Next week, Chanukah will fall on Thanksgiving, an exceedingly rare occurrence. I suspect that this year many families will enjoy their turkey stuffed with potato latkes and maybe even gefilte fish with a side of cranberry sauce.
Should the Jewish holiday be written and sounded and spelled as Hanukkah, the most popular version, or Chanukah, the second-most popular? The Hebrew word for the festival of lights, Hanukkah/Chanukah, consists of five Hebrew characters opening with the consonant het (chet). This letter is not the same as the English letter h, as in home, or ch, as in child). It’s a Hebrew guttural sound that has no precise equivalent in English. Still, I believe that the spelling Chanukah is closer to the chet sound in Hebrew and Yiddish. That’s because I have more chutzpa than hutzpa.
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Friday, the nation paused to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination in Dallas of John F. Kennedy, our 35th president. The word assassin descends from the Arabic hashshashin, literally “hashish eaters.” The original hashshashin were members of a 12th-century Ismaili sect in Syria. These fanatics would commit political murder, especially of a ruler or other public figure, after becoming intoxicated with prodigious quantities of hashish.
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“Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope,” once wrote a student. In one fell swoop — and one swell foop — that young scholar managed to misplace a modifier and perpetuate an erroneous myth.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lincoln at Gettysburg,” Gary Wills dulls the old saw that claims Lincoln, divinely inspired, dashed off his speech during a brief train ride: “These mythical accounts are badly out of character for Lincoln, who composed his speeches thoughtfully. His law partner, William Herndon, observing Lincoln’s careful preparation of cases, records that he was a slow writer, who liked to sort out his points and tighten his logic and his phrasing. That is the process vouched for in every other case of Lincoln’s memorable public statements. It is impossible to imagine him leaving his speech at Gettysburg to the last moment.”
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One hundred years ago, Wyoming ratified the 16th Amendment, providing the three-quarters majority of states necessary to amend the Constitution. The 16th Amendment gave Congress the authority to enact an income tax. That same year, the first Form 1040 appeared after Congress levied a 1 percent tax on net personal incomes above $3,000 with a 6 percent surtax on incomes of more than $500,000. Those percentages have grown considerably since 1913.
Why is so much of our hard-earned money theirs? Because the word theirs divides into THE IRS.
And did you know that the compound scot-free has nothing to do with Scotland or the Scottish? Back before Shakespeare’s day, a scoet was a municipal tax paid to a local sheriff or bailiff. Those who managed to dodge paying their share got off scot-free, that is, “tax-free.”
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The Cabrillo National Monument turned 100 this past Oct. 14. If Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the first European explorer to lead a flotilla of three ships to the shores of California and enter San Diego Bay, was Portuguese, his last name would be sounded as Ca-brill-o (rhymes with “pillow”), but if he was Castilian, Ca-bree-yo. Historians lean toward a Spanish origin but are not in complete agreement.
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A selfie is “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” This past week, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary named selfie its International Word of the Year. Runners up include binge-watch, “to watch multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or multiple streaming;” and twerk, “to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.”
Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com