Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.08.11
Dear friends,
Although I love words, I don’t get excited by etymologies—most of them are fairly dull. And a word’s etymology doesn’t (or shouldn’t!) have much influence on its current meaning. (It may be interesting that your great-great-grandparents came from Finland, but it probably didn’t affect your choice of profession much.) But every once in a while I find a charming etymology, such as this one for ‘omnibus’ (the word ‘bus’ is a clipping of ‘omnibus’):
Monsieur Laffitte must not, however, be given the credit of applying the name “omnibus” to the vehicles which he introduced, for it belongs to Monsieur Baudry, a retired military officer. In 1827 Baudry was the proprietor of some hot-water baths in the suburbs of Nantes, and for the convenience of his patrons ran a vehicle at fixed hours to and from the town. This coach, which was similar in build to the Parisian ones, he named the “Voiture des Bains de Richebourg,” but quickly came to the conclusion that the title was too long, and therefore endeavoured to think of a more suitable one.
It happened that just at that time a local grocer named Omnès caused considerable amusement in the town by painting over his shop “Omnès Omnibus.” No sooner did Baudry see this than he declared that he had found the very word which he required, and straightway renamed his vehicle “L’Omnibus.”
—from Omnibuses and Cabs, Their Origins and History
(Also the original idea for the bus was Blaise Pascal’s!)
One of the emails which I look forward to with great interest is the one announcing the new Project Gutenberg titles uploaded in the previous month. July’s included not only the book cited above, but also The Universal Directory For Taking Alive And Destroying Rats, And All Other Kinds Of Four-Footed And Winged Vermin, In A Method Hitherto Unattempted: Calculated for the Use of the Gentleman, the Farmer, and the Warrener, by Robert Smith, “Late Rat-Catcher to the Princess Amelia”. I hope never to need any of the practical knowledge within but I did learn some new hedgehog lore: they “will suck the milk of cows in the night-time, while they are asleep in the fields, and bite the dug in such manner that the cow never recovers”. Smith considers this “false and erroneous, having never been able, after many years strict enquiry and observance, to discover a single instance of it.”
In World War I a disconcerting number of vigilante organizations were active in the U.S., which mostly spent their time harassing (if not outright killing) German-Americans, socialists, and labor organizers. There were even vigilante organizations for children, including the Boy Spies of America (!) and the Anti-Yellow Dog Club. IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched (CW: very disturbing details of violence in that entry) in Montana; the perpetrators were never identified, and the numbers 3-7-77, which were pinned to Little’s body as a warning, are still used on the shoulder patch of the Montana Highway Patrol. 😬
The Auto Wash Bowl (advertised as “a bath tub for motor cars”), at the intersection of Western, Elston, and Division in Chicago, was basically a big concrete pool (seventy-six feet in diameter) with a corrugated floor. Drivers (or an attendant) drove cars through the water to clean the ‘chassis, running board, and fenders’. It cost fifty cents in 1925.
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin