Free Rice XVI--From Elbow Morphlogy and Chinese Pillories

Before getting to our starting point (elbow anatomy), let's begin with a word we can get out of the way immediately: scrumpy. Scrumpy is "rough cider, made from small or unselected apples." Scrump, the underlying word, means "anything withered or dried up, spec. a withered or stunted apple." The first usage of scrump, however, referred to people. From 1840: "You two old scrumps, suppose you sit an hour in the pump-room." The verb to scrump means to "steal (apples), esp. from orchards." So, one can say that St. Augustine's first big sin, as he describes it in Confessions, was scrumping applies.

Be sure to differentiate scrump from scrum, either the "scrimmage" in rugby or a "confused, noisy throng (at a social function or the like)." So, in the latter case, one has from 1959, "The handsome, fair-haired young man emerged from the scrum at the bar." One could talk about the crowd of photographers at the Olympics as a veritable scrum. Actually, the word scrum, for the confused back and forth beginning of rugby, was only first used in print in 1888. The earlier word, which is still used in American football, is scrimmage.

While on scrum, then, I retreated to scrimmage, and learned that it is "a noisy contention or tussle; also, a confused struggle between persons, often with exchange of blows." Thus, the line of scrimmage at a football game is the place where the "confused struggle" takes place, "often with exchange of blows." One could talk about the scrimmage of shoppng, or the "portentous scrimmage of sex." Scrimmage is itself ultimately derived from skirmish, which is familiar to us.

Scrinium

There are other "scr"-words, like scrim (cloth), scrip (paper, certificate), scringe (cringe) and scrimp (to be sparing), but I will leave this section after a word on scrinium. I hadn't seen the word previously. It is a term from Roman antiquity to denote a case or box, generally cylindrical, for holding rools of manuscript. The OED only lists scrine for this box or chest, and says that it can be for safe-keeping of any valuable, esp. the relics of saints. We can see the "scri" of "writing-desk" beyind it, but I suppose a writing-desk in antiquity was one's "safe deposit box" as well as the depository for documents. Because of the "relic-preserving" nature of a scrine, it is similar to a shrine. Thus, it is sort of a portmanteau word (for scribe and shrine), though I am sure that it makes no one's list of "top 10 portmanteau words I have met.."

On to the Elbow

One of the words in the freerice.com list was capitellum. I saw the "head" in it, but I wasn't sure exactly what it meant. Actually, the capitellum, pictured here, is "the rounded eminence on the outer surface of the lower end of the humerus or upper arm." It stands just on the opposite "shore" from the radius or forearm. In between is the humeroradial joint. By the way, the capitellum is often spelled capitulum. As if one Latin word isn't enough! Then, before leaving the elbow, I thought we should learn about the olecranon, the very tip of it. Olecranon is derived from two Greek words, olene (elbow) and cranion (top). There are all kinds of online pictures of olecranon bursitis, not a pretty thing, where the elbow swells. I also didn't know there was such a thing as Panner's disease, usually suffered by boys between 5-10 years of age, where the boy develops osteochondroses (bone + cartilage), where there is a disruption in the growth plate of the capitellum. This often leads to osteochondritis dissecans. In the past this condition was called "Little Leaguer's elbow," but now, with the advent of young gymnasts and racket sports, it has spread far beyond those little guys on the diamond. Well, that is enough on elbow anatomy for a day. Oops, two more words. When you rotate the hand, so that it is facing up, this is called supination; if it faces the floor, it is called pronation.

Potiche and Potichomania

A potiche is a large porcelain vase, typically rounded in shape, and frequently having a lid. It was originally produced in Ming dynasty China. From the London Times of 1829: "Several cabinet cups and saucers, jardiniers, potiches, inkstands, & c." By the way, a jardiniere, pictured here, is an ornamental pot or receptacle for the display of growing flowers within doors. Back to the potiche. If you do a "Google images" search for potiche jar, you get dozens of pictures. Many of these potiches have floral designs on them, and that is where potichomania enters. The Century defines potichomania as "cheap decoration, consisting in coating a glass vessel with paintings on paper or linen, the interstices being filled with opaque paint or varnish." The OED is more "neutral," emphasizing only the application of images printed on paper to glass vessels to give them the appearance of painted porcelain. The word first appeared in 1854:

"Poti-chino, to which the significant word Manie has been added by our Parisian sisters, is the art of conveying very ordinary glass vases into imitations of Etruscan, Dresden or Chinese jars...Potichimanie [note how Americanized or British spelling usually puts an "o" in between words with a Greek-derived ending, and ends the word in "a"], as it is generally called, is an art which has just been brought out in Paris."

By the way, are these images put on the inside or outside of the glass? Need some instruction in this, as with most other things in life...

Finishing with Cangue

This word comes from the French cangue, which itself is derived from the Portuguese cango and is connected with "yoke for oxen." Thus, a cangue is a "a heavy wooden frame or board worn around the neck like a kind of portable pillory as a punishment in China." From 1797: "The punishment of the cha, usually called by Europeans the cangue, is generally inflicted for petty crimes." Here is a whole web page devoted to the various forms of Chinese stocks/pillories. Here is a picture of a person in cangue. Two quotations, the first from F. Alvaro Semedo's 17th century History of China, and the second from George Riley Scott's History of Torture, give us more insight into this form of public humiliation and punishment:

"It is a great thick board, four or five palme square, with a hole cut in the middle of it about the bigness of a man’s neck. This they fasten about their necks, and to it are hung two scrolls of paper of a hand’s breadth, wherein are written his fault, and the cause of his punishment; they serve also to show that the board has not been opened; and so with these great boards about their necks, these poor wretches are brought out every day and exposed to shame in the public streets, for fifteen, twenty or thirty days, according as they are adjudged by their sentence, whose greatest rigour is that during all that time these boards are not taken off their necks, neither night or day.”

"As from the nature of the cangue it is impossible for the wearer to reach his mouth with his hands, he is dependent absolutely for food and drink upon the kindness of others. Those with neither relatives or friends are in sore danger of dying through exhaustion or starvation."

Let's continue the fun...

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