Walking hospitals

Fans of the long-running TV series M*A*S*H know that its initials stand for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. MASH units “were first established in August 1945, and were deployed during the Korean War and later conflicts. The U.S. Army deactivated the last MASH unit on February 16, 2006,” according to Wikipedia.

A MASH was not the first portable hospital, however. For example, in the late 1700s the French used what was called (hôpital) ambulant. This was a mobile or field hospital, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. It literally meant “hospital walking.” (In French an adjective most often comes after a noun.)

During the Crimean War in the 1850s, the word became common in English and its meaning went from field hospital to a "vehicle for conveying wounded from field,” according to the same dictionary.

Two synonyms for walk, amble and ambulate, share etymological roots with ambulance.

Illustration special to the Sentinel
 

Shaken, not stirred

My ever-frugal father frequently volunteered to cook lunch on Sunday, his only day off. Dad didn’t obsess over the menu; he simply rummaged in the refrigerator for leftovers and threw them all together into a frying pan or pot. (As Mom as my witness, I am not making this up.) To cope with Slumgullion Sundays, my siblings and I would often wangle lunch invitations from friends.

Perhaps if Dad had called his slumgullion hochepot, his ungrateful children may have found it easier to swallow, but the only foreign language Dad knew was German, which is what he spoke at home while growing up. It wasn’t until going to school that he learned English.

At any rate, hochepot in early French meant “a stew of many foods cooked together in a pot,” according to Merriam Webster’s Word Central. “Perhaps the pot was shaken instead of stirred since hochepot was formed from hochier, meaning ‘to shake,’ and pot, which had the same meaning in early French as it does in English now,” the online site also notes.

Hochepot in early French became hogpotch in Middle English, according to Webster’s, and then evolved to hotchpotch. Eventually, the “tch” blend in both syllables of the word morphed into “dge” to form hodgepodge. The word’s definition subsequently was broadened to mean a jumble or a confused mixture.

A hodgepodge of pots and pans
Photo special to the Sentinel
 

An acute, cute cat

Garfield might feel better about being called cute if he knew that the word is an abbreviated form of “acute,” which meant being mentally sharp nearly 300 years ago.

“Cute is a good example of how a shortened form of a word can take on a life of its own, developing a sense that dissociates it from the longer word from which it was derived,” The Free Dictionary* notes. “Cute was originally a shortened form of acute in the sense ‘keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd.’ In this sense cute is first recorded in a dictionary published in 1731. Probably cute came to be used as a term of approbation for things demonstrating acuteness, and so it went on to develop its own sense of ‘pretty, fetching,’ first recorded with reference to ‘gals’ in 1838.”

*www.thefreedictionary.com/cutely

Illustration special to the Sentinel
 

Two rivers ran through it

Readers who know the story behind George Will’s use of the mythological phrase “Augean stables” better appreciate Will’s contention that cleaning up Washington, D.C. would be no small accomplishment.

The Augean stables were not ordinary, run-of-the-mill barns. No, housing more than 1,000 cattle, the stables had not been cleaned out for three decades. Oh, and the cattle were immortal, to boot. At least the cattle couldn’t have been running amuck; after all that time, I’m thinkin’ they had to be up to their necks in muck and therefore unable to move around much.

The stables were the setting for the fifth labor of Heracles (Hercules to the Roman), who accomplished 12 stupendous feats as atonement for killing his wife and children while in a confused mental state. Though generally portrayed as a pretty hunky hero, Heracles in this labor chose to use brain over brawn and successfully devised a plan to reroute the Alpheus and Peneus rivers to flood all the filth out.

From this tale we have the phrase “Augean task,” which means any daunting and/or huge job.

Heracles rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Roman mosaic, 3rd century AD
Now displayed in the National Archeological Museum of Spain in Madrid
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
 

Canine treachery

Cartoonist Darby Conley has fun today with allusions to lines in Shakespeare’s drama, “Julius Caesar.”

“Et tu, canis” riffs on the line, “Et tu, Brute,” spoken by the dying Caesar to his friend, Brutus, who has participated in the plot to assassinate Caesar. It means, “And you, Brutus?” or “Even you, Brutus?”

Wikipedia notes there is no evidence that Caesar actually said this as he was being murdered in 44 BC by a group of senators. Shakespeare and Shakespeare only can be credited for the pithy line. “Canis,” by the way, is Latin for dog.

“I come to inoculate Bucky, not to praise him” is a spoof on Marc Antony’s lines from Act 3, Scene II:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”