Microsoft took the wraps off a new era of AI PCs.
Well stricken in years and well seasoned by life, the 88-year-old Mr. Kennan has standing to complain, and he gives good value as a curmudgeon. There is an echo of the 1920's in his condemnation of "great monopolies," and there is the flavor of the 1940's in his worries about "automation." He considers the computer useful primarily "to speed the manifold processes of a life that is plainly already proceeding at a pace far too great for the health and comfort of those that live it." And his loathing for the automobile is almost majestic. The automobile is a "mass addiction" that he associates with myriad evils, from the increase of crime to the decline of cities and spread of loneliness. He contrasts automobile travel "with the color and sociability of the English highway of Chaucer's time, as reflected in 'The Canterbury Tales,' or with the congenial atmosphere of the railway compartment of the Victorian novel."
Taiwan's President: Already Starting to Quack?
Wall Street Journal (blog)
Protesters flung eggs at a portrait of Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou during a demonstration in Taipei May 20, 2012. Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou's second term is off to a rocky start and analysts say the road ahead will only get bumpier as he gets ...
Donald Duck, 'modern Sisyphus,' still Germany's darling at 75
The Walt Disney cartoon character Donald Duck is turning 75. He is famous
around the world, but no country seems to be quite as obsessed with the
quacking curmudgeon as Germany.
The DW-WORLD Article
http://newsletter.dw-world.de/re?l=ew11u2I44va89pI0
An old man, especially one who is eccentric, curmudgeonly or grotesque.
Origin
An episode of the UK Channel4 archeological series Time Team, in April 2009, featured an item on falconry. A falconer, suitably dressed in mock-tudor doublet and hose, explained that the frame that was used to carry falcons to the field was called a cadge (probably a variant of 'cage'). Frame carrying was said to be a job for elderly falconers, who came to be called 'old cadgers' and later, 'old codgers'. He also threw in for good measure that this was also the derivation of 'cadging a lift' (a.k.a. 'cadge a ride').
Time Team includes senior academics who expect a good standard of historical and archeological evidence to support theories about the origins of the buildings and the artefacts that they dig up. Regrettably, those standards go out of the window when it comes to words and phrases. The 'old codger' assertion came with no evidence at all and yet it was confidently broadcast as fact. In truth, it is a highly dubious claim.
The 'cadge a lift' theory is certainly wrong. That phrase isn't known until the 19th century, well after falconry had become uncommon and, in any case, that 'beg/borrow' meaning of cadge was in use as a general term for 'obtaining without payment' and only later became used in 'cadge a lift'. As to 'old codger', it is the begging sense of cadge rather than the falcon transport meaning that is much more likely to be linked to 'cadger' and later 'codger'.
The earliest meaning of 'cadger', which pre-dates the naming of falconry cadges by a good two hundred years, was as the name of itinerant dealers who traded in butter/eggs etc., which they transported by pack-horse. This dates from the 15th century and was referred to in Robert Henryson's The Morall Fabillis of Esope, circa 1450:
Line breaks: cur|mudg¦eon
a bad-tempered old person
A bad-tempered or surly person.
falcon
noun [C]
a bird with pointed wings and a long tail which can be trained to hunt other birds and small animals
falconer
noun [C]
a person who keeps and often trains falcons for hunting
falconry
noun [U]
the sport of hunting small animals and birds using falcons:
a falconry display/course/centrequack
n.
The characteristic sound uttered by a duck.
intr.v., quacked, quack·ing, quacks.
To utter the characteristic sound of a duck.
quack2 (kwăk)
n.
Relating to or characteristic of a quack: a quack cure.
intr.v., quacked, quack·ing, quacks.
To act as a medical quack or a charlatan.
quackish quack'ish adj.
quackishly quack'ish·ly adv.
The Tories were in despair when David Cameron took over in 2005. In the eyes of voters the party was too curmudgeonly, exclusive and right-wing to be put in charge of Britain. Mr Cameron set about trying to change that. Emboldened and strengthened by his electoral triumph, the prime minister has set out to finish what he began a decade agohttp://econ.st/1Fi2CPr
Taiwan's President: Already Starting to Quack?
Wall Street Journal (blog)
Protesters flung eggs at a portrait of Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou during a demonstration in Taipei May 20, 2012. Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou's second term is off to a rocky start and analysts say the road ahead will only get bumpier as he gets ...
Donald Duck, 'modern Sisyphus,' still Germany's darling at 75
The Walt Disney cartoon character Donald Duck is turning 75. He is famous
around the world, but no country seems to be quite as obsessed with the
quacking curmudgeon as Germany.
The DW-WORLD Article
http://newsletter.dw-world.de/re?l=ew11u2I44va89pI0
Old codger
MeaningAn old man, especially one who is eccentric, curmudgeonly or grotesque.
Origin
An episode of the UK Channel4 archeological series Time Team, in April 2009, featured an item on falconry. A falconer, suitably dressed in mock-tudor doublet and hose, explained that the frame that was used to carry falcons to the field was called a cadge (probably a variant of 'cage'). Frame carrying was said to be a job for elderly falconers, who came to be called 'old cadgers' and later, 'old codgers'. He also threw in for good measure that this was also the derivation of 'cadging a lift' (a.k.a. 'cadge a ride').
Time Team includes senior academics who expect a good standard of historical and archeological evidence to support theories about the origins of the buildings and the artefacts that they dig up. Regrettably, those standards go out of the window when it comes to words and phrases. The 'old codger' assertion came with no evidence at all and yet it was confidently broadcast as fact. In truth, it is a highly dubious claim.
The 'cadge a lift' theory is certainly wrong. That phrase isn't known until the 19th century, well after falconry had become uncommon and, in any case, that 'beg/borrow' meaning of cadge was in use as a general term for 'obtaining without payment' and only later became used in 'cadge a lift'. As to 'old codger', it is the begging sense of cadge rather than the falcon transport meaning that is much more likely to be linked to 'cadger' and later 'codger'.
The earliest meaning of 'cadger', which pre-dates the naming of falconry cadges by a good two hundred years, was as the name of itinerant dealers who traded in butter/eggs etc., which they transported by pack-horse. This dates from the 15th century and was referred to in Robert Henryson's The Morall Fabillis of Esope, circa 1450:
"A Cadgear, with capill and with creils". [horse and baskets]Over time, less respectable tramps, beggers and smugglers also began to be called cadgers. Cadging changed from 'trading' to begging/borrowing'. By the early 19th century, any ne'er-do-well who made a living by questionable means might be called a cadger. William Hone's The Every-day Book, 1825, lists that meaning:
"A rosinante [a worn-out horse], borrowed from some whiskey smuggler or cadger."The link between cadger and codger is complex. In some parts of England the two words were used interchangeably, whereas in other regions they were separate words, one meaning 'beggar' and the other 'eccentric/grotesque fellow'. The latter meaning is the one used in an early example of 'old codger', David Garrick's farce Bon Ton, 1775:
"My Lord's servants call you an old out-of-fashion'd Codger."Men who had fallen on hard times and had resorted to any means possible to keep body and soul together were often those who were too old to find work. A cadger was likely to be a grizzled character wanting to borrow or steal from you; a codger was a peculiar and unfashionable chap, and both were likely to be old. 'Old codger' is most likely to be the linguistic merging of all those images. What is less likely is that the first such codger was seen carrying a cage of falcons.
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curmudgeon
Line breaks: cur|mudg¦eon
Pronunciation: /kəːˈmʌdʒ(ə)n/
noun [C] OLD-FASHIONEDa bad-tempered old person
A bad-tempered or surly person.
noun [C]
a bird with pointed wings and a long tail which can be trained to hunt other birds and small animals
falconer
noun [C]
a person who keeps and often trains falcons for hunting
falconry
noun [U]
the sport of hunting small animals and birds using falcons:
a falconry display/course/centrequack
n.
The characteristic sound uttered by a duck.
intr.v., quacked, quack·ing, quacks.
To utter the characteristic sound of a duck.
[Middle English quek, of imitative origin.]
quacky quack'y adj.quack2 (kwăk)
n.
- An untrained person who pretends to be a physician and dispenses medical advice and treatment.
- A charlatan; a mountebank.
Relating to or characteristic of a quack: a quack cure.
intr.v., quacked, quack·ing, quacks.
To act as a medical quack or a charlatan.
[Short for QUACKSALVER.]
quackery quack'er·y n.quackish quack'ish adj.
quackishly quack'ish·ly adv.
- 発音記号[kwǽk]
- [名]（アヒルなどの）ガーガーいう鳴き声；（ラジオなどの）騒音. ▼quack-quackは((幼児語))で「アヒル」.
1 則留言:
Gregory House, M.D., is a fictional antihero[1] and title character of the American medical drama House. Portrayed by Hugh Laurie, the character is a medical genius; a diagnostician with specializations in infectious diseases and nephrology. He works as the Chief of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where he heads a team of diagnosticians. House's character has been described as a "misanthrope", a "cynic", a narcissist and a "curmudgeon".
While the show was originally set to be a medical procedural, the idea changed when the writers started to explore the possibilities of a curmudgeonly title character.[58]
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