SHAZAM

SHAZAM: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury.

I have fond reminiscences of childhood hours spent watching truly terrible cartoons on VHS tapes, among them, Shazam! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the official name--perhaps the inspiration for a certain soon-to-be relic of a search engine?). But today I learned something new, browsing the legitimately LOL-worthy* cracked.com [H.T. Marginal Revolution]:

The origin of Shazam! is that young Billy Batson, a 12-year-old homeless newsboy, follows a mysterious stranger into a secret subway tunnel and boards an empty train that takes him to the lair of a wizard who gives him the secret word "Shazam!" The word is an acronym for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury who all lend their respective powers to whoever yells the word with the least amount of shame.

Yes, you've read correctly, Captain Marvel in all of that skin-tight clothing, with his rippled muscles and dangling package is actually a 12-year-old boy who, thanks to a secret magic word he learned only by talking to strangers and following them into abandoned subway tunnels, has the amazing ability to instantly transform into the legal age of consent.

But although Mercury is included in this list, it is another hero who doth receive his gifts. This was the Sub-Mariner--also in our excellent collection--of whom Cracked writes, worthy of a quote in full:

Namor was the bastard offspring of a ship's captain and a member of a secret undersea race. We might be tempted to call him a mermaid, but the comic book insists he is technically "Homo Mermanus." A piece of advice for budding comic book writers, if you'd like to avoid cheap gay jokes at your hero's expense, perhaps including the words "homo" and "anus" in your character's scientific classification is a bad idea.

Namor has pointy Spock ears, can communicate with aquatic life, breathe underwater, possesses an enhanced physique to deal with the high pressure depths and, of course, has the obligatory tiny wings on his ankles that enable him to fly.

What's that you say? That last one seems a little out of place? Why would an aquatically themed superhero flit about on delicate little calf-wings? According to the creators: Fuck you, that's why.

*I laughed out loud, many times. Does that pardon of such a delightfully corny expression? No, no it certainly does not.

Estne serpens parvus?

Is it a small snake?

In English, we call those charming little slimy gastropods "snails." The etymology is offensively dull. Via etymonline:

snail O.E. snægl, from P.Gmc. *snagilas (cf. O.S. snegil, O.N. snigill, M.H.G. snegel, dial. Ger. Schnegel, O.H.G. snecko, Ger. Schnecke "snail"), from base *snag-, *sneg- "to crawl" (see snake). The word essentially is a dim. form of O.E. snaca "snake," lit. "creeping thing." Also formerly used of slugs. Symbolic of slowness since at least c.1000;snail's pace is attested from c.1400.

The Romans were more observant. They called a snail a coclea, identical to their word for "spiral screw." And with their observation, the Greek tradition mixed in creativity, establishing my personal favorite (via LSJ): φέροικος--literally, house-bearer.

poenam fugere

To avoid the penalty.

On James Fallows always stimulating blog, a discussion of new Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner's past tax "error" leads him to dip into his mailbag:

"Not an innocent error" dept:

1) I couldn't agree more about Geithner and after 8 years of the rankest, in-your-face demonstration of a two-tiered justice system in which every wrong doer with a white collar has gotten off scott free (who is this scott anyway?) or even been rewarded for his malfeasance I just wish we could go back to the pretense that we have a legal system that works one way for all the people.

Let me hasten to add: I'm so excited about Obama and his promise I could just about burst but this episode keeps me from bumping my nose against the ceiling.

Scott? I know Scott Free, more properly as scot-free. The expression comes from Old English sc(e)ot-a payment, contribution, ‘reckoning’; a customary tax laid on, or a contribution paid by subjects according to their ability; a custom paid to the use of a sheriff or bailiff; a local or municipal tax (OED). To go scot-free is to avoid such a tax.

pro philologo

The case for of philology...

or Why I am not an Archaeologist. Cal Watkins presents the case for me:

The evidence that archaeology can provide is limited to material remains. But human culture is not confined to material artifacts. The reconstruction of vocabulary can offer a fuller, more interesting view of the culture of a prehistoric people than archaeology precisely because it includes nonmaterial culture. Consider the case of religion. To form an idea of the religion of a people, archaeologists proceed by inference, examining temples, sanctuaries, idols, votive objects, funerary offerings, and other material remains. But these may not be forthcoming; archaeology is, for example, of little or no utility in understanding the religion of the ancient Hebrews. Yet, for the Indo-European-speaking society, we can reconstruct with certainty the word for “god,” *deiw-os, and the two-word name of the chief deity of the pantheon, *dyeu-piter, Greek Zeus pater, and Luvian Tatis Tiwaz). The forms *dyeu- and *deiw-os are both derivatives of a root dyeu-, meaning “to shine,” which appears in the word for “day” in numerous languages (Latin dies; but English DAY is from a different root). The notion of deity was therefore linked to the notion of the bright sky. The second element of the name of the chief god, *dyeu-phter-, is the general Indo-European word for FATHER, used not in the sense of father as parent but with the meaning of the adult male who is head of the household, the sense of Latin pater familias. For the Indo-Europeans the society of the gods was conceived in the image of their own society as patriarchal. The reconstructed words *deiw-os and *dyeu-phter- alone tell us more about the conceptual world of the Indo-Europeans than a roomful of graven images.

That is from his excellent introduction to the American Heritage Dictionary's Appendix of Indo-European roots.

linguae Europae indigenae

The languages of aboriginal Europe.

Don Ringe is a very, very smart guy. In his discipline, only a very smart guy writes this:

In the first place, if you want “reality-based” answers, take a scientific approach. Science may or may not reveal the existence of an objectively real world out there, but it does give results that can be replicated and answers that can be proved by anyone who knows how the system works. That’s good enough for me because I think it’s the best we can hope for. If people find specific scientific conclusions ideologically inconvenient, that’s their problem.

Thus, you should read his discussion, on LanguageLog, of the languages of Europe prior to the arrival of Indo-European and the eventual spread of our linguistic parent.

Per se

Per se--more often misused or misspelled?

This is prompted by my recent observation and acute shock at "per say," but the first is painfully common.

Odysseus et Steve Irwin

Odysseus and Steve Irwin.

What do the legendary voyager and the Crocodile Hunter have in common?

They were both fatally impaled upon a sting-ray barb. 

The September 2006 death of Steve Irwin was, perhaps, no less tragic than that of Odysseus, who according to the lost Telegony, perished at the hands of his son by the witch Circe, Telegonus. The battle between father and son, neither who recognized the other, culminated in Odysseus's death on the his son's spear point--a sting-ray barb.

That bit of Classical lore is from M.L. West's Indo-European Poetry and Myth.