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Porcelain. Such a snooty, upperclass term, with a drawn-out, sybaritic sibilance in the middle of the word that almost demands a sneering utterance. Too bad the term porcelain derives from a vulgar Italian word that meant ‘external female genitals.’ Porcelain is a word whose wide European dispersion we owe directly to its use by Marco Polo in 1298 CE. The Venetian trader (1254 – 1324 CE) and traveler to the Far East wrote or dictated his book Il Milione ‘the million,’ better known as The Travels of Marco Polo, and in it is the earliest recorded use of the word porcellana, in both its meanings, as ‘cowrie shell’ and to name a white, smooth kind of Chinese ceramic ware he had found during his travels. Polo thought the lovely nacreous sheen of porcelain’s glaze resembled the mother-of-pearl-like shine of a cowrie shell.
A cowrie is a univalvular mollusk, a gastropod.
nacre or mother-of-pearl The popularity of Marco Polo’s book cannot be exaggerated. It was one of the first secular bestsellers published. Christopher Columbus himself took an annotated copy of an edition in Latin on his voyage across the Atlantic to find China. Columbus’ copy of Marco Polo’s travel book has survived. Part of one page with Columbus’ actual scribbled marginalia, in Latin, is seen below.
The Italian word for cowrie shell, porcellana, derives from Medieval Italian porcello literally ‘little pig’ but far more usually used as a contemptuous word for vulva, a word that harked back to the rough Latin Soldiers’ Slang porcus literally ‘domestic pig’ but even during Imperial Rome one of the commonest Street Latin terms for vulva, equivalent to crude modern English terms like twat and cunt. This misogynist aspersion exists still in a vulgar modern English euphemism for the verb fuck. One brutish stud, appraising a passing female, says to another guy, “Check it out. I’d like to pork that.” The fissure in the cowrie shell was supposed to resemble a woman’s vulva. Vulgarisms in every European language exploit this pudendal similarity to anything cleft, including modern English ones like crack and slit.
Porcelain entered English in its Middle French form porcelaine, and daintily dropped its terminal /e/. French too had borrowed this word to describe smooth chinaware from Italian porcellana. Vagina Dentata The cowrie shell/vulva parallel recalls a potent folk symbol of male nightmare, subsection:castration, namely, the vagina dentata, Latin ‘vagina with teeth.’ Below is a Wikipedia note on it. "Various cultures have folk tales about women with toothed vaginas, frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of sex with strange women. The vagina dentata appears in the myths of several cultures. Erich Neumann relays one such myth in which “A fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother; the hero is the man who overcomes the Terrible Mother, breaks the teeth out of her vagina, and so makes her into a woman.” The myth expresses the threat sexual intercourse poses for men who, although entering triumphantly, always leave diminished. The vagina dentata has proven a captivating image for many artists and writers, particularly among surrealist or psychoanalytic works. Although the myth is associated with the fear of castration, it is often falsely attributed to Sigmund Freud. Freud never mentions the term in any of his psycho-analytic work because it runs counter to his own ideas about castration. For Freud, the vagina signifies the fear of castration because the young (male) child assumes that women once had a penis that is now absent. The vagina, then, is the result of castration, not the cause of it. Says Siggie. This myth has been popularized recently by its mention in a sequence from Neil Gaiman's bestselling novel American Gods, and by the 2008 film “Teeth”. The anime “Wicked City” and Carlos Fuentes' novel Christopher Unborn both feature female characters with vaginae dentatae. Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash presents a device called the Dentata which is an anti-rape device inserted into the vagina."
And so, connoisseurs of fine china, inquiring students of anatomy and dirty old men everywhere, that’s as deep as we dare dip this time.
Copyright © 2012 William Gordon Casselman
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A Great New Review of My Latest Book!October 26, 2011 Welcome to the Enchanted Forest By WB Johnston This review is about Bill Casselman’s latest e-book about words: Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A Word Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems (Kindle Edition) “Wade Davis, lately of National Geographic, once described each living language as “an old-growth forest of the human spirit.” Once you decide to enter the kleptomaniacal woods of our mother tongue, what you need is more than a tour guide. This is no Disney-fied ‘keep-your-hands-inside-the-car-at all-times’, point A to point B, clear-cutting mining of language. You, here, are in the hands of Sir William of Cassel, a genuine shaman modestly posing as a simple lover of words. Leave it on your desk at work and trust that someone will riffle through it when you are out at lunch. Shamans are magicians of the highest order. The work of their hands and hearts is game-changing. Or, hey, put it on your Kindle and just feel comforted that you can wander back out into the forest with Bill even in the middle of a boring lecture. (Casselman replies: Thank you so much, Dr. J., for the kudos.)
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Jenni French of San Fancisco, California writes on her blog “My Corner of the Universe” for March 19, 2011: Casselman, Bill. Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A World Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2010.
And the author has quite a way with words, so I have found myself rereading many sentences in this book and slowing my progress through it. My current favorite sentence is found in a discussion of dog hybrid breed names: “What a revolting concatenation of cutesiness and smarmy nomenclatorial treacle parading under the name of canine hybrid breed names” (19). I’m sure I’ll have another favorite sentence in a day or two. This book is just that good and just that entertaining.” (Author Bill Casselman replies: “Thanks, Jenni!” ) Just a reminder that this book contains my ALL-NEW word esssays, none of which are available anywhere else in print or online.
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Cindy Lapeña on her blog “Creativity Unlimited” of July 19 ,2011, writes: Posted by mimrlith in 365 Things to Look Forward to. 19. Starting a book To a certified bibliophile like me, a.k.a. bookworm, one of the most exciting things to look forward to is to start reading a new book. In fact, sometimes the prospect of starting to read a new book is so exciting that I have to hurry to finish the book I am currently reading, just so I can start a new one. If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s a book, especially if it promises to be a good one. Of course there are certain books I just won’t touch or be seen with, but at the risk of being hung by my thumbs by fans of such literature, I will not mention any genres in particular. . . Seeing a book with a title that totally captivates me, like Where a Dobdob meets a Dikdik (yes, that is a book title!) has me so worked up, I just can’t wait to dive in. I imagine all sorts of deliciously fancifully outrageous words with a title like that. Is it obvious? I just love books on words. You won’t believe how many dictionaries I own. Or books on lexical oddities and other lexical explorations. Yes, I am a logophile of sorts. I love the new words I pick up from new books. I relish finding out the meanings of all manner of words and phrases and expressions. What could be more fun?” (Replies author Bill Casselman: Please scroll to bottom of page or click here to link to a free seven-page preview of my new book, Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik.
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Testimonial Email Thursday, February 3, 2011 Dear Mr. Casselman, . . . I revisited the paraprosdokian page, and have finally quit laughing again at “Casselman’s Conclusion.” You were not unkind to the “profligate prof-lets.” During my years as an acquisitions editor, in rejection letters I often quoted Prof. Moses Hadas, classicist at Columbia University, who wrote a young scholar in response to having been sent the prof-let’s first book, “Thank you for sending me your book. I will waste no time reading it.” Thank you,
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