Jewish World Review March 10, 2005 / 29 Adar I 57645
Editors of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, Tenth Edition
Source of the nickname the Big Easy for New Orleans; happy as a clam; grotesque or gruesome?
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Dear Editor:
What is the source of the nickname ``the Big Easy'' for New Orleans?
J.J., Londonderry, Vt.
Dear J.J.:
New Orleans, like many other distinctive cities, has a good handful of
nicknames, but none is as well known as ``the Big Easy.'' According to
our research, it first showed up in 1970 as the title of a novel about
New Orleans by James Conoway. The 1970 book was made into a popular
movie in 1986, and from that point the term became much more widely used.
Conoway is often credited with inventing the famous name himself,
although one of our citations from a 1988 article in Harper's Magazine
suggests otherwise: ``Liebling was conjuring up the city before 1960
(...) It was a poor, peculiar, happy place, (...) Only local black
people and a handful of hipsters knew to call it the Big Easy.'' As it
stands, however, we have no written evidence of ``the Big Easy'' prior
to Conoway's 1970 novel.
Dear Editor:
Where did we get the saying ``happy as a clam''? How can you tell if a
clam is happy?
J.M., Newport, R.I.
Dear J.M.:
The saying ``happy as a clam'' is a shortened version of a longer
phrase, ``happy as a clam at high tide.'' (A variation of this longer
phrase is ``happy as a clam in high water.'')
The extended saying is based on the fact that clams, living on or buried
in the ocean floor, are much less likely to be reached by digging hands
at high tide than at low tide. At high tide (or high water), a clam
would be considered to be ``happy'' because it is out of harm's way.
A number of sources trace the origin of the extended phrase to the 19th
century. With casual use it eventually got shortened to the more common
saying we know today, even though the logic of the original expression
is lost in the short version.
Dear Editor:
I hear people use ``grotesque'' when they really, to my mind, mean
``gruesome.'' Are these words really interchangeable? For example,
should one call a devastating outbreak of some killer disease ``a
grotesque nightmare'' or ``a gruesome nightmare''?
P.D., Caldwell, Idaho
Dear P.D.:
In one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes asks Dr.
Watson, ``How do you define the word 'grotesque'?'' Watson suggests,
``Strange remarkable,'' but Holmes doesn't entirely agree. ``There is
surely something more than that; some underlying suggestion of the
tragic and terrible,'' he says.
Watson is defining ``grotesque'' in its purest historical form.
``Grotesque'' comes from ``grotta,'' the Italian word for ``cave.''
During the Italian Renaissance, ``pitture grottesche'' were what the
Italians called the exotic paintings found in caverns unearthed in the
excavation of Rome. Later on, a style of decorative art that
incorporated fantastic combinations of human and animal forms interwoven
with strange fruits and flowers, reminiscent of the Roman ``cavern
pictures,'' was called simply ``grottesca'' in Italian. The Italian word
soon worked its way into English. Our noun ``grotesque'' still refers to
a style of decorative art that distorts the natural or, in a broader
sense, to anything that we might describe by the adjective
``grotesque.'' The adjective first appeared in English at the beginning
of the 17th century.
So the question then becomes, what are the limits of the grotesque?
Synonyms for the adjective are ``bizarre,'' ``fantastic,'' ``weird,''
``outlandish,'' and ``fanciful.'' ``Grotesque'' emphasizes distortion of
the natural usually to the point either of ridiculous ugliness or
ludicrous caricature. Sometimes the word suggests an absurdly irrational
combination of things that are incompatible, as in ``in this war-torn
state it is grotesque to use peacetime standards for measuring freedom
of speech.''
The other ``g'' words ``gruesome,'' ``grisly,'' ``gross,'' and
``ghastly'' really aren't close synonyms of ``grotesque,'' but it's
apparent that the boundaries blur at times. Thus, you might read of
``the grotesque inhumanity of his attacker.'' How acceptable you find
such usage may depend on whether you consider things that are horrific
and revolting or, in Sherlock Holmes's phrase, ``tragic and terrible''
to be strange or unnatural.
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