate capital of Richmond.
To map out his success in a pleasant atmosphere, Hooker surrounded himself with cronies and his army headquarters became something between a “bar-room and brothel.” His soldiers, meanwhile, ran roughshod over every corner of Washington, D.C., in search of paid sex. It became such a problem for military police that Hooker ordered that prostitutes be restricted to an area of the city known as Murder Bay, where assumedly the local populace wasn’t so prudish. This red-light district became known as Hooker’s Division, and the word hooker, meaning prostitute (already a regional slang term), gained widespread currency.
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