The Constitution State

What do you call a person from Connecticut? Today we’d call them a Connecticuter or a Connecticutian (or, colloquially, a Nutmegger), but in a 1987 address etymologist Allen Walker Read announced that he’d also found these options:

  • Connecticotian, used in 1702 by Cotton Mather
  • Connecticutensian, used in 1781 by historian Samuel Peters
  • Connectican, used in 1942 in a letter to the Baltimore Evening Sun
  • Connecticutan, used in 1946 by book reviewer John Cournos
  • Connecticutite, used in 1968 by an anonymous reviewer in Playboy

He also found several jocular forms:

  • Connecticutie, a pretty girl of Connecticut (used in 1938 by Frank Sullivan of Mrs. Heywood Broun and in 1947 by a journalist about Clare Boothe Luce)
  • Connecticanuck, a Connecticut person of French background
  • Connectikook, an oddball or eccentric from Connecticut
  • Connecticutup, a prankster from Connecticut

“Especially in language, exuberance accounts for much that happens.”

(Allen Walker Read, “Exuberance, a Motivation for Language,” (Word Ways 21:2 [May 1988], 71-74. He gives his documentation in “What Connecticut People Can Call Themselves,” Connecticut Onomastic Review No. 2, 1981, 3­-23. In 1992 he took up the same question regarding “Americans.”)

| Language

Procedure

The September 1981 University Computing Center Newsletter at the University of Southern California included this recipe for “Famous Rum Cake,” written in Assembler by a systems programmer for the IBM 360:

RUMCAKE CSECT
* THIS INTRODUCES SOME NEW MNEMONICS
*               MX             MIX
*               MXL            MIX UNTIL LIGHT
*               BSOP           BEAT UNTIL SOFT PEAKS
*               BSTP           BEAT UNTIL STIFF PEAKS
*               BKE            BAKE (SECOND OPERAND IS NUMBER OF MINUTES)
PREHEAT         BALR    12,0   350 DEGREES
                USING   *,12
BOWL1           L               3,FLOUR
                A               3,BAKPOW
                A               3,SALT
                A               3,BSODA
BOWL2           L               4,BUTTER
                MXL             4
                A               4,SUGAR1
                MX              4
                A               4,ORIND
                AR              4,3
                A               4,MIXTURE
                MX              4
                A               4,EXTRACTS
BOWL3           L               5,WHITES
                BSOP            5
                A               5,SUGAR2
                BSTP            5
                AR              5,4
                S               5,PANS
                BKE             PANS,=M'25'
                SVC             3
*
* TYPES OF CONSTANTS ARE ALSO INTRODUCED:
*               T               TEASPOON
                B               TABLESPOON
                C               CUP
*
* NON-INTEGER LENGTHS ARE ALSO INTRODUCED
*
FLOUR           DS              CL2
BAKPOW          DS              TL2             BAKING POWDER
SALT            DS              TL.25
BSODA           DS              TL.25           BAKING SODA
BUTTER          DS              CL.5            NOT MARGARINE
SUGAR1          DS              CL.75           GRANULATED
EGGS            DS              OF
WHITES          DS              HL2
YOLKS           DS              HL2
ORIND           DS              TL1             GRATED ORANGE RIND
MIXTURE         DS              0CL.5
RUM             DS              BL3
OJ              DS              CL.5            ORANGE JUICE
EXTRACTS        DS              0T
ALMOND          DS              TL.25
VANILLA         DS              TL.25
SUGAR2          DS              CL.25
WALNUTS         DS              CL.5
PANS            DC              2C'9INCH'       GREASED AND LINED
                END             RUMCAKE COOL FOR TEN MINUTES, THEN ENJOY

The programmer who sent me this offered a translation:

Here are some definitions I found in an IBM Assembler book, which may help: L = load, A = add, DS = define storage, S = store, SVC = supervisor call (SVC 3 probably means “execute”), AR = add register (AR 5,4 means “add the contents of register 4 to those of register 5 and store the result in register 5”).

Notice that the program never refers to the egg yolks and the walnuts! I fed the egg yolks to my cat, and chopped the walnuts and threw them in at the end.

Rum Cake

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, not margarine
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon grated orange rind
3 tablespoons rum
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9-inch cake pans, and line with waxed paper. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In another mixing bowl, cream the butter until light, add the 3/4 cup of sugar and mix well. Add the orange rind to the creamed mixture. Stir the orange juice and rum together, and add to the creamed mixture alternately with the dry ingredients. Add the almond and vanilla extracts and the walnuts. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Add the 1/4 cup of sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed. Fold the egg whites into the batter, pour into pans and bake for 25 minutes. Cool 10 minutes, then remove from the pans.

Notes: I used the peel from 1 whole orange, and juiced it to get the 1/2 cup of juice. There was no frosting recipe, so I made a half-recipe of this Cream Cheese Icing: cream together 8 ounces of softened cream cheese and 1/2 cup (1 cube) of softened butter of margarine. Sift a 16-ounce box of powdered sugar and add to the creamed mixture. Beat until light. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Makes enough icing for a 3-layer cake. (This cake needed only 4 ounces cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter, 8 ounces of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.)

(Thanks, Dorothy.)

| Language · Technology

In a Word

philomath
n. a lover of learning; a scholar

noddary
n. a foolish act

fedifragous
adj. contract-breaking

subitaneous
adj. sudden

In Fredric Brown’s 1954 short short story “Experiment,” Professor Johnson displays a brass cube and proposes to send it backward in time. An identical cube appears in his time machine at 2:55, and Johnson announces that at 3:00 he will complete the transaction by sending his own cube 5 minutes into the past.

A friend asks: What would happen if he changed his mind and didn’t send it?

“An interesting idea,” says the professor. “I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not …”

“There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.

“But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.”

| Language · Literature

I’ve Told You Twice

Play with work blend, keep warmish feet,
Away drive trouble, slowly eat;
Air pure breathe, and early rise;
Beware excess, take exercise.

Exercise take, excess beware;
Rise early and breathe pure air;
Eat slowly; trouble drive away;
Feet warmish keep, blend work with play.

— “W.E.R.,” in Truth, Jan. 13, 1881

| Language · Poems

Turnabout

In March 1939, students at McGill University dictated this sentence to a dozen faculty members:

Outside a cemetery sat a harassed cobbler and an embarrassed oculist, picknicking on a desiccated apple, and gazing at the symmetry of a lady’s ankle with unparalleled ecstasy.

The participants included three English professors, the head of the journalism department, and a proofreading instructor.

Only Esther Korstad, instructor of typewriting and shorthand, spelled everything correctly. The average participant misspelled 4.25 words.

| Language

“Nott Shott”

A duel was lately fought in Texas by Alexander Shott and John S. Nott. Nott was shot, and Shott was not. In this case it is better to be Shott than Nott.

There was a rumor that Nott was not shot, and Shott avers that he shot Nott, which proves either that the shot Shott shot at Nott was not shot, or that Nott was shot notwithstanding.

Circumstantial evidence is not always good. It may be made to appear on trial that the shot Shott shot shot Nott, or, as accidents with fire-arms are frequent, it may be possible that the shot Shott shot shot Shott himself, when the whole affair would resolve itself into its original elements, and Shott would be shot, and Nott would not. We think, however, that the shot Shott shot shot not Shott, but Nott; anyway, it is hard to tell who was shot.

— Guy Steeley, The Modern Elocutionist or Popular Speaker, 1900

| Language

Ambiguous Latin

In Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II, one of the king’s gaolers receives a message reading Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est. This can be read either as Edwardum occidere nolite; timere bonum est (“Do not kill Edward; it is good to be afraid [to do so]”) or as Edwardum occidere nolite timere; bonum est (“Do not be afraid to kill Edward; [to do so] is good”). The king is killed.

In 1213, John, Archbishop of Esztergom, was pressed to make a statement to Hungarian nobles planning the assassination of Gertrude of Merania. An assassination would have aided the church, but taking a role in it might have imperiled John’s position and his life. He wrote Reginam occidere nolite timere bonum est si omnes consentiunt ego non contradico, which also has two contradictory meanings depending on its punctuation. Reginam occidere nolite timere; bonum est; si omnes consentiunt, ego non contradico means “Do not fear to kill the queen, it is right; if everyone agrees, I do not oppose it,” but Reginam occidere nolite; timere bonum est; si omnes consentiunt, ego non; contradico means “Do not kill the queen; it is good to fear [doing so]; [even] if everyone agrees, I do not; I oppose it.” The queen, too, was murdered.

| Language

“Lessons of Noblemen”

According to the Guardian (March 1872), Lord Palmerston once dictated this sentence to 11 British cabinet ministers, “not one of whom, it is said, spelled it correctly”:

It is disagreeable to witness the embarrassment of a harassed peddler gauging the symmetry of a peeled potato.

“And Lord R. Cecil, in the House of Commons, some time ago, quoted the following lines which he said were given as a dictation exercise by an assistant commissioner to the children of a school in Ipswich”:

While hewing yew, Hugh lost his ewe,
And put it in the Hue and Cry,
To name its face’s dusky hues
Was all the effort he could use.
You brought the ewe back, by-and-by,
And only begged the hewer’s ewer,
Your hands to wash in water pure,
Lest nice-nosed ladies, not a few,
Should cry, on coming near you, “Ugh!”

| Language