Allegro ma non troppo

If I have any kind of individual writing style then it is a careless blend of the highfalutin' and the demotic or even racy; in other words, people may need a dictionary for one sentence and are offended by the coarseness of the next. This means that am often taken to task for faults in my writing, being condemned either for pretentiousness or crudity.

The atmosphere during many a convivial evening at Reginald's has become ill-natured or even violent when I have been forced to defend myself against attacks by Grumio or other soi-disant linguistic experts expressing their contempt for some trivial syntactical or stylistic error in something I have published.

Nearly always these strictures are totally unjustified; a typical example is the criticism of my excessive use of "selah", on the grounds that I do not actually know what the word means. This is unfair: if we all restricted our vocabulary to words of which we fully comprehend the meaning then discourse would be stifled and politicians, for example, would have to remain permanently mumchance (a pleasing prospect).

Anyway, in the case of "selah", there is every excuse for not knowing the meaning, for no-one really does. The Oxford Dictionary has:    

selah, exclamation
(in the Bible) occurring frequently at the end of a verse in Psalms and Habakkuk, probably as a musical direction.

This is not much help and is probably wrong: musical directions are not exclamations. So never mind what Habbakuk meant, I use it to mean any one of a number of things, for example: amen; what d'you think of that?; so there!; you know I'm right; QED; here endeth the lesson, or whatever.

Selah!

[The title of this post really is a musical direction and has an interesting story behind it.] 

Cops and Rozzers

We like naming things, so much so that a multilingual glossary of some groups of names would be a hefty volume.

Take insects, for example; in hundreds of years entomologists have already named millions of the little chaps, but there may still be many whole species which remain anonymous. Then there are our naughty bits: there are thousands of terms for these—technical, demotic or vulgar—although those in the last group are never uttered in polite society; any English translation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel will contain several hundred names for the items relevant to both genders.

A similar restriction applies to deities, many of whom are said to wax exceeding wrathful if their name, or one of their many names, is actually spoken. An extreme case of such divine paranoia is described by Arthur C Clarke in The Nine Billion Names of God, but I will not reveal the appalling punishment meted out if anyone lists these, for that would spoil the enjoyment of those who have never read this classic 1953 short story.

Police officers are another group bearing many names; a few are affectionate, most are insulting; Wikipedia lists two hundred of them. Inexplicably, a disproportionate number seem to originate in Turkey, such as this one:
Aynasız
The most common slang word to address a police officer in Turkish. The word literally means "mirrorless", and its attribution to a police officer suggests that a cop is perceived as someone who constantly accuses others of vice, whereas he himself has no mirror to see his own vice. It is the semi-official equivalent of the English word "pig" (only when used to refer to the police), and commonly used when translating English-spoken movies into Turkish. Pronunciation is roughly I-nuh-suzz. (Plural: Aynasızlar)

Few of the terms Wikipedia lists are as sophisticated as that. Most are rather dull:
Hot Dogs
a Chinese term referring to stationary traffic cops and guards who are standing in the sun all day.
or:
Bängen
Swedish slang term for the police. Originally an old Swedish word for devil, from Romani Beng with the same meaning.

The Blue Comes Through

A few years ago I wrote a post about my first employers and their products (or, rather, one of them; I omitted to mention another of our best sellers, an ointment for piles: blind, bleeding, itching, ulcerated or protruding).

And we sold all round the world other equally effective remedies for a variety of distressing maladies. Our advertising, though perfectly honest, was colourful and convincing; inevitably, it evoked a great number of enquiries and it was one of my duties as Export Manager to respond to them.

Many were from West Africa. In those days none of them were of the kind which asked for my bank details so as to facilitate the transfer to me of huge sums of money; some were heartwarming expressions of gratitude for having relieved the writer's discomfort or worry and others asked for advice or a free sample. Most included lurid details of the writer's symptoms, and some of these had to be kept out of the sight of the junior office staff, for these were prudish times; nowadays, of course, they would be pinned up so that everyone could have a giggle.

In reply I used a number of different standard letters, all of them ethically impeccable, giving sound advice where this could do no harm and always recommending consulting a doctor. Sometimes I would add a non-committal sentence of comfort or re-assurance.

I still have a file of the most entertaining letters that I received. It was all rather a waste of time, really. It would have been easier, and perhaps kinder, to have had a few hundred standard replies ready-printed for use in most cases, simply saying:

Dear Sir
You have the pox.
Yours faithfully....

Salutations in Cochinchina

When visiting one of the many parts of the world where they speak a language of which I have no knowledge, I always try to master a few phrases before I go. To help me with this I used to use Babel Fish but now I find Google Translate is better, and will pronounce the phrase for you as well as translate it. It is important to practise: get an intonation only slightly wrong and, with Asian languages in particular, you might ask your neighbour at dinner to pass the salt and find that you have insulted the fellow's grandmother in a most unmentionable manner.

It is useless to learn how to ask for directions, or indeed any kind of question other than rhetorical ones, for you will not understand the answer: cheery greetings and courtesies are what you need. Here, for example, are translations into Vietnamese of some phrases which might be useful when you are strolling in the vibrant market streets of Saigon:

Get out of here
Có được ra khỏi đây

Why don't you get out of here?
Tại sao bạn không nhận được ra khỏi đây?

If you don't get out of here, I will knock your block off / kick you in the mouth
Nếu bạn không nhận được ra khỏi đây, tôi sẽ rời khỏi khối / đá bạn trong miệng


[For the technically minded:  Google Translate uses statistical machine translation, which has made substantial advances in recent years, while Babel Fish uses SYSTRAN rule-based technology.]

Selection No 36

More re-cycled posts from 2005:
 
literature
Books that sound fascinating but probably aren't

religion
Sadly, now topical: fatuous comment on God's role in Katrina

personal
Casual observation on trivial matter evokes lively argument

Misunderstanding

I have just discovered that several versions of this probably apocryphal story have been circulating for years. Why had I never heard it until now?

On a visit to the Elysée Palace, Dorothy Macmillan said to Mme de Gaulle: "Now that your husband has achieved so much, is there any particular wish you have for him?", to which Madame replied: "Yes, a penis."

There was a stunned silence until General De Gaulle looked up and said: "Ah yes, 'appiness is what we all want."

In Glorious Drearicolor!

The website World of Soviet Groceries is not nearly as exciting as it sounds, though it does give an accurate if depressing picture of what life in the Soviet Union must have been like. 

When I was there the USSR still had a few years of life left in it and I don't remember what I ate in Moscow so I suppose most of the dishes must have been along the same lines as those illustrated.

So indeed were the entertainments provided for us by our hosts, though I suppose they meant well: the high spot was an hour spent in a glum queue waiting to file past the embalmed corpse of Lenin, and a close second was a promised afternoon at the Bolshoi Theatre, which turned out not to be one one of the great ballets or operas but a two-hour talk on the history of the Bolshoi, in Russian.

Cab and me

Last Thursday was an important anniversary for me, and by an extraordinary co-incidence it was also an anniversary for the great Cab Calloway, for on 3rd March in the year I was born he published Minnie the Moocher, the first million-selling jazz record.

But sadly I could not invite him to join me in celebration because he died in 1994, and I certainly wouldn't want to invite his trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who stabbed him in the leg with a small knife in 1941 and died in 1993.

So to mark the occasion I had dinner with my immediate family, nine of us, at a restaurant in rural Sussex: no scat singing or HBTY, just a couple of hours browsing and sluicing.

As a matter of interest (my interest, that is) I ate:
Potted Herring, Slow Cooked Gloucester Old Spot Belly, Fennel Gratin, Chestnut Honey Tart, Green Walnut Ice Cream... and miscellaneous forkfuls from the plates of those who had something different: Barbary duck, onion jam potatoes, pigeon, that sort of thing. An eight-year-old grand-daughter had chosen Jacob's Ladder (illustrated below), but needed very little help from me in putting it away. 

It was a splendid evening.

.

Welcome to Chicago

No 33 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

July 1933  Chicago needed good news. With Roosevelt's New Deal the end of the Great Depression seemed to be in sight and the final death of Prohibition was only months away. With Al Capone in prison and many mobsters dead times were quieter and 22 million people came to this racy fair, here announced in suitable style for the world's jazz capital. Even the pose of the bathing belle is as angular as a swastika.

Evelyn and Valentine write to the Mellons in Guildford NY: We went to the stock yards yesterday. You should see them cut ham off & pork loins. Just 2 cuts for ham and 1 for a loin.

Acupuncture’s dubious past

KSJ Tracker is a service for science journalists, created and funded by the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last year they published this note reviewing an article in a German newspaper about the background of acupuncture. I was attracted to it by the amazing diagram, which tells you everything you need to know about this ancient Chinese art, if you are an ancient Chinese quack.

It was George Soulié de Morant, a Frenchman (1878-1955), who is considered to be the “father” of western style acupuncture. His descriptions in his books of how and where to put the needles into the skin of patients guided all his followers. Unfortunately he was a fabulist, according to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The author (Hanjo Lehmann) is a physician and head of the German Institute for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), whose aim it is to research the scientific basis of TCM. He seems to be the first ever who really looked into the roots of the western style acupuncture and the ridiculous theories of Soulié de Morant. The article explains his fraud in detail, starting with his name – he himself added the aristocratic “de Morant”. Although he writes that he spoke Chinese, when he arrived in China in 1901 (only 23 years old!) there is no hint, that he ever studied Chinese or lived with Chinese people. Also, his rank as vice-consul and judge seems implausible, because he never visited any university or diplomatic school.

Regarding acupuncture, Soulié de Morant describes how he first saw and practised the technique himself during a cholera outbreak in Bejing in 1901. Unfortunately, no records of such an outbreak at that time exist. These and dozens of more inconsistencies are interesting, but what consequences do they have for “modern” acupuncture therapies? Well, Soulié de Morant’s fiction and misconceptions not only found their way into but are the very basis of current acupuncture. The whole philosophy of western acupuncture, with energy streams and stuff like that, is based on sloppy translations, misconceptions or even blank fantasy. As an example, the “Qi” in Chinese acupuncture tradition meant a fine substance; Soulié translated it into the disembodied, current-like “energy”, a whole different concept. One might say,  “Who cares? In most cases, acupuncture doesn’t work, anyway.”

In Germany, to get official approval to offer acupuncture German physicians must pay for an expensive course, based on Soulié de Morant’s quackery. So patients are having needles stuck into them based on the fantasies of a fraud.

And bring your good lady

A couple of years ago I published a post about the invitations which I occasionally receive from my old school. It would be hypocritical to express my regrets that I cannot attend, and ungracious to explain that that the functions they refer to are usually of a kind which are less attractive to me than the prospect of being thrown, naked, into a vat of boiling pitch. So I do not reply.

But they have not given up on me. Presumably they have a mouldering database of email addresses of old boys, many of whom have been dead for thirty years, which still includes mine. Anyway, they are still trying, and the invitation I had the other day was much more intriguing that the usual ones. It announced:

Prostate Awareness Roadshow and Social Evening

...at the Rugger Clubhouse, "...not just a venue for sportsmen: it is the spiritual home of the Old Boys and has 6 changing rooms for simultaneous blood tests". I had no idea!

Besides a talk from a consultant urological surgeon, "...the evening will also be a social affair and a chance to meet old friends over a pint and and gastronomic delights". The blood test is optional.

Difficult to turn down such an entrancing offer. But I shall, I shall. 

Milestones in the history of Egypt

In a couple of earlier posts I described the major events in Egypt in 1952 and 1953, in particular my arrival in Ismailia in February 1952, my move to Fayid in July that year and my return to England in January 1953. I am now able to add a note about contemporaneous happenings there and subsequent developments.

On 23rd July 1952 King Farouk was deposed by the Free Officers movement led by Gamel Abdel Nasser and Mohamed Naguib Yousef Qotp (Qotp?) Elkashlan, and the latter became Egypt's first Prime Minister. Eleven months later the Republic of Egypt was established and Naguib was sworn in as President. He had often been censured and as a child sometimes even whipped by his British tutors for criticizing Britain's occupation of Egypt and Sudan, but I had always felt he was a reasonable chap as army officers go and although I never actually met him I was ready to give him my full support had he asked me.

In November 1954, however, he was ousted by Nasser. By that time I was working in England as Export Manager for an American firm of proprietary medicine manufacturers, so I could play no part in what happened later: in fact, my influence on Middle Eastern affairs generally had declined for ever; Suez, the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein and the departure of the Shah all took place without my involvement, though over the years I had some happy times in Amman, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Luxor and many other hot noisy places where people try to sell you things.

And I never gave a thought to Hosni Mubarak, or he to me, during his thirty years of brutal dictatorship, until the last eighteen days and the immensely satisfying dénouement yesterday.

Flavour of the Month

Here's an extract from The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit:   

Avocado and Lime: Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra singing ‘Some Velvet Morning'.  At once beautiful together and distinctly separate, Lee the velvety note of avocado, Nancy the high-pitched lime that that cuts through the smoothness just when you’re getting too comfortable.

The association may largely be down to my having played the song over and over again, driving down Highway 1 in California on honeymoon. While others toast their future together over lightly grilled fish and flutes of champagne served on a lapping pontoon in the Indian Ocean, we stopped at striplit taquerías and ate burritos the size of shotputters’ forearms. Tender strips of grilled steak come rolled in a floury, slightly crisp tortillas packed with rice, beans, soured cream, mouth-watering, lime-laced guacamole and salsa so fiery you have to grab the sides of the little plastic service basket till your eyes stop streaming tears.

On the subject of guacamole, some say that leaving the avocado stone in will prevent discoloration. My view is that if the guacamole’s around long enough to find out, you’re not making it right.

Her rapturous description of a jumbo burrito reminds me how disgusting Tex-Mex food is. But isn't she fun to read?

Letting the French back in

Here is a picture of the British landing from their boats before the battle of Quebec, on September 17th, 1759. The leaders on both sides, Wolfe and Montcalm, were killed. (There was another Battle of Quebec in December 1775, when the British and Canadian garrison drove off an American attack and ended the threat to the British control of Canada.)

But Canadians know all this, of course, and possibly a few Englishmen as well; that is not what this post is about.

In the English county of Kent there is a small town called Westerham (town square shown below). Winston Churchill and I used to live not far from there, though not in the same house or at the same time.

It was the birthplace of General Wolfe, so naturally local pubs, tea-rooms and, for all I know, public conveniences, proudly bear his name.

On the outskirts of the town there is a large house, converted some years ago into a very good restaurant. It was run by a large and fierce francophone Egyptian called Zarb. I like to think that it was not from chauvinism or to thumb his nose at the locals but in a spirit of respect and reconciliation that he called it Le Marquis de Montcalm.

Location, location

Earlier this month I wrote about the incorporation of the Oxford Thesaurus into The Online Oxford Dictionary. Exciting news indeed, but I omitted to mention that one year's subscription to the combined work costs GBP205 or US$295.

But it needn't cost you anything at all. If you are a true-born, full-blooded Englishman there is no problem; if you are not true-born, or full-blooded, or English, or a man (or not even a UK resident), then you will have to go to a little trouble, but of course it will be well worth it. This is what you must do:

1. Choose a town in the UK where you could bear to live. Tastes vary so much that I cannot advise on this, but there are plenty of publications which will guide you, either negatively or positively, such as Crap Towns of Southeast England, Essex for Gourmets, We Ban Members of the Bullingdon Club, No LibDems Here, The Top 100 Scottish Towns for Posh Totty, Havens in Dorset for Hedge Fund Managers, Muggers' Cumbria, Slough: The Stamp Collector's Paradise and many others.

2. Log on to the website of the town you have chosen, find the telephone number of its public library and phone to find out whether it is covered by the agreement with the Oxford University Press permitting them to enable their subscribers to access OUP online publications (most UK library authorities are) from their home computers without charge.

3. If the answer is yes, move yourself (and your family if you like) to that town and join its library. You will be given a PIN.

4. Enjoy the OED and the Thesaurus for the rest of your life or until the British government closes down all the public libraries and sells the OED to Houghton Mifflin.

.

Book now to survive

Earlier this month a reader's letter in Private Eye drew attention to an advertisement which had appeared in Eye 1279. It is a tiny ad and contains only a coloured picture of some sort of conflagration and the questions "Have you thought about the future?" and "Are you ready" (with no question mark). But it does give a link to the website http://www.arcsurvival.com/ where all is explained.

The site is well designed, though the spelling and punctuation of the text are not of the highest standard, but the welcome page advises: "If you do not have expendable liquid funds available to you, to cover as a minimum of one point five million euros for each member of your family, please do not continue". I would have to check whether I qualify, which is by no means certain, but clearly the offer is aimed at a high proportion of OMF's demographic, and in the interests of my readers I felt bound to investigate so that none of them would miss the opportunity of a profitable investment.

It is indeed a remarkable offer. Bearing in mind that "the Mayan’s predicted thousands of years ago that mankind as we know it would cease to exist at the end of December 2012" (cue lovely picture of a Mayan carving), that ..."the Knights of Malta, Knights of the Templar, Bilderburg group, Illuminati, and so on, Reptilian hybrids, shape shifters, etc, etc) have been living underground for thousands of years, feeding off the surface in terms of energy, food, etc etc....." and are about to emerge and take over the few humans who will be left after World War 3", plus "the well-known fact that an asteroid in the shape of the devil's head will pass near the Earth in 2012", we may well be concerned about the future.

It must be said that not everyone agrees with these predictions; my friends Septimus and George, for example, who look at the end-of-mankind thing from a more Jesus-oriented viewpoint, reckon that it will all happen before the end of this year, but, unlike the ArcSurvival people, have no suggestions for avoiding the unpleasantness which awaits us all.

What does the Arc (or sometimes Ark) Survival Group have to offer?

Well, this is not a flimsy plan hastily cobbled together by amateurs. For years a "highly experienced, and knowledgeable engineering team that has over 20 years average experience in all aspects of engineering, Structural, Mechanical, Advanced Engineering,... very respected and well known by their peer’s, experts in cutting edge free energy technology, of which we have perfected and have gone to great lengths to secure, in Nuclear, chemical, biological, attack survival and with advanced knowledge and expertise in natural disaster survival, including plate shifts...and with extensive knowledge in long term food and water provision and storage..." has been preparing to offer to "a handful of Elite people" a number of Ark Survival villages completely invisible to the outside world.

Each village will have some of the latest medical equipment available, and will in fact incorporate a mini hospital, while "two of the Elite members will be fully trained and qualified Doctors who can cover all aspects of health including surgical operations. Natural and homeopathic healing will play a major role, and we are already very advanced with this including treatments and cures for previously thought incurable diseases".

Security will be paramount: "We have a small number of specialists ex British SAS members who are part of our team and play a major role in member preparation, training, and state of the art security measures. This ensures that our survival village, will not only be completely stealth, but will be secure against any outside hostility".

It is good to know that "careful vetting of all who become part of this project" will be considered "of the up most importance", though presumably care will be taken not to infringe any of the provisions of the Equal Opportunities Act or relevant EU regulations. After all, being one of the Elite may involve staying underground for several years, and after paying all that money it would be distressing to find that one was expected to share accommodation with a rowdy bunch of former hedge fund managers or LibDem supporters.

We are told that: "Commissioning will commence from July 2011 through to November 2012 and planned first evacuation December 15th 2012". However, the Mayans prophesied nasty things happening at the end of December 2012 and of course the devil's head asteroid is scheduled to start upsetting everyone's arrangements in the same month, so time is getting very short.

The project sounds well thought out and attractive, though some may be doubtful about "placing funds into an irrevocable letter of credit attached to a contact agreeable to both parties, for no less than 60% of the total required amount". Still, we were warned at the outset that only those ready to contribute a minimum of one point five million euros for each member of their family should enter the website.

Fractally speaking

Maths jokes, let alone good ones, are rare, and I am indebted to my friend Froog, eminent Sinologist, former barrister and now doyen of the Beijing Bar Society, for passing on this:

Q: The great mathematician who died last year was called Benoit B. Mandelbrot. What does the B stand for?

A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot

Having a ball in Berlin, 1930

No 33 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

May 1930   A  scene set for any amoral tale of Berlin's cabaret years. The couple occupy one of the 'postillons d'amour with curtains' advertised on the back of the card (as is table-to-table telephone). Then mood is sophisticated, liberated, modern, everything that makes Frank write My dearest Eva, Come to Berlin for a proper holiday. You cannot find the same in England. Amusement, weather, sights and all are good & I can act as guide. Was Eva (in Hounslow) tempted? Did she enter the novel whose opening lines this message could so convincingly supply?

Anne's First Theorem

Anne teaches mathematics, and our friend Grumio gave her this Christmas present:

He had it produced for Anne by TheoryMine, whose details are here (read the FAQs). A certificate of registry was provided guaranteeing that it is unique and provable, and that it has been recorded under her name in their database.

As most readers of OMF know, a theorem is a mathematical formula for which we have a proof. Both theorems and proofs are within a theory which consists of a set of axioms. A proof is a sequence of formulae, starting with some axioms and ending with the theorem. Each non-axiom formula in this sequence follows from the previous formulae in the sequence. All the axioms in TheoryMine theories are recursive definitions.

Recursion is a mathematical technique that is much used in computer programs. In a recursive definition, the value of a recursive function is defined in terms of values of the same function applied to smaller inputs. This sounds circular, but because the function's inputs get smaller and smaller the computation eventually stops. TheoryMine also uses recursion to define brand new types of input and output for each theory. These are called recursive data-structures.

But never mind about all that; theorems are abstract objects that are not subject to wear and tear. Even diamonds will be destroyed in the heat death of the universe; theorems won't be.

So what a splendid gift they make! No-one could doubt that they are a girl's best friend.

Les Mots Justes

When people stumble across a blog which seems to have no obvious theme or purpose, they naturally wonder what it is about. What's the point?, they ask themselves...what's the fellow's game?

So right from the start I have made it absolutely clear what themes OMF conspicuously lacked, and exactly what range of purposes it was not intended to serve: the blog is basically a confused and confusing assortment of disparate bits and pieces, if you will pardon the cliché, and with the help of the good Dr Roget, I compiled a list of all the words which seemed to me to describe its essence. These sixteen words are listed in ABOUT.

Now, as OMF lumbers into its seventh year, it occurs to me that this brief description of it is inadequate. By a happy coincidence, there was a historic event in the  publishing world last month which provided me with a wonderful tool to help me flesh it out: this was the incorporation into the mighty Oxford English Dictionary of the equally mighty Oxford Historical Thesaurus of the English Language (see note at the foot of this post) into the online version of the OED.

So it was the work of a moment to search for "medley" in the great thesaurus and get a list of thirty-two more words or phrases describing OMF. Here they are:

a mishmash 1475 A confused mixture or jumble; a muddle.
a peasemeal 1525 (figurative) A hotchpotch, a mess.
omnium gatherum 1530 A gathering or collection of all sorts of people or things.
a mingle 1548 A mingled mass, a mixture.
hotchpotch 1549 A confused mixture of disparate things; a medley, a jumble.
mingle-mangle 1549 A mixture, a mishmash; a confused medley of things, ideas, persons, etc.
a rhapsody 1574 A miscellany or medley; esp. a muddled collection of words, ideas, etc.
a sauce-medley 1579 A concoction, a mixture compounded by art.
a pell-mell 1586 An indiscriminate mingling, a confused mixture or throng.
a linsey-woolsey 1592 (figurative) A strange medley; confusion, nonsense.
a wilderness 1594 A mingled, confused, or vast assemblage or collection of persons or things.
a brewage 1599 (figurative)
a macaronic 1611 A jumble or medley.
an olla podrida 1635 A diverse mixture of things or elements
a consarcination 1640 Anything patched up, a heterogeneous combination.
a porridge 1642 A jumble, a mess; something without structure or substantial content; something dull or turgid.
an olio 1649 Any mixture of many heterogeneous elements.
a jumble 1661 A confused or disorderly mixture or assemblage
a motley 1698 An incongruous or confused mixture.
a capilotade 1705 (figurative) A cooked-up story, hash, medley.
a hash 1733 A mixture of mangled and incongruous fragments; a medley; a spoiled mixture; a mess
a salmagundi 1761 (figurative) A mixture
a pasticcio 1785 A confused mixture, a hotchpotch; a mess.
a macédoine 1820 A medley or mixture of unrelated things.
a job lot 1828 A motley assortment brought together (freq. cheaply)
a conglomerate 1837 (figurative) A mixture of various materials or elements, clustered together without assimilation.
a pot-pourri 1841 A diverse collection or assortment of people or things
a chow-chow 1850 A mixture or medley of any sort.
a jumbling 1852 What is produced by the action of the verb jumble
a haggis 1899 A mixture, hodge-podge; a mess.
a casserole 1930 (figurative) A variety of things cooked together.

Paradoxically, the forty-eight words together make up a precise and accurate specification of Other Men's Flowers, which is a perfect epitome of imprecision and inaccuracy.

Other Men's Flowers wishes a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all conglomerate fans, pasticcio buffs, chow-chow lovers, linsey-wolsey enthusiasts and peasemeal aficionados.


[The Oxford Historical Thesaurus is a taxonomic classification of the majority of senses and lemmas in OED Online. It can be thought of as a kind of semantic index to the contents of the OED, and can be used in OED Online to navigate around the dictionary by topic, find related terms, and explore the lexical history of a concept or meaning. Each class (a list of senses and lemmas sharing a particular meaning) is arranged chronologically, giving a historical overview of the concept represented by that class.]