Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I had no idea Magnus Magnusson wrote books and presented TV shows about Vikings and archaeology.

My Canadian partner knew the books and the TV shows but had no idea about Mastermind.

Today I learned who Grant Shapps is. I do love this quote:

He said he had "over-firmly denied" having a second job.

So I was recently looking into the etymology of tempura, which I knew to be a Portuguese loan word into Japanese.

I had read somewhere that it came from the "times" (i.e., Lent) when one ate fish. With cognates like temporary and temporal. Not unusual for Romance languages derived from Latin dialects.

Then I heard the alternate suggestion that it meant "seasoned." With cognates like tempered, temperament, temperature, temperate, temperamental. Moods, flavors, emotions.

Then it hit me that season, seasoning, seasoned... also are related to the time of year, as well as spices and flavors and condiments.

it's pumpkin spice all the way down

premium YMP content like this makes my ILX subscription well worth it

^^ agreed, great post ymp! ^^

Mark s, Fun fact: pumpkin spice originally referred to spices you would put ON pumpkin (nutmeg, clove, cinnamon), but - interestingly - not pumpkin. No one wanted squash in their coffee.

Apparently after some complaints, they added a little bit of actual pumpkin flavoring to it to satisfy those persons who felt pumpkin spice should include pumpkin.

I don't really have strong feelings in the matter but it's moderately interesting. (There is a whole "No Such Thing as a Fish" podcast on this

i did not learn until today that my mom wrote a chapter in the original Our Bodies, Ourselves ??!

Wow!

omg tracer!

It was when it was still a handmade packet called “Women And Their Bodies” lol. She had absolutely zero medical training but she pointed out that there was no chapter on what was then called VD and they were like “ok do you want to write it?” and she’s like okay

Interesting!

I was once contracted to edit and publish a history book on women's health for the U.S. government. Unfortunately this happened to be the year 2000. By the time it was to be published in 2001, a new presidential administration (hi, George Bush, hi Tommy Thompson) directed us to cut out content deemed controversial, which meant nothing about birth control, abortion, or (eek) lesbians.

The book shrank by half.

I read Lol Tolhurst talking about Hulme in Manchester and found out how bad the place was as residential area. I think I came across it about 10 years after he did and it was squats, artist residence etc. So I had a nostalgic image of it when it sounds like it was hellish for a family to be moved there.

Just realized chevron (the shape) is related to goat (the animal). Because of the horns.

Cf. Chevre, goat cheese.

Further adventures in pronounciation discovered at a shockingly old age: it's pronounced Laura Nee-ro, not Nye-ro. Hate it when that happens.

Oh wow

Like gyro

Huh?

my friend orders "jy-roes" in Greek restaurants and it drives me nuts

I do that too. I plead Jersey.

The gy in gyro rhymes with I and guy and pie in the UK too.

Just ask for a doner instead.

Are you telling me you also pronounce gyroscope that way because I can't quite believe that?

It's supposed to be yee-ros but obviously most places will understand you if you say jy-ros.

Of course there are also sandwiches called heroes.

Alba, they come from the same root! Turning or spinning.

Exactly

And we say them the same

https://www.rd.com/article/how-to-pronounce-gyro/

my friend orders "jy-roes" in Greek restaurants and it drives me nuts

I pronounce them hong-roes

This is the second piece of Hongro wordplay I've seen on ILE this week and I'm here for it.

Gyros is just the Greek word for a doner kebab, the Greeks being loath to give the Turks any credit for anything.

I'm sure they felt hard done-r

We were at our local Greek restaurant recently and the waitress came by to ask if we needed anything else.

My wife kicked me under the table because she knew I was about to sing WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER YEE-RO

OMG Jy-Ros is a capital crime where I come from!

courtesy of a mistake in my grocery delivery I have just learned that Grey Poupon mustard is not actually grey and is called that because it was invented by 2 blokes called Grey and Poupon

Someone once told me that they overheard someone else order 'FAH-ju-TAZZ' in a Mexican restaurant. One of the more impressively hilarious food-based mispronunciations I've ever encountered.

I worked in a California Mex restaurant, and I got:

"fuh-JAH-tas"
"fuh-JAI-tas"
"faj-tuhs"

but what I rarely got was tipped

we could eat yee-ros, just for one day

Not really shocking but I just learned a useful term that was borrowed from the French, jeune premier, which means a young man who plays romantic leads. See also jeune premiere for actresses.

Although actually the role is what’s young, not necessarily the actor playing it.

It means an actor who typically plays such roles.

I recently saw a high school production of "As You Like It" and tried to explain to my elder child how many layers of meaning must have been involved in Shakey times, having a boy play a girl who was pretending to be a boy etc. Etc. My kid was like, "uh, yeah, dad, it's 2024."

My Mexican uncle shook his head at the American pronunciations he had heard. His favorite was "jah-LAP-eh-nos."

While I am generally leery of bad anglicizations, we still make Paris rhyme with ferrous, and say Germany instead of Deutschland, etc.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13409/pg13409-images.html#link2H_4_0017

wait, herod was jewish? i sorta assumed he was like, a... i guess a gentile roman lackey.

i did not learn until today that my mom wrote a chapter in the original Our Bodies, Ourselves ??!

this is incredible. and also*

i did not learn until today that my mom wrote a chapter in the original Our Bodies, Ourselves ??!

I saw somebody posting about that this week and was impressed! Also condolences, Tracer. She seemed pretty amazing. Saw her at many demonstrations and events over the years.

Thank you tipsy. I liked reading your piece about her.