Silent Letters

[Carborendum]

 

Edited December 20, 2024 by Carborendum

[Vort]

Silent Letter Day, aka Middle English.

[Jamie123]

Quote

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;

As You Like It Act 2 scene 7.

In Shakespeare's time the h was not silent, so he was actually making a rather naughty pun which goes unnoticed today.

Edited January 4 by Jamie123

[Vort]

On 1/4/2025 at 9:42 AM, Jamie123 said:

As You Like It Act 2 scene 7.

In Shakespeare's time the h was not silent, so he was actually making a rather naughty pun which goes unnoticed today.

That Shakespeare and his ribald humor. He did enjoy spicing up his plays in ways that we modern English speakers don't get.

[Carborendum]

15 hours ago, Vort said:

That Shakespeare and his ribald humor. He did enjoy spicing up his plays in ways that we modern English speakers don't get.

A coworker needed help with a crossword puzzle. I told them the required word was "bawd."

They knew what that word meant. But being the "prude" of the office (I honestly have no idea how I got that reputation) they wondered how I knew that word.

They had heard me quote Shakespeare a lot.  So, I told them, "You can't read any play by Shakespeare without also coming across footnotes that say, "And there is also a bawdy innuendo."

Shame on me for reading footnotes.

Edited January 7 by Carborendum

[zil2]

2 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Shame on me for reading footnotes.

Scandalous!

[mordorbund]

4 hours ago, Carborendum said:

footnotes

The other silent letters

[Carborendum]

19 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

The other silent letters

A friend asked me (I could tell that this was a setup to a joke) "Do you know why Asians are considered porky?  Because they're the other white meat."

(eyeroll) The things friends can get away with saying that no one else can.

[SilentOne]

12 hours ago, Carborendum said:

A coworker needed help with a crossword puzzle. I told them the required word was "bawd."

They knew what that word meant. But being the "prude" of the office (I honestly have no idea how I got that reputation) they wondered how I knew that word.

Why in the world would not appreciating bawdy references mean you shouldn't have the vocabulary to name them?

[Jamie123]

 

On 1/7/2025 at 12:45 PM, Carborendum said:

They knew what that word meant. But being the "prude" of the office (I honestly have no idea how I got that reputation) they wondered how I knew that word.

Many many years ago a coworker was surprised that I knew what a whore was. I don't know where he thought I went to school, but even if I'd read nothing but the Bible, I'd not have avoided knowing about prostitution. It shows how much scripture he'd read.

Edited January 8 by Jamie123

[Jamie123]

Hours vs. Ours just made me remember this from the 1980s.

https://youtu.be/0QVPUIRGthI?si=ckiF5vQ2i8JNLvGs

"No they're not ours, they're hours, h. o. u. r. s. No, not h-ours, hours. It's silent!!! I don't know!!!!"

Edited January 9 by Jamie123

[Carborendum]

On 1/7/2025 at 7:31 PM, SilentOne said:

Why in the world would not appreciating bawdy references mean you shouldn't have the vocabulary to name them?

Backstory is a bit more complex.

The clue to the crossword was "tart".  In today's vernacular, that would clearly be a type of food or candy, or at least a flavor.  People don't immediately jump to the slang term.  But having memorized Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it was part of my vocabulary.

  "You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some wat'ry tart threw a sword at you!"

Compound that with the fact that the word "bawd" isn't really used at all.  "Bawdy" is used, but not common among people in their 20s.  And even then, people don't realize that the adjective "bawdy" would indicate the noun "bawd."  They were completely surprised by that.

So the fact that I used the almost never used definition of a word that is commonly used in a different sense, then linked it to an archaic word that is also never used, and that they are both a somewhat inappropriate subject, I must therefore have a dirty mind.

No. My mind naturally cross-references things, whether sacred or profane, or all things in between.

Edited January 9 by Carborendum

[Jamie123]

On 1/9/2025 at 1:44 PM, Carborendum said:

No. My mind naturally cross-references things, whether sacred or profane, or all things in between.

Another example aside from "tart" is "pussy". I understand in the US, this is primarily vulgar slang for female genitalia, though the original meaning of "cat" still survives (just). For example in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, whenever Tom interrupts Spike's nap with his violent pursuit of Jerry, Spike grabs him and says "Now listen here, pussy cat!"

There's also Tweety bird saying: "I tought I taw a puddy tat".

In the UK it's the other way around: the primary meaning is still "cat" but we are well aware of the secondary meaning, and the cross-reference is a frequent source of bawdy humour. There used to be a popular comedy show called Are You Being Served, which featured a character called Mrs. Slocombe (played by Mollie Sugden). At least once in every episode, Mrs. Slocombe would make an innocent comment about her cat, which was always open to alternative interpretation.

Examples: "My pussy was in such a state this morning!" "Mr. Humphries, leave my pussy alone!"

In an interview years later, the show's writer David Croft said "Mrs. Slocombe was talking about her cat! Anything else was entirely in your mind!" Which was absolutely true! 

Edited January 11 by Jamie123

[Vort]

7 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

In an interview years later, the show's writer David Croft said "Mrs. Slocombe was talking about her cat! Anything else was entirely in your mind!" Which was absolutely true!

Ah, the beauty and the treachery of words, which after all exist only in the mind. Even the sonic patterns we create with our vocal cords and mouths, the ink arrangements on pages, and the pixel patterns you are currently reading are simply metasymbols, representations of the thought patterns we call words. And words, of course, are merely representations of the external ideas we discuss, our meager attempts to model an external, independently existing reality that we can never actually touch, but only dance around using our wordy thoughts in a struggle to understand and contemplate what's really out there in existence. We are a part of that existence, yet we can access it only t hrough our imperfect senses, and we can understand it only using the biochemical signals within and between our neurons. It's amazing, frightening, and confounding, yet we struggle through. Because what else are we do to?

As Magritte says, | <- ceci n'est pas une pipe. (It's only a pixel pattern representing a pipe.)

[Carborendum]

On 1/11/2025 at 11:07 AM, Jamie123 said:

In an interview years later, the show's writer David Croft said "Mrs. Slocombe was talking about her cat! Anything else was entirely in your mind!" Which was absolutely true! 

I'm reminded of Gene Simmons responding to people's remarks that KISS stood for "Knights In Satan's Service."

He asked: What the H--- is that supposed to be?"

Interviewer: So, what does KISS mean?

Simmons: Nothing more than what you do with two pairs of lips.

[Ironhold]

15 hours ago, Carborendum said:

I'm reminded of Gene Simmons responding to people's remarks that KISS stood for "Knights In Satan's Service."

He asked: What the H--- is that supposed to be?"

Interviewer: So, what does KISS mean?

Simmons: Nothing more than what you do with two pairs of lips.

I've actually read Gene's circa 2001 autobiography "KISS and Make-Up". 

In it, he claims that he, Paul, Peter, and IIRC Ace were brainstorming names while at a stoplight one day, and KISS was something they regarded as mutually acceptable; it was short enough to be easily remembered, but distinctive enough that it stood out. 

As it is, Gene went to Hebrew school after he and his mother arrived in New York City, and so he admitted in the book that he would frequently quote the Bible right back at people who accused him of Satanism back in the 1970s to see what their reaction was. 

The whole glam rock vibe? Gene claimed that he and Paul were bored with seeing bands that just stood around or sat around playing & didn't do anything to justify the cost of seeing them live. They figured that if they were going to make it worth it for people to buy their tickets they were going to put on an absolute spectacle. 

[Vort]

5 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

Gene's circa 2001 autobiography "KISS and Make-Up".

Thnk what you will of Gene Simmons, but this book title is just brilliant.