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One way that some people gain a degree of immortality is
through eponyms
-- words that started out as proper
names.
For instance, every time someone is accused of
chauvinism
or of behaving like a chauvinist,
we are invoking Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort, a
much-wounded veteran of the Napoleonic wars who maintained
a loud, simple-minded and obsessive admiration of Napoleon.
The French press of the 1830's enjoyed making fun of
Chauvin's fixation, and thus a word evolved.
Silhouette similarly honors Etienne de Silhouette, a parsimonious French minister of finance in 1759. His work was apparently all shadow and no substance, and so his name became a byword.
It isn't just the French who have enriched our language. Boycott commemorates Charles Cunningham Boycott, a retired British army captain who in 1873 became the resident manager of an English earl's Irish estates. When famine loomed in 1879, Boycott refused to reduce rents.
In retaliation, the Irish tenant farmers refused to communicate with him in any way whatsoever. Capt. Boycott was shunned and ostracized during his career, and for the past century, his name has become a common response when people feel put upon by outside powers.
Many other names have become words -- sandwich, jezebel, guillotine, baedeker, derrick, bowdlerize, mesmerize, lynch, bloomers, hooker, sadist, quisling, to name a few -- but sadly, Colorado has not yet contributed any eponyms to the Official English language. We could try, though. Here's a two-career couple talking over the day's events.
How was your day, honey?
Not that hot. Thought I'd relax by myself over coffee
and the paper when I went out for breakfast this morning,
and just as soon as I got comfortable, this guy came up and
started romering at me about the airport. It was even worse
than when we got penaed at church last week.
But your day must have gone better than mine. We had
our proposal ready to go at work today, and I thought it
looked pretty good and everything was set to go. Then the
boss chenowethed it and said he had a lot of questions we
hadn't answered. He'd been all for it before, and I can't
figure out why he pulled a kirscht and changed sides. I
don't know what we're going to do now. I was so upset. I
was scared I might just start schroedering, right there in
front of everybody.
Well at least you knew where your boss stood. When I
got to work, I found out that my marketing plan got
wirthed, and I don't know if it will ever get out of
limbo.
Don't worry, dear. If you really got wirthed, then
when somebody else makes a decision, you'll find out what
your boss was thinking. When you should worry is if your
plan gets bledsoed, and then it will vanish into
strickland, never to be seen again. By the way, how did we
come out on our taxes this year?
We really got paulsoned. I sure wish we could get
somebody to armstrong an amendment to the tax laws just for
us. I don't know what this country's coming to, all this
money going to keeping clinically dead people alive for
another week or two, and all these services that probably
go to illegal immigrants that don't even know how to read
or write philips. As a society, we're just not anschutz
enough to afford all that. And on a personal level, our
checking account looks so strang right now that I'm going
to have to schuck and put in more time on the job and spend
less time on community things.
Please, dear, don't start lamming again. It might
make you feel better, but if you keep that up, you'll get
to be such a shroyer that nobody will listen to
you.
Sorry. I guess I'm in a berg mood. I wanted to take
the bus to work today, but it got considined and I had to
drive. That's aggravating.
Not as aggravating as what your son did. The school
called and said he quillened again today. He's turning into
a real discipline problem.
Well, just as long as he's not harting around with
some little bimbo.
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