Month: October 2016

If you simply want to find slang, there are plenty of places to look online, but if you want a thoroughly researched, meticulously documented view of 600 years of English slang expressions, Jonathon Green’s Green’s Dictionary of Slang is what you need. Until now, getting a look at Green’s three volume masterpiece involved a trip to the library, or shelling out hundreds of dollars. This week, with the launching of Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online, it’s become a whole lot easier to dig into the fascinating, long history of English slang.

The site allows lookups of word definitions and etymologies for free, and, for a well-worth-it subscription fee, offers citations and more extensive search options. We have made good use of Green’s dictionary here at mental_floss, for articles like “31 Adorable Slang Terms for Sexual Intercourse from the Last 600 Years,” “35 Classy Slang Terms for Naughty Bits from the Past 600 Years,” and “35 Creative Slang Terms for Death from the Past 600 Years.”

The range of usually-not-discussed-in-polite-company human experience is covered in the dictionary, and constantly expanding with new research. As Green’s announcement states, “the dictionary breaks down into the following major themes and categories; the order is based on frequency of definition:

Crime and Criminals 5012; Drink, Drinking and Drunks 4589; Drugs 3976; Money 3342; Women (almost invariably considered negatively or at best sexually) 2968; Fools and Foolish 2403; Men (of various descriptions, not invariably, but often self-aggrandizing) 2183; Sexual Intercourse 1740; Penis: 1351; Homosexuals/-ity 1238; Prostitute/-ion 1185; Vagina 1180; Policeman / Policing 1034; Terms of Racial or National Abuse: 1000; Masturbate/-ion 945; Die, Death, Dead 831; Beat or Hit 728; Mad 776; Anus or Buttocks 634; Defecate/-ion & Urinate/-ion 540; Kill or Murder 521; Promiscuous / Promiscuity 347; Unattractive 279; Fat 247; Oral Sex 240; Vomiting 219; Anal Sex 180; STDs 65.

Now doesn’t that sound like a lexicographical good time? Check out Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online here.

Disney has had a stranglehold on animated feature films ever since Walt and friends made the first one, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937. But there have been occasional challenges to Disney’s dominance over the years, none so dramatic as the one represented by Don Bluth and The Secret of NIMH. Released in the summer of 1982, at a time when Disney’s Animation Studio was struggling (these were the The Fox and the Hound/The Black Cauldron years), The Secret of NIMH saw a group of traditional animators attempt to unseat Disney—or at the very least to rattle the company out of its complacency. It was like David and Goliath, except that David lost and motivated Goliath to try harder. Here’s a trove of information about everyone’s favorite non-Disney animated classic. 

1. IT WAS MADE BY FORMER DISNEY ANIMATORS WHO WENT ROGUE.

In 1979, while Disney was in the middle of production on The Fox and the Hound, animators Don Bluth, John Pomeroy, and Gary Goldman left the company, joined by a handful of other members of the animation staff. They were frustrated by Disney’s bureaucracy and assembly-line attitude, and they believed Disney was neglecting certain animation skills and techniques that would be vital in the years ahead, especially as their veteran artists—the legendary Nine Old Men—retired or died.

2. THE FILMMAKERS WORKED FASTER AND CHEAPER THAN THEY HAD AT DISNEY.

Disney’s The Fox and the Hound cost $12 million. The Black Cauldron, released in 1985, would cost $44 million. The Secret of NIMH? A cool $7 million. Furthermore, it was produced in 30 months—half the time Disney’s ‘toon features took. 

3. A TOY COMPANY MADE THEM CHANGE THE MAIN CHARACTER’S NAME.

The 1971 novel from which the book was adapted is called Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The title was shortened for the movie, and Frisby—which is pronounced like “Frisbee”—was changed to Brisby to avoid trademark problems with Wham-O, the company that makes America’s favorite flying disk.

4. DISNEY TURNED THE BOOK DOWN.

According to writer/producer Gary Goldman, animator Ken Anderson first took the book to Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman, Disney’s chief animator. Reitherman’s reply: “We’ve already got a mouse.”  

5. THE MOVIE ONLY TELLS US ONCE WHAT “NIMH” MEANS.

It’s the National Institute of Mental Health, the research facility where rats were being experimented upon. Characters in the movie only call it “NIMH” except for the very first time it comes up:

FARMER’S WIFE: Dear, a man came by today, from NIMH.

FARMER: NIMH?

FARMER’S WIFE: Yes, you know, the National Institute of Mental Health. He was asking if we had noticed anything strange about the rats on the farm…

Anecdotally, when we mentioned this on Twitter, we were surprised to find that many fans of the film never realized what “NIMH” meant. 

6. THE MOVIE NEVER TELLS US ONE IMPORTANT CHARACTER’S NAME. 

Jenner, the conniving rat who sabotages the plan to move Mrs. Brisby’s home and kills Nicodemus, is assisted by a reluctant sidekick. But this beta-rat becomes conscience-stricken, turns on Jenner, and is ultimately the one who kills him. It wasn’t until after the film was released that its makers realized the heroic rodent’s name is never mentioned. It’s Sullivan.

7. IT WAS DRAWN BY THE SAME HANDS THAT DREW XANADU‘S ANIMATED SEQUENCE.

One of the first projects that Bluth’s new company took on was the two-minute animated scene in Xanadu (1980), the famously bad Olivia Newton-John musical. The side project put The Secret of NIMH under an even tighter schedule, and animators were known to take cat naps under their desks while working long hours. 

8. THERE’S HIDDEN SYMBOLISM IN TWO CHARACTERS’ SIMILARITIES. 

John Pomeroy, one of the chief architects of the film, said it was intentional that the Owl and Nicodemus have the same walk, glowing eyes, and speech patterns, meant to imply they were two different physical incarnations of the same mystical character. There was even some talk of having the same actor provide the voices for both characters, but it was determined that the film needed as many different celebrity voices as it could get.

9. THERE WERE MANY SIGNIFICANT CHANGES FROM THE BOOK.

Mrs. Brisby’s magical amulet isn’t in the book at all. As the three producers explained in a letter to a school class that asked about the changes, “The amulet was a device, or a symbol, to represent the internal power of Mrs. Brisby … A visual extension of an internal (and harder to show in a film) power.”

Other alterations: Nicodemus was turned from an ordinary rat into a wizard; Jenner, merely a traitor in the book who leaves the colony, was made into a full-fledged villain; and the ending was changed so that Mrs. Brisby’s children are saved by Mrs. Brisby, not the rats. 

10. DOM DELUISE TURNED JEREMY THE CROW FROM A MINOR CHARACTER TO A MAJOR ONE.

The rotund, jovial comedian was one of America’s favorite funnymen at the time, thanks to his association with Mel Brooks, Burt Reynolds, and The Muppets, and his regular appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Just as Robin Williams would do with Aladdin‘s Genie a decade later, Dom DeLuise expanded Jeremy the crow’s role by hamming it up and improvising during the recording sessions. The producers (who supposedly all chose DeLuise for the part independently of one another) responded by incorporating his ideas into the script. DeLuise would later provide voices for several other Don Bluth productions. 

11. STUDIO POLITICS PROBABLY DOOMED IT.

Bluth and company made their deal with United Artists. But UA, after having its best year ever in 1979 (thanks to Rocky II, Manhattan, and Moonraker), fell apart completely in 1980, when Heaven’s Gate proved a disastrous flop. UA’s corporate owner sold the studio to another company, Tracinda, which also owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; in 1982, Tracinda merged them into MGM/UA.

The new bosses weren’t as interested in NIMH as the old bosses had been. The release date was moved up from late August to early July, putting it in competition with E.T., Rocky III, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, Blade Runner, and Annie. What’s more, instead of giving the film a wide release, MGM/UA opened it on less than 100 screens and expanded very slowly—so slowly that by the time it rolled out, the advertising had come and gone and people had forgotten about it. NIMH grossed around $14 million in theaters and didn’t become truly profitable until it found an audience on home video. 

12. JOHN CARRADINE DID HIS LINES IN ONE TAKE, ON PAINKILLERS.

Producer Gary Goldman told an online forum that the great John Carradine, hired to lend gravitas to the voice of the wise Owl, arrived late to the afternoon recording session and seemed to be intoxicated. Carradine’s agent confided that the 75-year-old actor suffered from near-debilitating arthritis, the medication for which made him loopy. Also, the agent said, he’d probably had a martini at lunch. Goldman, Bluth, and their cohorts used coffee and conversation to get Carradine sharp again. Once he was sober, he recorded his lines, declared each delivery to be the best performance he had in him, said he wouldn’t do retakes or alternate versions, and left. “Good thing he gave a great performance,” Goldman said.

Springy, sweet, and puffed full of air, marshmallows as we know them are a pretty unnatural (albeit delicious) treat. It turns out, though, that the campfire-friendly confections originated thousands of years ago with the most basic of ingredients.

Start with the fact that the marshmallow is actually a plant. Found mostly in Europe and western Asia, Althaea officinalis grows as high as six feet tall and sprouts light pink flowers. A member of the mallow family, it grows mainly in wet or marshy areas—and thus, “marsh” meets “mallow.”

Beginning around 9th century BCE, the Greeks used marshmallows to heal wounds and soothe sore throats. A balm made from the plant’s sap was often applied to toothaches and bee stings. The plant’s medicinal uses grew more varied in the centuries that followed: Arab physicians made a poultice from ground-up marshmallow leaves and used it as an anti-inflammatory. The Romans found that marshmallows worked well as a laxative, while numerous other civilizations found it had the opposite effect on one’s libido. By the Middle Ages, marshmallows served as a treatment for everything from upset stomachs to chest colds and insomnia.

The Ancient Egyptians were the first ones to make a sweet treat from the plant, when they combined marshmallow sap with nuts and honey. The dish bore no resemblance to today’s marshmallows, and was reserved for the nobility. The gods were supposedly big fans, as well.

For centuries afterwards, the plant served as a food source only in times of famine. In contrast to the marshmallow candy, the marshmallow plant is tough and very bitter. In 19th century France, confectioners married the plant’s medicinal side with the indulgent qualities revealed by the Egyptians. Pâté de guimauve was a spongy-soft dessert made from whipping dried marshmallow roots with sugar, water, and egg whites. Sold as a healthful treat in lozenge and bar form, the guimauve, as it was known, quickly became a hit. There was just one problem: Drying and preparing the marshmallow stretched production to a day or two. To cut down the time, confectioners substituted gelatin for the plant extract.

With production streamlined, marshmallows made their way to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Soon after arriving, the recipe was tweaked to make marshmallow crème (which, in keeping with the marshmallow’s health food origins, was once advertised as a wrinkle cream). In 1927, the Girl Scouts Handbook came out with a recipe for “Some More.” It instructed readers to “toast two marshmallows over the coals to a crisp gooey state and then put them inside a graham cracker and chocolate bar sandwich.” The name was soon shortened, and s’mores have been an American campfire tradition ever since.

The next leap for marshmallows came in the 1950s, when manufacturer Alex Doumak developed a process called extrusion that forced marshmallow mixture through metal tubes, shaping it into long ropes that were then cut to uniform size. The process gave marshmallows their cylindrical shape and it pumped even more air into them, giving them the soft-but-firm quality that we associate with the treat today. Kraft’s “Jet Puffed” tagline rebranded this process, which subjects the marshmallow mixture to gas blasts at 200 pounds per square inch.

Thanks to the wonders of industrial processing, Americans today consume more than 90 million pounds of marshmallows every year. Companies now make all-natural marshmallows using vegan gelatin and alternative sweeteners. You can also make your own marshmallows with some corn syrup, granulated sugar, gelatin, and a few other ingredients.

If you’ve got time and the right equipment, you can even make marshmallows the really old-fashioned way, using marshmallow root. Step one: “Make sure the marshmallow roots aren’t moldy or too woody.” Good luck with that!

Halloween has been celebrated in the United States since the 1800s, thanks to Irish and Scottish immigrants who brought over their All Hallows’ Eve traditions. So it’s no surprise that a distinctly American English has risen around the holiday, including these 18 spooky regionalisms we’ve gathered in our continued partnership with the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE).

1. HOLLY EVE

In Arkansas or Missouri in the 1930s, West Virginia in the 1940s, or Pennsylvania in the 1950s, you might have referred to Halloween as Holly Eve. Hence, says DARE, a Holly Eve-er is “one who goes out on Halloween.”

2. POKE OF MOONSHINE

Another name for the jack o’ lantern, at least in 1930s Connecticut. A peak in the Adirondacks shares the name and, according to The New York Times, might come from the Algonquin Indian pohqui, meaning “broken,” and moosie, meaning “smooth,” possibly referring to “the level summit and stunning east-facing cliffs.” In the case of a jack o’ lantern, it could possibly refer to its carved and intact surfaces. In South Carolina, to move like a poke of moonshine is to move slowly and lazily.

3. FALSE FACE

The term false face originated in the late 18th century, according to DARE, to mean a mask in general, and in the early 1900s came to refer specifically to a Halloween mask. From a 1911 ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Halloween Masks—We have that false face you want for Tuesday night, grotesque and funny.”

The term seems to have been popular in the 1940s and ‘50s, with DARE quotes from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas. One individual states that their grandmother, who was born in New York City in the 1880s, used “‘false face’ (stress on ‘false’) as her ordinary word for ‘Halloween mask,’” and while the mask “didn’t have to be worn specifically on or for Halloween … it did have to cover the entire face.”

4. AND 5. HELP THE POOR AND SOAP OR EATS

While trick or treat is the norm for bonbon begging, in 1930s and ’40s Detroit, you might have also heard help the poor. Over in parts of California, Ohio, and Minnesota, the candy call might have been soap or eats or soap or grub. According to a Wisconsin resident, soap has to do with “threatening to soap windows” if goodies aren’t given.

6. PENNY NIGHT

Another trick or treat alternative is penny night, at least in southwest Ohio. The term also refers to the Halloween celebration itself. We’re not sure what pennies have to do with it except as sweets stand-ins.

7. BEGGARS’ NIGHT

Parts of the North and North Midland— especially Ohio and Iowa—call Halloween like it is: beggars’ night. “Beggars’ Night, how ’bout a bite?” you might have heard in the Buckeye State. Beggars’ night could be celebrated on “one or more days” the week before Halloween, much to the annoyance of several of those quoted in DARE. From a 1936 issue of the Piqua Daily Call in Ohio: “If the kids would get organized and pick on one particular date for their Beggar’s Night, we could brace ourselves for the onslaught.”

One Ohio resident said they had beggar’s night on October 30, on which they said, “Please help the poor,” while on Halloween they said, “Trick or treat.” The same practice also occurred on Thanksgiving eve, according to quotes from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York City.

8. DEVIL’S NIGHT

As a Michigan resident, you might have called the night before Halloween devil’s night, during which, according to quotes in DARE, kids might vandalize and set fire to abandoned buildings. In 1995, Detroit rechristened devil’s night as Angel’s Night, a community-organized event in which tens of thousands of volunteers “help patrol and surveil the streets during the days leading up to Halloween.”

9. MISCHIEF NIGHT

To this New Jersey native, Halloween eve has always been mischief night, on which you could expect to get TP’d, egged, and, in the case of our mailbox one year, spray-painted. According to quotes in DARE, additional activities might include doorbell ringing, gate removing (hence, gate night in some parts of the Northeast), car window soaping, pumpkin stealing, and porch furniture moving.

In England, mischief night refers to the prank-filled evenings of April 30 (May Day eve), October 30, or November 4, the night before Guy Fawkes Day. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation of the term is from 1830, while DARE’s is from 1977. It’s not clear exactly when the New Jersey/southeastern Pennsylvania meaning of mischief night originated. The earliest record we could find was from 1947 in an article, “Passaic Takes the ”Mischief Out of ‘Mischief Night.’”

A variation on mischief night might be mystery night, attested in Essex and northern Middlesex counties, as well as other parts of north and central Jersey.

10. AND 11. GOOSEY NIGHT AND PICKET NIGHT

Garden State alternatives to mischief night include goosey night and picket night. While picket night might come from “the custom of producing noise by running a stick along a picket fence,” according to Lexical Variation in New Jersey by Robert Foster, it’s unclear where goosey night comes from. If we had to guess, perhaps from goose, meaning to poke or startle.

12. CABBAGE NIGHT

In some northern parts of the United States, October 30 is known as cabbage night, during which, according to DARE, “young people throw cabbages and refuse on people’s porches, and play other pranks.” Why cabbages? As io9 explains, it might have to do with an old Scottish tradition in which young women would pull up cabbages “to examine their stalks,” see if their future husbands “would be lean or plump,” and inexplicably hurl the vegetables at neighbors’ homes.

13. CLOTHESLINE NIGHT

In parts of 1950s Vermont, clotheslines were apparently the victim of much TP’ing on Halloween eve. Hence, clothesline night.

14. AND 15. CORN NIGHT AND DOORBELL NIGHT

Corn was the projectile of choice in Ohio areas in the late 1930s. One resident remembered the custom of celebrating the night before Halloween by chucking “dried, shelled corn” at porches. In other parts of the Buckeye State, ringing and running is preferred on what’s known as doorbell night.

16. LIGHT NIGHT

Over in New York, mischief makers would “fling rocks at bare street lights,” says one resident—hence, light night.

17. MOVING NIGHT

After a raucous moving night in Baltimore, you might find anything not nailed down—including gates, flower pots, and porch furniture—moved to a neighboring yard, down the block, or even on the next block.

18. TICKTACK NIGHT

The cabbage night equivalent in regions including Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Ticktack are various “homemade noisemakers used to make rapping or other annoying sounds against a window or door as a prank,” especially around Halloween, as well as the prank itself. In parts of Ohio, one resident said, the tick tack noises were from the sound of corn being thrown at windows.

According to Foster’s Lexical Variation in New Jersey, “Mercer County is the home of Tick Tack Night,” where the name is sometimes reinterpreted as “Tic Tac Toe Night” and some pranksters believed they were “called upon to draw tic tac toe diagrams on houses and walks.”