"The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe (Jan. 19, 1809 - Oct. 7, 1849)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

            Nameless here for evermore.

    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

    “’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

            This it is and nothing more.”

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

            Darkness there and nothing more.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

            Merely this and nothing more.

    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

    “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

      Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

            ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

            With such name as “Nevermore.”

    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

    Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

    Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”

            Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store

    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

            Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

    But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

            Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

    On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

            She shall press, ah, nevermore!

    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

    On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Remembering Noah Webster, a champion of American English

One of the great, but often overlooked, Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries achieved a milestone on this date in 1828. That’s when Noah Webster copyrighted An American Dictionary of the English Language. It contained 70,000 entries and "was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well," according to merriam-webster.com.

While working on his magnum opus, the Connecticut native and Yale graduate "learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own country's tongue," the site reports. "One facet of Webster's importance was his willingness to innovate when he thought innovation meant improvement. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder."

Despite his singular claim to fame, Webster was not a man of limited accomplishments.

As the Los Angeles Times noted in its review of The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall’s 2011 biography of Webster, “he was variously a lawyer, patriot, amateur epidemiologist, statistician, pamphleteer, co-founder of Amherst College and, at Washington's urging, editor of New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva. As Washington's confidant at the Constitutional Convention, he had a voice in the proceedings, including his strong advocacy of several key principles, the need for ‘a supreme power at the head of the union most notable among them. But his most enduring triumph was his relentless mission to get Americans to think of themselves as Americans.”

Nor was this self-important man a milquetoast. 

The Wall Street Journal, in its review of Kendall’s biography, notes that Webster "was not well-liked by the nation's great men, as Mr. Kendall shows. He was pompous: Jeremy Belknap, the contemporary historian, nicknamed him 'the Monarch.' Benjamin Rush enjoyed telling the story of how Webster, upon being welcomed to Philadelphia, replied: 'Sir, you may congratulate Philadelphia upon the occasion!'"

Webster believed that the spelling of many words was artificial and needlessly confusing, so he proposed revisions, such as changing musick to music and plough to plow. While Webster won some battles on that front, as those two cases show, he lost others. Here are examples, from merriam-webster.com, of his successful and unsuccessful spelling revisions. (I think we definitely made the right call in turning thumbs down on "wimmen.")

Webster successfully changed:

gaol  to  jail
mould  to  mold
travelled  to  traveled
honour  to  honor
centre  to  center
humour  to  humor
masque  to  mask
publick  to  public

Webster failed to change:

ache  to  ake
soup  to  soop
sleigh  to  sley
sponge  to  spunge
tongue  to  tung
cloak  to  cloke
determine  to  determin
women  to  wimmen

To dub or not to dub . . . . . that shouldn't be the question

Some folks refuse to watch a movie that has subtitles, or so I’ve been told. They insist that movies in any language other than English be dubbed, because they can’t be bothered reading anything on screen.

I find this viewpoint baffling. In fact, I’m reluctant to watch a film or TV show that is dubbed. How better to destroy the credibility, the allure, the very character of a foreign film if everyone in Rome or Moscow or Istanbul appears to be chattering in English?

Here are two cases in point.

A while back, my wife Liz and I settled in to watch Marseille, a French television series starring Gérard Depardieu as the embattled mayor of that city. The acting, the pacing and the script were solid, but thanks to dubbing, Depardieu and everyone else on the show prattled en anglais.

To make matters worse, the dubbed version of Marseille doesn't even feature the accented English of native French speakers. Instead, we suffered through the disorienting experience of watching a show set and shot in France in which the entire French cast sounded like transplanted Iowans.

We didn’t bother with the second episode.

Compare that to Borgen, a television series that has been described by Slate magazine as “the Danish West Wing.” This political drama, which is in Danish with English subtitles, explores the world of Danish politics following the election of Denmark’s first female prime minister. 

Liz and I zipped through all 10 episodes of the first season because the series is so compelling. It isn’t fun to watch despite the fact that it’s in Danish, but rather in part because it’s in Danish.

Now, I don’t claim to understand Danish, although I eventually came to recognize the Danish words for “hi” and “bye” and “yes” and “no” and “prime minister.” To be honest, I don’t even like the sound of Danish all that much. Like Swedish and Norwegian, it's a North Germanic language. No offense to the Danes, but Danish sounds harsh to my ear. I much prefer French and Portuguese and the other Romance languages. And English, of course.

But Borgen is a Danish series. It's set in Denmark. It stars Danish actors speaking the Danish language. It’s about Danish politics. It features handsome shots of Copenhagen, including Christiansborg Palace, which houses the Danish Parliament, the Danish prime minister’s office and the Supreme Court of Denmark.

Why would I want to see such a thing bastardized by robbing it of what lies at the very heart of every culture: language? Could there be anything more absurd than watching Danish politicians, bureaucrats and journalists who seem to have been raised in Chicago?

Put another way, shouldn't the characters in The West Wing and House of Cards be portrayed, with subtitles, as Americans speaking American English, even if their antics are being viewed in Serbia?

As they might say in Denmark: Ja!

Massachusetts monikers make me long to buy a grinder at a spa

Having lived and worked in Maine for 30 years now, there’s no denying that I love the place. But I was born and raised in Massachusetts, and there are some bits and pieces of Bay State vocabulary that, as a native son, I prefer over what is seen and heard elsewhere.

Two examples of this caught my eye during a recent visit to “the commonwealth,” as they like to say in Massachusetts, which goes in for grand self-descriptions. Both of them involve terminology that may be used in other locales too, but not in the country as a whole.

Here’s Exhibit A. A liquor store in the Bay State is known as a package store. Always. As in, without exception. Wikipedia claims the term is common in Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. (Talk about strange bedfellows.) This is said to be the case because liquor purchased in those states "must be packaged in sealed bottles or other containers when it is taken from the store."

Growing up in Massachusetts, I never heard anyone describe a joint that sells booze as a liquor store. Ever. I don’t remember hearing “packie” too much either, although it's a popular Massachusetts nickname for such a business. "Package store" was standard terminology in our neck of the woods. That’s what the sign on the store said, and that’s the word we always used.

In a similar vein, I was pleased to see, during my recent visit, that sandwich shops in Massachusetts still refer to a submarine sandwich by its proper name: a grinder. The word is commonly used on menus, and frequently heard when customers place their orders.

A sub is not a hoagie or a hero in the Bay State. And it certainly is not an Italian (sometimes pronounced eye-talian), which is a Maine term. Grinder probably is an odd-sounding sub synonym to the uninitiated, but it never occurred to me back in the day that there might be other ways of describing one of my favorite meals.

Here too, Wikipedia has weighed in. "One theory has the name coming from Italian-American slang for a dock worker, among whom the sandwich was popular." Another theory holds that the grinder's crunchy bread requires a lot of chewing, aka, grinding. Hence, grinder.

Whatever. All I know is that if someone ever compiles a Massachusetts-to-English dictionary to help tourists and transplants, “grinder” and “package store” are sure to be among the most frequently consulted entries. After all, visitors and newcomers need to educate themselves if they hail from some poor, benighted region where misguided folks refer to a bubbler as a water fountain, and a spa as a corner store.

In the animal kingdom, a parliament of collective nouns

I recently stumbled upon a great list of collective nouns for animals at oxforddictionaries.com, most of which I was unfamiliar with. We all know that a group of crows is called a murder, for example, but a busyness of ferrets? It would be interesting to know how many of these are Britishisms that are not used in America, but whether they have taken root here or not, they’re delightfully colorful and imaginative. Here’s a sampling.

a shrewdness of apes

a sloth of bears

a swarm or drift or hive or erst of bees

a herd or gang or obstinacy of buffalo

an army of caterpillars 

a bask of crocodiles

a murder of crows

a raft or bunch or paddling of ducks on water

a safe of ducks on land

a busyness of ferrets

a skulk of foxes

a gaggle of geese on land

a skein or team or wedge of geese in flight

a cast of hawks

a siege of herons

a bloat of hippopotami

a mob or troop of kangaroos

a tiding of magpies

a troop of monkeys

a barren of mules

a watch of nightingales

a pandemonium of parrots

a crash of rhinoceros

a parliament or building of rooks

a host of sparrows

a knot of toads

a sounder of wild boar

a descent of woodpeckers

a zeal of zebras

English evolves as WTF becomes ensconced in the dictionary

What the fuck? You probably wouldn’t pose a question that way in polite company, but you might very well use the acronym WTF to express amazement or frustration online.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, WTF is one of 1,700 new entries in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, which also has updated many existing entries. The dictionary says WTF is “used to express or describe outraged surprise, recklessness, confusion, or bemusement.”

Other examples of new additions include:

Clickbait, which is “something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest;”

Dark money, “money contributed to nonprofit organizations (especially those classified as social welfare organizations and business leagues) that is used to fund political campaigns without the disclosure of the donors’ identities;”

Emoji, “any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, e-mail and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc.;”

Jegging, “a legging that is designed to resemble a tight-fitting pair of denim jeans and is made of a stretchable fabric — usually plural;”

Meme, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture;”

Net neutrality, “the idea, principle, or requirement that Internet service providers should or must treat all Internet data as the same regardless of its kind, source or destination;”

NSFW, “not safe for work; not suitable for work — used to warn someone that a website, e-mail attachment, etc., is not suitable for viewing at most places of employment;”

Photobomb, “to move into the frame of a photograph as it is being taken as a joke or prank.”

A language lover dies, and we are diminished by his passing

I had never heard of David Candow until NPR's Scott Simon offered the following tribute on a recent Weekend Edition Saturday. It caught my eye (or, to be more precise, my ear) because I worked in radio news when I was in college and for four years thereafter, before making the switch to newspaper journalism.

I realized, listening to Simon's radio essay, that the Canadian-born Candow was someone I wish I could have met, even though I was unaware of his very existence until it was too late. Here’s Simon’s tribute to this fellow language lover. There’s some solid advice here, for writers and broadcasters alike. 

_________

A man known around here as "The Host Whisperer" has died.

David Candow was 74. He was a slightly tubby man from Newfoundland with a sly smile and a soft voice. I wanted nothing to do with him.

David was a consultant, brought in to work with NPR hosts and reporters on writing and delivery. People who make their living on the air often distrust consultants. We figure they've been brought in by executives who have usually never recorded more than a voicemail message, and want all hosts to sound the same.

David had put actual programs on the CBC in a 35-year career there, and worked around the world. But he didn't try to impress with his experience. Instead, he said, "Let's just talk," and I came to learn that was how he saw the craft of broadcasting.

"Don't announce," he said. "Talk. Don't act. Be yourself. It's a very hard thing, eh?" he'd say. "To be yourself in front of all those people. But if you can be yourself, you'll sound like no one else, and people really hear what's real."

David had a few rules for writing, which he called "good ideas," because he knew journalists balk at rules. Over the years, I've found David Candow's advice as valuable as George Orwell's, with which it had a lot in common.

Be clear and conversational. Don't put long, multi-titled, hyphenated prefaces before names.

"Would you ask a friend," asked David, "'Have you seen the new movie by actor, producer and five-time-Academy Award nominee Brad Pitt?' You'd probably say, 'Have you seen the new Brad Pitt movie?'"

Don't say, "Composer Phillip Glass." Say, "Phillip Glass has written a new opera."

Give people credit, David said with a wry half-smile. "After all, they listen to you, don't they?"

Avoid dependent clauses, he advised, so people don't have to chase a sentence the way a cat tries to catch up with the end of a string.

Try to avoid words that end in i-n-g. All those extra letters and sounds slow a sentence. Say, "The Dodgers play tonight," not "are playing."

Say rain or snow, not precipitation. Avoid corporate and technical cliches, and if you begin to hear a word too much — bandwidth, curate, eclectic and robust are my current least-favorites — it's become a cliche; don't use it.

And like Orwell, David said, "Break any of these rules if it will help people remember what you say."

Great teachers don't just instruct us about craft, but remind why the craft is important. David Candow used to remind us, "One of the most compelling sounds for the human ear is the sound of another human voice talking about something they care about."

David Candow

In the English language, "new" words are sometimes quite old

Mental.floss.com recently posted a list of 16 words that are "much older than they seem," complete with quotes from the Oxford English Dictionary that document the claim. It's an amazing list, because most if not all of the words on it do, in fact, strike modern eyes and ears as recent additions to the language.

For example, people were using “friend” as a verb in the 1400s. “Unfriend” has been around at least since 1659. And “puke” was part of the vernacular in the 16th century. For the "outasight" (1890s) list of new-sounding words that are anything but new, put down your bottle of "booze" (1850s) for a minute and click here.

Richard Blanco's inaugural poem . . . "One Today"

Mainer Richard Blanco was the inaugural poet for President Obama’s second inauguration yesterday, making him only the fifth person to ever fill that roll. The 44-year-old Blanco was the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay poet and the youngest person to read a poem at a presidential inauguration. Blanco’s poem, written for the occasion, is entitled One Today. You can read about the poet and his poem here.

 _____

 
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,


peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces


of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth


across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.


One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story


told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,


each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:


pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,


fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows


begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—


bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,


on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—


to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did


for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,


the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:


equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,


the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,


or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain


the empty desks of twenty children marked absent


today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light


breathing color into stained glass windows,


life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth


onto the steps of our museums and park benches


as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk


of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat


and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills


in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands


digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands


as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane


so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains


mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it


through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,


buses launching down avenues, the symphony


of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,


the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,


or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open


for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,


buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días


in the language my mother taught me—in every language


spoken into one wind carrying our lives


without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed


their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked


their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:


weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report


for the boss on time, stitching another wound


or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,


or the last floor on the Freedom Tower


jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes


tired from work: some days guessing at the weather


of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love


that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother


who knew how to give, or forgiving a father


who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight


of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,


always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon


like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop


and every window, of one country—all of us—


facing the stars


hope—a new constellation


waiting for us to map it,


waiting for us to name it—together

Kontemplating konfusing and konfounding korporate kuriosities

I have nothing against the Kleen-Rite Corp., which I’d never even heard of until I spotted one of the firm’s Kleen-Vend machines attached to the wall at a car wash. This dispenser carries assorted cleaning products for your vehicle, which is fine and dandy but not the reason why we’re gathered here today.

What caught my eye is the name of the machine: Kleen-Vend. Which triggered the following question: Why? Why mess with proper spelling? Okay, “rite,” as in Kleen-Rite Corp., has the advantage of being shorter than “right,” so that change has a certain dubious logic. But “kleen”?

Why dub your company Kleen-Rite and label your product Kleen-Vend when, using the same number of letters, you could go with Clean-Rite and Clean-Vend? After all, “vend” is an actual word, so the company got it half right.

Is a manufactured word more attractive to consumers than the real deal? Does corporate America have an excessive fondness for the letter ‘k”? (Maybe so. Kleenex and Krispy Kreme have been around for a while now.) Has some other company copyrighted the use of the word “clean” in product naming?

It’s one of life’s more curious conundrums. Or should that be kurious konundrums? Where's Krazy Kat when you need a little linguistic help?

"I'm sorry," "you're welcome," and other anachronisms

One of the more subtle, but telling, markers of time’s passage is the evolution of the language we use during simple, everyday exchanges.

Recently, for example, a young man preoccupied with his smart phone almost bumped into me as I was leaving the supermarket. To his credit, he was a polite fellow, and he realized he was at fault for not paying attention to his surroundings.

Back in the day, someone in his situation would have said "I'm sorry," or “excuse me,” or, going even farther back in time, “pardon me.” But not in this case.

“My bad, sir,” this fellow said by way of apology. He was perfectly sincere and I was perfectly content. But his wording did take me aback for a second or two. It's not that I was unfamiliar with the term, but that I'm more accustomed to seeing it in print than hearing it in conversation.

Later that day, when I was paying for lunch at a sandwich shop, the clerk counted out my change and gave it to me.

“Thank you,” I said.

When the world was young, the clerk would have replied by saying “you’re welcome,” or, more recently, “no problem.”

But here, too, times have changed.

“Have a good one,” she replied. It was courteous, but oddly so, a least to an old timer like me.

What about sic semper tyrannis?

I normally stop by merriam-webster.com to double-check spellings, but the site also has a nifty collection of Top 10 lists for word lovers, including Top 10 Latin Words to Live By. (Actually, they're phrases, but let's not quibble.) Here, with translations, is that list. (Sorry, John Wilkes Booth, but "sic semper tyrannis" didn't make the cut.) You can read a brief description of each entry here.

Amor Vincit Omnia ("love conquers all things")

In Vino Veritas ("there is truth in wine")

Carpe Diem ("seize the day")

Utile Dulci ("the useful with the agreeable")

Semper Fidelis ("always faithful")

Caveat Emptor ("let the buyer beware")

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc ("after this, therefore on account of it")

Per Angusta Ad Augusta ("through difficulties to honors")

Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice ("if you seek his monument, look around")

Aere Perennius ("more lasting than bronze")

And now for some real profanity, Québec-style

Looking back on it now, I don’t remember how I learned that French-Canadian profanity is in a class by itself.

Although French was my first language and I grew up in a bilingual home in Massachusetts, my parents certainly didn’t teach me how to swear a blue streak in French. And I’m damn sure (make that darn sure) that the nuns at St. Joan of Arc School in Southbridge, Mass., did not instruct us in the fine art of cursing “à la française.”

My best guess is that some of the more street-smart kids at our bilingual elementary school picked up a few juicy expletives from their relatives early on and shared them with the rest of us during recess. Whatever the explanation, I eventually figured out that English curses derive from human anatomy, sexual acts or bodily functions, while the strongest Québécois swearwords are religious in origin.

Take, for example, calice. This is the French word for chalice. It's not a remotely nasty word in and of itself. Quite the opposite. Yet it is commonly used as such in Canadian French.

The same is true of tabernacle, which is spelled the same in both French and English and has the same meaning in both languages: a locked receptable for holding consecrated Communion hosts. While no English speaker would shout tabernacle if he whacked his thumb with a hammer, many a speaker of Canadian French has done just that (while pronouncing it tabarnak).

So too with Calvaire, the French word for Calvary, the hill where Jesus was crucified. A simple place name in English. Something else entirely in French, if the speaker is angry enough.

Slate culture critic June Thomas tackled this topic following the recent premiere of the fifth season of Mad Men, in which Don Draper’s new wife, Megan, “reverted to her mother’s native tongue to express annoyance” by muttering calice when she got angry.

“Chances are this was American cable’s first exposure to French-Canadian profanity,” Thomas wrote. “Like many other Québécois French curses, calice has its origins in Roman Catholic ritual.”

So, what’s the appeal of converting religious terms into swear words?

Citing an article in The Economist, Thomas wrote: “The theory is that it was a form of rebelling against the Roman Catholic church, whose clergy were a dominant force in the lives of Quebeckers, providing health, social services and education, until they handed these powers over to the state following the social upheaval of the 1960s.”

Although I don’t recall precisely when and where I picked up these swearwords, I do remember using them from time to time as a kid - and getting caught by my religious, French-speaking parents.

Their outrage was palpable.

In fact, I’m convinced they would have been far less upset had I unleashed a rant containing every imaginable English expletive in one long, cuss-laden sentence than they were when I uttered a lone calice or Calvaire or tabarnak.