Accute (for Acute)

On Monday I mentioned a job posting that had used the word "cuties" instead of "duties," clearly by accident but to rather good effect. This somehow led me to the story of California poet and librarian Ina Coolbrith, whom many men found mighty attractive. (Joaquin Miller, quoting Tennyson, once described her as "divinely tall, and most divinely fair.") But today, let's circle back to the word cute itself. I recently came across an article on Slate concerning the derivation of this word, which it seems was originally short for acute and was even written with an apostrophe before the a, in order to denote the elided letter. It basically meant neat and concise, appropriate and pleasing. After telling this to a friend the other day, he responded: "That's a cute angle!" Even J. D. Salinger himself was not above punning in this fashion. In Seymour: An Introduction, he quotes from an old vaudeville act: "Second Banana: 'I've been in bed for nine weeks with acute hepatitis.' Top Banana: 'Which one, you lucky dog? They're both cute, those Hepatitis girls.'" He also brings up the word again in a passage concerning Seymour and his wife Muriel: "Later, when we were having a drink at the station, she asked me if I didn’t think that kitten was 'rather nice.' She doesn’t use the word 'cute' any more. When did I ever frighten her out of her normal vocabulary? Bore that I am, I mentioned R. H. Blyth’s definition of sentimentality: that we are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it. I said (sententiously?) that God undoubtedly loves kittens, but not, in all probability, with Technicolor bootees on their paws. He leaves that creative touch to script writers..." There were 16 examples of today's typo in OhioLINK, and 650 in WorldCat. Perhaps close to half of these hits were for works published in the 17th and 18th centuries, so in cases like that, be sure to check the spelling on the piece itself.

(Los gato son muy bellos, or "The cat is very beautiful," 24 November 2011, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Spagetti* (for Spaghetti*)

There was once a time in America when "ethnic" food was pretty much only eaten by people of that particular ethnic group. Downtown Albany, New York, had boasted a thriving "Little Italy" neighborhood for many years until then-governor Nelson Rockefeller decided it might be a good idea to raze 1,500 homes and apartment buildings, 350 businesses, four churches, and 29 taverns—thereby displacing 9,000 residents—in order to make room for the grandiose Empire State Plaza, where thousands of civil servants now work. I recall my mother telling me one time about a school chum of hers in high school who used to invite her over for dinner. This was the first time, she said, she had ever had spaghetti. Pasta of all kinds, but perhaps especially spaghetti, is so ubiquitous nowadays it's hard to imagine a time when this wasn't the case. But on April Fools' Day in 1957, the "Spaghetti-tree hoax" confused and confounded many British citizens, who, as Wikipedia puts it, "were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water." Afterwards, a "number of viewers" contacted the BBC for information on how to grow their own spaghetti tree. Years later, CNN called this three-minute broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled." Well-known BBC broadcaster Richard Dimbleby spoke in stentorian tones of the traditional Swiss "harvest festival," the advanced breeding techniques required to produce spaghetti of uniform length, and the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil." There were two cases of Spagetti* (for spaghetti*) in OhioLINK today, and 161 in WorldCat.

(Screenshot from a broadcast of the spaghetti harvest BBC April Fool's Day joke, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Morman* (for Mormon*)

Recently a job posting arrived in my email box. It read in part: "The work involves responsibility for entry level professional librarian duties. Employees in this class are expected to learn the specific applications of professional training by the performance of cuties under the supervision of professional librarians in higher level positions..." (You know, I'm not really looking for employment at the moment, but I'd love to see that job performance!) Unfortunately, I couldn't find any typos worth mentioning for either the one here or its intended word, so we'll have to go with Morman* today instead. One librarian who was a definite cutie, and one who also performed her duties—and then some—was Ina Coolbrith, dubbed the "Sweet Singer of California." Coolbrith, born in 1841 and the niece of LDS founder Joseph Smith Jr., had moved with her mother from Illinois to California to escape Mormonism as a young girl. She found work as a librarian in Oakland and San Francisco, for the Bohemian Club and the Mercantile Library Association, but her true calling was poetry. She was the first California Poet Laureate, as well as the first poet laureate in the nation. Coolbrith garnered the respect of Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, John Muir, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Adah Menken, and other well-known California artists. Muir once sent her a box of cherries, suggesting she apply for the job of librarian at the San Francisco library, a position that had just been vacated by John Vance Cheney. Coolbrith thanked him for "the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your brain," but added: "No, I cannot have Mr. Cheney's place. I am disqualified by sex." (San Francisco insisted at the time that their librarians be men.) Coolbrith's librarian days were not especially rewarding ones. She got paid less than a man, and was ultimately fired from the Oakland Free Library, where a trustee was quoted as saying, "We need a librarian not a poet." Coolbrith mentored both Jack London and Isadora Duncan as children. In her autobiography, Duncan mentions that Coolbrith had always been pleased with her book choices, and admits she didn't find out till much later that the poet was also apparently the great love of her married father's life. Jack London called her his "literary mother." Tragically, much of Coolbrith's writing and personal papers were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire; it seems she only managed to save her cat. However, her many friends and supporters came to her aid and did what they could to ensure her legacy nonetheless. The book Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate, by Aleta George, was just released last month. There were 147 cases of Morman* in OhioLINK, and "too many records found for your search" in WorldCat. Some of these, you should note, might be properly rendered foreign names and words, or antiquated spellings. Consider searching on both truncated terms (Morman* + Mormon*) to limit your results.

(Portrait photograph of Ina Coolbrith, taken in San Francisco at the Louis Thors studio, approximately 1871, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Berrr* (for Berry, Berries, etc.)

Just this week, the most charming book appeared on my office shelf for series questions.  Jacob Biggle’s The Biggle Berry Book: Small Fruit Facts from Bud to Box Conserved into Understandable Form constitutes part of the Biggle Farm Library, and it’s jam-packed (terrible pun intended) with vintage photographs and color plates, as well as a plenitude of advice about berry cultivation.  The book was first published in 1894, and this tiny excerpt demonstrates just how passionate Mr. Biggle was about his fruits:

The only just and true way for an honorable and manly man is to grow them, and let everybody about the place have all he can eat. For the berry comes from the garden to the table in tempting and presentable shape, fit to grace the table of a king.

That’s pretty much how I feel about raspberries.  As a mostly unsuccessful grower, I was inspired to order this book for my personal collection and am planning to give it another try this year.  However, don’t even get me started about rhubarb!

Perhaps you detest rotten Berrr*-ies and will feel inspired to weed them out of your catalog.  Today’s typo appears 3 times in OhioLINK and 104 in WorldCat.

(Raspberries, by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Sprng* (for Spring, etc.)

I always know that Spring isn’t far away when I begin hearing the calls of a tree frog named for the season. That would be the Spring Peeper, or Pseudacris crucifer. The genus name designates this little guy as a “chorus frog,” which you can totally understand if you’ve ever encountered an entire woods full of them. (Check out their song at the Arkansas Frogs and Toads site.) My only question is this: if it’s a chorus, how do they decide who conducts?

Depending on where you live, you may find that Spring is about as scarce as its counterpart typo Sprng*. There is a lone entry in the OhioLINK database, and only 135 in WorldCat.

(Spring Peeper, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Souix (for Sioux)

Today marks the birthday of Amanda Clement, the first woman paid to umpire a baseball game. The exact year isn't known, but it was around 1903 to 1905, when Amanda was about sixteen years old, a time when most women could neither dream of playing ball, nor even leaning in. Clement was born in Hudson, South Dakota, in 1888, and grew up next door to the town ballpark. She wasn't allowed to play with the boys, but she was permitted to referee their games. Proving to be quite talented at it, "Mandy" was quickly discovered and before long had begun working in the semi-professional leagues. She was billed as the "World Champion Woman Umpire," a fact that South Dakota Magazine dryly points out "was somewhat true since she was surely the only one." But Clement was more than a tomboyish curiosity. She also taught physical education, managed YWCAs, organized various sports teams, coached basketball, and set a world record for a female throwing a baseball (279 feet). She claimed that her sex seemed to make the players more courteous; a "no-nonsense Congregationalist," she was reported to be "death on balls and strikes." According to the magazine: "After Amanda returned to Hudson to care for her sick mother in 1929, she still found time to be city assessor, justice of the peace, police matron, drug store clerk, and typesetter for the local newspaper." I was recently talking to someone about the derivation of the phrase "to paddle one's own canoe." (I'm voting for Louisa May Alcott.) Whoever it was who said it, though, Clement definitely did it, both figuratively and possibly literally. (She once pulled a drowning man from the Mississippi River.) Umpire in a Skirt: the Amanda Clement Story tells the tale of this feminist forerunner. As one Amazon reviewer wrote: "Modern young people have little conception of what life was like for women at the turn of the last century. Thanks to groundbreakers like Amanda Clement, attitudes toward women have changed. Marilyn Kratz brings this era to life in an inspiring and entertaining story about this spunky, memorable heroine." Amanda spent the second half of her life in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she died in 1971. Souix (for Sioux) was found four times in OhioLINK, and 188 times in WorldCat.

(Amanda E. Clement, courtesy of South Dakota Magazine and Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Estauri*, Estaury (for Estuari* and Estuary)

An estuary, says Wikipedia, is "a partly enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea." It's also a word that has a lot of vowels in it ("... and sometimes Y!"), with each one pronounced individually. I'm not sure whether that fact adds or subtracts to its likelihood as a typo, but an A-U combo is certainly more common than a U-A one. As a matter of fact, I just met a young man named Raurri who tells me that his Irish name was originally supposed to be Ruarri, but the hospital staff wrote it down wrong on his birth certificate. So apparently, it's an easy switch to make, but at least he got to go home with the right parents. For our part, we got four hits on Estauri* in OhioLINK, and 125 in WorldCat (along with 26 for Estaury).

(The Hudson at the Tappan Zee, by Francis Augustus Silva, 1876, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum and Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid