proantitransubstantiationableness

OREGON CLIPPINGS is getting closer and closer to being published so here are clippings from OREGON CLIPPINGS about words.  The last clipping is more about names than words but I needed to include at least one funny clipping.

This graphic is from Pixabay.com

 The longest word in the English language is “proantitransubstantiationableness,” a jointed word of 33 letters.  “Transubstantiationableness” is the next longest.

Herr Polack, a well-known engineer and electrician, has discovered, says the Vienna correspondent of the London Chronicle, a means of telegraphing 60,000 words per hour over a single wire.

E.D. Halloway has been telegraph operator at Pasco for 10 years without a vacation, and has sent an average of 100 telegrams a day during that time.

Among all the European languages the English is the richest so far as the number of words is concerned, and it is also the one which has added to its vocabulary the largest number of words within the last half century.  The latest English dictionaries contain not less than 260,000 different words.  Next in rank comes the German language, with 80,000 words, and then come in succession the Italian, with 35,000, the French with 30,000, and the Spanish with 20,000 words.  Among the oriental languages the Arabic is the most copious, its vocabulary being even richer than that of the English language.  In the Chinese languages there are 10,000 syllables or roots, out of which it is possible to frame 49,000 words.  Another notable language is the old Indian Tamil, which is now spoken in the south of India, and which contains, according to the latest calculation, 67,642 words.  In the Turkish language there are 22,530 words.  A singular fact is that aborigines, as a rule, have very limited vocabularies.  The Kaffirs of South Africa have at their disposal not more than 8,000 words, and the natives of Australia use only 2,000 words.

There is a fashion in language, as there is in dress and in customs.  One year “only cads ride bicycles,” and the next year society sanctions the use of the wheel by members of the Four Hundred.  Croquet goes out and tennis comes in, to be succeeded in popular favor in its turn by golf.  So it is with our written and printed speech.  A chance use of a word or the coining of a happy phrase is followed by the adoption and constant iteration of the favorite expression until the monotony of it grows wearisome.  Unlike a fashion in dress, the new phrases are not discarded.  We get accustomed to them and use them still, and we use also the new forms of speech to express other ideas.  No one nowadays speaks of a tendency; it is always a “trend.”  Ten years ago “trend” was a fad-word.  Now it has quite superseded the use of the older and more accurate word.  There were “combines” and “deals” before those words were invented, and there was no difficulty about expressing the ideas without them.  We may call this era the Reign of the Intensive Adverb.  A plain, simple, unattended verb is becoming unusual.  Does any man complain?  He is sure to “complain bitterly.”  He is also “bitterly disappointed,” although his feeling of disappointment may be momentary.  No one in this age fails without failing “utterly.”  These adverbs are additions to the old stock of awfullies, fearfullies, totallies, completelies and the like, which came in with the last generation.  When all the superlatives are used up, where will the word-makers go to find forms of expression when strong and comprehensive words are required?  [Author’s note:  The Four Hundred were the social elite of New York City in the late 19th century.  Four hundred is supposedly the number of people Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Jr.'s ballroom could accommodate.]

A couple named Newton Lord and Jennie Helper were married in an eastern Kentucky town some days ago and the editor of the local paper was almost clubbed to death by the indignant groom because he made use of the heading, “Lord–Helper.”

Potatoes

It is potato harvesting season here in the San Luis Valley––many, many huge trucks on the highways loaded so full that you can find "roadkill" potatoes at the corners where the trucks turn.  So, some excerpts from OREGON CLIPPINGS about potatoes will be the subject of today's blog.
 
*Sam Owen has made a discovery that will be of vast importance to Eastern Oregon farmers in all dry seasons.  He has found by planting onions and potatoes in the same field in alternate rows the onions become so strong that they bring tears to the eyes of potatoes in such vast volumes that the roots of the vines are kept moist and a big crop raised in spite of the drouth.  Sam tells us that Jack Allphin is trying an experiment, too, but says he don’t think it’s any good.  He has crossed the early eggplant with the milkweed hoping to harvest custard pies.

*Mlle. Emma Calve is probably the only great prima donna who combines farming with her brilliant operatic achievements.  She has a large farm at Cevennes and rusticates there each summer.
     Last summer the famous singer went into her kitchen garden and cared for her own vegetables.  No one was allowed to touch them and the results were far better than when her gardener cared for the things.  Mlle. Calve wore a short skirt of blue jeans, sabots, and a linen shirt waist.  She spaded and hoed and watered her vegetables day after day and proudly sent gifts of the finest fruits of her labors to friends in Paris.
     The prima donna was very ill and nervous when she went to Cevennes, but this free, open-air life and the vigorous exercise soon restored her to the most robust health.  When friends ask her the secret of her cure she answers: “Spades and potatoes.”
     Mlle Calve’s chickens also come in for some of her attention but the garden is her chief delight.

*A good many gardeners have made money out of early potatoes, says the Asotin Sentinel.  The very first sold at $3.60 a bushel.  The present price is $2 for 100 pounds when sold directly to the consumers and $1.75 when sold to dealers.

*A prominent scientist of a mathematical turn, having a little spare time on his hands, devoted some of it recently to computing the bulk of food he has consumed in the seventy years of his life.  The resulting figures are surprising and in the comparative details of his report the average man who eats and drinks will find much to interest him.  The scientist says, in summing up, that if all the bread he has eaten could be duplicated and gathered together, it would weigh fourteen tons.  He has feasted on a good-sized herd of oxen, sheep and pigs, which, if represented in one animal of each of the kinds mentioned, would make the prehistoric mammoths like like babies.  “If all the milk, tea, coffee, beer, wine, liquor and water I have used or wasted in those years,” he continues, “had been stored in a vessel of sufficient capacity, its size would make the famous Heidelberg tun look like 30 cents.”
He reckons that he daily ate one and one-half pounds of bread, biscuits, cakes and crackers during sixty out of his seventy years of life, adding that as a boy under 10 years he probably consumed about half that quantity.  This makes in seventy years 280,000 to 300,000 pounds of bread, etc., a quantity equal to 441 cubic yards.  “A man eats on the average three potatoes a day, weighing in the neighborhood of one-quarter of a pound,” continues this authority.  “That isn’t much per week and per year, perhaps, but it amounts up in sixty or seventy years.  Imagine twenty-one potatoes piled up week after week for seventy years, making due allowance for a lesser consumption during the first ten years.  The giant potato evolved would fill two flat railway cars of the longest kind, and 100 men would be unable to move it.

There is more to this article and some pictures in the book.  I'm still working on the book but no specific publication date yet.

Money

I launched CHICAGO CLIPPINGS this week.  Publishing means I got it uploaded to and approved by Amazon but launching means I set up promotions on different web sites and there are so many to choose from that it can be overwhelming.  I have learned much since THE COFFIN WAR and one thing I have learned is that researching and compiling books is way more fun than launching them.  Anyway, I opted to go with just one or two this time - baby steps.  The big promo day, September 3, finally arrived and suddenly instead of being excited I got scared no one would want my book, not even for free, and then how would I feel.  I understand the niche for my kind of books is a small one and they will never be best sellers.  I am perfectly fine with that but I don't want to be the only one who likes them either.

I checked the numbers just before we headed to town at 9 a.m. and was pleased to see there were 25 free downloads.  By the time we got to town, 20 minutes away, there were 50.  The numbers climbed steadily all day and now, on the last day of the free promotion, the total is 686 downloads.  The overall ranking of the book started at over 8,000 and got as high as 362, only 262 from being in the top 100 free books.   And CHICAGO CLIPPINGS is ranked #1 in the US History, State and Local, Midwest category!

So, because I didn't make a cent on all those downloads today's clippings will be about money from the soon to be published OREGON CLIPPINGS.

*  Four happy Dawsonites passed through Skagway recently with a canvas sack of Yukon gold that weighed 100 pounds dead weight, and which came from French gulch diggings on Eldorado creek.  They are all Canadian citizens and first came to Alaska during the popular Klondike rush of December 1897.

*Paper money cannot be used in the Philippines.  The islands are infested with ants which eat almost everything and are particularly fond of paper.  A warning was given that nothing but gold and silver coin be sent to the islands.

*It is computed that there is £80,000,000 in gold and jewels at the bottom of the sea on the route between England and India.

*An Eastern Oregon paper is taking coyote scalps for subscriptions.  Another says it will take the scalps of its subscribers if they don’t pay up their subscriptions.

*The Savings Bank, in Brussels, says the Revue Scientifique has recently adopted a process of sterilizing all bank-notes which pass through its hands.  The money is exposed for several hours to the vapor of formalin.  The Revue suggest that books lent out from the public libraries should be similarly treated.

*A good story is told of an old-fashioned miser.  He was never known to have anything in the way of new apparel but once; then he was going on a journey and had to purchase a pair of boots.  The stage coach left before daylight so he got ready and went to the hotel to stop for the night.  Among a whole row of boots and shoes in the morning he could not find the old familiar pair.  He had forgotten the new ones and he hunted in vain.  The coach was ready so he looked carefully round to see that he was not observed, put on a nice new pair that fitted him, then called a waiter and told him the circumstances, giving him ten shillings for the owner.  But the miser had bought his own boots.