Comments on: Various Visuals

By: roac

roac — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:22:50 +0000

My pleasure.

By: kid bitzer

kid bitzer — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:20:56 +0000

that makes all the difference then. “wheelbarrows” are not even under consideration.

rather, it is the singular of “long barrows” that should go to “long barf”.

thanks for clearing that up.

By: roac

roac — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:10:00 +0000

Oops, correction to 20: The OE word that became “barrow” was beorh not burh, which is a different word though related. Should have looked it up instead of relying on memory.

The history is that beorh meaning “hill” survived and turned into “barrow” only in the SW of England, where it was used in the names of hills, such as “Long Barrow.” 19th-century archaeologists adopted the dialect word as technical term for a type of grave-mound. Hence Tolkien’s “Barrow-downs” and Barrow-wights” (a term he borrowed from Andrew Lang).

By: roac

roac — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:53:57 +0000

Oooh goodie, someone took the bait! No, the barrow in “wheelbarrow” is a different word from “barrow” a grave-mound. It is from Middle English “bearwe.” The OED thinks that “bearwe” must be from an Old English word derived from beran “carry.” (No such OE word is to be found in the surviving literature. Linguists however have no compunction about presuming that it existed; they just signal its disappearance with an asterisk.)

There are actually four noun entries for “barrow” in OED. One means a castrated boar and one is a kind of coat. Etymologically, they’re four different words that just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same.

By: kid bitzer

kid bitzer — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:45:01 +0000

@ 20—
dwarf to dwarrows?
so, wait: the singular of wheelbarrows should be “wheelbarf”?

By: roac

roac — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:41:35 +0000

Curse you, Rob at 18! I was so looking forward to trotting out "dwarrows." At least I can provide one bit of additional information, namely that the paradigm for dweorh -> *dwarrows is burh -> barrows. Ajay would obviously classify you and me as way, way too influenced by Tolkien. If there is evidence for the statement at 15, I am not aware of it. "Dwarves" was a mistake, as Tolkien admitted.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:20:51 +0000

“No one has pointed out that it should be “Licensed to Ill”.”

My god, you’re right.

By: rob

rob — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:31:52 +0000

“The real historical plural of ‘dwarf’ (like teeth of tooth) is dwarrows anyway: rather a nice word, but a bit too archaic. Still I rather wish I had used the word dwarrow.”

Reference: The Letters of JRR Tolkien Letter # 17 To Stanley Unwin, Chairman of Allen and Unwin, p. 23, 24

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:14:32 +0000

No one has pointed out that it should be “Licensed to Ill”.

Also, I didn’t notice the spelling, probably because the last DVD I watched was “Even Dwarfs Started Small” by Werner Herzog. “A Good Year For Dwarfs” sounds like a great sequel title.

By: ajay

ajay — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:08:35 +0000

I think if your answer is along the lines of 15, then you are definitely way too influenced by Tolkien.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:43:18 +0000

Tolkien himself clearly distinguished between short people (dwarfs) and members of the dwarven race (dwarves).

By: kid bitzer

kid bitzer — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:07:52 +0000

daumier’s louis/poire dates from the early 1830s; later than gillray, but still a fair sight earlier than zimmerman.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:16:02 +0000

I didn’t notice the spelling. I was too busy thinking about why the prospect of a tall, leggy, scantily-clad exotic dancer/porn star might be relevant to the dubious interests of short men.

Oh give me a break, it’s Monday.

By: rand careaga

rand careaga — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:07:29 +0000

@mollymooly

You must be quite old. Geez, that’s a hell of a way to start a Monday. I gradually stopped paying attention to popular music as an undergraduate in the first few years of the 1970s because I thought it was becoming turgid and overproduced. A chance exposure to early Talking Heads impressed me with their (initially) stripped-down sound, and I looked in again in a dilettantish fashion for a few years after that. Now it’s just too damned much of an ordeal to struggle into the walker, hobble across the parlor and fire up the Victrola (and besides, Lali Puna won’t release their stuff on 78s).

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:45:10 +0000

Yeah, I was going to bring up Gillray myself.

“I am genuinely getting interested in the origins of modern cartooning styles. So I’d be curious if anyone has any bright ideas.”

The endpages of Spiegelman’s In The Shadow Of No Towers have a short history of the origins of newspaper comic strips. It’s mainly interested in how the characters developed and were received, but you can learn a lot abut the visual styles as well. Also, you can find collections of Herriman’s hugely influential Krazy Kat easily enough and they’re a fantastic read.