Odette Williams has written a book called Simple Cake.  The premise is that cake making doesn’t have to be a laborious, complicated and overly fussy thing–in fact, it can be quite simple.  Contributor Melissa Clark met up with Odette Williams in New York to talk cake.  Odette kindly shared her recipes for Versatile Coconut Cake and Madeleines.  https://www.splendidtable.org/episode/let-them-eat-simple-cake



“Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution.  As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread.  Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited as an example of Marie-Antoinette’s obliviousness to the conditions and daily lives of ordinary people.  But did she ever actually utter those words?  Probably not.  For one thing, the original French phrase that Marie-Antoinette is supposed to have said—“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”—doesn’t exactly translate as “Let them eat cake.”  It translates as, well, “Let them eat brioche.”  Of course, since brioche is a rich bread made with eggs and butter, almost as luxurious as cake, it doesn’t really change the point of the story.  More important, though, there is absolutely no historical evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or anything like it.  So where did the quote come from, and how did it become associated with Marie-Antoinette?  As it happens, folklore scholars have found similar tales in other parts of the world, although the details differ from one version to another.  In a tale collected in 16th-century Germany, for instance, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t simply eat Krosem (a sweet bread).  Essentially, stories of rulers or aristocrats oblivious to their privileges are popular and widespread legends.  The first person to put the specific phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” into print may have been the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In Book VI of Rousseau’s Confessions (written about 1767), he relates a version of the story, attributing the quote to “a great princess.”  Although Marie-Antoinette was a princess at the time, she was still a child, so it is unlikely that she was the princess Rousseau had in mind.  John M. Cunningham  https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake



“Conflate” comes from the Latin conflare, “to blow together, stir up, raise, accomplish; also to melt together, melt down (metals),” The Oxford English Dictionary says.  Its first use, around 1583, referred to a “tumour conflated of a melancholious humour.”  The “melancholy humor” referred to black bile, one of the four humors that early medicine believed were responsible for the health (or illness) of the human body.  Black bile represented the earth; the others were blood, the sanguine humor, representing air; yellow bile, the choleric humor, representing fire; and phlegm, the phlegmatic humor, representing water (of course).  In 1885, the OED says, “conflate” was first used to mean “To combine or fuse two variant readings of a text into a composite reading; to form a composite reading or text by such fusion.”  “Conflate” can be a verb or an adjective, though its use as the latter is rare these days.  https://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/language_corner_020915.php



According to the Google Ngram viewer (which tracks occurrences of words in books that happen to be in the Google Books database) from 1800 to the present, usage of “conflate” in printed books piddled along at nearly zero until it started to rise in the 1960s and then shot up between 1980 and 2000.  http://www.word-detective.com/2015/08/conflate/



Existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility.  The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook.  And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth.  An existentialist believes that a person should be forced to choose and be responsible without the help of laws, ethnic rules, or traditions.  Existentialistic ideas came out of a time in society when there was a deep sense of despair following the Great Depression and World War II.  There was a spirit of optimism in society that was destroyed by World War I and its mid-century calamities.  This despair has been articulated by existentialist philosophers well into the 1970s and continues on to this day as a popular way of thinking and reasoning (with the freedom to choose one’s preferred moral belief system and lifestyle).  Existentialism is the search and journey for true self and true personal meaning in life.  Most importantly, it is the arbitrary act that existentialism finds most objectionable-that is, when someone or society tries to impose or demand that their beliefs, values, or rules be faithfully accepted and obeyed.  https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/existentialism.htm



Something that is off the cuff is unplanned or done on the spur of the moment.  The phrase usually relates to impromptu speech, but it can also relate to anything else that is improvised or done on short notice.  The phrase usually functions adverbially, in which case it does not need to be hyphenated.  But when it’s an adjective preceding the noun it modifies (e.g., off-the-cuff remarks), it is hyphenated (according to the conventions for phrasal adjectives).  The phrase might derive to the practice of making notes on one’s cuff in last-minute preparation for a speech, but this origin isn’t definitively established, and there are a few other, less plausible theories.  https://grammarist.com/usage/off-the-cuff/



Easy sauce for noodles  A couple of ladlefuls of water the noodles were cooked in with cheese, herbs and optional ingredients like diced vegetables or finely chopped nuts.



PRONOUNCING THE  Usually the is pronounced thuh.  In front of a vowel or vowel sound (for instance, hour, where the first letter is silent) the is pronounced thee.  You may use the as thuh in front of eel or easy if similar sounds next to each other seem awkward.



"Facetious" comes from a Latin word that means "jest."  A facetious comment is a joking comment—often an inappropriate joking comment.  Think of a jester or joker making a funny face at you, and remember the first part of "facetious" is spelled "face."  "Sarcastic" comes from a Greek word that means "to speak bitterly or to sneer."  A sarcastic response is less funny than a facetious response and more bitter and harsh.  "Sardonic" has an interesting history.  Try to associate it with the Greek island of Sardinia because the Greeks coined the word sardonic from the name of that island, which is now part of Italy.  A plant was said to grow on Sardinia that, if eaten, would force a person’s face muscles into a grimacing smile—not a smile of happiness, but a smile of pain—a sardonic smile. Scientists in Italy recently reported that they believe a Sardinian plant called water celery is the lethal herb the Greeks had in mind.  Sardonic means "cutting, cynical, and disdainful" and is often used to describe a kind of humor.  https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/facetious-sarcastic-or-sardonic



dapper  adjective  mid-15c., "elegant, neat, trim," from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German dapper "bold, strong, sturdy," later "quick, nimble," from Proto-Germanic *dapraz (source also of Old High German tapfar"heavy," German tapfer "brave"), perhaps with ironical shift of meaning, from PIE root *dheb- "dense, firm, compressed."  Later shifting toward "small and active, nimble, brisk, lively" (from c. 1600).  "Formerly appreciative; now more or less depreciative, with associations of littleness or pettyness" [Oxford English Dictionary].  https://www.etymonline.com/word/dapper



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct.  There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living.  These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark.  They light the way for humankind. - Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (17 Jul 1921-1944)


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2125  July 17, 2019