drinks, are called “literary bummers .” Companion words or phrases include bum’s rush , for forcible eviction, like being tossed out of a bar or ballgame. To wit, the great crepehanger of a comic George Carlin said, “If God dropped acid, would he see people? Bummer .” The Hindu shopkeeper Apu says to Ned Flanders on The Simpsons : “That’s the problem with your religion: it’s a bummer —but the sing-alongs are okay.” And the Dude in The Big Lebowski sighs “Bummer” no fewer than a dozen times, which is far less than the 283 “f-bombs” that are dropped during the movie.
BUNDLING
A pioneer custom of sleeping fully clothed in the same bed with members of the opposite sex. A tradition formerly in vogue in Wales and New England during a time when beds were scarce, men and women slept together in the same bed without removing their clothes. Halliwell’s Dictionary cites the Duke de la Rochefoucauld’s Travels in America : a practice wherein “a man and woman slept in the same bed, he with his small clothes, and she with her petticoats on; an expedient practiced in America on a scarcity of beds, where, on such an occasion, husbands and parents frequently permitted travelers to bundle with their wives and daughters. This custom is now abolished.” Could it be that the coo of lovers, “little bundle of love” came from
bundling ? Since you asked, bundling comes from the Middle Dutch bondel , from bond, and binden , to bind, binding, and German bundilin . The modern sense of bundling a baby or a package, “to wrap up in warm heavy clothes,” was recorded in 1893.
C
CAHOOTS
To collude with, to be in league with, to deal with secretly. So furtive is this word, no one really knows its origins. It hides in etymology dictionaries like a crow in a dark cave. Some scholars suspect it derives from the old Roman word cohorts , a troop of soldiers, and others say it comes from Old French cahute , hut, which provides a shadowy word picture of clandestine deals made in remote cabins in the woods. More recently, Daniel Cassidy suggests, in How the Irish Invented Slang , that its roots are in the Irish comh-udar , co-author, co-instigator. Thus, to be in cahoots with your collaborator on your next spy novel would be as redundant as sending a keg of Guinness to Ireland. Writing in the New York Times in 2000, columnist Molly Ivins asked, “Where’s the outrage? I’ve got plenty for ya!” When she interviewed the director of the Intermountain Tissue Center in Salt Lake City about the highly profitable trade in body parts,
he told her, “If donors were told at the time about profits, they wouldn’t donate.” Ivins adds, “Duh. The nonprofit foundations involved in this grisly trade are in cahoots with the for-profit corporations.”
CALCULATE
To count; a method of reckoning. If you visualize the Roman fresco of a definition that the venerable Skeat provides, “to reckon by help of small pebbles,” you’ll never look at calculation the same way. For it comes from the Latin calculus , pebble, and calx , stone, specifically stones for the Roman (or Chinese) abacus to be used for accounting purposes. These stones also contributed to a clever Roman invention that only Mel Brooks could’ve staged. Mounted onto a chariot that carried passengers was a box full of pebbles with a small hole in the bottom. This box was attached to another box into which the pebbles dropped as the chariot rumbled along. When the chariot reached its destination, let’s say the Colosseum in Rome, the dropped pebbles were counted or calculated and the “fare” determined. Imagine the stones dropping like those numbers that click over on the old taxicab meters, and you’ll appreciate this Fred Flintstone-like device as the first taximeter. Who knew that math could be so much fun? Companion words include calculus , Newton’s invention of the branch of mathematics, and calculation , the act of figuring out stock prices, baseball
BUNDLING
A pioneer custom of sleeping fully clothed in the same bed with members of the opposite sex. A tradition formerly in vogue in Wales and New England during a time when beds were scarce, men and women slept together in the same bed without removing their clothes. Halliwell’s Dictionary cites the Duke de la Rochefoucauld’s Travels in America : a practice wherein “a man and woman slept in the same bed, he with his small clothes, and she with her petticoats on; an expedient practiced in America on a scarcity of beds, where, on such an occasion, husbands and parents frequently permitted travelers to bundle with their wives and daughters. This custom is now abolished.” Could it be that the coo of lovers, “little bundle of love” came from
bundling ? Since you asked, bundling comes from the Middle Dutch bondel , from bond, and binden , to bind, binding, and German bundilin . The modern sense of bundling a baby or a package, “to wrap up in warm heavy clothes,” was recorded in 1893.
C
CAHOOTS
To collude with, to be in league with, to deal with secretly. So furtive is this word, no one really knows its origins. It hides in etymology dictionaries like a crow in a dark cave. Some scholars suspect it derives from the old Roman word cohorts , a troop of soldiers, and others say it comes from Old French cahute , hut, which provides a shadowy word picture of clandestine deals made in remote cabins in the woods. More recently, Daniel Cassidy suggests, in How the Irish Invented Slang , that its roots are in the Irish comh-udar , co-author, co-instigator. Thus, to be in cahoots with your collaborator on your next spy novel would be as redundant as sending a keg of Guinness to Ireland. Writing in the New York Times in 2000, columnist Molly Ivins asked, “Where’s the outrage? I’ve got plenty for ya!” When she interviewed the director of the Intermountain Tissue Center in Salt Lake City about the highly profitable trade in body parts,
he told her, “If donors were told at the time about profits, they wouldn’t donate.” Ivins adds, “Duh. The nonprofit foundations involved in this grisly trade are in cahoots with the for-profit corporations.”
CALCULATE
To count; a method of reckoning. If you visualize the Roman fresco of a definition that the venerable Skeat provides, “to reckon by help of small pebbles,” you’ll never look at calculation the same way. For it comes from the Latin calculus , pebble, and calx , stone, specifically stones for the Roman (or Chinese) abacus to be used for accounting purposes. These stones also contributed to a clever Roman invention that only Mel Brooks could’ve staged. Mounted onto a chariot that carried passengers was a box full of pebbles with a small hole in the bottom. This box was attached to another box into which the pebbles dropped as the chariot rumbled along. When the chariot reached its destination, let’s say the Colosseum in Rome, the dropped pebbles were counted or calculated and the “fare” determined. Imagine the stones dropping like those numbers that click over on the old taxicab meters, and you’ll appreciate this Fred Flintstone-like device as the first taximeter. Who knew that math could be so much fun? Companion words include calculus , Newton’s invention of the branch of mathematics, and calculation , the act of figuring out stock prices, baseball
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