Venetian Blinds

The Encyclopedia of Spurious Etymologies

Introduction:

For several years now, one of my many crackpot ideas was to create a book under the above name. Each of the many entries would be concocted as follows: first, I would choose something common and banal (and preferably with a name to match, such as the ‘Jersey Barrier’ below.) Second, I would provide the definition, genesis, and uses of that thing in all its crushingly truthful banality (definition 1a.) And finally, I would make up out of whole cloth a brand new etymology for it – one interesting, exotic – and funny. This last I would list right after the actual one (definition 1s.)

Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), I have only been able to come up with one pairing. And so my idea for such an enterprise languished for lack of sufficient number of entries. (Any encyclopedia worth its salt needs more than one entry – doesn’t it?) (NB: Since that was written, I have managed to concoct additional entries.)

Until now, that is. I have recently realized that, thanks to the internet, this encyclopedia could become a community project. And thus I am issuing this:

CALL FOR ACTUAL AND SPURIOUS ETYMOLOGIES.

You can register and begin writing your own entries here: http://www.blogger.com/home

You should sign your entries – unless (and I can understand this) you are ashamed to be associated with such an enterprise (in which case you may simply call yourself ‘Chicken Little.’) And please give credit to any sources you use on the internet.



5a. Venetian Blinds – A blind, made of thin horizontal slats or louvers, so connected as to overlap one another when closed, and to show a series of open spaces for the admission of light and air when open; they can also be pulled up so that the entire window is clear. In particular, a hanging blind of which the slats are held together by strips of webbing or other flexible material.

The blinds can be tilted by rotating a small knob that is attached to the strings, twisting a long wand, or by pulling a cord; the raising and lowering of the blinds is achieved by pulling a different string.

Venetian blinds were introduced around 1770, possibly in Venice, Italy. Slat width can be between 16-120 mm, however most common are 50 mm (2 in.)

[Sources: Wikipedia etc.]


5a'. Venetian Blinds - Any of a multitude of hunter blinds found in or near the Venetian lagoon.

[Note: I had come up with this under the assumption that it would fall in the ‘Spurious’ category. Imagine my surprise when I found out that there really is hunting in Venice!]

From the website of a hunter there:

“The hunting areas are found all along the seashore from the estuary of the fiume Pô to the border with Slovenia in the south of Udine. In this area, you are considered to be hunting in the region of Venice even if many places are situated well outside the city's lagoon. The seashore formed by water pockets and grassy silt banks named barenes has been stable for many centuries now. With the growing social importance of field sports, the owners of the valli gradually turned their properties into hunting estates. The only difference between the past and today is the fact that the estates have mainly moved from the hands of the Venetian aristocracy to those of industrial tycoons from all over Italy.

"Hemingway wrote about hunting in Venice in ‘Over the River and Through the Trees.’ He was in love with Venice in part because of a young contessina and perhaps in equal measure because of the excellent duck hunting he found there during the winters of 1948, 1949 and 1950. By then he’d learned that Venice is at its best during the fall and winter months.

“Carpaccio's charming panel of hunting on the lagoon, which has been convincingly dated to the early 1490s, shows the Venetian lagoon with birds being hunted by archers standing at the prows of their boats. Not many changes have occurred since that time.”

[Source: ‘Caccia e pesca in Venezia’]


5s. Venetian Blind – a class of sightless beggars commonly encountered in and around St. Mark’s Square in Venice.

These blind beggars are different from almost every other blind person in the civilized world in this respect: they proudly and disdainfully eschew any device – whether cane, guide dog or even another person - which might aid them in finding their way around.

Instead, they orient themselves by means of a unique and elegant acoustical radar: the antiphonal music wafting from St. Mark’s Basilica. (I did not use the term ‘radar’ lightly here. The term ‘antiphonal’ refers to music, such as the brass music of the Gabrielis, wherein two or more groups of musicians are spaced significantly apart in the space and ‘answer’ one another. Thus the beggars have at least two different sound sources to use in pinpointing their position at any given time.)

Unfortunately, this ingenious system is not foolproof: once in a while some poor hapless blind beggar strays and winds up falling into the canal. (Whether the radar had failed or the victim, forgetting the thoroughfares were waterways, had been attempting to jaywalk, is often hard to determine.) Usually they are fished out by some enterprising gondolier.

Of course there have always been some persons in Venice (beneath our contempt of course) who were discomforted by the very sight of those blind beggars. When such people lived on or near the Square, they sought to shield themselves from such unseemly beggarly vistas. Thus was commissioned a special kind of window shade - the sort with horizontal slats which could be turned upward (by means of a clever system of strings) just enough to block the view below whilst still affording the viewer both light and the sight of other building facades in the square.

Contrary to popular usage, however, those slated shades should not be referred to as ‘Venetian blinds’. Rather, the proper and correct term is ‘Venetian blind blinds’.

- Theo & Doro May theomay@comcast.net

Introduction

The Encyclopedia of Spurious Etymologies

For several years now, one of my many crackpot ideas was to create a book under the above name. Each of the many entries would be concocted as follows: first, I would choose something common and banal (and preferably with a name to match, such as the ‘Jersey Barrier’ below.) Second, I would provide the definition, genesis, and uses of that thing in all its crushingly truthful banality (definition 1a.) And finally, I would make up out of whole cloth a brand new etymology for it – one interesting, exotic – and funny. This last I would list right after the actual one (definition 1s.)

Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), I have only been able to come up with one pairing. And so my idea for such an enterprise languished for lack of sufficient number of entries. (Any encyclopedia worth its salt needs more than one entry – doesn’t it?) (NB: Since that was written, I have managed to concoct additional entries.)

Until now, that is. I have recently realized that, thanks to the internet, this encyclopedia could become a community project. And thus I am issuing this:

CALL FOR ACTUAL AND SPURIOUS ETYMOLOGIES.

You can register and begin writing your own entries here: http://www.blogger.com/home

You should sign your entries – unless (and I can understand this) you are ashamed to be associated with such an enterprise (in which case you may simply call yourself ‘Chicken Little.’) And please give credit to any sources you use on the internet.

P.S. My father had a rather simplistic sense of humor. Once when we were driving through Binghamton, NY, he asked whether we knew how that city got its name. "Well you see, there was a guy named Bing, and he had a ton of ham..." I am hoping that the entries offered for this (potentially venerable) Encyclopedia show evidence of more sophistication!

- Theo May

Steinway & Sons

4a. Steinway & Sons – a piano maker, founded 1853 in New York City, with a second factory established 1880 in the city of Hamburg, Germany.

Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, a pianomaker of the Steinweg brand, emigrated from Germany to America in 1850 with his family. Only one son Theodore Steinweg stayed in Germany, and continued making the Steinweg brand of pianos. In 1853 Heinrich founded Steinway & Sons, after two years of work for other piano companies and for himself. His first workshop was in a small loft at the back of 85 Varick Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was not until 1864 that the family changed their name legally to Steinway, the Anglicized form of Steinweg.

By the 1860s Steinway had built a new factory and lumber yard. Now 350 men worked at Steinway & Sons and production increased from 500 to 1800 pianos in a year. Steinway pianos underwent numerous substantial improvements through innovations made both at the Steinway factory and elsewhere in the industry, based on emerging engineering and scientific research, including developments in the science of acoustics. Almost half of the company's 115 patented inventions were developed by the first and second generations of the Steinway family. Soon Steinway's pianos would win several important prizes at Exhibitions in New York, Paris, and London.

About 70% of all of the 580,000 Steinways made over the past 150 years are still in use by musicians today because old Steinways are being constantly rebuilt and repaired with new strings and hammers due to steady demand for Steinways from the pre-WWI and pre-WWII era.

Now in its fifth generation, the Steinway family can be as high strung as the pianos it makes. The Steinway Artist Program, for example, has not been without opponents and controversy. Steinway artists are expected to perform exclusively on Steinway instruments wherever a Steinway is available. In 1972, Steinway responded to Garrick Ohlsson's statement that Bösendorfer was "the Rolls-Royce of pianos" by trucking away the Steinway concert grand Ohlsson was about to play in a recital at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. Ohlsson ended up performing on a Bösendorfer borrowed at the 11th hour, but Steinway barred him from using its instruments for some time. Angela Hewitt was dropped from Steinway’s roster in 2002 after performing a concert on a Fazioli piano. The Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has complained that Steinway is trying to establish a monopoly on the concert world by becoming “the Microsoft of pianos.” [

Steinway pianos are still considered to be the finest made in the U.S. and among the very best in the world.

[Sources: Wikipedia etc.]



4s. Steinway & Sons – a piano maker, founded 1835 in Vienna, Austria, with a second factory established 1853 in New York City.

Heinrich Dämonsoft Stoneweight, a German immigrant, began building fortepianos (a lighter forerunner of the modern piano) in Boston around 1820. He called them ‘Stoneweight Fortes’ as a pun on his name: they were designed to weigh no more than a stone (14 lbs.) so that they could be easily transported.

Unfortunately, this little conceit resulted in an inferior product. Stoneweight used cheap lightweight alloys for strings and pins, and the equivalent of balsa wood for the body. As a result, strings and pins would snap right and left, under-aged sounding boards would crack and warp, and pins would rip out of their moorings.

In short, Stoneweight Fortes became notorious: the name itself, like Yugo automobiles in a later era, was synonymous with cheap (as opposed to inexpensive) and shoddy goods.

Ironically, by this time the fortepiano was effectively obsolete, having been superceded by the pianoforte, a much more sonorous instrument.

Lawsuits and irrelevance drove Stoneweight Fortepianos into bankruptcy. Heinrich Stoneweight fled his creditors, embarking to Vienna with his wife and three young daughters. There he ingratiated himself with the notable composers of the day, with the vague idea of producing instruments for them (he wanted, so to speak, a piece of the action.) (He purportedly bent the ear of the deaf Beethoven, yelling into his ear trumpet for half an hour or more. Beethoven later wrote in his conversation book, “What an ass!”)

But Stoneweight began producing pianofortes, and with the same careful attention to detail he had given his fortepianos (i.e., none.)(At least now he had relaxed the weight restriction!) By 1830 Stoneweight pianos were the laughingstock of Vienna.

At this point his three daughters were grown up, and they found themselves to be heartily ashamed of their father. Quietly they went to the Stein piano works there in Vienna (the best piano maker in continental Europe) and began apprentice work with the great Nannette Streicher, herself one of the only women in charge of an industry in Europe. After three years, they returned and took firm control of their father’s business.

Each of the three sisters had developed a specialty: Gretel, the oldest, had a gift for discovering new ways to improve the action mechanism; Helga, the middle sister, was a genius at aging woods used for cases and sounding boards; while Theodora, the youngest, took over the struggling finances and put the company on a firm footing.

They said that they wanted to produce pianos ‘the Stein way’ – hence the new name for the Stoneweight company. Proud of their achievement, they wanted to call it ‘Steinway & Daughters’. But old Heinrich, a typical German paterfamilias of that time, demanded ‘Steinway & Sons’ (even though he had no sons.) Unfortunately, he still had complete control of the company.

So father and daughters struck a deal: he would turn over total control to the girls if they would call it ‘Steinway & Sons’.

In 1853 Gretel and Helga embarked to America and formed another factory of ‘Steinway & Sons’ in New York City, while Theodora remained in Vienna to manage the company there. Since then the business has been handed down in the female line (there have been no sons for five generations.)

Steinway & Sons pianos are now considered to be the finest made in the U.S. and among the very best in the world. By contrast, all surviving Stoneweight fortes and pianos (there are only three, the rest having torn themselves apart) have been placed in the newly opened Museum of Incompetence in New York.


Theo May theomay@comcast.net

Hoover Vacuum Cleaner

3a. Hoover Vacuum Cleaner – A particular make of vacuum cleaner (a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from carpeted floors. The dirt is collected by a filtering system for later disposal.)

The first manually-powered cleaner using vacuum principles was the "Whirlwind", invented in Chicago in 1868 by Ives W. McGaffey. The machine was lightweight and compact, but was difficult to operate because of the need to turn a hand crank at the same time as pushing it across the floor.

The first powered cleaner employing a vacuum was patented and produced by Hubert Cecil Booth in 1901. He noticed a device used in trains that blew dust off the chairs, and thought it would be much more useful to have one that sucked dust. He tested the idea by laying a handkerchief on the seat of a dinner chair, putting his mouth to the handkerchief, and then trying to suck up as much dust as he could onto the handkerchief. Upon seeing the dust and dirt collected on the underside of the handkerchief he realized the idea could work. Booth created a large device, known as Puffing Billy, driven first by an oil engine, and later by an electric motor. It was drawn by horses and parked outside the building to be cleaned. Booth never achieved great success with his invention.

In 1904, James Murray Spangler, a janitor in Canton, Ohio invented an electric vacuum cleaner from a fan, a box, and a pillowcase. In addition to suction, Spangler's design incorporated a rotating brush to loosen debris. Spangler patented his rotating-brush design in 1908, and eventually sold the idea to his cousin's husband's "Hoover Harness and Leather Goods Factory." In the United States, Hoover remains one of the leading manufacturers of household goods, including cleaners; and Hoover became very wealthy from the invention.

Hoover is also notable for an extremely unusual vacuum cleaner, the Hoover Constellation, which was a canister type but lacked wheels. Instead, the vacuum cleaner was supposed to float on its exhaust, operating as a hovercraft. Introduced in 1952, it tended to be loud, had relatively poor cleaning power, and could not float over carpets.

In Britain Hoover has become so associated with vacuum cleaners as to become a genericized trademark. The word "hoover" (without initial capitalization) is often used as a generic term for "vacuum cleaner". Hoover is also used as a verb, as in "I've just hoovered the carpet".

[Source: Wikipedia]


3s. Hoover Vacuum Cleaner – A fanciful term applied to Franklin Delano Roosevelt – possibly by himself.

As is well known, the administration of Herbert Hoover (1929–33) was helpless to deal with the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929. This dearth of leadership resulted in a vacuum – the ‘Hoover Vacuum’, as it came to be called. A good part of this had to do with the Republican Party itself: its corrupting alliances with Big Business against the Working Class.

On the campaign trail in 1932, Democratic candidate Roosevelt made reference to ‘those corrupt entanglements’, and pledged to ‘clean them all up.’ Hence his self-description as “a Hoover Vacuum Cleaner.”

The machine called the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner was developed in 1933 after Roosevelt’s election, as a cynical attempt to cash in on the president’s popularity. It became a best seller.

By the way, apparently FDR was responsible for being the first to utter a vulgarism now used by most teens. This also occurred during the 1932 campaign. Letting down his guard on his patrician bearing for a moment, Roosevelt was overheard to remark to an aide, “You know, that Hoover really sucks!”

- Theo May theomay@comcast.net


3s'. Hoover Vacuum Cleaner – A fleeting reference to J. Edgar Hoover by President Eisenhower in his farewell address.

In that speech, as is famously known, Eisenhower warned about the encroaching corrosive influence by what he called “the military-industrial complex.” One indication of the threat of such a ‘complex’ (if indeed it was such a threat – perhaps Eisenhower had a military-industrial-complex complex…) was the obvious fact that he waited until his presidency was over to warn us about it (so: Eisenhower the war-hero as peace-chicken?)

But the General gave another warning in that infamous address. This concerned something so dangerous that not only did he issue it as he was saying goodbye, but he delivered it soto voce – that is, in an undertone which virtually no one could hear. And he tacked it onto the other provocative admonition, thus further blunting its message: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex, (as well as by the hideous Hoover vacuum cleaner.”)

Well! Only an elect few heard this, but they knew exactly what Ike was talking about. Over the decades, the FBI Director had amassed more and more power for himself. This included illegal surveillance of the private lives of people he felt were a threat, whose politics he didn’t agree with, or whom he just didn’t like. Like a giant vacuum cleaner, he sucked up all the ‘dirt’ around him, to be used to blackmail or imprison or even have murdered his hapless victims. This is what Eisenhower meant by his metaphor. (At the same time, the president was relatively safe because there really was a Hoover Vacuum Cleaner, and the more naïve might think he was attacking the monopolistic tendencies of that machine’s maker.)

But Eisenhower went further than that. Brilliantly, he was also making a literal allusion to Hoover’s own hypocritical private life – a life which included cross-dressing.

For example, Hoover would dress up in the uniform of a typical house maid, including a frilly-lacy apron (sometimes he would only wear the apron – wrap your mind around that!), and then he would do the house cleaning. Part of this had to do with prancing about with a vacuum cleaner. And as I said, all this was known to only a few select cognoscenti.

But it was known to Eisenhower. And no doubt he felt that something had to be done about Hoover’s evil and hypocrisy, once and for all.

So do you see what Ike was doing? He was outing Hoover to the nation.

As I said, almost no one picked up on this. But the FBI Director did, and reportedly he was livid with rage.

A few short years later, Eisenhower died of a strange wasting disease no one could explain.

- Theo and Doro May theomay@comcast.net doromay@comcast.net

'Damn The Torpedoes!'

2a. ’Damn the torpedoes!’ – This expression is attributed to Admiral David Farragut during the Civil (or was it uncivil?) War.

On August 5, 1864, Farragut won a great victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay. Mobile was the Confederacy's last major port open on the Gulf of Mexico. The bay was heavily mined (tethered naval mines were known as torpedoes at the time). Farragut ordered his fleet to charge the bay. When the monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank, the others began to pull back.

Farragut could see the ships pulling back from his high perch, lashed to the rigging of his flagship the USS Hartford. "What's the trouble?" was shouted through a trumpet from the flagship to the USS Brooklyn. "Torpedoes!" was shouted back in reply. "Damn the torpedoes!" said Farragut, "Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" The bulk of the fleet succeeded in entering the bay. Farragut then triumphed over the opposition of heavy batteries in Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines to defeat the squadron of Admiral Franklin Buchanan.

[Source: Wikipedia]


2s. ’Damn the torpedoes!’ – A corruption of a rallying cry of the revolutionaries during the 1848 uprising in Paris.

Because of its distinctive profile (the bottom being thicker than the top) as well as its intended use, Le Barrière Gersais (see ‘Jersey Barrier’ above) was often called ‘La Barrage’ (‘The Dam’) by the revolutionaries. A rallying cry became: “La Barrage empêche les balles!” (“The Dam impedes [blocks] the bullets!”) Soon [time was running out on the barricades] it was shortened to ‘La Barrage empêche!’ (‘The Dam impedes!’)

Somehow, this motto became corrupted in a bastardized translation into English. What was a noun became, homophonically, an expletive; and the verb ‘impedes’ was distorted into a noun containing the same vowel sound. Hence the origin, fanciful as it may seem, of the famous expression: ’Damn the torpedoes!’

Yes I know, this expression is attributed [Wikipedia: ‘It may be apocryphal.’ Do you see? Already we know its origins are in doubt] to Admiral David Farragut, who supposedly used it during the Civil War at the Battle of Mobile Bay. But what if he did say it? Is it not clear that this was a subtle reference to the rallying cry of Jacques Gersais and his fellow revolutionaries of just a few short years before?

- Theo May theomay@comcast.net

Jersey Barrier

1a. Jersey Barrier – a concrete barrier used to separate lanes of traffic (often opposing lanes of traffic) with a goal of minimizing vehicle crossover in the case of accidents. It is also used as defense against car bombs.

It was originally developed at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ (under the direction of the New Jersey State Highway Department) to divide multiple lanes on a highway. The first concrete median barrier used in New Jersey was installed in 1955, and it was only 18 inches tall. It looked like a low vertical wall with a curb on each side. Operational problems were observed, the shape was changed, and the height was increased to 24 inches, and to 32 inches in 1959. The commonly seen shape came into being then. Basically, going upward, the first 2 inches from the pavement rises vertically, the next 10 inches rises at a 55-degree angle, and the remainder at an 84-degree angle (as measured from horizontal).

New Jersey did not use crash-testing to develop the barrier. The state highway department observed the accident results of its barrier installations, and evolved the shape of the barrier. Both New Jersey and California continued experimenting in the early 1960s, and the New Jersey barrier was widely adopted by California.

The basic reason for the New Jersey profile is to redirect a vehicle that hits it. The vehicle's wheels and sheet metal on the impacting side ride upward to prevent vehicle rollover. The Jersey Barrier is very heavy, something like 600 lbs. per linear foot of barrier. Often, it is cast-in-place or slip-formed onto a concrete footer with steel dowel anchors. A tractor-trailer impacting at a 15-degree angle at 60mph will be successfully redirected.

In the state of New Jersey, ironically, the term "Jersey barrier" is rarely used. Residents, government agencies, and road traffic and media reports on radio and television usually use the term "traffic divider".

Jersey barriers have been used extensively in the American occupation of Iraq to fortify road-blocks and public infrastructure, along with much taller variants.

[Sources: Wikipedia; Scott Kozel]


1s. Jersey Barrier - a concrete barrier originally developed during the February 1848 Revolution in France.

The revolutionaries were searching for ways to barricade the streets of Paris. As in any great enterprise of discovery, various things were tried at random (seemingly; but is it ever really completely random?) to ascertain their worth at repelling troops and their bullets. We are told, for example, that they used overturned wagons, carts, carriages, and even omnibuses. (But what is more commonplace in a revolutionary setting than an overturned omnibus?) The problem with these sorts of things is that, first, they could be penetrated by bullets; second, they could be rammed and moved; and third, they could be set afire.

There was one man who had the intelligence and foresight to look beyond these failings to seek something which would work. His name was Jacques Gersais and he was a road builder. In the early 1840’s we find that he was helping build streets (when such things were paved at all) out of bricks and cobblestones in Paris and its environs.

But then Gersais heard about something called Portland Cement, a concrete first manufactured in England in 1842. Gersais went over there and brought back the materials, knowledge, and wherewithal to Paris for purposes of road construction.

In February 1848 when fighting broke out and revolutionaries were casting about for suitable barricades, Gersais hit upon the design for a barrier which could not be penetrated, moved, or burned. It would be utterly stable (i.e. it could not be overturned), as it would be thick at the bottom and gradually tapered to the top. It would be tall enough (about 1.5 meters, or 5 feet) to protect the insurrectionists. And it would be forbiddingly heavy, since it would be fashioned of Portland Cement (concrete.)

The result came to be called 'Le Barrière Gersais', and Jacques feverishly cast scores of them to be used as barricades. When at length the insurrection was put down, Gersais fled to the isle of Jersey off the French coast, where he found work building concrete sidewalks (a relatively pedestrian occupation), and an occasional barrier (mostly for sentimental reasons, as there was little market for it.) It is not known whether he called the latter after himself or in homage to his adopted home.

The regime of Louis Napoleon destroyed most of Les Barrières Gersais. (After all, what government would want such invitations to further insurrection hanging around?) But a few survived, sitting alone and all but forgotten in back corners of Paris. (Indeed, there would be no other need for them in any era before the automobile.) These found use nearly a century later when in August 1944 Parisians rose up against their German captors and once again erected barricades.

During the liberation of Paris later that month, a young American soldier (his name is lost to history) saw those barriers. Ten years later, as a traffic engineer in New Jersey, he remembered their distinctive shape and began casting shorter versions for use on roads in the United States.

Contrary to popular myth, however, the origins of the name for the so-called Jersey Barrier have absolutely nothing to do with the State of New Jersey. Rather, the engineer named his creation for his wife Joyce, who apparently had a similar shape. His name of endearment for her was ‘Joycey’, hence the corruption to ‘Joisey’ and finally ‘Jersey’.

It is not known whether or not he knew the original (French) name for his re-creation.

- Theo May