Convergent Word Puzzles- 301-350

Answers to be supplied upon request.

Find The Convergent Word

Finfd the convergent words for each set of three words. Each set of three words fits into one of three categories: food & beverage, body parts, animals

301- a)tale-star-hook b)irate-halt-ire c)annoy-bear-love

302- a)computer-golden-sauce b)mix-walk-crust stain-wings-dry

303- a)figure-pin-line b)tie-acid-language c)sock-let-black

304- a)hop-cool-bone b)coerce-mass-stomach c)punch-artificial-shaped

305- a)nation-reich-party b)weight-paper-butter c)ilk-book-wood

306- a)blond-fields-pink b)vulture-wild-tom c)house-fin-pale

307- a)acid-import-fire b)church-computer-trap c)harass-dog-grey

308- a)boat-train-bonus b)ice-log-pearl c)roll-goose-hunt

309- a)king-complain-salad b)fool-egg-soup c)rubber-fingers-yellow

310- a)lone-prairie-she b) baby-con -in c)grease-business-bars

311- a)tack-tom-hole b)cancer-high-pool c)high-eye-beat

312- a)bell-pot-sergeant b)pie-face-oven c)house-case -job

313- a)tomato-kitchen-spoon b)apple-pan-bowl c)soup-evade-dead

314- a)hare-dead -teaser b)oil-deer -tight c)out-eye-backs

315- a)lock-bone-breaker b)block-master-lead c)dog-ion-boot

316 a)fed-pop-meal b) money-draft -small c)tale-star-hook

317- a)fault-stool-powder b)around hook-blue c)ball-big-hired -

318- a) follow-tired-bird b) hole-backwards-ail c)state-harass-honey

319- a)superb-night-barn b)ears-white-bush c)all-sea-hunting

320- a)basket-ginger-money b)bar-potato-days c)he-master-ski

321- a)boy-sour-nut b)mar-twist-cotton c)dog-monk-devil

322- a)close-elephant-ant b)naked-ram-eye c)gall -pleas-ten

323- a)ache-wind-knuckle b)dog-ache-nest c)leaders-check-pie

324- a)some-assistance-farm b)open-book-lift c)support-stern-diamond

325- a)dear-badger-comb b)green-nut-chick c)butter-stand-salted

326- a)cash-sacred-hide) b)hit-man-cricket c)bug-arms-tolerate

327- a)middle-identify-paint b)war-barrel-nut c)up-a-strap

328- a)string-let-sandwich b)thwart-ale-hop c)scampi-cocktail-boat

329- a)reap-alligator-led b)jelly-old-soup c)complaint-roast-eater

330- a)lash-breaking-fall b)shoe-be-bubble c)body-net-ball

331- a)circus-market-bag b)lily-woods-white c)cat-uncle-boy

332- a)republic-top-boat b)breast-soup-butter c)bill-plains-wings

333- a)tip-hold-clip b)wash-organ-off c)pump-close-fight

334- a)back-god-skin b)spare-steak-cage c)bone-deep-joint

335- a)sitting-soup-avoid b)eye-bald-American c)skin-basket-boat

336- a)rice-black-potato b)hole-ears-jack c)black-beret-bush

337- a)Indian-pudding-paddy b)bowl-fruit-green c)farm-fry-pink

338- a)button-beer-ache b)blue-give-artificial) c)milk-back-dry

339- a)throb-less -sweet b)top-swing-talk c)mark-shot-wig

340- a)juice-root-top b)cream-blue-cloth c)pie-wood-orchard

341- a)meat-loan-tiger b)hole-ears-jack c)opera-high-radish

342- a)lucky-collar-devil b)dog-rush-fighter c)sea-poke- pox

343- a)aired-imp-wife b)brown-cane-daddy c)hero-islands-tuna

344- a)slat-in-as b)pant-page-shackle c)berry-wild-mother

345- a)laid-lash-light b)jerk-pad-cap c)under-sandwich-white

346- a)cheese-Spanish-mushroom b)bar-bay-pearl c)garden-oil-black

347- a)vulture-wild-tom b)dove-neck-snapping c)white-killer-hunt

348- a)party-cozy-set) b)master-French-salute c)soup-sauce-juice

349- a)heat-peck-party b)wart-road-groun c)hide-crazy-power

350- a)part-rod-battering b)farm-fry-pink c)dog-pig-white

MOTHER"S DAY ARTICLES BY JEREMY &JENNIFER RICHLER

Mothers' Day bouquets in Mexico City Photo by YURI CORTEZ/AFP/GettyImages

For years, I hated Mother's Day. My mother died when I was 22, and every year after that, when spring rolled around and the greeting cards reared their heads, I felt the resentment start to bubble up. “Tell mom how much she really means,” the signs at Hallmark implored me. It felt like a mean joke, just another reminder of all I’d lost.

My mother and I had always been close, but in the last few years before she died, after I’d gone off to college, we’d gotten closer. We emailed a few times a day, relating the little details of our lives. I knew what she’d had for lunch, how her best friend’s daughter was settling into her new apartment. She knew which book I was reading for my Russian novel class, which of my roommates was pissing me off. We had catchphrases, inside jokes we’d repeat in the emails and cards we sent each other.

The first Mother's Day after she died, passing by some greeting cards in a store, I thought about buying her one. Maybe, I thought, I could start a ritual of getting her a card every year—a kind of “taking back” of the holiday. But then I thought about how I’d never actually send the cards, how they’d just sit in a drawer somewhere, the way the flowers I brought to her grave every year just lay there, wilting, until someone threw them out. And the inside jokes would never change—my mother and I were frozen in time, like the picture of us on my nightstand, taken just a couple of months before she died. I decided not to get her any cards. And I continued to hate Mother's Day.

But then, a little more than 4 years ago, I became a mother. I didn’t have to be excluded from Mother's Day anymore, I realized—I would get cards! And I have—hastily scribbled by my son, with Thomas the Tank Engine stickers affixed haphazardly. I have been allowed back into a club from which I’d long been excluded.

A bit more than a year ago, I became a mother again—this time to a girl. I am half of a mother-daughter pair again, and this reality has churned up a longing I haven’t felt in years. I remember the things my mother and I liked to do together—the leisurely lunches and shopping trips, punctuated with laughter and gossip—and I imagine doing those things with my daughter. I remember how we could confide in each other our deepest worries—mine usually about a boy I was pining after, hers substantially deeper, often about her aging parents—and I imagine doing that with my daughter. I think about all the things we never got to do, the parts of our relationship we never got to explore—her giving me parenting advice, me helping her mourn the loss of a parent—and I imagine having all that with my daughter. So much seems possible.

And yet, I know I can’t—shouldn’t—recreate with my children the relationship I had with my mother. Maybe my daughter won’t like shopping. Maybe my son won’t email so often. And that’s okay—we’ll do other things. We’ll have different catchphrases, different inside jokes.

What I do hope stays the same is the feeling I had, when I would come home late on weekend nights as a teenager and my mother would be waiting up for me on the living room couch. She wasn’t waiting to make sure I didn’t miss curfew—she simply couldn’t sleep soundly until she knew I was home, safe. At the time, I teased her for being neurotic, but even then, it felt like a warm hug. That’s what my mother gave me, above everything else: the feeling that she was looking out for me, cheering me on, loving me with such purpose. I hope I can give my children that; to know that I had would be the best kind of gift.

 

Mother's Day Articles Featuring Articles by Jeremy Richler & Jennifer Richler

Single-tier health care system questioned

JEREMY RICHLER

While Canadians strongly support health care as a basic, fundamental right for all, questions have arisen on whether the monopoly of provinces delivering a single-tier, universally-administered system should continue, Toronto lawyer Jeremy Richler writes in Lawyers Weekly.

In a recent Environics poll, 54 per cent of Canadians “agree that individual Canadians should be given the right to buy private health care within Canada if they do not receive timely access in the public system,” even if this were to weaken the principle of universality, with some having quicker access to care than others, the article says.

Forty three per cent of respondents disagreed, it adds.

“The legal precedent for this line of reasoning can be found in Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) [2005] S.C.J. No. 33, whereby the Supreme Court used the principles of fundamental justice enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to allow limited private insurance for the delivery of medically necessary care,” writes Richler.

“In a split decision, the majority for the court found that private health insurance is entirely legitimate where a public monopoly impedes access to health care services, undermining both the security of the person and the principles of fundamental justice.”

Though Canadians will continue to passionately debate the merits of increased privatization of health care, initial polling shows the pendulum swinging in favour of Chaoulli and limited two-tier care, writes Richler.

“The sooner our politicians are pro-active in addressing these principles of fundamental justice instead of stale, misguided talking points, the better off Canadians will be,” the article says.

Beyond platitudes: Two-tier health care to preserve principles of fundamental justice.

Canada’s publicly administered, universally accessible health care system has since its inception, been at the core of our national identity. Most Canadians strongly support the notion that access to health care is a basic, fundamental right, one that must be preserved regardless of ability to pay.

What is becoming less clear is whether the provinces that deliver health care should continue to have a monopoly with a single tier, universally administered system.

In a recent Environics poll, a small majority (54%) of Canadians “agree that individual Canadians should be given the right to buy private health care within Canada if they do not receive timely access in the public system,” even if this were to weaken the principle of universality, with some having quicker access to care than others. 43% of respondents disagreed. (The Environics Institute, “What Canadians think about their health care system.”)

The legal precedent for this line of reasoning can be found in Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) 2005 SCC 35. (hereinafter Chaoulli), a case whereby the Supreme Court used the principles of fundamental justice enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (hereinafter “Charter”) to allow limited private insurance for the delivery of medically necessary care.

In a split decision, the majority for the court found that private health insurance is entirely legitimate where a public monopoly impedes access to health care services, undermining both the security of the person and the principles of fundamental justice.

Justice Deschamps, in her ruling, sides with the majority opinion, but differs slightly in that she places emphasis on the public monopoly’s violation of s.1 of the Quebec Charter, rather than s.7 of the Charter. She squarely advocates the need for change, citing that “ inertia cannot be used as an argument to justify deference.” (Chaoulli, at para. 97.)

McLachlin and Major note that the “Charter does not confer a freestanding right to health care. However, where the government puts in place a scheme to provide health care, that scheme must comply with the Charter.” (Chaoulli, at para. 104) Their ruling finds that the virtual monopoly of the government in delivering health care leads to erosion of the security of the person and principles of fundamental justice in this authoritative passage:

The state has effectively limited access to private health care except for the very rich, who can

afford private care without need of insurance. This virtual monopoly, on the evidence, results in delays in treatment that adversely affect the citizen’s security of the person. Where a law adversely affects life, liberty or security of the person, it must conform to the principles of fundamental justice. This law, in our view, fails to do so. (Chaoulli at para. 106)

Binnie and LeBel, in their dissent, challenge the central assumption that the proliferation of private health care will ameliorate outcomes and security of the person. They insist the majority view point provides “an overly optimistic view of the benefits offered by private insurance” and “an oversimplified view of the adverse effects of the public health system. “ (Chaoulli, at para. 169)

Their final point is that the majority is overbroad in its construction of s.7, which is meant primarily to address rights inherent to criminal law as enshrined in ss.8-14 of the Charter.

While the dissent challenges the assumption that enabling private insurance will necessarily lead to improved health outcomes, their reasoning misses the point, and their narrow construction of s.7 is a central flaw therein.

The Charter is meant to underscore the relationship between the individual and the state, and to highlight the most basic, fundamental freedoms with which any government legislation must comply. The courts must guard strenuously against using the Charter to make policy, as this is role inherent and central to elected legislatures.

The relationship between private health care and patient outcomes is a red herring. What is very real is the prospect of death for any sick Canadian where medically necessary services are required, but absent.

It then follows that as a principle of fundamental justice, individuals must have the right to purchase public insurance when wait times are long, medically necessary services are unavailable, and acute illness or death are distinct possibilities.

Though Canadians will continue to passionately debate the merits of increased privatization of health care, initial polling shows the pendulum swinging in favour of Chaoulli and limited two-tier care. The sooner our politicians are proactive in addressing these principles of fundamental justice instead of stale, misguided talking points, the better off Canadians will be.

Jeremy Richler is a sole practicing lawyer in Toronto in good standing with the Law Society of Upper Canada. He is a member of the Canadian Bar Association, and can be reached at www.jeremyarichler.com

(This article was published in May 2013 in Lexpert under the title "Nine Yards Loses Nine Feeet.")

The Whole Nine Yards loses nine feet

             by

Howard Richler

In 1997, in his Encyclopedia of Words and Phrase Origins, Robert Hendrickson's entry whole nine yards states: “The expression did not arise in the garment industry but among construction workers, the nine yards referring to the maximum capacity a cement-mixer truck can carry – nine cubic yards of cement.” Hendrickson was not the only commentator who felt the phrases's origin was cast in cement. In 2003, wordsmith William Safire in his book No Uncertain Terms asserted that the expression referred to a fully loaded concrete truck whose contents are usually measured in an amount of nine cubic yards.

So it would appear that one of the greatest etymological puzzles in the English language had been settled. Safire had previously dedicated eight columns to this phrase's origin before opting for the concrete truck theory because of “dilligent research, buttressed by many letters from construction workers” that supported the hypothesis.

I for one have never acceped this theory. The phrase didn't surface until the early 60s at a time when the average concrete mixer size was only 6.25 cubic yards. So, it seems unlikely that “nine yards” would be found in the expression given it would take at least three more decades for concrete mixers to possess a nine cubic yard capacity.

Googling “whole nine yards” yields a cornucopia of explanations for the phrase's provenance. After each, you will find my brief debunking analysis in brackets.

• It derives from the amount of cloth it takes to make a suit/veil/kilt/burial shroud or the number of lots in a large city block (There is no standard size for a bolt of cloth, or the number of lots in a city block.)

• It comes from the nautical term “yard” thar refers to the poles that hold up sails, with a typical ship having three masts of three yards each. (Large square-rigged ships had more than nine yards, and in any case the expression would then begin “all” and not “whole.”)

• It refers to the length of a belt of machine gun ammunition carried by a World War 11 pilot; ergo to expend all of ones's supply.(Ammunition is either measured by weight or counted in rounds and never measured by the the belt's length. Also, even if machine gun belts were nine yards there is not a single documentation of “whole nine yards” being used in this fashion during the Second World War.

• It is a sarcastic reference to American football where nine yards leaves a team one yard short of a first down. (If it had a football provenance, a non-sarcastic expression of “whole ten yards” would have been more likely to develop.)

• It refers to the number of cubic yards of dirt in a burial plot for a wealthy person. (We are not burying a bear. Most plots contain only four cubic yards of dirt regardless of the economic circumstances of the departed.)

• During the Vietnam War, American soldiers encountered the Montagnards, the Vietnamese hill tribes who joined the war American allies. Some pepole said there were nine tribes and the US Army abbreviated their name to “Yards”; ergo, the whole nine yards. (The problem is there were more than nine tribes.)

Other candidates I uneathed in my googling quest include: the length of a hangman's noose; the capacity of a West Virginia garbage truck; the distance a convict would have to dash during a jail break to get from the cellblock to the outer wall; the whipping of prisoners during the Middle Ages with a cat o' nine tails; and the nine pence charge for deluxe theatre seats during the Shakespearean era.

Thanks to help afforded by searchable data bases that have developed during the last decade, I will now reveal which one of the above multitudinous etymological theories I believe is correct.

None!

In a December 2012 article in the New York Times, Jennifer Schuessler reported that Fred Shapiro a librarian at Yale Law School was searching in Chronicling America, a library database of pre-1923 newspapers, when he found two 1912 articles in the Mount Vernon Signal (Kentucky) that guaranteed to provide readers the “whole six yards” of a story. Subsequently, another researcher unearthed another citation of this exact phrase in a 1916 edition of the same newspaper. Archivists have also discovered this 1921 headline from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal (South Carolina): “The Whole Six Yards.” It would appear that inflationary forces somewhere between 1912 and the 60s increased the distance by 50%.

Shapiro believes that the 1912 discovery in a Kentucky newspaper points to a likely “backwoods provenance.” I think it is also fair to say that the expression was not first used to refer to a specific amount and that the “whole nine/six yards” just as easily could read “whole shebang” or “whole enchilada.”

However, as many people love exotic etymologies and an iconic phrase that began its life as referring to a random number is not particularly exciting, I suspect not everyone will accept this humdrum explanation. If you'd like vent your anger towards me, please feel free to contact me and flame the messenger at hrichler@gmail.com.

Howard Richler's book How Happy Became Homosexual and other mysterious semantic shifts was published in May by Ronsdale Press of Vancouver, B.C.

Sussing Out Baby Talk

(This article appeared in the April Lexpert under the title Sussing Out Baby Talk)

Sussing out baby talk and mutant English

                                     by

                          Howard Richler

(This article is dedicated to my granddaughter Maya Ruth Richler-Stoffman born in Bloomington, Indiana who celebrated her first birthday on April 5, 2013)

I must confess that my Quebec English is not always understood in the ROC (Rest of Canada), showing we Anglos must not only be bilingual in English and French but be conversant in both Quebec English and standard English. Here's an example: Some years ago, in a previous millennium, I was toiling in the steel industry and as I couldn't speak directly to a Newfoundland customer, I left a messageasking the man to phone me back adding “my local is 222.” I found out a week later why the person never phoned me back. My reference to “local” made him think I represented a union – I should have used the term “extension.” Other examples of this phenomenon are the use by Quebec Anglos of the term “stage” for an internship and during the recent student debacle in Quebec I even several English-speaking people refer to student “manifestations.” Surely. it would not be apparent to most people in the English-speaking world that manifestations are “demonstrations.”

Given that Maya is your quintessential apolitical one-year old not involved with unions and demonstrations, one might ask how she fits into this article. Well, a friend of my daughter (Maya's mom) born in Montreal but now living in South Africa had a similar linguistic experience recently when she asked a Johannesburg mother of a toddler whether she used a “suss.” Thos term was met with total non-comprehension by the mother who surmised that “suss” was a Bantu term she wasn't familiar with. So what's going on here?

In reality, English is available in a plethora of flavours. The Oxford Companion to the English Language (OCEL) lists over 400 varieties. Some of them are rather obscure such as Pitcairnese defined as “the creole spoken by the descendants of the mutineers from HMS Bounty, who settled on uninhabited Pitcairn Island in 1790.”

Quebec English is actually one of the mutations listed in the OCEL. In my dealings with the outside world, I'm constantly being reminded, if not chided, about the distinctiveness of my English. Just like my daughter's friend residing in South Africa, many a mother born in Quebec, but bringing up her children eleswhere, is likely to have her mongrel English roots sussed out were she to use the word “suss” as a noun in a baby care context. You see, for many Quebec anglophones a “suss” is their word of choice for a pacifier but this term is not to be found among other English-speaking peoples. That is because it comes from the French-Canadian term for a pacifier sucon or suce and derives from the French word sucer “to suck.” Even in France this Quebecois term would be largely unknown as the definitive word there would be une tetine.

However, this mongrelization is not unusual as the term pacifier varies quite a lot in the English-speaking world. In the United Kingdom the term pacifier is largely unknown and the definitive term for such is a “dummy” because the device is an artificial teat. But even in North America and the UK today many people will use other terms than pacifier and dummy; these include binky or nuk (or nuk-nuk.) Binky was actually a brand name for a pacifier introduced by Playtex in 1948 and produced until 1977. Nuk derives from the Nuk baby product company which was established in Germany in 1964. Interestingly, the term binky grew beyond the sense of pacifier and is often used to refer to a young child's blanket, stuffed animal or other prized possession.

In fact, terms for many products we associate with babies vary considerably in the English-speaking world. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, British English and North American English are two languages separated by an ocean, and we see this chasm in many terms associated with “baby talk.” After all, “popping” a baby in a “cot” in Britain just means placing it there, whereas stating that you “popped” a baby in a North American “crib” might get you arrested for harming an infant.

Also, in England, a nanny changes a baby's nappy and not its diaper. The word “nappy” was first used in English in the 14^th century when it referred to a textile fabric and by the next century it referred more specificaaly to a linen fabric. It is in the 17^th century that the word is first used to refer to a baby's napkin or cloth. The word nappy is a version of napkin and its first citation in the OED is in 1927. Another transatlantic difference. the “pram” to refer to a baby carriage goes back to 1884 and I was actually that it is actually a shortening of the word perambulator. Nowadays this term has succumbed on both sides of the pond to the more generic descriptive “push chair” or “stroller.”

Happy first birthday, Maya. May you grow to embrace all the forms of English you encounter in the coming year of starting to learn to speak oue ever-changing language.

hrichler@gmail.com

Howard Richler'st book How Happy Became Homosexual and other mysterious semantic shifts will be published by Ronsdale Press in May 2013.

• Anthony LewisJames Fallows
  

Scientific Explanations for Why Spoilers Are So Horrible

Studies show that anticipation and suspension of disbelief are both key ingredients in a pleasurable experience—and spoilers have a tendency to kill both.

Jennifer RichlerMar 21 2013, 8:41 AM ET

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I was recently the victim of a spoiler. It was the day after the two-hour finale of Downton Abbey, and I hadn't watched it yet. I innocently went on Facebook for my daily dose of family vacation and gourmet dinner photos, and there it was: a major plot twist divulged, courtesy of one of my "friends."
My tale of woe will likely sound familiar to many. The combination of social media, which allow us to react to events in real time, and new technologies, which provide us with countless ways to watch shows after they air, has made it easy to accidentally learn how a TV episode or movie ends before watching it. It isn't surprising, then, that the spoiler issue has been chewed over for years. Way back in 2008, on New York's Vulture site, Dan Kois even proposed a list of statutes of limitations for spoilers, specifying how long writers should wait before revealing important plot twists from TV shows, movies, plays, and books in their articles.

Related Story

The Irresistible Perils of Watching a Film's Deleted Scenes

But this most recent spoiling left me feeling especially outraged—which, in turn, led me to wonder: Why did I care? Why were spoilers so bad? It turns out, I found, there's scientific research that helps explains what it is that spoilers spoil.
Some of this research starts with a fundamental question: Why do people like stories in the first place? As Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom points out in his book How Pleasure Works, it's puzzling that we spend more of our free time exploring fictional worlds—reading, watching TV and movies, playing video games—than engaging in real-world pastimes. "Surely we would be better off pursuing more adaptive activities—eating and drinking and fornicating, establishing relationships, building shelter, and teaching our children," he writes.
So what's with our obsession with make-believe? Bloom and others argue that, on some level, we don't distinguish fact from fiction. There's research to back this up: For example, a study found that people refuse to eat a piece of fudge shaped to look like feces, even though they know it's just fudge. Appearance and reality get blurred. We like stories about sex because we like having sex, and somewhere in our minds, the two are the same. As Thalia Goldstein, a psychology professor at Pace University, explained to me, this blurring actually happens at the neurological level: The conscious, thinking parts of our brain tell us that a story isn't real, but the more primitive parts tell us it is.
This research suggests one explanation for why spoilers suck: They remind us that a story is just a story. It's hard to get transported when you already know where you'll end up—in real life you don't have that knowledge.
Of course, not everyone shares my spoiler hatred. A recent study found that people who heard the "spoiled" version of a short story liked it more than those who heard the "unspoiled" version. But as Goldstein pointed out, the study overlooked a key fact: People only care about spoilers for stories they feel invested in, not those they've heard for the first time a minute earlier.

Spoilers suck because they remind us that a story is just a story. It's hard to get transported when you already know where you'll end up—in real life, you don't have that knowledge.

Some spoiler defenders make more theoretical arguments, such as Time's TV critic James Poniewozik, who wrote, "An unwanted spoiler does take something away, but not, I think, the pleasure of actually reading or watching a story. Rather, it takes away from the anticipation before watching it—wondering who dies, whether they'll get off the Island."
But taking away the anticipation does take away the pleasure of a story. There's plenty of research showing that people enjoy the anticipation of something pleasurable as much as—or sometimes even more than—they enjoy the thing itself. That's why a study found that people would rather postpone a free dinner at a French restaurant by a week than have it right away; they want the pleasure of looking forward to the meal. As Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert says in his book Stumbling on Happiness, "Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit."
Others point out that if knowing major plot twists inevitably spoiled stories, people wouldn't enjoy reading the same book or watching the same movie over and over, and wouldn't flock to see movies like Argo, for which most people already know the ending. But watching a favorite movie for the hundredth time affords a kind of pleasure that is very different from—and, I would argue, not as strong as—what you experience when you see it for the first time. Once you know how a story ends, you can no longer have your mind blown; the pleasure is now in the details. Ditto for movies for which you know the ending before they even start. As Goldstein noted, "Nobody goes to a James Bond movie wondering if the crime is going to get solved and justice served—you go to see explosions and whatever the women are wearing or not wearing." Maybe that's one reason most romantic comedies are so bad, as Christopher Orr argued recently in The Atlantic—you already know how things end, and the details aren't very interesting.
What about people who read spoilers intentionally? You know these people (or perhaps you're even one of them): They claim that spoilers free them from the anxiety of watching or reading something suspenseful. Maybe they just don't know what's good for them. Or maybe, for some people, anticipation is agony; hence the expression, "The anticipation is killing me." After all, not everyone in the French restaurant study chose to put off the meal; some wanted to have it sooner rather than later.
In the end, it's hard to know how much spoilers really matter—you can't watch the same movie spoiled and unspoiled and compare your experience of each. Goldstein suggested a clever experiment that gets close: Take a group of people and have them watch two movies that include major plot twists. Half the group watches movie A spoiled and movie B unspoiled, and vice versa for the other half. Then compare people's enjoyment of the spoiled and unspoiled movies.
Until someone does that study, I'm going to stick to my spoilers-are-evil stance and try a little harder to stay out of their way. That probably means I need to avoid social media whenever there's something on the DVR. Either that or suck it up and watch my beloved shows live.

Irish contributions to the English language

(This article first appeared inthe March 2013 edition of Lexpert under the title "Ireland's Gift to the English")

Few Irish words in English? What a load of malarkey!

                                by

                       Howard Richler

Tis claimed that on Saint Patrick's Day everyone is Irish. While this may or may not be true, it is a fact that the original Brits were the Celts who arrived in Britain and Ireland by 500 BC. After the Romans left Britain in the fifth century AD, the country was dominated by non-aligned Celtic chiefdoms. It didn't take long for the isle’s neighbours to glean that Britain was ripe for invasion without Roman protection. In poured hordes of Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and Danes who pushed the Celtic Britons to the isle’s periphery of Wales, Cornwall and Cumbria. Around the same time the Celts also settled in Ireland.

As I mentioned in a Lexpert article two months ago, I believe many linguists have greatly understated the contributions of these Celtic people to English. In fact, the OED shows approximately 1000 Celtic contributions to English such as bard, bug (as in bugbear), caber, clan, and glen, with the majority of them coming out of Ireland.

Other Celtic words filtered in later on. The word “bog” is a 16^th century adaptation of the Irish bogach. “Bog” has the connotation of “soft” in the Celtic word bog-luachair “bulrush.” Also coming into English in the 16^th century are the pair of plaid from the Gaelic plaide and Irish ploid, “blanket’, and the word “slogan” from the Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, “host-cry.” The word “galore” is a 17^th century rendering of the Irish go leór , “to sufficiency.” Whiskey” is an 18^th century cropping of “whiskybae,” and is a variation of the Gaelic uisgebeatha, “water of life.”

The term “Tory” has the distinction of not only being Irish in origin, but a rather nasty insult to boot. It is really an anglicized spelling of the Irish tóraidhe, “pursuer,” and originally denoted an Irish guerilla who, to revenge being ousted from his land by the British, took to plundering Ireland’s occupiers. The OED highlights this origin in its first definition of “Tory”: “In the seventeenth century, one of the dispossessed Irish, who became outlaws, subsisting by plundering and killing the English settlers and soldiers.” It quickly became a term to refer to any Irish Papist and by the middle of the seventeenth century the word was often used by British commentators as a synonym for “bandit,” as in this mid- seventeenth century reference found in Bulstrode Whitelocke's Memorial of the English Affair: “Eight Officers . . riding upon the Highway [in Ireland], were murder'd by those bloody Highway Rogues called the Tories.” At the end of the seventeenth century the word was applied to a group of English politicians who had originally opposed the deposing of Roman Catholic James and his replacement with the Protestant duo, William and Mary. Eventually, this loose assortment of politicians became regarded as a political party, the Tories. Even later, however, we find the word used as a derogation of the Irish. Catharine Macaulay, in her The History of England, written in 1849 writes, “The bogs of Ireland . . . afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those who were afterwards known as Whiteboys. These men were then called Tories.”

However, even the aforementioned total of approximately 1000 words of Celtic origin may be understated. Linguist Loreto Todd argues convincingly in the journal English Today that many other words might have an Irish lineage, These include:

Ass (animal) This word appears to be a modified form of the Irish term asal. The OED hypothesizes that the Irish word comes from the Latin asinus but is possible that the Latin term may have come from the Celtic one.

Bat (stick) Many etymologists see this word derivinf from the Old French batte. However, according to the OED, “the supposed Old English bat is by some referred to a Celtic origin. Compare Irish and Gaelic bat, bata, staff, cudgel.”

Clock-The OED states that “clock” does not appear to derive from any Germanic language and adds that it was “known since about the 8^th century in Celtic Irish cloc, Gaelic clag, Cornish , cloch, … (but) not found in southern Romanic languages where campana is the word for “bell.”

Another word that may have an Irish origin is “kibosh.” Its first OED citation occurs in Charles Dickens' Sketches by Boz written in 1836. The OED states, “Origin obscure; it has been stated to be Yiddish or Anglo-Hebraic.” Some etymologists, however, believe that it derives from the Irish phrase cie bais “cap of death.” The word bais is pronounced “bawsh” and cie is pronounced with a hard initial consonant, somewhat like “kai.”

Irish contributions to English may not be as sparse as generally supposed. They are to be found in considerable numbers, assuming one knows what shamrock to look under.

A happy St. Patrick's Day to all.

Howard Richler's latest book From Gay (Happy) to Gay (Homosexual) is being published by Ronsdale Press in 2013.