Pop Culture

Yesterday on a day trip to Lee, Massachusetts, a friend and I sought out an antiques store specializing in finds from the 1950s. We found the store, but it was closed. Nevertheless outside the shop was a dented beverage cooler with an advertising name of Dirigo. I wished I had my camera, but tucked the name away for further investigation today. Here you can see an old label from a Dirigo Bottling Company product, and here you can read a little about the company. Earlier I had written about Dirigo kayak/canoe models; I guess residents of Maine find their one-word motto (Latin dīrigō, I direct) a handy name for all kinds of things. If you watch on television a news conference that takes place in Maine, you can sometimes see the word on the Maine flag.

I Think I Can

Earlier this evening I attended my first Zumba class, or as I think of it, Zumb-ah-h-h-h-h! I really enjoyed the workout, and was so happy that I did not collapse or pass out. I have a feeling that I will not be able to walk tomorrow without pain, but I feel great right now. While waiting for the instructor I walked around the gym and as always was tickled to discover some Latin, this time on the label of the exercise balls tucked up against the wall of the Zumba room. The labels read VALEO, Latin for “I am strong, I am able, I CAN.” The root of valeō appears in English words like valid, invalid, valence, covalent, prevalent, and countervail, to name a few. It is so nice to know that I can Zumba! For a little more information about the Valeo brand, check here.

ROMA AETERNA

At least a couple of my current students are visiting Rome this spring vacation, so I'll post a few photos from time to time from my last visit in 2008. I love details like sewer grates and covers!

More Than A Hundred Anniversaries

This morning I spied the word quasquicentennial in a recent issue of Real Simple magazine. Familiar with sesquicentennial, observation of a 150th anniversary, I did not know quasquicentennial until I looked it up online, first at the Oxford English Dictionary and then in a back issue of American Speech, via the JSTOR database available through my school’s library. Students who have read the book Frindle by Andrew Clements will be amused by the story of quasquicentennial, which turns out to be a word invented in 1962 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the town of Delavan, Illinois. The Latin roots of the word work out to one-quarter plus one hundred. How wonderful that next year, 2012, will be the fiftieth anniversary of the word quasquicentennial!

Best Car

An ad in the Sunday paper caught my eye, this time for a car manufactured by Kia. The new car is called an OPTIMA, and, following up on yesterday’s post about meliora (better things), the next step in the comparison is optimus, a, um, a Latin adjective meaning very good, the best, excellent. Other English words containing this Latin root are optimist and optimal. So the Kia company modestly believes this new model must be the best, either that it has ever made, or perhaps among all cars available now anywhere. You will have to judge for yourself. I am pretty happy with my Jaguar X-type, which has come out of hibernation, a wonderful way to celebrate this first day of spring!

Ever Better

The young woman who checked out my purchases at Agway earlier this afternoon was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt with the seal of the University of Rochester, whose one-word motto is MELIORA. One of my favorite English derivatives from a Latin word, ameliorate, comes from this Latin word, meliora, which means better things or, as the university translates, ever better. When you ameliorate something, you make it better in some way. Earlier I had written about the motto of Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT: moniti meliora sequamur (having been warned, let us follow better things).