Masoch’s book is definitively kinky, although by today’s standards (let alone those of his predecessor, de Sade) the sex scenes are demure, and the turgid prose is heavily weighted down by philosophical rambling. Masoch exalts himself as a “supersensualist,” identifying heavily with the Christian martyrs who gladly submitted to torture in return for elevated spirituality (see tawdry). The writer is at equal pains to explain his other fetish—a crazed obsession with furs—but does so rather less convincingly.
Venus im Pelz was based on a real-life affair, and after its publication Masoch became involved with a woman named Aurore Rümelin, who played out certain of his fantasies, including taking on the name of his character Wanda. Masoch entered into a contract with this Wanda which began with the salutation “My Slave” and ended with, “Should you ever find my domination unendurable and should your chains ever become too heavy, you will be obliged to kill yourself, for I will never set you free.” The slave signed the document “Dr. Leopold, Knight of Sacher-Masoch.”
Masoch and Aurore/Wanda married, but somehow things didn’t work out.
mau·so·le·um n. A large tomb, or a building containing several of them, or a big empty place that feels likes one.
Mausolos was a Persian satrap who had a seriously nice tomb. In life, Mausolos expanded his family’s influence into Greece and came into conflict with Athens. Upon his death, in 353 B.C., the building of a great memorial in Helicarnassus was commissioned by Artemisia, who was doubly brokenhearted, being both Mausolos’ widow and sister. (Those satraps liked keeping it all in the family.)
The Mausoleum of Mausolos would go on to be named one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the highest architectural prize pretty much ever. And for good reason. Not only was the tomb absurdly enormous, it was covered with statues and elaborate friezes carved by the finest Greek sculptors of the day.
The building stood for roughly sixteen centuries before being shattered by earthquakes. Soon after, the Knights of Malta scavenged the marble to fortify their nearby castle, took the sculptures they liked to decorate it, and ground and burned the rest into lime. Sadly, all that’s left of the tomb is a bit of rubble, which if you’re interested is somewhere in Turkey. The best of its remaining statuary, like so much of the world’s great art, was carted off during the Victorian era and now sits in London’s British Museum.
mav·er·ick n. An individual who tends to his own individuality.
Samuel Augustus Maverick was a Yale graduate, lawyer, Mexican War veteran, and San Antonio mayor who owned so much Texas real estate they named a county after him. In the mid-1840s, Maverick accepted a herd of cattle in exchange for a debt and, not caring much for livestock, neglected them to the point of allowing calves to wander about unbranded, a cardinal sin in the free-ranging days before barbed wire. The lack of a brand became a brand in itself: Whenever anybody found a stray calf with no markings, they said, “That there’s a maverick.” Metaphorical uses soon followed.
A more famous owner of the surname was the fictional Old West hustler Bret Maverick, played by James Garner in an excellent 1950s TV show and by Mel Gibson in a less excellent 1990s movie.
men·tor n. One who imparts experiential wisdom to those who have less of it.
When Odysseus departed Ithaca to go fight the Trojan War, he left his young son, Telemachus, in the care of his wise friend Mentor. For the duration of the conflict and Odysseus’ long sea-tossed voyage home, the aged Mentor advised the young prince and helped him fend off his mother Penelope’s legion of suitors.
The mythology surrounding the Trojan War era has resulted in an all-time bounty of eponyms. While terms like Achilles’ heel and odyssey might still be used with an idea of the events to which they refer, certain words have become so deeply ingrained as to have broken free of their original context entirely, such as with siren, the use of which as a device for making noise dates only to the nineteenth century, and hector, which evolved from meaning a valiant warrior in the mold of the great Trojan prince to a bully and a braggart, from which it became a verb meaning “to domineer.”*
Many such eponyms, however, are fading altogether— along with our collective educations. One is myrmidon, the name of the race of men descended from ants (yeah, ants) who were Achilles’ staunchest supporters, thus any member of an entourage or gang. Stentorian derives from the “great-lunged” Stentor, whose voice Homer describes as crying out “with the blast of fifty other men,” while a cassandra, ignored predictor of bad fortune, was coined after the doomsayer none of the Trojans believed.
mes·mer·ize v. To spellbind or enthrall; to captivate.
Franz Anton Mesmer studied medicine in Vienna, writing his 1766 doctoral dissertation on the gravitational effects of the planets on the body, a theory then in vogue. Mesmer went on to become a successful physician with a unique way of curing people: He would have them swallow a solution of iron, then pass magnets over their bodies to summon an “artificial tide” that helped unblock the free flow of “life fluid.” Blocked life fluid, you see, is bad.
Dr. Mesmer soon discovered that he needn’t resort to outside devices as he had his own “animal magnetism”* to get life fluids flowing. After an unfortunate incident with a blind girl, he moved to Paris, where the practice of Mesmerism became a sensation. With a process of laying on hands, hypnosis, and suggestion set to the otherworldly sounds of a glass harmonica (later used in a thousand horror movies), Mesmer produced trance states in his patients that provoked convulsions, the desired “crisis” that uncorked blockages. His mass healings became a happening.
Louis XVI appointed a crack medical commission to investigate Dr. Mesmer, gathering such luminaries as U.S. ambassador Benjamin Franklin, creator of Mesmer’s beloved glass harmonica, and—somewhat ironically for the monarch—a certain Dr. Guillotin. Their verdict: merde.
nic·o·tine n. Addictive substance found in tobacco; also used as an insecticide.
In 1560, ambassador to Portugal Jean Nicot sent a little something from the New World to the French court back home as a gift: tobacco. Much as they later would with Dr. Guillotin’s suggestion, the French took to the new idea enthusiastically.
onan·ism n. Masturbation.
Genesis 38 opens with Israelite tribal leader Judah espying a pretty young Canaanite; Judah “took her, and went in unto her,” after which event she conceived Er, and, after another going-in-unto, Onan.* When the time came Judah married off his eldest son, but Er “was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.” So Judah said to Onan, his second son, “Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother”—meaning, give your dead brother an heir. Onan, while fully on board with the sex part, didn’t cotton to the idea of being stepfather to his own child, so after he went in unto his brother’s wife, he pulled out, and spilled his seed all over the ground. “And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.”
That’s all we know about Onan. So how is it that the name of this randy and unscrupulous Israelite came to be synonymous with masturbation? That’s where things get weird.
That Onan was killed because he had sex with his sister-in-law under false pretenses seems the obvious reading of Genesis 38, but from early days an alternate interpretation took hold that the Lord was smiting Onan for the wasteful act of spilling seed itself, and therefore any spilling of seed (you get that by “seed” we’re talking semen here, right?) without impregnating intentions was verboten.
Then came Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and All Its Frightful Consequences in Both Sexes, Considered, an early-eighteenth-century bestseller that claimed “onanism” was the cause of gonorrhea, blindness, insanity, and stunted growth. It offered as cures “Strengthening Tincture” and “Prolifick Powder,” expensive at ten and twelve shillings apiece, but how can you put a price on being master of your domain? Though transparent quackery, Onania piqued the interest of Dr. Samuel Auguste Tissot, a well-respected Swiss medical
researcher. After intently studying many young male masturbators, Tissot concluded in his 1760 work L’Onanisme that semen was an “essential oil” that, when expelled from the body in unnecessary amounts, caused a plethora of disastrous medical conditions, legitimizing Onania and causing boys everywhere to fear that masturbation led not only to eternal damnation but to dis-figurement and death.
Thanks a lot, doc.
WORDS OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS
The Bible is our single most fecund source of eponyms. Whether or not these words are anonyponymous depends upon one’s familiarity with the good book, so, with the exception of Onan, these eponyms have been excluded from our main list of entries. But for those of you who never went to Sunday school, here’s a sampling.
Jezebel was the Yoko Ono of the Old Testament, a Phoenician princess who married Ahab, king of Israel, and got him to ditch Yahweh in favor of her hometown god, Baal. For this, jezebel has forever after stood for any manner of conniving, shameless, brazen, controlling, impudent hussy.
The Old Testament produced a surfeit of synonyms for giant, from goliath to behemoth, the largest creature on land (thankfully an herbivore) and leviathan, the greatest beast of the sea (eating preferences unspecified). A jeremiad is a litany of woes and/or complaints, a reference to the prophet Jeremiah’s aptly titled Book of Lamentations. Nimrod was a “mighty hunter before the Lord” in Genesis, yielding the expected meaning of one skilled in the catch, but another use, as a contemptible moron, comes from Bugs Bunny’s sarcastic belittling of Elmer Fudd. Bugs also popularized another O.T. eponym, methuselah, meaning a really old guy, after the great-great-great-grampa of Nimrod, who lived to the ripe old age of 969.
The New Testament gave us a doubting Thomas and a good Samaritan, plus a not-so-good Samaritan, Simon Magus, the first heretic; simony is the buying and selling of church offices. A judas needs no explaining, but how Mary Magdalene came to be an eponym does.
In Middle English Mary Magdalene was called Maudelen, and she was most often depicted weeping piteously over the dead Christ. Then, as now, there were lots of sentimental old drunks across England, and when they began to cry into their beer they were said to be acting all Maudelen, which is to say, maudlin.
pan·der v. To cynically cater to another’s interests.
The character from whom this term originates has a long and varied history on the margins of great literature. In Homer’s Iliad, Pandarus was a Trojan archer who played a pivotal role in the conflict, breaking a truce with the Greeks by firing off a hasty arrow. The medieval romance of Troilus and Cressida, however, found Pandarus performing a rather different function.
First, about Troilus. He was the little brother of the Trojan princes Hector and Paris, known mostly for having been really good-looking and getting whacked by Achilles. Homer mentions his name only in passing. In the Middle Ages, however, this bit player suddenly became the protagonist of a great love story. No longer just some pretty boy, Troilus valiantly battles Achilles, wounding him, and even routs his fearsome Myrmidons. The crux of the drama is Troilus’s love for Cressida, who is being held prisoner by Troilus’s father, Priam, in retaliation for her father’s desertion. Troilus needs someone to help him get to Cressida. Enter Pandarus.
Pandarus is Troilus’s friend and the uncle of the imprisoned Cressida; taking pity on the lovesick Trojan prince, Pandarus acts as Troilus’s go-between in wooing the girl. At least, this is how the story went by the time the twelfth-century Roman de Troie got retold by Boccaccio (1330s) and re-retold by Geoffrey Chaucer, from whose Troilus and Criseyde (1380s) the name popularly entered our language. A “pandare” meant a helper in secret love affairs, but the term soon took on a more negative, pimplike connotation, so much so that when Shakespeare wrote his version of Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602) he made Pandarus a cynical degenerate merrily willing to procure his niece for the Trojan prince. The Bard also endowed the character with a remarkable degree of self-conscious prescience:
Since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world’s end after my name, call them all—Pandars!
pants n. Pants.
Pantaleon was an unmarried physician living in the pagan Byzantine empire who, by simply invoking the name of Jesus Christ, could perform miraculous acts such as healing a blind man. Jealous, Pantaleon’s fellow doctors denounced him to the emperor, who, himself a patient of Pantaleon’s, asked the good doctor to give up this Christian nonsense—whereupon Pantaleon proved the power of God by curing a man of paralysis. Having witnessed the trick, the emperor condemned Pantaleon to death for the practice of black magic.
As is the case with many Catholic martyrs, death was the beginning of a second life. Pantaleon became the patron saint of physicians, bachelors, and torture victims, and now his own name could be invoked to cure a variety of ailments, as well as to guard against locusts. A member of the Fourteen Holy Helpers—a sort of league of super-saints who banded together to fight the Black Death— Saint Pantaleon’s stock went up dramatically in places like hard-hit Venice, where a spectacular church was dedicated to him in thanks for delivering the city from the plague. He later won even more ardent veneration in the Serenissima with the advent of the lottery and his designation as the heavenly provider of winning numbers. San Pantalone became so identified with the city in fact that his name was borrowed by the commedia dell’arte for the character of the prototypically greedy Venetian merchant.
The commedia dell’arte had storylines harking back to Roman times but was played out as improvisational farce. Each actor of the troupe dressed in mask and costume as one of a repertory of stock characters, such as Arlecchino, easily recognizable in his trademark diamond-patch outfit and better known to us by his Frenchified name, Harlequin. The costume signature of Pantalone was a pair of red leggings that reached the feet, a distinctively Venetian manner of cladding the legs that audiences outside the Veneto found odd and remarkable. Over the years and in various languages, the character’s name was borrowed to describe varying fashions of long trousers and related garments. This makes it hard to pin down exactly how and when American English adapted the anglicized name Pantaloon, but by the mid-1800s the term had comfortably been shortened to pants. Around this same time women first began wearing bloomers, which were advocated as an advancement in women’s freedom (quite literally, as it was seriously hard to move in those hoop skirts), most passionately by women’s rights and temperance activist Amelia Jenks Bloomer.
pa·pa·raz·zi n. A member of the media who stalks celebrities.
On his trip to Calabria in the winter of 1897–1898, English novelist George Gissing stopped for a few nights in Catanzaro, staying at the Baedeker-recommended Albergo Centrale. In his room he found a printed card addressed to guests.
“The proprietor,” Gissing later summarized the note, “had learnt with extreme regret that certain travellers who slept under his roof were in the habit of taking their meals at other places of entertainment. This practice, he desired it to be known, not only hurt his personal feelings— tocca il suo morale—but did harm to the reputation of his establishment. Assuring all and sundry that he would do his utmost to maintain a high standard of culinary excellence, the proprietor ended by begging his honourable clients that they would bestow their kind favours on the restaurant of the house . . . and therewith signed himself— Coriolano Paparazzo.”
Sixty years later a screenwriter in Rome was beset by a different problem. Ennio Flaiano was working with director Federico Fellini on a movie about international society and the nightlife of the Via Veneto. Their protagonist was a reporter who had an ever-present companion, a character based on the brazen new breed of photographer who made a living shooting stealth photos of celebrities on the town. The problem was what to call him. Flaiano desperately wanted the perfect name, a name that would make the character come alive. By chance, he opened up a new Italian translation of Gissing’s 1901 travel book By the Ionian Sea to a random page and s
aw the peculiar surname of the owner of the Albergo Centrale. “Paparazzo,” Flaiano wrote in his notes, “the name of the photographer will be ‘Paparazzo.’ ”
The movie, La Dolce Vita, was a smash success, and in its plural Italian form the word paparazzi has entered the world lexicon, giving old Coriolano a reputation he never expected. As Flaiano summed up, “Names have their destiny.”
pas·qui·nade n. The public ridiculing of a person in written verse or prose.
Piazza Navona was one of Rome’s most fashionable addresses long before the Via Veneto, and going way back was the site of the Stadium of Domitian, the field of which is traced in the piazza’s unusual oval shape. The badly damaged statue of a warrior thought to have decorated the Circus Agonalis (as the stadium was also known) came unearthed in 1501 when a street was dug up for the rebuilding of the Palazzo Orsini. Although such fragments were a dime a dozen in the Eternal City, the elderly cardinal overseeing the work was so charmed by the marble torso that he had it erected on the corner of the palazzo where it had been found.
Almost immediately, signs began appearing around the neck of the statue, who acquired the nickname Pasquino after maybe a tailor or barber who lived in the neighborhood. These nocturnally affixed placards contained bitingly sarcastic verses attacking the most powerful men of Rome, most often the ruling pope, at least one of whom tried to have Pasquino hurled into the Tiber. Not that it would’ve mattered, as statues all across the city had begun “talking,” a custom that continues to this day.
pi·la·tes n. A very expensive form of exercise.
Life was tough growing up in 1880s Germany with a name like Pilates. Pontius Pilate, Killer of Christ! was the sort of taunt little Joseph Pilates had to put up with from kids in the school yard, made worse by the fact he was the classic sickly child, burdened with a plethora of diseases, both medieval (rickets, rheumatic fever) and modern (asthma). But Joseph turned it all around like the ninety-pound weakling in a Charles Atlas ad by throwing himself into bodybuilding, yoga, gymnastics, and boxing, coming up with his own system to strengthen and develop key muscles. Pilates came to America in the 1920s and soon opened a studio in New York. His “Contrology” method first caught on in the dance community, attracting such luminaries as Martha Graham and George Balanchine. It would take more than half a century, however, for Pilates to hit the mainstream (assuming, of course, that you consider status-conscious bougie housewives the mainstream). Once it did, the method became so popular that competing schools went to court over whether Pilates was a brand or pilates was a word.
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