Aiguillette [Noun.]

A braided cord awarded to a police or military unit for distinguished service and worn on the left shoulder. From aglet or aiglet, literally “needle”, meaning the cover at the tip of a shoelace, to prevent it from fraying. (See also: fourragère).

“Don’t these schools do enough damage making all these kids think alike, now they have to make them look alike too? It’s not a new idea, either. I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand because the narration was in German.” – George Carlin

On Describing a Woman

“A gentleman is a someone who can describe Sophia Loren without using gestures.”

– Michel Audiard

Idiotic Division of Functions

‘According to the current way of thinking (or not-thinking), it seems that if we are to enjoy anything then we must not have to think about it, and, conversely, if we are to think about anything, then we mustn’t enjoy it. This is a calamitous and idiotic division of functions.'[1]

– Queneau. R. 1947. Exercises in Style New York, United States: New Directions (2012) p. xiv

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[1] Excerpt of the preface by Barbara Wright who translated Queneau’s Exercises de Style in 1981.

Ennui [Noun.]

A gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom.

Charles: Martin, do I detect a soupçon of ennui? – Absolute Power (Radio series 2000-2004)

Soupçon [Noun.]

A very small amount.

Frasier: […] this time I want you to do it with a bit more… grandeur. With some majesty and a soupçon of awe. – Frasier Season 7, Episode 13; “They’re playing our song” [No. 157]

20/viii mmxv

The Soviet Mother Heroine medal was awarded to all mothers bearing and raising 10 or more children. It was awarded upon the first birthday of the last child, provided that nine other children (natural or adopted) were alive. It was awarded 454,142 times. Once to a man who raised 12 adopted sons.

The French word for ‘memory’ is souvenir.

For the first two centuries of its existence, Christianity included people who believed in one god, in two, in 12, in 30, and in 144.

Harry Houdini’s real name was actually Erik Weisz.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, the 63 letter German word meaning ‘a law on the delegation of supervising the labelling of beef’, is to be removed from the dictionary because it was not used often enough. Up until now, it was the longest word in the language. The 36 letter word Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung, meaning ‘motor-vehicle liability insurance’ will probably take over first place.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Coquetry [Noun.]

An affectation of amorous tenderness; attempts to attract admiration or notice, often for the mere gratification of vanity; flirting. Compare the French coquetterie and the German Koketterie.

What To Call The @

The @ is called by many different names across the 28 member states of the EU – mainly animals. The map also locates curious clusters in which these animals congregate, as if certain climates are more favourable to certain imaginary creatures than to others. Electronic elephants seem to thrive only in Scandinavia, for example.

The Romance languages by and large stuck to the inanimate arroba, the pre-digital name for the @ sign in Spanish and Portuguese. That name is derived from the Arabic ar-rub, meaning a quarter – in this case, a measure of weight: 25% of what a donkey (or mule) could carry. In Spain, the customary weight of an arroba was 25 pounds (11.5 kg), in Portugal, 32 pounds (14.7 kg). On the map, we see these weights proliferate throughout the Iberian peninsula, but also in France and French-speaking Belgium (as arobase).

Continental Europe is otherwise dominated by digital monkeys, due to the likeness of the @ to a monkey tail curling around a tree branch. In Germany and Austria, the symbol is referred to as Klammeraffe. The word translates as ‘spider monkey’ – an American genus of monkey noted for its long tail. Klammer on its own can mean ‘bracket’, ‘staple’ or ‘paperclip’. The Klammeraffe shares Germany and Austria with the ordinary at. But in Poland, the małpa (‘monkey’) has the country to itself.

Dutch speakers in the Netherlands and Belgium refer to the @ as apenstaart(je), ‘(little) monkey tail’. In Luxembourgish, that becomes Afeschwanz.

The simian simile also proliferates throughout the Balkans: in Romanian, the @ is called coadă de maimuţă (‘monkey tail’), in Bulgarian маймунка (maimunka – ‘little monkey’). Croatians either use at or manki, a direct loan from the English ‘monkey’ (rather than the Croatian word for monkey, majmun). Their Slovenian neighbours call it an afna (‘little monkey’).

In Scandinavia, the elephant was seen as an apt metaphor for the curly a. In both Danish and Swedish, the @ is called snabel-a, with snabel meaning ‘[elephant’s] trunk’. Their Finnish neighbours offically call it at-merkki, but colloquially either kissanhäntä (‘cat’s tail’) or miukumauku (‘meow-meow’).

Czechs and Slovaks are united in their fishy metaphor for the @, finding in its curly appearance a similarity to zavináč, or ‘rollmops’ (rolled pickled herring fillets).

Italy is dominated by a chiocciola (‘snail’) riding up its boot. In Greece and Cyprus, the @ is rather enigmatically compared to a παπάκι (papaki – ‘duckling’).

The Baltics follow the English fashion, and say at. Not very imaginative perhaps, but less impalatable than the Hungarians, who say kukac, or ‘maggot’.

That concludes all the fauna on this delightfully weird map, but here are some other remarkable names for @ in other languages: Armenian: shnik (‘puppy’); Chinese: xiao laoshu (‘little mouse’); Japanese: naruto (after the tidal whirlpools in Naruto bay); Kazakh: aykulak (‘moon’s ear’); Norwegian: krøllalfa (‘curly alpha’); Russian: sobaka (‘dog’); Ukrainian: vukho (‘ear’).