Scatterplot

1. I went to the BYU Men’s and Women’s Chorus Concert on Friday, primarily because the last three songs that the Women’s Chorus sang were from Wicked (”Popular,” “For Good,” and “Defying Gravity”). I got goosebumps. I love musicals! :)

2. When singing in church meetings, I’ve noticed how people often put the hymnbook away when they get to the last line or two, because they know the hymn. Keeping my own hymnbook out feels slightly awkward, as if I’m saying, “I don’t know this hymn!” Which is true some of the time, granted. :) Anyway, I’m probably the only person who thinks about this.

3. In my Varieties of English class the other day, the presentation was on Scottish English. Turns out “ben” in Scots English means “mountain.” Kind of fitting, don’t you think? ;)

4. We had a C.S. Lewis Society showing of the BBC The Silver Chair last week. Special effects were…well, low-budget and aging. :) But as I watched it, comparing it to the new movie in my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if the less-photorealistic special effects weren’t more convincing. Leaving more to the mind’s eye can be a blessing, I think. And it seems like a lot of the glittery special effects these days don’t have as much suspension-of-disbelief power. Perhaps I was just tired. :)

5. I watched a neat Jewish film at the International Cinema last week, The Ushpizin. It’s about a Jewish couple in Jerusalem who take in two guests during Sukkot (the festival of booths). Good stuff.

6. I’ve been reading The Four Loves for the CSL Society, and in this week’s reading Lewis points out that “naked” was originally the past participle of the verb “nake,” to strip or peel. Philology is great.

7. This morning I found I’d run out of eggs (for scrambled eggs), so I microwaved two potatoes. It’s not uncommon for loud pops to sound while the plate turns round, but today they kept popping after I took the plate out, every thirty seconds or so. It was about two minutes later that I realized the pops were actually the sound of a crack splitting apart the plate. With each pop the crack grew half an inch or so. It was awesome. :)

8. Sixline has a couple of great photos he put up yesterday. Keep your eyes peeled for more.

9. I’m morally opposed to tanning salons.

Of course ‘ben’ means mountain. “By yon bonny banks and yon bonny brays, on the steep, steep side of Ben Lommond . . . ” I love “Loch Lommond.” Great song.

1. I was there on Friday too. And I agree. It made me a little sad that I decided not to go for a third year in Women’s Chorus.

2. You’re not the only one who thinks about it. Sorry.

7. One of my roommates put a plate in the broiler beneath our oven the other day. When she opened the drawer, the plate split into fourths and the pieces shot apart, leaving the piece of meat perched precariously on the four broken corners. Um, it looked a lot cooler than it sounds.

9. I have yet to understand why one would pay money to get skin cancer.

Whee! Link love. :D

6. Was it really? No sources I can find concur with that. I’m off campus so I can’t check OED, but I found:

m-w.com:
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English nacod; akin to Old High German nackot naked, Latin nudus, Greek gymnos

etymonline.com:
O.E. nacod “nude,” also “not fully clothed,” from P.Gmc. *nakwathaz (cf. O.Fris. nakad, M.Du. naket, Du. naakt, Ger. nackt, O.N. nökkviðr, O.Swed. nakuþer, Goth. naqaþs “naked”), from PIE base *neogw- “naked” (cf. Skt. nagna, Hittite nekumant-, L. nudus, Lith. nuogas, O.C.S. nagu-, O.Ir. nocht, Welsh noeth).

In all cases it seems to mean ‘naked’ and never ‘peel.’

If it’s related to the Sanskrit nagna, then even Thai has a reflex:
นัคคะ, or นัค- in compounds (this is actually from the Pali form of the root, though). RID defines it as เปลืิอยกาย and gives the example นัคสมณะ, a nude ascetic. (Or, if you prefer to translate it with cognates, naked shaman.)

Whoa, Rikker, you can totally check the OED when you’re not on campus. Use the link from the HBLL. It’ll just ask you for you net ID and password before it directs you there.

Amen and amen to the moral opposition by way of all things tanning bed.

Sadly, I’m in New Hampshire. :) Your idea is a good one, and I looked into my own university’s library system, and while it links through, it authenticates by IP address, so no luck for me.

Rikker,
Sorry, I didn’t realize you weren’t a BYU student. That’s unfortunate that you can’t access the OED off campus. What silliness.

No worries. Ben and I know each other from serving missions in Thailand, which is how I came to haunt his blog.

OED is silly for requiring paid subscriptions anyway. But they know they’re the tops and that every academic institution is bound subscribe. Gotta do something to bring in revenue when your physical product is as massive as OED2 is. Can’t imagine they sell too many sets. Anyone have $800 dollars I could borrow? Ha.

Liz: Ach, I should have known. :) When I was but a wee bairn, I…um…something. I guess I just wanted to say “wee bairn.” :)

Katherine the First: If only you’d gotten a picture! Your roommate (my colleague) read this over my shoulder and said she hadn’t heard about the plate yet. It didn’t happen to be her plate, did it? ;) Just kidding.

Sixline: I like to support things well done. :)

Rikker: The OED says this:

[Cognate with Old Frisian nakad, naked, naket, Middle Dutch naect, nāket (Dutch naakt), Middle Low German nacket, nackt, nāket, nākt, Old High German nackot, nackut (Middle High German nacket, German nackt), Old Icelandic nøkviðr, nøkkviðr, Old Swedish nakudher, naqvidher, Gothic naqaþs, a participial derivative of the Indo-European base which is also represented by Sanskrit nagna (see naga n.2), classical Latin nūdus (see nude a. (adv.) and n.), Old Irish nocht (Irish nocht), Welsh noeth, Old Church Slavonic nagŭ, Russian nagoj, Lithuanian nuogas.

It’s not entirely clear from there whether the participial derivative comes through a verb nake or straight from the IE base, so I looked it up in Bosworth & Tollers (the standard Old English dictionary):

nacod, næcad; adj. I. naked, bare; …. [Goth. nakwaþs : Icel. nökviðr : O. Frs. nakad : O. H. Ger. nachot, nahhut : Ger. nackt.] v. eall-, lim-nacod; nacian.

The last word was a verb, and it happened to be right above the entry for nacod, and I think it sheds some more light on the matter:

nacian; p. ode To strip (the clothes off a person) :– Ðá hé ðæt nolde hé wæs nacod and on carcern onsænded when he would not do that (deny Christ), he was stripped and sent to prison, Shrn. 51, 12. [The shenship of his flesh he shal nakyn, Wick. Lev. xx, 19; he nakide (later version, made nakid) the hous of the pore man, Job xx, 19 : O nice men, whi nake ye youre bakkes, Chauc. Boeth. 1. 4288 : Prompt. Parv. nakyn nudo, denudo, v. p. 351, note 1. The verb to nake occurs as late as Tourneur who has ‘nake your swords;’ v. Skeat Dict. s. v. naked.] v. be-nacian, nacod.

Alas, B&T doesn’t have a clear chronology of sources, so it’s hard to tell if nacod comes from nacian or if nacian is a back-formation of sorts from nacod. The first citation for nacian does seem to agree with Lewis’s hypothesis, though…

Terrah and Katherine the First: I can’t figure out why people would want to turn themselves orange, like Oompa-Loompas. It boggles the mind, it does.

Katherine the Second and Rikker: I agree, the OED should be free. “Free the OED!” came the cry from the crowd(er). “Free the OED!”

Ben and Rikker: We should make T-shirts, lobby, write petitions, organize protests. But mainly make T-shirts.

Why stop at t-shirts? Hats, mugs, aprons, tote bags, baby onesies!

http://www.cafepress.com/freetheOED

I couldn’t resist. It is free to set up, after all. :)

Now I just have to decide whether I really want to buy something with my poor design skills. Let’s let Ben redesign our logo. ;)

Rikker,
That’s awesome! :-) Drat, now that we have t-shirts, I guess that means we have to start a club.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

And yes, the domain name is available. ;)