Odysseus the Odious (or Let’s Take a Ulyssiad!)

“All along the southbound odyssey/ The train pulls out at Kankakee . . .”

Only a poet with the humor and imagination of Steve Goodman would rhyme “odyssey” with Kankakee in his classic song, “City of New Orleans.” “Odyssey” is not normally a word I think about, even when planning a trip. However, a few weeks ago, I received “Odyssey” as the word of the day from the “Oxford English Dictionary” e-mail list. The definition contained nothing surprising: “(The name of) one of two great hexametric epic poems of ancient Greece traditionally attributed to Homer (the other being the Iliad).” The second definition covers the common noun meaning of “odyssey” as “a long series of wanderings; a long adventurous journey.” Imagine my surprise, however, when I read that the source of the name of the traveler, Odysseus, comes not from a word that reflects epic grandeur, but from a Greek word meaning “to hate” and the Latin “odium.” The entry notes, “Odysseus was thought to be so called because he was ‘hated by gods and men’.”

Having taught “The Odyssey” several times as a cross-curricular unit with Global Studies, I am aware of Odysseus’s foibles. As a teacher, and as a female, I gave him little quarter when it came to his infidelities with Circe and Calypso. (Note: If you have not read Margaret Atwood’s “The Penelopiad,” the story of “The Odyssey” from Penelope’s point-of-view, I highly recommend it.)

While Odysseus did display other examples of bad boy behavior--such as taunting the Cyclops or endangering his men by demanding that he alone hear the song of the Sirens--he looked after his men very ingeniously. The fact that none of them made it back to Ithaca alive testifies to their own bad judgment, not to a failure to lead on Odysseus’s part.

Odysseus is better known for his cunning than his bad behavior. After all, he came up with the ruse of the Trojan Horse, which finally put an end to the 10-year Trojan War. Out of curiosity, I looked up the Latin equivalent for Odysseus, Ulysses, in the “OED” and found this definition: “Used as the type of a traveler or adventurer;  . . . also, a crafty and clever schemer.” I also found the adjective “Ulyssean” meaning “resembling Ulysses in craft or deceit, or in extensive wanderings.” Does Odysseus deserve the loathing associated with his name?  He did displease Poseidon, and the gods took sides for and against this intrepid traveler. Interestingly, his Greek name reflects the gods’ displeasure with the epic hero, but his (roamin’) Roman name reflects his clever accomplishments, giving the epic hero some credit.

Next time you embark upon an odyssey and have an unpleasant time, you can blame it on Odysseus the Odious. Occasionally on “Be-Worded,” have suggested new words. (See “friendkind” and “pixelography.”) In defense of Ulysses, the Clever, I am going to propose a new word for those journeys we take which have pleasant twists and turns: ulyssiad. Maybe in the future, a clever lyricist in the tradition of Steve Goodman will craftily rhyme “ulyssiad” with a place, creating another classic in the world of songs about travel.

NOTE: A Google search of “ulyssiad” turned up an old book, “The Ulyssiad: An American Epic,” by Eliza Madelina Wilbur Souvielle, published in 1896. As best as I can tell, this book involves Ulysses Grant and the Civil War on some level.

GRIN DING

Since the invention of spelling and punctuation, bloopers have provided untold amusement. Recently, I bought a tee shirt which says, “Let’s Eat Grandma!” above a horrified cartoon grandma. The caption below horrified grandma reads, “Let’s Eat, Grandma! PUNCTUATION SAVES LIVES.” An anecdote regarding nuances of spelling “burro” and “burrow” admonishes that those who confuse the two words do not know their ass from a hole in the ground. I still remember from my early days as an English teacher the student who claimed to have a “wench” on the front of his truck. (I will let you insert your own sarcastic comment here about women and hoods.) Even creative hyphenation can provide linguistic amusement.

Around the corner from my house, a man has a business in the back of his house. The sign out front reads “GRIN DING,” with a hole (not a burrow, though) separating the “N” and the “D.” I know that his business entails sharpening tools, but I still enjoy thinking about what exactly a “grin ding” might be. I know that a “wing ding” informally means “a lavish or lively party or celebration,” according to the “American Heritage Dictionary.” Might a “grin ding” be a type of wing ding?

To this end, I looked up “ding” and found familiar meanings, specifically “to ring; clang” and “to dent or nick.” Ringing or clanging a bell might elicit a grin, especially if a dinner bell is being rung. On the other hand, having your car dented or nicked might elicit an upside down grin.

When I looked up “grin” to see what kind of fun I might have with my “grin ding,” my findings quite surprised me. Come to find out, “grin” originally had a more somber meaning than “to smile broadly, often baring the teeth, as in amusement, glee, embarrassment, or other strong emotion” as the “AHD” defines it in current usage. Actually, the origin of the word goes back an Old English word which means “to grimace” or “to mutter.” Until now, I have always associated grinning with harmless fun (unless Jack Nicholson was the one grinning).

This finding sent me scrambling for my “Oxford English Dictionary.” The first definition of “grin” given, a noun usage, reads, “A snare for catching birds or animals, made of cord, hair, wire, or the like, with a running noose.” A subsequent definition as a verb reads, “To catch in a noose; to snare, ensnare; to choke, strangle.” At this point, my broad smile vanished, replaced with an urge to put on a turtle neck shirt. The fourth definition reads, “Of persons or animals: To draw back the lips and display the teeth.” This definition strips all overt emotion from the act of grinning, whether the grinner be human or animal.

Sufficiently horrified at the grim turn of the history of “grin,” I consulted David Crystal and Ben Crystal’s “Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion.” In Shakespeare’s usage, “grin” means “bare the teeth, grimace, snarl.”

My grin parade got rained on. My enthusiasm for throwing a “grin ding” has dulled. The “Grin” Reaper has stolen my smile. I guess I will just have to grin and bear it.

NOTE: During a break from writing “GRIN DING,” I began reading a profile in the 1 Sept 2014 “New Yorker,” “The Troll Slayer: A Cambridge classicist takes on her sexist detractors,” by Rebecca Mead. I found this passage: “Beard observes that there is not word in Latin for ‘smile,’ and makes the striking suggestion that the Romans simply did not smile in the sense that we understand the social gesture today.” Mead goes on to quote Gregory Hays’ refutation of this claim: “’It may well be that the Romans did not smile, as we do, to indicate greeting or willingness to serve. But the smile of amusement, pleasure, or approval is probably as Roman as gladiators and stuffed dormice.’” Who would have thought that the history of smiling or grinning would be so fraught?

Skinning a cat in a bag

Imagine language without idioms, proverbs, or other flourishes to represent the nuances of the human condition. In 1984, George Orwell imagines such a language in “Newspeak.” Recently at work, a colleague used a proverb to point out that we could approach a certain task in a few different ways, saying, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” A second colleague noted that an absent co-worker who loves cats would have been upset to hear that proverb used. A discussion of the possible origins of the proverb ensued, with great sympathy for Poor Tom Cat.

A few days later, a panelist on a radio talk show commented on a secret revealed, again using a cat-related proverb, “Someone let the cat out of the bag.” This usage caught my attention because of the recent conversation at work regarding skinning cats. At least the poor skinned cat was set free.

 Ways to skin a cat

Where did these catty proverbs originate? I employed only one way to skin these kitties—a Google search. Three different sources all agree that vague references to killing cats appear in English proverbs going back to the 1600’s; however, the exact origin of the first proverb under study remains a mystery. A web site dealing with English Language and usage, English Stack Exchange, cites a letter dated 13 March 1839 in which John Smith writes about the challenge of creating a white flag to signal a truce: "There's more ways to kill a cat than one." The Phrase Finder cites a version from 1855 in Charles Kingsley’s novel Westward Ho!, “There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream.”

All three sources cited agree that the earliest appearance of the proverb referring to skinning a cat as opposed to killing it appears in 1840 in a short story, “The Money Diggers,” by Seba Smith, an American humorist.

Rolls off the Tongue puzzles over the proverbial desire to kill both cats and dogs, noting a shift from “killing the cat” to “skinning the cat” in American usage and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, published in 1889. This proverb, however, does not refer to feline cats but to catfish, rendering the proverb less gruesome and potentially more palatable.

LETTING THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG

Now that the cat is skinned, let’s let the cat out of the bag. A generally accepted first appearance of the phrase in print comes from The London Times in 1760: “We could have wished that the author . . . had not let the cat out of the bag.”

Both The Phrase Finder and Mental Floss offer similar information regarding two theories of origin for this phrase. One theory, traced back to 1530, refers to a trick supposedly played at markets in which the wily seller substituted a cat for a pig in a bag, or a poke. According to the Phrase Finder, “If you let the cat out of the bag,” you disclosed the trick – and avoided buying a pig in a poke (bag).

In the second theory, the “cat” is a cat-of-nine-tails, a whip used to punish sailors. Few sources give this explanation much credibility. For a full refutation of both theories, see Snopes.com.

While the cat has been away, this mouse has played—with words and ideas—perhaps set on by the cat’s curiosity, which I hope will not kill it this time. I had planned to write more about cats and proverbs in this blog, but for now I must put the cat back in the bag and promise you more feline-related fun in the next blog.

LAGNIAPPE: “Pig in a Poke” is the name of an episode of “Green Acres” in which Lisa sneaks Arnold Ziffel into a New York hotel room in order to prevent Mr. Haney from seizing Arnold to satisfy a debt.