It’s Wednesday so I set off to catch a bus to the market in Uppermill. I was out earlier than planned and my Bee app (the app that gives me info about Greater Manchester public transport) told me my bus was not going to come for about 15 minutes. So I walked a couple of stops along the route. It was a fine and sunny and waiting at a bus stop in the open air was more pleasant than standing in the often rather smelly bus shelter at the crossroads.
The market was more depleted than ever. In the square there was only the fishmonger. Maybe the shoe and slipper man (shoe-and-slipper-monger?) was on holiday as he quite often goes off to Spain. The other stalls that used to be in the square disappeared some time ago. On the other side of the road, outside the Methodist church, there is still a busy flower and plant stall but really it is hard to call the whole set-up a market any longer.
Having wondered about the possibility of saying “shoe-and-slipper-monger”, I decided to do a bit of research. It’s something of an occupational habit among linguists. The first thing I found was this:
monger /mŭng′gər, mŏng′-/
noun
A dealer in a specific commodity. Often used in combination.
"an ironmonger."
A person promoting something undesirable or discreditable. Often used in combination.
"a scandalmonger; a warmonger."
A trader; a dealer; -- now used chiefly in composition.
"fishmonger, ironmonger, newsmonger"
Other sources reinforced the idea of a “monger” as someone not to be admired:
a person who is involved with something in a petty or contemptible way (usually used in combination).
a gossipmonger.
a promoter of something unpleasant
warmonger
It turns out to be an old term:
Origin of monger
First recorded before 1000; Middle English noun monger(e), mounger, Old English mangere, equivalent to mang(ian) “to trade, act as a monger” (ultimately from Latin mangō“salesman”) + -ere agent noun suffix; cognate with Old Norse, Old High German mangari.
There you go!
I said that wondering about words was a bit of an obsession among linguits. linguists. Out of the blue yesterday, Phil pondered about the origin of the expression “the elephant in the room”. This is what my research gave me:
“In 1814, Ivan Krylov, (1769–1844), poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled "The Inquisitive Man", which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial. Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel Demons wrote, "Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man, who didn't notice the elephant in the museum...."
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first recorded use of the phrase, as a simile, in The New York Times on 20 June 1959: "Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It's so big you just can't ignore it.According to the website the Phrase Finder, the first known use in print is from 1952.
This idiomatic expression may have been in general use much earlier than 1959. For example, the phrase appears 44 years earlier in the pages of the British Journal of Education in 1915. The sentence was presented as a trivial illustration of a question British schoolboys would be able to answer, e.g., "Is there an elephant in the class-room?"
There you go!
I thought my Spanish sister was safely home with her family in the south of Spain. It’s about 10 days since she and her daughter and grandchildren left here to have a few days in London. I knew she planned to visit a friend once her daughter and co had set off for Spain but I really thought she had returned home by now. Then today I received this message:
“Hi Anthes. I am stranded in Gatwick 😂After three hours sitting in the plane yesterday, we were told our flight, and all other flights had been cancelled due to a major air traffic control problem. I finally managed to get a flight to Gibraltar today at 16:30, but It was impossible to get a hotel and I have been in the airport all night, luckily in good company with people I met xxx”
Well, as I’ve read reports about continuing chaos at Gatwick, we are now keeping our fingers crossed that she manages to depart today. One night sleeping in the airport is a bit of an adventure but a second night would be rather excessive.
Also excessive is the continued speculation about those travellers and would-be family rejoiners the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. So here’s a cartoon to that effect:
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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