Some things that I have realized:
- E flat tuning on the ukulele is even more awesome than C tuning. I didn't think it was possible for the ukulele to become yet more awesome to me, but it has done so! Oh, little instrument of my dreams, will you never cease to amaze?
- A name is different from a word. More on this to come. Probably. I think I need to read Derrida (who makes me so angry with his writing style) on names.
- Good death stuff from Pepys again:
so to my brother’s and to church, and with the grave-maker chose a place for my brother to lie in, just under my mother’s pew. But to see how a man’s tombes are at the mercy of such a fellow, that for sixpence he would, (as his owne words were,) “I will justle them together but I will make room for him;” speaking of the fulness of the middle isle, where he was to lie; and that he would, for my father’s sake, do my brother that is dead all the civility he can; which was to disturb other corps that are not quite rotten, to make room for him; and methought his manner of speaking it was very remarkable; as of a thing that now was in his power to do a man a courtesy or not.
- I'd always assumed the use of "cod" or "cods" for the testicles (most commonly noted in my world with regards to cod-pieces, which are "pieces" --articles of clothing-- to cover the cod) came from the fish. I'd always, in fact, found it a bit of a puzzle that the penis (or more properly, the testicles) would be associated with fish – since modern slang has that as a female, rather than male association -- and in fact wondered if the association was ironic: floppiness, or something like that.
But it turns out that testicles are cods because "cod"'s first meaning in English is "bag" – a use that comes directly from the old German. OED records the first usage in this sense in 1000, which means it must have been in use pretty much from the inception of the Germanic languages themselves – way before 1357's "cod-fish." The OED actually says that no one's really sure why a codfish is a codfish – does it bear some resemblance to a bag? I wonder if it were perhaps caught in bags or put in bags particularly or something.
Or is the connection more salacious: could this be a particularly spermy-seeming fish? It makes me think of cod roe, a substance that does feature in some early cooking. The word "roe" is from the same Old Teutonic/potentially Flemish origins, and the early uses do seem to suggest a possible association with sperm, rather than eggs (and in fact, "roe" can mean both):- 14.. Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 591 Lactes, roof of fyshe, or mylke of fyshe. "Roof" is the word we now spell "roe." The suggestion here is the association with "milk," a substance that is certainly female, but whose appearance suggests its connection with semen as well – and in fact lots of early medicine took it to be the same substance, just disposed differently in men and women.
- c1460 J. RUSSELL Bk. Nurture in Babees Bk. (1868) 161 White herynge in a dische,..looke he be white by e boon, e roughe white & nesche. "Rough" is yet another spelling of roe. My argument is more tenuous here, since it depends on the usage of "he" for the fish, which could easily be explained simply by the potential for using "he" as a gender-neutral or generic pronoun in English. The "rough" is still identified as white, though.
- 1595 SHAKES. Rom. & Jul. II. iv. 39 Here comes Romeo. Mer. Without his Roe, like a dryed Hering. Count on our man Will to point up a moment of gender confusion! Romeo, the great lover, is described as having roe – or rather as being without all his roe, suggesting both that he's impotently without semen and that he has used it all up with too much sexual passion, and has thus made himself effeminate. (Effeminate both in his lack of sperm and in the suggestion that what he had in the first place is actually roe, more properly feminine – his sexual passion towards women is so ardent that it feminizes him.) The suggestion of a flaccid (because dried out) penis is clear here. So Mercutio.
Anyway, so it turns out that things are the other way around from how I thought they were – the fish may be named for testicles, rather than the testicles named for fish. Interesting.- By the way -- speaking of the OED, Ellen sent me this piece about a visit to their offices. It's a fun read, although I find the writer's anxiety about whether he's going to be called down over incorrect word use a little puzzling. I suspect him of having been educated at a strict boarding school.
- I'd always assumed the use of "cod" or "cods" for the testicles (most commonly noted in my world with regards to cod-pieces, which are "pieces" --articles of clothing-- to cover the cod) came from the fish. I'd always, in fact, found it a bit of a puzzle that the penis (or more properly, the testicles) would be associated with fish – since modern slang has that as a female, rather than male association -- and in fact wondered if the association was ironic: floppiness, or something like that.
Labels: bodies, death/mourning/corpses, early modern, language, ukulele
>>The suggestion here is the association with "milk," a substance that is certainly female, but whose appearance suggests its connection with semen as well – and in fact lots of early medicine took it to be the same substance, just disposed differently in men and women.<<
What the hell? Did they bother to taste them before making that weird assumption? What's the nutrition content of semen anyway? I've always wondered... I mean, for scientific reasons.
>>"Rough" is yet another spelling of roe.<<
We'd like a pizza with bloated orange roughy, please.