Here are scraps from my notebook, bits of verbal lore I found of interest and hope you will too.

island tuxedo: A British Columbia Term for a Nova Scotia Product

Loggers on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island work in cold, rainy, often brutal weather. They need stout insulation, partly provided by the almost universal use among loggers of long johns, usually made by Stanfield’s, the underwear company headquartered in Truro, Nova Scotia. Loggers dubbed the standard one-piece set of Stanfield’s long johns “the island tuxedo,” referring to Vancouver Island.

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soft-seater: Canadian Showbiz Phrase

A soft-seater is a performance venue larger than a bar or nightclub and smaller than a giant stadium. In the lingo of show-bookers and musical agents it carries the additional aura of being an auditoium or small theater that caters to upscale, sophisiticated audiences. The phrase may well have originated in Toronto, Ontario, once the theater capital of Canada.

One of the earliest printed uses of the phrase soft-seater appeared in 1983 in The Globe & Mail where arts reporter and critic Liam Lacey wrote “A lot of really good mid-line acts that would ordinarily play a soft-seat place such as Massey Hall were just slaughtered this year—Joan Armatrading, Todd Rundgren and Robert Palmer. All of them deserved better and bigger audiences.”

The hue of the definition was refined in The Washington Post (October 20, 1989) by Kevin McManus: “The number of reading series in Washington has grown impressively high. They fall into two main types: soft-seaters and hard seaters. A soft-seater is typically held in a fancy auditorium with a lectern and microphone on the stage and, nearby, a small table that holds a drinking glass and water pitcher. The person who introduces the reader is all dressed up and appears to have painstakingly crafted his or her remarks.”

In Billboard, the weekly bible of showbiz, a 2002 article (April 13) entitled “Touring Canada, stated that “for soft-seater acts, booking agents are beginning to turn to the suburbs, where 800-1,300 seat theaters are pulling talent from the urban centers.”

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YIDDISH PUNS

These new American Yiddish daffy definitions were sent to me by Larry Paikin, a correspondent and friend in Miami Beach who in turn had them emailed to him. He is not the author and we cannot find the author, if indeed these have seen previous print. They read as if crafted by a literate comic mind. Let me know the source — if you know it — and I’ll add it here for due credit.

True indeed is it that explanatory scholia subtending a joke tend to ruin the humour. Jewish readers will get the jokes below immediately. Goyim will read my goyishe explanations below each quip.

DÉJÀ NU n. Having the feeling you've seen the same exasperated look on your mother's face but not knowing exactly when.

 

Bill Casselman note : Nu is perhaps the most Yiddish of all Yiddish interjections and particles. It’s from a little Russian word of the same name and address, namely nu. In Russian (ну!) means ‘well now’ or ‘really! or ‘so?’ Yiddish borrowed the word and added dozens of subtle shades of meaning. But the meaning of this déjà nu comment is the accusatory “so?” As in: “So, what have you done now to break your mother’s heart?” The subtext of the joke is that the Jewish mother has uttered the guilt-inducing “Nu?” to her son or daughter so often that, of course, it’s now déjà nu.

Déjà is a French adverb meaning ‘already’ or ‘again,’ and vu is a past participle of the verb voir ‘to see.’ Vu means ‘seen’ and the pun is on the French phrase borrowed into every western language, déjà vu – ‘already seen,’ something you have already seen in the past and now are seeing again and this reseeing is vaguely unsettling.

 

TRAYFFIC ACCIDENT n. An appetizer one finds out has pork.

 

B.C. note: Pork is trayf. It is against certain Jewish dietary laws to eat meats that are trayf.

The origin of the Yiddish word is the Hebrew adjective teref ‘ripped apart.’ Any food that is not kosher is trayf, any food not prepared by the butcher according to ritual law.

Bad gentile food is named in Yiddish after the pig. Chuzzer is the Yiddish word for pig. Chuzzerai is ‘pig food,’ food that is trayf. Pork hot dogs are chuzzerai.

HEBORT vb. To forget all the Hebrew one ever learned immediately after one's Bar Mitzvah.

MISHPOCHADOTS n. The assorted lipstick and make-up stains found on one's  face and collar after kissing all one's aunts and cousins at a reception.

B.C. note: The Yiddish word for ‘family,’ borrowed from Hebrew, is mishpocha.

RE-SHTETLEMENT n. Moving from Brooklyn to Miami and  finding all your old neighbors live in the same condo as you.

 

B.C. note: Shtetl is the Yiddish word for a small village, such as the settlements and ghettoes Jews were forced to live in during and after the European diaspora. This Yiddish word is from medieval German. It’s a diminutive of the common German word for city or town, Stadt. One medieval German spelling shows its origin clearly, namely, städtel.

DIS-KVELLIFIED vb. To drop out of law school, med. school or business as seen through the eyes of parents, grandparents, and Uncle Sid. In extreme cases, simply choosing to major in art history when Irv's son, David, is majoring in biology, is sufficient grounds for diskvellification.

 

B.C. note: To kvell is a Yiddish verb that means ‘to swell with pride,’ usually said of parents proud of their children. The source is the German verb quellen, most often used to describe water gushing forth or flooding over the top of a retaining object.

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Yechy & Icky

The word newest to me and most repellent to my sense of what is apt is the creepy hybrid term bioparent. Your bioparent is your birth parent, that is, your parent. Thus, in the realm of redundancy and annoying pleonasm, I think bioparent takes the cake. Let’s upscale that metaphor. I think bioparent takes the Gâteau St. Honoré.

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Gâteau St. Honoré

Since these are informal notes, I toss in the origin of that cream-crammed confection. Saint Honoré is the patron saint of bakers and pâtissiers. The sugary gâteau was invented in 1846 by the pâtissier Chiboust, in honor of the saint and also because his shop was on Rue St. Honoré in Paris. Indeed, this château of a gâteau is often served à la crême Chiboust.

Saint Honoré or Honoratus of Amiens, patron saint of bakers, is shown above holding the baker’s peel. A peel is a shovel-like tool used by bakers to slide loaves of bread, pizzas, pastries, and other baked goods into and out of an oven. Perhaps, like me, you've seen it a dozen times and never known its proper name. A peel is usually made of wood, with a broad, flat carrying blade for holding the baked goods and a handle.

Why is a bishop of Amiens the patron saint of bakers? “According to a legend, when it was known in his hometown that he had been proclaimed bishop, his nursemaid, who was baking bread for the family, refused to believe that had been elevated to such a position. She remarked that she would believe the news only if the peel she had been using to bake bread put down roots and turned itself into a tree. When the peel was placed into the ground, it was transformed into a blackberry tree that gave flowers and fruit. This miraculous tree was still being shown in the sixteenth century.”

Another story? “During Honoratus’ service as bishop of Amiens a number of miraculous events occurred, which spared farmers, millers, and bakers from natural disasters. Residents of France connected the miracles with Bishop Honoré and in 1204 a Parisian baker built a chapel to commemorate him.”

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Finally, to conclude on a pseudo-intellectual note — I offer my paraphrase of Proposition 7 in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: 

Wovon man sprechen kann, darüber muß man quatschen.

‘What humans can speak about, they have to blather about.’