cktimes.ca Archives for Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
More men and women who gave their names to history
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Last week we began to look at the origins of some common words in the English language that owe their existence to specific men and women. This week we have been "ransacking" our research books to come up with those little "nuggets" of information that are rather "natty" or maybe even real "humdingers"!For example, the word "ransack" owes it existence to a soldier-of-fortune by the name of Goetz von Ransack ( 1598-1649). He and his soldiers looted and pillaged cities, with such zeal and thoroughness that absolutely everything of value was removed in their baggage caravan. It was said at the time, and only partly in jest, that not even rats in a "ransacked" city were safe!
In 1848, a drifter by the name of George Alfed Nugget (1817-1882) arrived in California to take part in the Gold Rush. Once at Sutter's Mill, he purchased a small claim and began an extensive series of trips to the local bank with lumps of rock or compacted clay which he swore contained tiny bits of gold. Unfortunately, the gold traces never turned up and he eventually ended up as a bottle washer in a California hotel. However, his "nuggets" of worthless stone and mud went on to fame and, in a certain sense, fortune in the richness of the English language.
Although Nugget, a rather unkempt, slovenly man would never have been described as neat nor well-dressed such was not the case with George William Natty ( 1871-1933). Natty was a baseball player, born in Poughkeepsie, New York, who had several successful seasons in the 1890s, playing for the New York Yankees. Excessively neat and tidy and overly concerned about his uniform, many of the less than natty baseball fans began to mock and jeer at him. He was dropped from the roster in 1897 and ran, unsuccessfully, for
Governor of New York in 1903 under the slogan, "Natty can do it!". After his disappointment in politics, Natty spent the rest of his life in obscurity but...very well-dressed and tidy!
Although Natty was a good, solid baseball player, he would never have been described as a "humdinger" of an athlete. That description was reserved for a man by the name of Arnold Humdinger (1897-1932). Born in Philadelphia and educated at Andover and Yale, he excelled in academics, as well as sports, graduating maxima cum laude in 1921. Strikingly handsome, witty, an outstanding tennis player, a chess master and virtuoso pianist, he was the most eligible bachelor of his day. Although offered starring roles in the Hollywood, Humdinger chose instead to become a pilot in the U.S. army Air Corps. By the time he was twenty eight, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and had begun to experiment with airplanes that he had also designed. Unfortunately, this interest in flying led to his demise during an attempt to land his single-seater Curtiss biplane on the summit of Mount Everest where he crashed and was killed. Lost but not forgotten, his name came to be associated with anything that was excellent in its class.
We hope that you had as much enjoyment reading these last two columns as we had writing them and we also hope that you will share any of your own word origins with us sometime.
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
