Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:33 pm...the use of "literally" as a mere intensifier, which pedants are always complaining about as a modern barbarity, goes back to at least 1863.

Pardon my reviving the beginning of this post, but I do have two potential citations about half a century earlier —

"And round their enormous great wide table, too, which fills up the room so dreadfully! Had the doctor been contented to take my dining-table when I came away, as anybody in their senses would have done, instead of having that absurd new one of his own, which is wider, literally wider than the dinner-table here, how infinitely better it would have been!"

“Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said.” As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. “Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!”

Both from Mansfield Park (Jane Austen), first published in 1814. Placing it into the mouth of Mrs. Norris and Maria Bertram, two characters we aren't exactly meant to like, however, I don't think Austen thought much more highly of the usage than modern pedants do.

Seen in a poem written 1892:

Dyson wrote: This drovin' on the plain, too, it’s all O.K. when the weather
Isn’t hot enough to curl the soles right off your upper leather,
Or so cold that when the mornin' wind comes hissin' through the grasses
You can feel it cut your eyelids like a whip-lash as it passes.

I’m surprised to see ‘OK’ being used in such an old poem — and in Australia even, which at the time was hardly the centre of linguistic innovation — but apparently it has been around since the 1830s.

Tangentially related to this: It is also an interesting cultural phenomenon that English-speaking countries appear to fail to realize that for them modernity began centuries ago, and seem to essentially function on the Russian timeline. I'd be curious to find out what causes that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

A young boy living in northern Russia eight hundred years ago, writing on birch bark paper, whose work by happenstance managed to survive all throughout these years buried in the soil. He made drawings alongside his academic exercises, including what Wikipedia describes as homework assigned by his teacher.

My first thought was that his teacher was probably his mother, and the "homework" was not really homework in the sense we think of it, but .... simply the classwork itself. But I looked up more information, and people seem to believe the boy was indeed studying in a modern-style classroom with other kids and was required to do more work after school.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I saw this and immediately thought of this thread. What do you think about this etymology?

calling police "fuzz" is so intrinsically tied to the 1960s that i was shocked to see it in a 1950 dictionary of underworld slang that was based on research/data collection that began in 1925

Zju wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:19 pm I saw this and immediately thought of this thread. What do you think about this etymology?

"Ancient pronunciation is unknowable."
So it's war, then.

In the movie adaptation of Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, released in 1984 and titled 2010: The Year We Make Contact, there's one line of dialogue where a character says

"Course, there's one good thing about a reactionary President, he's not into health foods. Last one, we didn't lunch, we grazed."

I remember that, when I first watched the movie, at some time in the late 1990s, I thought that stereotypes like this about people of which political persuasions are into which types of food were a very recent (from a late 1990s perspective) thing, and I was surprised to hear something like that in a movie from 1984.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:49 pm I remember that, when I first watched the movie, at some time in the late 1990s, I thought that stereotypes like this about people of which political persuasions are into which types of food were a very recent (from a late 1990s perspective) thing, and I was surprised to hear something like that in a movie from 1984.

I'm currently reading through the Doonesbury Archives (currently the early Bush Senior years), and also finding out that a lot of the stereotypes and talking points about liberals and conservatives go back (at least) to the 70s and 80s. I knew that the antagonism went way back, but it's still strange that there is political dialogue that you could run today and nobody would notice that it's 40 years old.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 2:17 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:49 pm I remember that, when I first watched the movie, at some time in the late 1990s, I thought that stereotypes like this about people of which political persuasions are into which types of food were a very recent (from a late 1990s perspective) thing, and I was surprised to hear something like that in a movie from 1984.

I'm currently reading through the Doonesbury Archives (currently the early Bush Senior years), and also finding out that a lot of the stereotypes and talking points about liberals and conservatives go back (at least) to the 70s and 80s. I knew that the antagonism went way back, but it's still strange that there is political dialogue that you could run today and nobody would notice that it's 40 years old.

…for instance?

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:40 am

hwhatting wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 2:17 am I'm currently reading through the Doonesbury Archives (currently the early Bush Senior years), and also finding out that a lot of the stereotypes and talking points about liberals and conservatives go back (at least) to the 70s and 80s. I knew that the antagonism went way back, but it's still strange that there is political dialogue that you could run today and nobody would notice that it's 40 years old.

…for instance?

Searching through the archives for that stuff takes more time than I have now. If I come across something again, I'll post it. One thing I remember is Uncle Duke testifying to a Congress committee on behalf of the NRA, which must have been in the late 70s - the arguments could be copy-pasted into today's debates.

A square sheet of inscribed metal mounted to a pole, found in Iran and dated to around 2400 BC, is claimed by many to be the world's oldest flag.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/co ... 0_bc_iran/

Putting aside the arguments about whether metal sheets inscribed with art can be considered flags or not, I'm still surprised that anything of this kind existed that far back in time. It certainly wouldnt have been visible from a great distance like modern flags are, and it certainly wouldnt be easy to produce in large quantities.

It may be that flags of this style were a local innovation that may have flourished and died out, having little to do with flags as we think of them today, but at least in Armenia around 300 BC there is evidence of flags similar to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... leOfAr.svg .... whether they were able to reliably produce them in color or not I dont know.

Huh, they're also kind of similar to modern road signs. Except we tend to use writing more than pictures.

‘newfangled’ is apparently attested from the 1400s.

There was a religious movement called the Lollards in 14th and 15th century England.

I was reminded of this by a current thread in the Conlangery forum: in the novel It Can't Happen Here, written and set in the USA of the 1930s, at one point a character who is not Chinese eats Chinese food. Now, of course the USA has had Chinese communities since at least the 19th centuries, and these communities had non-Chinese customers coming to their restaurants since at least the early 20th century. But still, when I read that part of that book, I had to remind myself of those facts, because, being German, I had previously had this vague notion that Chinese food only arrived in the West in the last decades of the 20th century.

In 1864, a scientific group was formed called the X Club.

Today I learned that the Cat Stevens song Father and Son is from 1970. Given how often I still heard it in various places when I was young, I would have guessed that it was released at some time in the 1990s.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Nov 18, 2022 6:04 am Today I learned that the Cat Stevens song Father and Son is from 1970. Given how often I still heard it in various places when I was young, I would have guessed that it was released at some time in the 1990s.

I sometimes get the feeling that a lot of Germans consider the 70s the peak of American music making. My brother went on a camping trip with a group of Pfadfinder in high school and came back complaining that in sing-alongs all they wanted to hear was John Denver.(who by that time was better remembered stateside for his collaborations with the Muppets than for his mid-70s chart dominance).

A lot of songs I discovered in the 80s were remakes of songs from the 70s and 60s. It was always a bit jarring to hear the originals--especially when covers of pops songs in earlier styles started to become popular in the late 90s, so you would sometimes hear a song and not know at first whether this was truly the "original" recording or a tongue-in-cheek reworking meant to sound like one.