Have a Word With You?

Howdy Ahead of Armageddon

Update Department:

My friend Ian Frazier, author of wonderful books including Travels of Siberia, informs me that Putin is from the same root as Sputnik, the Russian space satellite, which means "travel partner," "runnin' buddy," "road dawg." So maybe my speculation that Putin sounds like a family term for a private part of the body was off.

Reality Check Department:

Yzette Swan, a young woman whom I have known, and beamed at, since she was in something like the second grade, smiled at me the other day and remarked:

            "I like your hipster glasses."

            It had not occurred to me that there was anything special about that pair of reading glasses. I smiled. And almost said, "Thanks."

            But no. I am not quite that easily drawn in.

            "Hipster . . . " I said. "That's not the same, though, as . . . "

            Yzette let me dangle, just for a moment. Then:

            "Hip."

            "Ah," said I.

            And tried to think of other words in which the suffix -ster means "not so much."     

            Not lobster. That strange animal's verbal ancestor is Old English loppestre, which meant both "lobster" and "locust." Perhaps the b crept in, says etymonline.com, under the influence of Old English lobbe, "spider." Think about that the next time you lock eyes with a lobster.

            Now. You're probably eliminating oyster, too. On the grounds that oyster does not mean someone who says oy with no real feeling. Indeed, oyster is from the Proto-Indo-European root *ost-, "bone." Nothing to do, etymology tells us, with either the Yiddish oy or the Cockney  oi.

            But wait just a minute. On definitions.net, we read: "The 1937 musical song "The Lambeth Walk" from Me and My Girl ends with a cry of 'Oi!', expressing defiance and transgression of the working class characters; it was  newsworthy when the King and Queen, with the rest of the audience, cocked their thumbs and shouted Oi!"

            That King and Queen (Edward and Alexandra), I'm thinking, were oisters.

            I don't go around shouting oi, myself. I didn't even know about the Cockney oi until Ted Lasso came along. That's a good series, there. The players, who are from all over, holler oi a lot,  with feeling.

            You know where the word soccer came from? Nothing to do with sock. It's from Assoc., an abbreviation of Football Association, as opposed to Rugby football. Which is called rugger. So instead of soccer, why not asser? Popular usage can only push the King’s and/or Queen’s English so far.

            By the way:

Today's top ten "Trending words" (I guess that means the ten words that are being looked up most often) on etymonline are, in order:

                        howdy

                        pharmacy

                        retail

                        female

                        irregardless

                        wealth

                        indigenous

                        armageddon

                        lunatic

                        jesus

            No higher than number 9, armageddon?  That's a relief.

Your assignment is to make up a sentence using those ten words, not necessarily in order. Here’s a start:

“Howdy,” said the lunatic in the pharmacy . . .

                  Now For Yet Another Limerick

               In the Ongoing Series, What Is Wrong

                           With Men?

                        First date. A fellow named Ferd

                        Is searching for just the right word:

                                    "I guess you could say

                                    That I … am ...  a ...

                        What's that? No, not a nerd!"