I am updating this blog from the Neckers Computer lab and I am here working till 13:30 today. I didn't really sleep yesterday night so as to get back to my schedule of getting up early in the morning. Today I learned few new words from my wordsmith newsletter
Epeolatory (pronounced ep-i-OL-uh-tree) The following sentence at wordsmith was a pretty good one. "I read my dictionary for a few more minutes, until tiredness eventually brought my epeolatry to an end for the day."
Serien Fine rain falling from an apparently cloudless sky, typically observed after sunset. She must have caught a chill from the serein, that's all!"
Skeuomorph SKYOO-uh-morf A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip
Snood (noun): 1. A fleshy appendage over the beak of a turkey. 2. A net for holding a woman's hair at the back of her head.
(From Wikipedia)
Hey Rube "Hey, Rube!" is
circus slang most commonly used in the
United States with origins in the middle 19th century. It is a rallying call, or a cry for help, used by circus people involved in a fight. It can also be used in the sense of describing a fight between circus people and the general public (ie. "the clown got a black eye in a hey, Rube!").
In the early days of circuses in America (c. 1800-1860), it was very common for the employees (and owners) of circuses to get into fights with the locals as they traveled from town to town. Circuses were places where country people could gather, blow off steam and voice political views. Circuses were rowdy, loud and often lewd affairs.
Mark Twain's classic description of a circus and other shows in
Huckleberry Finn provides illustration. It was a rare show that did not include at least some violence, and this often involved the members of the circus.
When a circus worker was attacked or in trouble, he would yell "Hey, Rube!" and his fellow circus workers would rush to join the melee. Circus pioneer and legendary clown
Dan Rice called it "a terrible cry, [meaning] as no other expression in the language does, that a fierce deadly fight is on, that men who are far away from home [traveling circus workers] must band together in a struggle that means life or death to them."
[1]The origin of the expression can be traced to 1848 when a member of Dan Rice's troupe was attacked at a New Orleans dance house. That man yelled to his friend, named "Reuben", who rushed to his aid.
[1]. Another explanation is that the name "
Rubens" is a slang term for farmers (e.g., "Rustic Reubens"), usually shortened to "
Rubes". The
OED's first entry for "Hey, Rube!" is from 1882 Times (Chicago) 3 Dec. Suppl. 12/4 "A canvasman watching a tent is just like a man watching his home. He'll fight in a minute if the outsider cuts the canvas, and if a crowd comes to quarrel he will yell, ‘Hey Rube!’ That's the circus rallying cry, and look out for war when you hear it."
The term is still known and used today in circuses, but often more romanticizing the "glory days" when circuses were rowdy affairs, and less describing actual fights or calling for aid.
[1] It was invoked in an issue of the
DC Comics book
The Outsiders in reference to the team's leader,
Nightwing, who was a former circus acrobat. The term is also used in
All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #9, when
Robin refers to
Green Lantern repeatedly as a "rube", and then proceeds to beat him up and almost kill him.
Hypergelast "One who laughs excessively" "America had become a laughing nation, a country of frivolists and hypergelasts, a culture dangerously out of control."
Agelast "One who hardly laughs"
Now its my turn to weave all these words into 1 sentence The brothers attempt to crash the party was foiled by the hosts cry of
Hey Rube. The two brothers are
Antipodal while the elder is a
Hypergelast, designs
Skeumorph guitars, loves singing in
Serien the younger is
Agelast, wears his hair in a
Snood and widely known for his
Epeolatory
