A butt load and other things.

So it looks like I may be a once a month writer. It also looks like I am beginning a habit of starting my blog posts with the word "so." SO… in honor of that word. I have dedicated this post to the accumulation of words I have looked up on my phone or those that have stood out to me in some way this past week.  

WARNING! There are etymological definitions in this post. Don't be skittish. Etymology is your friend.

1) Waffle: 

Some of you may believe I have recently become obsessed with this word. It is not true. I do like waffles and we had some pretty incredible one’s at our New Year’s party, but the search for this definition came while eating waffles at Aspen Grove with Gretchen and Katie. I am instead, obsessed with etymology, or word origins. And apart from functioning as a clock and obviously, a phone, my cell phone’s most important job after those tasks is to act as an all-knowing advisor. “I'll look it up,” at least for me, seems to be the new “can you hear me now?” of the smartphone generation. Perhaps after “is there an app for that?” and “Do you have Angry Birds?”

Etymology: 

waffle (n.): 

1744, from Du. wafel "waffle," from M.Du. or M.L.G. wafel; cognate with O.H.G. waba "honeycomb" (Ger. Wabe) and related to O.H.G. weban, O.E. wefan "to weave" (see weave). Sense of "honeycomb" is preserved in some combinations referring to a weave of cloth. Waffle iron is from 1794.

(This of course makes perfect sense in reference to the traditional honeycombed appearance of modern waffle makers…)

waffle (v.): 

1690s, "to yelp, bark," frequentative of waff "to yelp" (1610); possibly of imitative origin. Figurative sense of "talk foolishly" (1701) led to that of "vacillate, equivocate" (1803), originally a Scottish and northern English usage. Related: Waffled; waffling.

I couldn’t leave out this definition of the word however…Who knew that all those waffling politicians could be linked back to yelping and barking… This, OF COURSE, made me think of one of my favorite childhood Christmas Specials. "Here we come a waffling." Enjoy.

2) Witance: 

This was the word I was asked to type into Gretchen’s blog to verify I was a human being and not a virus leaving her a message about our next Daycare Theater movie selection. This is not a “real” word in the English language. In fact, if you Google this word all that comes up are garbled words used as code or VERY poorly translated sentences:

“Tha the handsgh the souhat files of the Qi rArts oliva, the clawy reinforcdes, I hea you not lhas a relaxcited witance of wid vividly at

”firhe Ying Keraid the l moved witance, liketoday's reloped him.gray. 

But this should/could be a word because of the combination of its individual parts.

Wit:

1. The natural ability to perceive and understand; intelligence.

2. The ability to perceive and express in an ingeniously humorous manner the relationship between seemingly incongruous or disparate things.

wit (n.): 

"mental capacity," O.E. wit, more commonly gewit, from P.Gmc. *witjan (cf. O.S. wit, O.N. vit, Dan. vid, Swed. vett, O.Fris. wit, O.H.G. wizzi "knowledge, understanding, intelligence, mind," Ger. Witz "wit, witticism, joke," Goth. unwiti "ignorance"), from PIE *woid-/*weid-/*wid- "to see," metaphorically "to know" (see vision). Related to O.E. witan "to know" (source of wit (v.)). Meaning "ability to make clever remarks in an amusing way" is first recorded 1540s; that of "person of wit or learning" is from late 15c. For nuances of usage, see humor.

-ance: 

1. indicating an action, state or condition, or quality

 -ance:

suffix attached to verbs to form abstract nouns of process or fact (convergence from converge), or of state or quality (absence from absent); ultimately from L. -antia and -entia, which depended on the vowel in the stem word. As Old French evolved from Latin, these were leveled to -ance, but later French borrowings from Latin (some of them subsequently passed to English) used the appropriate Latin form of the ending, as did words borrowed by English directly from Latin (diligence, absence). English thus inherited a confused mass of words from French and further confused it since c.1500 by restoring -ence selectively in some forms of these words to conform with Latin. Thus dependant, but independence, etc.

Wit + ance 

So, as English “inherited a confused mass of words” it didn’t seem to add wit + ance together. The combination is plausible, but awkward. 

“Her genuine witance made her very likable” doesn’t pack the same punch as just saying the girl is “witty". The girl with “witance” might require white gloves and a role in a BBC drama.

3) Butt load: 

My final selection came from a late night car conversation with Katie Jane. I know it’s not just me. I know you have also wondered where the phrase “butt load” came from. Here’s what I found.

1. A large amount, possibly a variant of boatload, or perhaps refering to a large container known as a butt.

“We spent all day Sunday and picked up a buttload of pecans.
”

            “For some reason there were a buttload of books with unicorns on the cover.” 

The Measurement: 

Butt - a measure of liquid capacity equal to 126 gallons or two hogs heads. An English butt is 2 hogshead of 54 imperial gallons each or ~129.7 US gallons (i.e., a UK butt is apparently slightly bigger than a US one).

But don’t confuse it with the Spanish butt. We wouldn’t want that.

A Spanish butt is based on a wine cask and is equivalent to 140 US gallons or ~116.6 UK gallons (i.e., a Spanish butt is bigger still)

1 butt equals:

•  2 hogsheads (this is probably the easiest to remember for social occasions) – OF COURSE!
•  476.961 liters
• 126 gallons
• 104.917 UK gallons
• 13.5347 bushels
•  0.131592 cords
• 11.6574 firkins (not to be confused with jerkin  
• 4032 gills
• 21504 ponys
• 4032 noggins
• 1008 pints
• 96768 teaspoons
• 12.0308 ephahs
• 1.58987x10^7 drops
• 10752 jiggers
• 16128 shots
• 629.504 wine bottles
•  630 fifths

So those of you who are not quite convinced of the benefits of having a smart phone or of looking up the definitions of words and phrases should stop waffling, add to your witance, and start looking up words. There are a butt load of them out there and you never know what you might find. 

A beginning.

So here’s the deal. I have been meaning to start a blog for a while now. In fact, this site has been organized like this since August. But now that the press of my master’s thesis has finally lifted and with it the feeling that writing = overwhelmed, incompetent, and a bit pukey, it is time to start writing again. I used to think a journal was enough. But I am a terrible journal writer. I usually write too soon after an experience and spew emotions and lame phrases that sound like they should be in a high school yearbook or I become melodramatic and once again misrepresent the truth. It seems my problem is audience. Of course I am going to think “he is SOOO awesome!” because the only person I have to account to is, well, me. But as a writing instructor I recognize that audience is everything. I am not trying to amuse myself in my journal, or share my favorite music, writings, truth, and snatches of Arizona sky. Nope. It’s just me and my little brain. But here, I can share. And I love sharing. Actually, I think that is why I am a teacher. Because sometimes things are too wonderful, clear, ridiculous, inspiring, and awkward not to share them and help others recognize them as well. In fact, that is what I see as beautiful, that process of connection between people and places, humor, knowledge, inspiration, and truth. And I am in search of all those things.

During parts of my life I have wandered from one place to the next, collecting these bits of beauty or as Everett Ruess, the man whom the title of my blog was originally written for, once penned, “I only live to see again. To mix and match my colors with the visioned splendors I’ve failed to catch.” That is what makes a vagabond so restless, or at least me and Everett. We are always on the move, in search of this beauty wherever we find ourselves. It crops up in the most interesting places, like this semester in the words of one of my 19 year old students who woke to his crying infant daughter and instead of just calming her and heading back to bed, he held her for an hour so he could “learn to understand her deep brown eyes.” That kind of beauty is everywhere, mixing, growing, morphing into the genius that created “Scrooge / Muppet's Christmas Carol,” digital SLR cameras, spam haikus, or homemade waffles.

You can call these moments gifts, or for some of you— coincidence. I call it being blessed with an extraordinary life. But beware, once you start looking for the beauty, recognize that it is, in fact, all around you, it becomes addictive, buries itself deep inside and you crave it more and more. But don’t fight it. Give in, like me and Everett, until “the wild silences have enfolded [you], unresisting.” You’ll thank me when you do.  Just make sure you share those flashes of inspiration when they come, or you’ll find that someone else has patented your “Baby Cage.” And no one wants that.

 Now here we are, at least for the moment.