Fritinancy

Word of the week: Penumbra

A penumbra is a partially shaded area, in particular “that of the shadow cast by the moon on the earth in a solar eclipse, or by the earth on the moon in a lunar eclipse, resulting in an area that experiences only a partial eclipse” (OED). The word comes from Latin pen- (“almost”) and umbra (“shadow”); that pen- is the same “almost” we see in penultimate: the almost-last thing in a series.

But I’m not here to talk about astronomy or Latin or second-to-last things. I’m here to talk about abortion, the US Supreme Court, the US Constitution, and a thrilling theatrical performance I urge you to see.

 

Earth’s umbra (central shadow) and penumbra (extended shadow) during a lunar eclipse. Via NASA.gov.

Stephen Sondheim, 1930–2021

He lived 91 richly productive years, attended a live theater production eleven days before he died, enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with friends the day before his death. Who can ask, as the Gershwin song goes, for anything more? But we fans are greedy: The death of the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, on November 26, after a long life of creative brilliance, leaves us wanting still more.

So here’s a little more.

A partial list of Sondheim musicals in chronological order, via Teepublic

“Dear” in the headlights

Earlier this week I received a fundraising email whose salutation was “Look,” which seemed just a little … testy. But what do I know; I was schooled in the “Dear Sir or Madam” era. It made me wonder which forms of address are acceptable in 2021, which are a little edgy, and which are too quaint to be taken seriously.

“Dear ___,” it goes without saying, now falls into the third category—in correspondence, anyway. When traveling grammar advisor Ellen Jovin conducted a Twitter poll last year, the “Dear ___” salutation received zero votes. 

What percentage of your work emails begin with the word "Dear"?

— Ellen is at the Grammar Table (@GrammarTable) October 10, 2020

Click through to see additional polls.

In the titles of books, movies, and plays, though, “Dear” practically de rigueur. Maybe it’s ironic. Maybe it’s nostalgic. But there’s no denying it’s popular.

Links for shut-ins

Here in California, we’re closing in on four weeks of shelter-in-place. Cancellations and closures began even earlier. I’d had tickets to the International Ocean Film Festival, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the San Francisco Ballet’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Loot at the Aurora Theatre—all canceled. (The silent film festival will take place in November instead of April.) I’d signed up for a class on the musical-theater genius Stephen Sondheim (happy 90th birthday, Mr. S.!): canceled.

And work? Clients went dark. They’re struggling, too.

We’re all coping in different ways. Here are some of things I’m finding helpful.

Word of the week: Cursed

I feel uncharacteristically moved by the Halloween spirit this year—the ghastly, chilling spirit, not the sexy-Mr.-Rogers-costume spirit, I hasten to add. Last week, the spirit manifested itself in an investigation of macabre. This week I’m drawn to cursed, a word that New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino notes “has become central in the online vernacular.” In her essay “How We Came to Live in ‘Cursed’ Times,” published October 7, Tolentino points to the Twitter account Cursed Images, an Instagram account called Cursed Shirts (defined by its creator as “bad shirts”), and a suspended Twitter account called Cursed TikToks (which posted “the cringiest of the cringiest TikTok videos ever made,” according to a DailyDot report).

What these accounts have in common, besides their image-centeredness, is “a sort of context-driven profanity,” Tolentino writes. She quotes Jenny Odell, the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy:

Let’s hear it for the boys

I’ve been watching The Boys on Amazon Prime, and along with enjoying the clever conceit (superheroes as corrupt bad guys controlled by an evil mega-corporation) and the dash of Brit slang and swearing (shufti, dekko, chuffed, lots of casual cunts), I’ve been thinking about the title. The show is based on a graphic-novel series that I’ve never read, and maybe “boys” is more overtly explained there, but on the show we’re left to infer that The Boys are the good-guy squad, even though one of their number is a young woman.

 

They aren’t the only capital-B Boys trending in popular-culture titles right now. Although less robust than the ongoing Girl/Girls title phenomenon (see my posts from 2015 and from 2018), “Boy/Boys” is still a trendlet worth noting.

Word of the week: Intimacy director

Just for my own amusement, I keep a list of job titles that didn’t exist until relatively recently. Most of them are in technology fields: Customer success manager. Code sensei. Scooter juicer. Operations Jedi.

One recently created job, however, depends not on technology but on psychology and stagecraft. Intimacy directors—the title appears to have been invented around 2016 by the founders of Intimacy Directors International, although the discipline was developed about 15 years ago—work with theater actors to choreograph “moments of staged intimacy in order to create safe, repeatable, and effective storytelling,” according to IDI’s website. (Their counterparts in television and film are called intimacy coordinators, and play similar roles in “scenes containing intimacy, simulated sex, nudity or high emotional content.”)

Names of the Year 2015

The American Name Society is accepting nominations for Names of the Year, with the winners to be announced at the society’s annual meeting in Washington, DC, on January 8, 2016. Anyone can play; submit your nominations before January 5.

Here are my own nominations in the categories established by ANS – names “that best illustrate, through their creation and/or use during the past 12 months, important trends in the culture of the United States and Canada.” My top picks are *starred.

Word of the Week: Hollanderizing

Hollanderizing: A proprietary process for cleaning fur garments, named for its inventors, A. Hollander and Sons Fur Care (originally of Newark, New Jersey, and later of Toronto and Montreal).

“Hollanderizing: Canada’s leading garment care professionals since 1930.” (Hollanderizing.com.)

Word of the Week: Trilby

Trilby: A soft hat, traditionally made of felt, with a narrow brim and indented crown.

The trilby hat style takes its name from Trilby, the title and principal character of an 1894 novel by the British writer and caricaturist* George du Maurier (grandfather of Daphne du Maurier). In Du Maurier’s story, Trilby O’Ferrall is a half-Irish woman living la vie bohème in Paris; she’s transformed from artist’s model to opera diva through the hypnotic powers of a sinister mesmerist named Svengali. In one production of the play that was adapted from the novel, the actress playing Trilby wore a distinctive short-brimmed hat that became a fashionable menswear staple. Du Maurier may have borrowed the name “Trilby” from an 1822 novel, Trilby, ou le lutin d’Argail,by Charles Nodier, in which Trilby was a Scottish fairy; the ballet La Sylphide is based on the French story.

(Like trilby, “Svengali” also entered the lexicon: it’s “a person who exerts a sinister controlling influence,” usually over a woman. “The name has been absorbed into the language as irrevocably as ‘Simon Legree’ as a definition of cruelty, or ‘Scrooge’ of parsimony,” wrote Avis Berman in a 1993 article for Smithsonian Magazine. Trilby also contributed the phrase “in the altogether” as a euphemism for “naked.”)

 

From the back cover of the Oxford World’s Classics paperback edition of Trilby (2009):

Immensely popular for years, the novel led to a hit play, a series of popular films, Trilby products from hats to ice-cream, and streets in Florida named after characters in the book.