Tag: nerd

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How Ambimetric Are You?

Are you ambimetric? The chances are that if you were born between 1977 and 1983, you are.

I just uploaded a short hyperlapse Reel showing the making of one the floral embellishments for my Happily Ever After veil. While fingers, beads and threads blurred, the clear constant throughout all 18 seconds was my scarred, tortured, gouged cutting mat.

The cutting mat that has seen better days

How Embarrassing

I’d been worried about the state of my nails, but this proved to be the bigger embarrassment. And it made me realise what a stickler for inches I am. The other side of this mat is pristine, untouched, virginal cutting surface. No trenches scored by countless merciless passes of the rotary cutter. No fibres mashed into its surface by blunt blades to highlight gouges further. Just beautiful, brand-new, reliable cutting mat that I could flip over at any time.

Just one problem. It’s in metric.

The Measure of Xennials

Xennials – the microgeneration born between 1977 and 1983, including me – straddle Generation X and Millenials, with characteristics of both. Sociologists usually define us by the technologies we’re comfortable with. As a classic example, I grew up with a rotary phone screwed to the wall and didn’t have an email address or mobile phone until I was 19 but I was an early (well, 2007) adopter of Twitter. Then again, I met my husband in 1997 and have never used online dating.

I suggest they look at how we measure things. Don’t get me wrong about the centimetres. I CAN work with them, but only for certain things. Metric and imperial units were taught in school but their use had de facto rules whether we realised it at the time or not. Here’s how I’ve realised I work.

Speed

Speed can only be in miles per hour (MPH). Except for that drunken night in the pub with friends in 2003 when we decided that we were henceforth lobbying for the official adoption of furlongs per fortnight (FPF). More specific to my line of work is SPM: stitches per minute. My embroidery machine for example is currently working on a full moon at 500SPM, only half its top speed.

SPM, MPH or FPF?

Distance

As with speed, my default is the imperial mile. Doesn’t matter whether it’s by car, bike, train, plane or crow. However, if I’ve swum it, it’s metres. I can’t run, but if I did, it would get metres, unless it were a marathon and then it would be 26.something miles; I’ve no idea how many kilometres.

However, distance across the living room with a retractable tape measure is always metric.

Similarly, fabric (and thread) length is in metres, but its width is in inches.

The british tabloid press will always convert distance into lengths of a football field, but I have no interest in the game so this one is wasted on me.

Height

Humans must be in feet and inches. Oh, you’re two metres tall? I have no idea what that means. Except I do know that I’m 175cm tall, because I lived in metric-loving Japan once where I was asked my height so often that it remains one of the only things I can still say in Japanese (Hyaku nana-ju go).

However, heights of animals (including horses, because I’m not horsey and don’t understand hands), inanimate objects, buildings, ceilings, tables, DIY projects, etc are all metric. I can’t visualise a 20ft building.

For anything taller than a human, I am also fluent in the standard british unit of height: either Nelson’s Column or a double-decker bus.

Heel height on shoes must be inches. As luck would have it, the ring finger of my left hand is not only precisely 3″ high but bends in exactly 1″ sections, which tells me much about footwear before trying them on just by holding the heel to it. One knuckle and I’ll be taller than my husband, two and I’ll still be able to walk and three will be uncomfortable.

Literally handy

Bodies

Body measurements must always be in inches. So too must dressmaking patterns, seam allowances and notes on how much I’m taking up/in/off or adding.

Two exceptions: the first is when I have to add a lot of measurements together, in which case I’ll use metric but then convert the final number back to imperial.

The second is that the distance of a bullet/knife to a human heart or artery is always in millimetres or “a whisker.”

Weight

Kilos for luggage and cats, grams for parcels and stone and pounds (never just pounds once over the age of one day) for humans.

Area

Cup fraction for bras (half cup, whole cup, etc), square metres for rooms and gardens, number of bedrooms for a whole house, square miles for anything between that and Wales and multiples thereof for anything above that.

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With this ring, I thee… bet?

Winter’s Wedding Words: Wedding

Are you a betting person? Fond of a flutter? Paying wages? Planning a wedding is closer to all of these than you might have ever thought.

You feeling lucky, punk?

The word ‘wedding’ comes from the Old English ‘weddian’, which meant to covenant, engage or pledge. Germanic linguistic history gives us loads of similar words meaning pledge, such as ‘weddia’ in Old Frisian, ‘wedden’ in Low Middle German and Middle and modern Dutch and ‘vedhja’ in Old Icelandic. Gothic also had ‘gawadjōn’ which actually meant to marry or espouse.

So it’s no great leap to see the connection to Modern German’s ‘wetten’, which means to wager or bet, as well as pledge. When you think about betting, what you’re actually doing is promising to pay if you’re wrong. Indeed, Old English ‘wedd’ meant being pawned or mortgaged.

Our Modern English word ‘wages’ also has the same linguistic root, wages also being a promise or pledge, i.e. of a reward for completed work.The germanic languages seem to agree; Middle and Modern Dutch ‘wedde’ means wages.

The Latinate side of English’s origins cognates with the germanic too. Latin’s ‘vas’ (genitive ‘vadis’) and Lithuanian’s ‘vādas’ meant surety or bail.

Finally, ‘wedlock’ doesn’t actually have anything to do with locks. It is simply Old English ‘wedd’ (pledge) plus the suffix ‘lac’ which signified a noun. The suffix changed to ‘lock’ by folk etymology, through association with the similar sounding ‘lock’.

Padlock, wedlock… same-same but different
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Old wives’ tales

Winter’s Wedding Words: wife

I’m disappointed.

Not in an epically understated way, like my gracious German cousins last week ⚽️🎉.

More like when I go out for Chinese food and the main course never seems to live up to splendiferous platter of prawn toasts, satay chicken sticks, spring rolls and duck pancakes we had for the starter.

I blame husband. Not my husband, nor anyone else’s, but the word ‘husband’ itself. Specifically, its etymology. Because after I learned that it shares its origin with 007 and bondage for my last blog post, I had high hopes for its feminine counterpart.

Disappointment (1882), by Julius Leblanc Stewart. I don’t know what he did either.

Alas, ‘wife’ began its recorded life as Old English wif, meaning… wife.

However, ‘wif’ could also mean woman, irrespective of marital status. So I researched ‘woman’. And here I found my nugget of geek gold.

An anomalous quirk of English language evolution is that the word ‘wife’, i.e. a woman as a man’s possession (the predominant mentality of the time), predates ‘woman’ as a female person generally.

Disappointed AND retroactively outraged.

So I embroidered the shit out of a veil and felt much better.

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Honeymoon is not as sweet as it sounds

Winter’s Wedding Words: Honeymoon

Remember that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Carrie asks Charles why he thinks it’s called a honeymoon? Charles suggests that it’s honey because it’s as sweet as honey and moon because it’s the first time a husband gets to see his wife’s bottom. Well, wouldn’t you just know it? He’s actually (partially) right. Just not about the butt cheeks.

I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon.

It is indeed honey because it’s something sweet. BUT (not butt) it’s actually meant ironically, to describe something that seems wonderful now but won’t last, hence when people talk about the ‘honeymoon period’ of a project or endeavour, etc, with the implicit expectation of it all going to shit.

This is because of the nature of the phases of the moon: it is no sooner full than it begins to wane. So, ‘honeymoon’ is a rather cynical remark on the newlyweds’ long-term prospects for happiness.

Perhaps the last laugh is on the cynics though; they seem to have forgotten that even when the moon disappears entirely, it will start to wax once more and reach its full glory again (and again, and again) soon enough. That sounds sweet enough to me. Peachy even.

🍑
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Husbands, 007 and bondage: their surprising shared history

Winter’s Wedding Words: Husband

I’m never one to kink shame but I have to admit I nearly spat my tea when I was researching this one; under ‘husband’ in my etymological dictionary was the instruction to, “See ‘Bondage'”.

Another surprise on this etymological adventure was that it would lead me to 007 himself.

‘Husband’ is a compound of two words: ‘house’ and ‘bond’ (not ‘band’). Old English (about 800 years ago) combined ‘hus’ meaning ‘house’ and ‘bonda’ meaning ‘hold’ into ‘husbonda’, which meant householder, lord of the house, house owner. Before this, it probably came from something scandiwegian as Old Icelandic has the very similar ‘hūsbondi’.

But get this. The ‘bond’ bit originally meant tennant (ie not land owning) farmer, or serf. When you think about the modern meanings of bond, it starts to make sense. Tie, fetter, bind, hold, commit. These folk would hold their land temporarily rather than own it. You can also see how ‘bond’ became ‘bondage’ as in enslave or servitude.

It’s also probably the source of the surname Bond. The original Bonds were unlikely to be driving an Aston Martin. 007 has come a long way.