WordsWordsWords

Answer: Menorca, some say

Every day, I get the Palabra del Día (Word of the Day) email from elcastellano.org, a website dedicated to the Spanish language. It not only reveals the etymology of the word, but also discusses something about the history behind it.

Today’s word: mayonesa.

Its history is given as this:
In April 1756, the French rolled into Menorca to take over. There they became acquainted with a sauce made of olive oil and egg yolk that Menorcans served on fish. The capital of Menorca was Puerto Mahón (now just Mahón), and the Duke of Richelieu dubbed the delicious condiment sauce mahonnaise. Before long, it became known in Spanish-speaking countries as salsa mayonesa.

Like many food-related words, our mayonnaise was borrowed from French. My nephew Larry hates it and I’m sure wishes we would give it back.

The people at etymonline.com question this etymology due to its late arrival in French (1806). I dunno, is it a folk etymology*? Did it take 50 years to cross the sea? Or did the word just not make it until then into written form where the linguists could find it? People could eat mayonnaise without writing about it. Though there’s the cookbook genre that linguists use. Etymonline also includes in its description, “An inferior sort of Miracle Whip,” which is pretty funny if you ask me.

It’s interesting to me that you can now buy olive oil mayonnaise, which, if this etymology is true, brings it back to its origins. Love it? Hate it? Leave a comment. Oh, wait. Sorry, you can’t; because of spammers I had to turn comments off.

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*Technically, a derivational-only popular etymology

We have a standard dachshund, Tucker, whose nickname (one of them anyway), is Security System. We live on the back side of a subdivision that’s built out in the desert. We see lots of wildlife around our house. Tucker is sure to alert us to every rabbit, quail, or whatever animal he sees, as well as barking at things like fireworks, which are clearly (in his opinion) encroaching on our private space. It probably goes without saying that he also goes nuts when UPS, FedEx, or USPS shows up.

But when the coyotes yip, he lies very still and very quiet. He’s never actually encountered a coyote, but something deep in his genes must holler, “Danger! Stay still and maybe they won’t see you!”
It’s hard sometimes, though, to take a coyote seriously. A video from our night vision outdoor camera:

I’m currently reading Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel. I really enjoyed her book Station Eleven, which preceded Covid by over five years. The pandemic in Station Eleven, however, resulted in almost total devastation of civilization. Aren’t you glad she wasn’t more prescient? I wonder how nervous she got in 2020 when things started heating up.

A pandemic makes a cameo appearance in Sea of Tranquility, but primarily it’s a time travel novel. I tend to love time travel plots, and this one is shaping up to be really good.

But I have a bone to pick. A pretty big bone.

In the first section, one of our characters, a second-born son from Britain who’s a troublemaker with an allowance (“remittance”)—but no hopes of an inheritance—emigrates to Canada in 1912. After spending time in Halifax and Saskatchewan, he decides to take the train farther west.

Much farther west. All the way west to Victoria, in fact. Which is on an island. And cannot be reached by train.

The Professor and I have taken three ferries to Victoria. The Washington State ferry from Port Angeles, the high-speed Clipper from Seattle, and a BC Ferry from Vancouver.

We must have missed the bridge.

I used to write a blog. I really enjoyed it, but then life got in the way. Even though the last post on it was eight and a half years ago, I never had the heart to take it down. I always intended to get back to it. And so I have, apparently.

In 2015, I was partway through a 10-year career as a private investigator, doing mostly criminal defense investigations, in the Seattle area.

In 2024, I am retired and living in New Mexico.

The Professor is still the same. The dogs, or at least two out of three, are different.

I still love to write. So I think it’s time.

Yesterday, I got an email from my beloved alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. Subject line: “Hurry, while there’s still time.” I thought to myself, “Well, if there’s still time, why do I have to hurry?” Maybe the better statement would be

Relax. There’s still time.

We get near constant messages that we don’t do enough, that we need to pick up the pace. Go the speed limit, I just dare you—you’ll be taking your life into your own hands.

I don’t accept this mindset. Or I should say, to the extent I find myself able, I attempt to reject this mindset. I choose unlikely moments to luxuriate in having plenty of time. I come to a truly complete stop at a stop sign and breathe in and out before I start back up. (I know, it’s practically un-American!) I let someone go ahead of me in line at the grocery store. When a harried restaurant server apologizes that my meal is taking a long time, I say, “That’s ok. I’m in no hurry.”

I must confess my own shortcomings, however. If not, the Professor might point out that I am often in a hurry, because I wasn’t in a hurry. I have a way of dawdling until I’m almost late. My ex once said, “Are you listening to yourself?” after I had uttered the sentence, “Hurry up so we don’t have to rush.”

Last Saturday, the Professor and I toured the Georgetown Steam Plant in Seattle. It’s an electricity-generating facility that was built in 1906. I’m interested too, but the Professor especially likes what she calls “industrial tourism.” We’ve done the county waste treatment facility tour. We’ve been to the Hanford nuclear facility. We’ve done three electricity plants, the last two (believe it or not) in the past six weeks! The other was the Museu da Electricidade in Lisbon.

The reason I bring it up is that the plant was designed by Frank Gilbreth, best known for his time and motion studies. These studies broke down tasks into minute movements, then attempted to discover the most efficient way possible to perform those tasks by using the fewest movements and standardizing each worker’s performance of them. To many, though, his method’s greatest accomplishment was, rather than efficiency, the grinding down of workers in body and spirit, and the creation of a great deal of stress and injury caused by repetitive motion.

Which brings us to Doris Day, 1957. The Pajama Game was a movie adaptation of a popular Broadway play of the same name. We performed the show when I was a junior in high school. One of the songs, “Racing with the Clock,” is about this very topic—only much more entertaining than the studies themselves. (Also, I’m relatively certain that adding choreography to a task cuts down on efficiency considerably.)

So breathe, relax, refuse to hurry, and opt not to race with the clock. But first, hurry—watch this clip! Only 1:41, less than two minutes. I’m sure you have time.