A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 

shrinkflation  (shringk-FLAY-shuhn)  noun  The practice of reducing the size of products while selling at the same price.  A blend of shrink + inflation.  Earliest documented use:  2013.

selectorate  (si-LEK-tuhr-it)  noun  A smaller group of people, as opposed to the general population, involved in picking a person, especially for a political position.

A blend of select + electorate.  Both from Latin legere (to choose).  Earliest documented use:  1967.

Sloane Ranger  (slohn RAYN-juhr)  noun  A young, fashionable, upper-class person  A blend of Sloane Square (in Chelsea, London) + Lone Ranger, coined by the writer Peter York in Harpers & Queen magazine.  Earliest documented use:  1975.  The magazine writer Peter York coined this term and later co-wrote the book The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook.  Originally the term applied to a young woman, but now can be used for anyone.  The term is sometimes shortened to simply Sloane.

Copernican  (koh/kuh-PUHR-ni-kuhn)  adjective  1.  Very important; radically different; paradigm shifting.  2.  Relating to Copernicus or his theory that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun.  After the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) whose heliocentric views were considered revolutionary in a world that believed in the geocentric model.  Earliest documented use:  1667.    

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From:  Martin E Cobern  In college, my friends used to joke (at least I think they were joking) that there was an alternative model of the universe.  In the Cobernican Theory, the universe revolved around me!  I still use Cobernicus as a screen name. 

From:  John C Bender  I’ve seen Copernican used also in science writing referring to the assumption that our position in view of the cosmos isn’t particularly special.  AWADmailIssue 1059

From:  Emily Baldwin   A perfect story on shrinkflation is the class-action suit filed against McCormick & Company for nonfunctional slack-fill in their pepper containers.  There’s a Planet Money podcast episode about it.  [Settled for $2.5 million.]
From:  John Kilmarx   Subject:  Shrinkflation - Phyletic, Gooey, and Otherwise 
Here’s a classic little essay (pdf) on econo-evolutionary trends by Stephen Jay Gould (yes, that one!) in the classic (and very odd) book Junk Food from 1980. 
From:  Andrew Pressburger  An example of shrinkflation is in the first chapter of Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  After the chocolate ration is reduced from 30 grams per week to 20, the Ministry of Truth puts out the claim that it has been increased to 20 grams (its supposed previous level is not stated).  AWADmail Issue 1060 

Tiers of cheese are center stage in many still lifes from the opening decades of the seventeenth century.  Still lifes from this period typically depict domestic fare, the components of a simple meal, and are known as ontbijtje (breakfast pieces).  Bread and cheese, maybe an artichoke or a herring, a tankard of beer.  All very egalitarian.  Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris)  Émile Zola:  The novel is set in Les Halles, the central food market that was demolished in 1971 and replaced by a Westfield mall.  “It was the Camembert they could smell.  This cheese, with its gamy odour, had overpowered the milder smells of the marolles and the limbourg; its power was remarkable.  A poet’s hope:  to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.”  W.H. Auden had been living in the Big Apple for years when he penned “A poet’s hope:  to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.”   T.S. Eliot dubbed Wensleydale the Mozart of cheese.  For George Orwell it was outclassed only by Stilton.  Who invented cheese?  Without refrigeration milk soon spoils.  At some point millennia ago herders worked out how to convert their milk into cheese, a more stable source of nourishment.  The cheeses that evolved in various locations—the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere—were shaped by the physical and cultural characteristics of their particular environments.  Adding flavorings to cheese is a very old practice--herbs, peppercorns, spices, even weeds.  Noëlle Janaczewska  https://lithub.com/on-the-culinary-and-artistic-history-of-cheese

Stilton is an English cheese, produced in two varieties:  Blue, which has Penicillium roqueforti added to generate a characteristic smell and taste, and White, which does not.  Both have been granted the status of a protected designation of origin (PDO) by the European Commission, requiring that only such cheese produced in the three counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire may be called Stilton.  The cheese takes its name from the village of Stilton, now in Cambridgeshire, where it has long been sold.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilton_cheese

Stilton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, about 12 miles (19 km) north of Huntingdon in Huntingdonshire, which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county of England.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilton 

“Every moment is precious”  Dracula Daily:  November 2, 2022  You can see more details, read past issues, and more at DraculaDaily.com.

When you gather 4,434 cheeses from 42 countries in one room to find out which is best, there's inevitably a sense of excitement in the air.  There is, of course, inevitably also a very, very powerful smell.  That heady and almost intoxicating mix of ripening dairy produce and friendly competition was swirling around a conference center in the United Kingdom on Nov. 2, 2022 as 250 international judges sniffed, prodded and chomped their way along tables groaning with cheese to decide which should take the crown at the 2022 edition of the 34^th World Cheese Awards.  This year's winner, a Gruyère from Switzerland, was eventually chosen by a panel of top judges.  Barry Neild https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-best-cheese-awards-2022-wales/index.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2587  November 4, 2022