The Patter Song

Definition

A patter song is a comic song in opera and operetta that are characterized by a moderately fast to very fast tempo with a rapid succession of rhythmic patterns that each have a syllable of text to be sung by the singer.

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The verb patter means:

1make a repeated light tapping sound : a flurry of rain pattered against the window.

• run with quick light steps : the patter of little feet (allusion a walking baby)

2talk at length without saying anything significant : she pattered on incessantly.

ORIGIN late Middle English (as a verb in the sense [recite (a prayer, charm, etc.) rapidly] ): frompaternoster . The noun dates from the mid 18th cent.

The noun patter means:

rapid or smooth-flowing continuous talk, such as that used by a comedian or salesman : slick black hair, flashy clothes, and a New York line of patter.

• rapid speech included in a song, esp. for comic effect : [as adj. ] a patter song of invective.

• the special language or jargon of a profession or other group : he picked up the patter from watching his dad.(similar to lingo)

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In a patter song, the text is often filled with difficult, tongue-twisting lyrics that are very entertaining to listen to. These songs are typically composed for a bass or baritone voice. 

This form of musical composition is not at all new;patter songs are very prominent in the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and can be found in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gioacchino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti and others. The patter song is still used today and a more recent version can be found in Stephen Sondheim's song Getting Married Today from his Broadway musical Company.

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Another modern Patter song - 

Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doin' it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin' for a new friend
The man in the coon-skip cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten.

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the DA
Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try, 'No Doz'
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows.

Get sick, get well
Hang around an ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write Braille
Get jailed, jump bail Join the army, if you failed
Look out kid
You're gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin' for a new fool
Don't follow leaders
Watch the parkin' meters.

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don't wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles.

More Patter here:

http://www.schickele.com/cgi-bin/playlist.pl?program=14

BALONEY!

 Today we talk about the use of a word that comes from a popular lunch meat, bologna.
 This name, of course, comes from the town of Bologna, Italy, and bologna is similar to the
Italian lunch meat Mortadella. So how did baloney come to mean something untrue or nonsensical?                                                      

Definition

Baloney |bəˈlōnē|noun informal
1 foolish or deceptive talk; nonsense : typical salesman’s baloney.

Origin
One of the earliest uses of "baloney" to mean nonsense was in the catch phrase "It's baloney no matter how thin you slice it," a popular American expression in the 1930's. It means that regardless of how many clever points or fine distinctions one makes, what one is saying is still false or is still nonsense.

Variety slang writer Jack Conway, who also coined  'high-hat', 'pushover', 'payoff', 'bellylaugh', 'palooka and scram*', popularized the slang “nonsense” meaning for the word “balogna” or “baloney” in the early 1920s.

(* the only ones which are now in disuse.)

Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944), the New York governor who ran for president in 1928, frequently used the “baloney” slang term in 1928 and in the early 1930s. It is said that it was one of his favorite words.

2002, Dave Distel, The Sweater Letter, ISBN 0595259332, p. 267: 
“Do you have the ability,” he asked another juror, “to discern between the truth and baloney?” 
“I think so, definitely.” 
“No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney, right?”

Phony Baloney

The word phony means 

1 : not true, real, or genuine : intended to make someone think something that is not true 
▪ He gave a phony name to the police. = The name he gave the police was phony. ▪ a phony [=(more commonly) counterfeit] $100 bill ▪ She's been talking in a phony [=fake] Irish accent all day.

2 of a person : not honest or sincere : saying things that are meant to deceive people 
▪ phony politicians

— pho·ni·ness noun [noncount] 
▪ I recognized the phoniness of her accent.

Perhaps because phoney rhymes with baloney and because of their proximity in meaning, the two words started to be used together, especially to refer to a person whose credibility is dubious:

Phoney baloney - A nickname for the late 1980s, early 1990s pop group Milli Vanilli whose singers actually didn't sing the songs they claimed to. The two males were likely selected for the group based on their appearance. They lip-synched all of their live performances. They were busted because people started to question why nobody had ever heard their singing voices in person. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

Phonus Bolonus

This humorous variant could be described as 'mock Latin', as if phoney baloney were a scientific classification.

"And you cannot tell by the way a party looks or how he lives in this town, if he has any scratch, because many a party who is around in automobiles, and wearing good clothes, and chucking quite a swell is nothing but a phonus bolonus and does not have any real scratch whatever."
   - Damon Runyon from The Snatching of Bookie Bob.

Synonyms of baloney;

British equivalents:
 tosh; tommyrot; humbug; drool; bosh; boloney; twaddle; taradiddle;

How can you deal with the inedible baloney in your life?

THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT

 

And to close....There is even a SONG about baloney:

 

                                         LYRICS: BALONEY POLONIOUS  

To thine own self be true
Is only your point of view
Baloney, Polonius, for everyone but you
Brevity is the soul of wit
But stick with wit a little bit
And then you might discover something new

Neither a lender or borrower be
But in the end when you're in need
Baloney, Polonius, you know
More matter and less art, you say?
McLuhan blew that one away
Take your baloney, Polonius, and go

I'll come back as a master thinker
Commit philanthropy
Revive the maxims I destroyed
And go down in history
Erect a few statues, endow a few colleges
All named after me
Shakespeare said I'm bad
But I'm good

There's method in madness, yes 
There I must agree
I'd like to see the whole world going mad
But the fact that you said it
Would tend to discredit
Polonius, due to your hokey baloney
Whatever truth the statement may have had

"Baloney is the unvarnished lie laid on so thick you hate it..."- Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in a 1954 radio address.

Cookbooks and Cooked books

Many intermediate level Esl students struggle with the possessive case when it is applied to objects possessing objects. For example we can say :

The book's cover is bound in fine leather. Or : The cover of the book is made of leather.    In both cases, we are talking about the material characteristics of its cover.

We can also use a 2 noun + 1 noun construction: The book cover was well-designed.

The word book is generic, and can be used with many nouns to say what kind of book it is.                   Eg. Date book, Art book, Checkbook, Codebook or Cookbook

These are all compound nouns.

Compound word is made of two or more words that together express a single idea.

 a. An open compound means that the words of the compound are written separately, (New Year’s Eve, credit card, sea salt).

b. A hyphenated compound separates the words by hyphen(s) (brother-in-law, high-maintenance, force-feed).

c. A solid compound is formed when the two words are written as one word (typewriter, breakfront, oatmeal).  Solid compounds generally begin as two separate words, then start to be used as hyphenated words, and finally become solid compounds or permanent compounds, eg. Cookbook.

·o0o·

Cook the Books

Books, plural; used with 'the', refers to the accounting books (accounts receivable and accounts payable).

> a bound set of blank sheets for writing or keeping records in : an accounts book.
• ( books) a set of records or accounts : He can do more than balance the books.
• a bookmaker's record of bets accepted and money paid out. The slang for such a bookkeeper is 'bookie'.

To cook the books means to create the appearance of earnings that really don't exist. A company is guilty of cooking the books when it knowingly includes incorrect information on its financial statements -- manipulating expenses and earnings to improve their earnings per share of stock (EPS).

More:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cookthebooks.asp

From Breaking Bad, Season 4x11 Crawl Space

Transcript

Skyler: $617,000 written out to me. Ah, what is this?

Ted: I can't take your money.

Skyler: Oh? And why is that?

Ted: Because at the end of the day, paying my debt with illicit gambling winnings...I don't know; it feels wrong.

Skyler: It feels wrong.

Ted: To me it does. I'm not judging you or Walt. I just don't feel comfortable with it.

Skyler: Well, um, Ted, the whole reason we're in this mess is because you had me cooking your books. So when did 'wrong' suddenly become a problem for you?

Ted: Now hold on, that was a one time measure I took in an honest attempt to protect my employees and save my dad's company.

Fish vs. Fishes: Is it ever correct to say "fishes"?

When Plurals have the same form as their singulars. 

There are nouns whose singular and plural forms are the same, such as “fish,” “moose,” “sheep,” “deer,” and “swine".

These nouns don’t have the normal plural ending because we think of them as a group, as in “We saw deer in the woods.”

The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style uses the example “Half a dozen fishes inhabit the lake” (7).

So you could say:

We caught five fish.

Or:

The commercial troller caught 5000 fish.

We had fish for dinner.

And if you can also say:

There are many fishes in this pond. 

Just remember that the meaning changes. This sentence means that the pond has many species of fish in it. Use "fishes" only for this purpose.

Heat up vs. Hot up

What is the difference between Heat up and Hot up?

Heat is a verb and hot is an adjective, so it seems wrong to put an adjective together with a particle:

Hot up, hotting up

I consulted several sources and found:

OED:

verb (hots, hotting, hotted)

(hot something up or hot up) British informal

make or become hot:[with object]He hotted up the flaskbecome or make more lively or exciting:[no object] :the championship contest hotted up
The Merriam-Webster:

hot up

 verb

Definition of HOT UP

intransitive verb; chiefly British

: to increase in intensity, pace, or excitement <Air raids began to hot up about the beginning of February. — George Orwell>

transitive verb

chiefly British : to make livelier, speedier, or more intense

With a silky Southern drawl, the waitress asked, "Want me to hot up that pie?"

(Well, I doubt that, because most Americans have never even heard of 'hot up'.) Here is what an American from California had to say:

"I think it's simply that "hot" is an adjective and "heat" is a verb. I've also never heard "hot up".  You can also "reheat" your food in the microwave, if you're warming up leftovers, for example."

 

and The American Heritage Dictionary:

Hot up

Chiefly British Informal. to heat; warm (usually followed by up).

I heard it today, here:

http://www.euronews.net/2011/12/01/diplomatic-row-grows-between-tehran-and-london/
So you might think that 'hot up' is just a silly journalistic attempt at originality, but you'd be wrong.
Again, according to Merriam-Webster:

First Known Use of HOT UP

1878! 

 

It turns out that this informal British usage is not even new, and it's not slang either.
At least, it's not slang to say that a situation is 'hotting up'. Apparently, it is slang to 'hot up' a person, an audience or a situation. 


Being an American English speaker, I will always prefer Heat up to Hot up, but essentially both are correct.

More on Heat:
Meaning #2 - intensity of feeling, esp. of anger or excitement : Words few men would dare use to another, even in the heat of anger. 
You can also say> In the heat of the moment, when you are describing something said or done rashly.
• 'The heat' [informal] - intensive and unwelcome pressure or criticism, esp. from the authorities : A flurry of legal proceedings turned up the heat in the dispute.
Other interesting expressions with heat:

go hot and cold - experience a sudden feeling of fear or shock

have the hots for - [informal] be sexually attracted to

hot on the heels of - following closely: The mugger ran away from the scene of the crime, with the police hot on his heels.

hot to trot - impatient to begin some activity

hot under the collar - [informal] angry, resentful or embarrassed.

in hot water - [informal] in trouble: She landed in hot water for falsifying the documents.

ESL Spanish students:
Calor - heat 
Caliente - hot
Calentar - heat/ heat up (or hot up, if you must); 
Warm up is used in certain contexts, but I won't comment on that in this post.
Califacción - heating (n.) 


So...In summer you feel the heat.
If I ask,"How are you?"
in Spanish you might say, 'Tengo mucho calor' or 'Con mucho calor'
This cannot be translated directly.
You could say:


It's very hot/it's too hot today.
or
I'm overheated.(I feel the heat too much)
eg. She felt overheated after her run in the park.