Cracker

As an American slang word Cracker means poor white Southern trash. It dates to the 18th century and comes from the verb to crack. Crack as a loud noise led to using crack to describe a loud braggart.

A Cracker is traditionally a pasty white, fat-assed, Southern Baptist, who longs for the return of segregation. They hate the government. They hate blacks, especially blacks who are more educated than they are which is just about everyone. They hate book learning except where it comes to reading the Bible, even then they hate all that peace and love shit Jesus taught. They love the "eye for an eye" and smiting parts though.

Huckleberry Finn's Pap was a Cracker. So is Wiley Drake.

Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man....They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home....but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me -- I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger -- why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way....They call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger... ~ 'Pap' Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6, by Mark Twain

Gubernatorial

Why is it governor but gubernatorial?

Both words come from the same Latin root, gubernare meaning to direct or rule. Gubernatorial is an 18th century American word formed directly from the Latin. Governor dates to the 14th century in English and is an import from the French word, gouverneur.

Pagan

Newt Gingrich, knowing as he does that Republicans have become the American Hezbollah (the Party of God), recently announced, "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

Pagan (n) - A non-Christian. An idolatrous worshiper of false gods. From the Latin paganus meaning rustic villager. Literally, pagan is the Latin word for hick and came to its meaning because villagers came to Christianity later than sophisticated city dwellers. It's use to mean devil worshiper is the simplistic extension that anything that is not Christian must be of the devil.

Infidel (n) - A non-Muslim. The common translation of the Arabic word kafir, meaning disbeliever. From the Latin infidelis meaning unfaithful.

Gentile (n) - A non-Jew. The common translation of the Hebrew ha goyim, meaning non-Jewish nations. Also Yiddish goy. From the Latin gentilis meaning countrymen, it was the early Christian church translation of the Greek word ethnikos (the nations) which had been the common translation of ha goyim.

Christians and Muslims believe their religions are so distasteful that if their adherents are exposed to any of the fun religions, like Wicca, they will convert en mass. Hence, Christians have been known to burn pagans and Muslims to behead infidels. Jews view gentiles as "everybody else" and are far more peacefully tolerate.

Vacation

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in the summer sun. ~ Connie Francis

Sometimes you just need to take a few days off and let the world struggle on without you.

Vacation (n) - a period of intermission; rest; leisure. From the Latin vacationem, meaning free of duty. That, in turn, was from the Latin word vacare meaning empty which also leads to the words vacuum and vain.

Nightmare

An Incubus

Nightmare (n) - A bad dream. Night is an Old English word. Mare is also Old English word for an evil spirit. Combined, the words described the incubi and succubi. Respectively male and female demons that have sexual intercourse with sleeping people, feeding off the sleeper's soul.

Incubus and Succubus (n) - Both from Latin. Incubus means one who lies on top of a sleeper. Succubus means one who lies underneath a sleeper. These demons are staples of World of Warcraft, second-rate horror movies, and fundamentalist Christian sects trying to scare believers away from sex.

A Succubus

Sonia Sotomayor

Names also have meanings.

Sonia - Comes from the Greek name Sophia meaning wisdom.

Sotomayor - Parsed, soto means thicket and mayor means great or greater. So at its simplest Sotomayor means "the Great Thicket." It is an old family name from the Andalucia region of Spain. There are two stories how the name came to be.

The simpler is that many centuries ago a noble family took its surname from where it settled, the Valley of the Thickets; in colloquial Latin of the region: Sotomayor.

The more complicated story, described here, is that the tutor to the son of a Galician king in the time of the Goths threw a spear into a thicket not knowing that the king's son was playing there. The king understood it was an accident and forgave the tutor. The tutor, in turn, took the name of Sotomayor to honor to slain boy.

Sleep

Perchance to dream.

Sleep (n) - Something insomniacs seldom experience. An Old English word dating back to the dawn on the language.

Insomnia (n) - The inability to sleep. From the Latin in- (not) and somnus (sleep). Entered the English Language in the early 17th century.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - An experimental rock group and the first Google hit when searching the word sleepytime. Suck on that Sleepytime Herbal Tea.

Hispanic

Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, although Republican word parsers are trying to claim that Benjamin Cardozo was the first "hispanic" justice.

Hispanic (a) - Of or pertaining to Spain or the Spanish language. From the Latin Hispania, the Iberian Peninsula. Since the 19th century the word hispanic describes a person whose heritage is of any of the Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere commonly known as Latin America.

Sotomayor was born in New York City to parents who had immigrated from Puerto Rico.

Cardozo was also born in New York City. His ancestors immigrated from England in the 18th century and lived in New York during the Revolutionary War. Prior to that he had ancestors who traveled to Holland in the 16th century from Portugal to escape the Spanish Inquisition as they were Sephardi Jews.

The Republican parsers are claiming that since Cardozo's family lived in Hispania centuries ago then he was Hispanic. Benjamin Cardozo was a brilliant man, logical, and a skilled wordsmith. He would never have engaged in such sloppy reasoning and, himself, never claimed to be Hispanic.

Empathy

According to Republicans the very worst trait a Supreme Court justice can have.

Empathy (n) - Understanding and engaging the emotions and feelings of another. Being sensitive to another's feelings. Entered the English Language at the turn of the 20th century. From the German word Einfühlung coined in 1858 by a German philosopher. Constructed from the Greek en- and pathos meaning in feeling.

Antonyms: unfeeling, insensitivity, obtuseness, callousness.

Empathy is one of the four essential leadership traits.

Quack

No, not the duck sound. I've been thinking about some of the doctors I've known. There was the anesthesiologist who was so bored by her job she would take business phone calls while in the operating theater. Then there was an orthopedic surgeon who got to be head of his department, not through skill but by being a royal SOB. He maintained an excellent record by blaming the patients for all of his screw-ups. They were just hypochondriacs.

Quack (n) - Medical charlatan. Dates from the 17th century from the Dutch word, kwaksalver, meaning seller of salves.

Cricket

I know about as much about cricket as I do korfball, which is next to nothing. Still, cricket has added some fun words to the English language.
Cricket - From the Old French word criquet meaning goal post. The insect name comes from a different French word, criquer meaning to creak. Using cricket to mean fair play as in "That's just not cricket" dates to the 19th century.

Hat Trick - The usage familiar to North Americans is to score three goals in ice hockey. The term originated in cricket and means putting down batsmen three times on three consecutive throws.

Sticky Wicket - Mostly a British slang that Americans occasionally use. As slang is means a difficult situation. In cricket it means a wet playing field (pitch).

Googly - Meaning bug-eyed from the comic strip Barney Google. In cricket a googly is a spinning delivery akin to the curveball in baseball.

Mullygrubber - My favorite cricket term it refers to a pitched ball that doesn't bounce. There are even some obscure non-cricket slang uses.

Purge

For such a simple word, purge has quite a history.

Purge (v) - To cleanse or purify. From the Latin word purgare meaning to make pure.

Purge has been the word of choice for the periodic removal of the ideologically unclean from a political movement. In recent history:

• Ba'athist Purge in Iraq - Following the United States invasion of Iraq there was a effort to prevent anyone who had been a member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party from achieving any position of responsibility. That quickly became counterproductive as most of the Iraqis who knew how to accomplish anything had been members of the Party.
  
• Nazi Purge - On June 30, 1934, Hitler sent the SS out to rid him of bothersome members of his party. Called Reichsmordwoche in German, "Blood Purge" (literally "empire murder week"), it came to be known to the world as the Night of the Long Knives.
  

• Soviet Purge - The Soviet Union under Stalin loved their periodic purges. In 1927 Leon Trotsky, one of the founding Russian Communist revolutionaries, was expelled from the Communist Party along with his supporters, Trotskyites. But that was nothing next to the Great Purge of 1935-1938. Being purged from the Communist Party under Stalin then meant arrest, torture, and execution. They were even airbrushed out of pictures. Over a million Russians died as a consequence of the Party purges.
• RINO Purge - RINO - Republican In Name Only. Republican conservatives are in a lather to cleanse their party of the moral pollution of liberalism. The list of which Republicans need purging is fluid but it appears to be: 1) Any Republican east of the Hudson River; 2) John McCain; 3) Any Republican who voted with Democrats at least once in 2009. While the Republican Party purge has not yet risen to the level of demanding blood, that may change.
  

Righteousness

Dick Cheney's preferred term for acts of CIA interrogators, as defined by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary.

Righteousness (n) - A sturdy virtue that was once found among the Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries, but it appears to have been imperfectly expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic passage from which is here given:

"Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to the letter of the law. It is not enough that one be pious and just: one must see to it that others also are in the same state; and to this end compulsion is a proper means. Forasmuch as my injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty to estop as to forestall mine own tort. Wherefore if I would be righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful, in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself restrain."

Mislead and Lie

What is the difference between to mislead and to lie, as in the sentence:

The CIA did not lie to congressional Democrats regarding the torture of prisoners but they may have been misled.

Mislead (v) - To lead into the wrong path, to guide into error, to deceive.

Lie (v) - To utter falsehood with an intention to deceive.

If we parse what is known to have been told to Congress we find euphemisms, undefined terms, half truths, and omitted facts. There were, probably, no direct falsehoods but what was told to Congress was designed to deceive. Not quite lies, rather deliberate, carefully crafted efforts to mislead. Was it perjury? I'm guessing no because I'm guessing the CIA avoided anything resembling testifying under oath.

Misled by lies, wondering the confused I am.
Stripped from us what we've earnt, learn simply there's no escape.
Encourage no other, just let them think what they want to believe. ~ Misled by Lies by Final Eve