Skinny dipping... -- what's it all about?

Ever wondered what Katy Perry meant by ''skinny dipping'' in her ''Last Friday Night"? Irrespective of whatever you pictured, there's quite a story behind this phrase.

Eugene de Blaas, "In the Water" (1914)

Skinny dipping, is a term used to describe nude swimming. The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked body.  

Prior to the mid-19th century, swimming nude was unexceptional. Francis Kilvert, a skinny-dipper (1873), describes men's bathing suits then coming into use as "a pair of very short red and white striped drawers". Period illustrations of women's suits show they were far more cumbersome.

Benjamin Franklin, an avid swimmer, possessed a copy of the Art of Swimming by Melchisédech Thévenot, which featured illustrations of nude swimmers. Among other notable Americans, Presidents John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt are perhaps the best-known skinny-dippers. Roosevelt describes nude swims in the Potomac with his "tennis cabinet" in his Autobiography: "If we swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes." Quotations from the diary of Rev. Francis Kilvert, an English nude swimmer, in Cec Cinder's The Nudist Idea, show the transition in the England of the 1870s from an acceptance of nude bathing to the mandatory use of bathing suits. 

In some English schools, Manchester Grammar School for example, nude swimming was compulsory until the 1970s. This was also the case for some US high and junior high schools. A 2006 Roper poll showed that 25% of all American adults had been skinny dipping at least once, and that 74% believed nude swimming should be tolerated at accepted locations.

In the United States, various counties and municipalities may enact their own dress codes, and many have. There is no federal law against nudity. Nude beaches, such as Baker Beach in San Francisco, operate within federal park lands in California. However, under a provision called concurrent jurisdiction, federal park rangers may enforce state and local laws, or invite local authorities to do so.

based on: en.wikipedia.org

Dog and pony show

Dog and pony show is a colloquial term previously used in the United States in the late-19th and early-20th centuries to refer to small travelling circuses that toured through small towns and rural areas. The name derives from the common use of performing dogs and ponies as the main attractions of the events.

Performances were generally held in open-air arenas, such as race tracks or public spaces in localities that were too small or remote to attract larger, more elaborate performers or performances. By the latter part of the 20th century, the original meaning of the term had largely been lost.

The term has come to mean a highly promoted, often over-staged performance, presentation, or event designed to sway or convince opinion for political, or less often, commercial ends. Typically, the term is used to connote disdain, jocular lack of appreciation, or distrust of the message being presented or the efforts undertaken to present it.

 

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_and_pony_show

Untranslatability of notions

It happens too often that there exists a given notion in one particular language (source lg) that has no legitimate equivalent in the other language (target lg). The possible reason may be lack of sufficient terminology in a given field in this particular language. Or is the structure of the language itself to blame?

Let's take the example of one of the psychological terms: ''commitment device'' that I've recently come across (Daniel Goldstein, The Battle Between Your Present and Future Self, TED Talks). The English version of Wikipedia gives quite satisfactory account of what is hidden behind the term:

Journalist Stephen J. Dubner and Economist Steven Levitt define a commitment device as "a means with which to lock yourself into a course of action that you might not otherwise choose but that produces a desired result". Put differently, a commitment device is "[a] way to change one’s own incentives to make an otherwise empty promise credible". It is a technique where someone makes it easier for themselves to avoid akrasia (acting against one's better judgement), particularly procrastination.

As we read further, the term "commitment device" is used in both economics and game theory. In particular, the concept is relevant to the fields of economics and especially the study of decision making (Brocas, et al.). "Commitment devices are a way to overcome the discrepancy between an individual’s short-term and long-term preferences- in other words, they are a way for self-aware people to modify their incentives or set of possible choices in order to overcome impatience or other irrational behavior. You know the story of Ulysses tying himself to the mast so that he couldn’t be lured in by the song of the Sirens? You can think of that as the quintessential commitment device" (Beggs 2009).

Examples of commitment devices abound. Dubner and Levitt give the example of Han Xin, a general in ancient China, who positioned his soldiers with their backs to a river, making it impossible for them to flee, and thereby leaving them no choice but to attack the enemy head-on. They also present various commitment devices related to weight-loss (2007). In addition, some game theorists have argued that human emotions and sense of honor are forms of commitment device (Arslan 2011 & Ross and Dumouchel 2004).

The article on ''commitment device'' gives us a good enough overview and introduces the very idea of what is meant by this concept. Still, a Polish translator is facing a serious challenge as to how render the item in question into the target language. This is just one of the numerous examples of cases where the Polish readers have to satisfy themselves with half-baked ideas and ad hoc solutions provided by the translators because either the field has not been explored sufficiently and there is no legit equivalent or the English version is less verbose and clumsy. 

Possible renditions of ''commitment device'' into Polish:

- motywator

-czynnik zobowiązujący do pożądanego działania

The Charm of Nicknames

The word 'nickname' is first recorded in 15th century as 'an eke name' ('eke' meaning 'also' in Old English) and was used to refer to an additional name given to express attitude of familiarity, affection or ridicule (D. Crystal, 'The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language'). It is not surprising that people have names but it may be a little mind-boggling that all the US States and many business areas have their nicknames too, e.g. 'Silicon Valley' in Calfornia, 'Motown' for Detroit, 'Emerald Isle' for Ireland, 'Red Planet' for Mars etc. There are even nicknames based on nicknames such as 'Costa Geriatrica' used to refer to coastal town in southern England where many retired elderly people live. Among 'nicknamed' objects there are flags ('Jolly Roger') and newspapers ('Thunderer' for 'The Times' of London).

No no-brainers allowed: Typical American

Ever wondered what is exactly meant by 'back-seat driver' or 'double-whammy'? Or what to do when somebody wants you NOT to 'gild the lily'? 

So let's cut to the chase and visit 160 Phrases Coined in the USA, which provide a top-notch guide to plethora of useful phrases that would hardly come in handy outside the USA. But it is their origin that would probably dazzle you most. After all, what you see is what you get. 

Try your hand at some of the trickiest ones:

1. Acid test

2. Bats in the belfry

3. Bunny boiler

4. Heebie-jeebies

Solutions:

1. A sure test, giving an incontestable result.

2. Crazy, eccentric (So, in 1920s they preferred to say 'Are you bats?' instead of 'Are you nuts?' and call someone 'batty' instead of 'dotty')

3. An obsessive and dangerous female, in pursuit of a lover who has spurned her. (Fatal Attraction rings a bell?)

4. A feeling of anxiety, apprehension or illness.

A Hairy Situation: Towhead

While reading Duma Key by Stephen King, I came across a quirky-looking word 'towhead'. I was curious not only to work out the meaning but also to learn about the etymology as 'head' and 'tow' are quite hard to combine even in metaphorical way. On the Washington Post website there is a pretty convincing explanation why blond-haired people are referred to as 'towheads':

 In colonial times, families grew their own flax to make into fabric for clothing. Transforming the flax into thread was a complicated, involved process with many time-consuming steps. After the flax was harvested, it was soaked in water for several days to soften it so the inner fibers could be removed from the stalk. To separate the long, thin fibers from the shorter, coarser ones, the flax was pulled through a bed of nails or combed in a process called 'towing'. The shorter fibers that were extricated were of a lesser quality and were called 'tow'. This led to the term 'towheads' to describe people, particularly children, whose hair resembled these strands.

MerriamWebster.com  dates 'tow' to the 14th century and states that its origin is "Middle English, from Old English tow-spinning." However, Urbandictionary.com states that the meaning of 'tow' comes from Middle Low German 'touw' (which means "flax, hemp fiber"). This probably went back to the prehistoric Germanic base *tow-, *taw 'make', 'prepare' (source also of English tool), in the sense "make yarn from wool; spin".