Fashionable Words: Donnybrook

When you go shirtless, you know it's getting serious.

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]


Word:

donnybrook


Definition:  noun

A free-for-all, a melee, a brawl.


Origin:

Ireland has gotten by during its existence largely based on a handful of stereotypes that--to a degree--its citizenry generally accepts:
a.)  potatoes
b.)  Guinness
c.)  whiskey
d.)  shamrocks
e.)  fighting

No one can deny a quality potato-based meal, and the debate on alcohol begins and ends immediately with a simple "yes, please." Fighting, though, seems like a silly stereotype until you realize that donnybrook--which is about WWE-style fighting--has its origins in Ireland as well.

First and foremost, donnybrook the word comes from Donnybrook, a modern-day district of Dublin, no different than Harlem is a part of New York City. The district gets its name from the Irish language Domhnach Broc, meaning "The Church of Saint Broc." Little is known about Saint Broc except that she founded a convent or church in the early eighth century, a church/convent long lost. By the tenth century, Vikings were raiding Ireland and most likely sacked Saint Broc's creation. Today, only a cemetery in use from that time period remains.

Am I saying the word donnybrook somehow is connected to a saint? Yes...yes, I am.

Nowhere does it say you need a mustache to be involved in a donnybrook

In 1204, King John of England (better known as the king in the Robin Hood stories and brother of Richard the Lionhearted) granted the corporation of Dublin to hold an 8-day fair in the Donnybrook district. Within fifty years, it was lengthened to 15-days, and for the next 660+ years a fair was held in Donnybrook annually.

King John: Lover of fairs and creator of donnybrooks.

What started out as a peaceful, boring get together slowly built up over the decades. Fair-goers started drinking heavily. Small fights begot moderate fights begot sizable fights begot what became known as donnybrooks. Stunningly, large amounts of alcohol and personal quarrels led to massive brawls. I'm as stunned by this revelation as you.

Ireland embraced its stereotype of drinking and fighting, so much so that in a 1778 newspaper article one writer complained, "How irksome it was to friends of the industry and well-being of Society to hear that upwards of 50,000 persons visited the fair on the previous Sunday, and returned to the city like intoxicated savages." Someone sounds like a Negative Nancy.

How most modern-day donnybrooks slowly start out, with John Wayne (right) throwing down.

Eventually, some in the community banded together to create a committee to end the fair. It took decades (the fair had a license, and whoever owned the license could end the annual get-together), but the committee eventually bought the license and ended the Donnybrook Fair in 1866.

The fair might have ended, but the association with chaos lived on, and so did the word.


Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definition of 'donnybrook':

4.)  The word that gives the Irish and the college sports programs the Irish reputation for brawling [...] (and the) end of a donnybrook usually results in missing teeth, lacerations to the head, scars, scrapes, and bruises to the body. If you ever hear of a donnybrook starting at the place you're in, either run, or participate and be prepared for all of the above flesh wounds the next morning.


Used in a sentence:

After drinking two cases of beer while tailgating, Tommy and his friends started arguing with another group of fans, and everyone ended up in a donnybrook, throwing punches and kicks at each other in the parking lot.


Why you should use 'donnybrook' in your everyday life:

Using donnybrook is as close as your tender life will ever get to the world of MMA.


Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to5):

Three

It also sounds like it could be a name you randomly picked from a telephone book--like a guy named Donny Brook, who owns a butcher shop but does a little light illegal gambling on the side.

Canadian copy editor isn't down with that.

Now they've done it. They've angered John Wayne.

No one knows for certain where the term "ten gallon hat" came from. It might be from the Spanish tan galán, meaning so gallant or so fine, or maybe it comes from an English language corruption of the Spanish galón, which means galloon in English, a type of braided trimming around the crown of a hat. Whatever the reason, "ten gallon hat" doesn't reference the measurement of ten gallons of liquid.

Regardless, a copy editor at Maclean’s, a Canadian weekly news magazine, was very literal in their work this week. In the middle of a story referencing Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Jersey, the following passage was changed:


"Inside the coliseum, which serves as the athletic centre for the inner-city satellite campus of the state university of the Garden State, there was a high-school marching band performing in 38-litre hats and white boots, and cheerleaders in gold lamé hot pants."


The metric system! Canada's obsession with sensible scientific measurements has struck again. This copy editor went the extra mile 1609.34 meters and stuck it right in America's midsection.

There will be hell to pay once John Wayne hears about this.

Duke University and John Wayne's family are in a legal battle over the name 'Duke.'

First, the origins of two Dukes:

1.)  Marion Mitchell Morrison was his real name, but his stage name was John Wayne. The swaggering cinematic ideal of American machismo for four decades went by the nickname Duke, or The Duke, an adult version of the moniker given to him as a child by a local firefighter. Always seen walking around town with his Airedale Terrier named Duke, the young Marion Morrison was nicknamed Little Duke by said firefighter, and so a name was born.

2.)  Founded in 1838 by a group of Methodists and Quakers as Brown's Schoolhouse, then later named the Union Institute Academy, Normal College, Trinity College, the university now known as Duke University acquired its name after a $40 million gift was granted to the school by James B. Duke.

James Duke established the Duke Endowment, largely in memory of his father, Washington Duke, a wealthy tobacco industrialist who decades earlier had donated money to the school and pressured it to move its location to Durham, NC, where it currently resides. James Duke would gain on his father's industrialist legacy, establishing a monopoly on the tobacco marketplace, helping create modern cigarette manufacturing, and becoming one of the richest Americans at the time of his death.

The school changed its name to Duke University in 1924 with the arrival of James Duke's endowment pledge, after the university's president, William Preston Few, insisted upon the name change to honor the school's greatest benefactor--and so a name was born.


Now, the rest of the story:

According to The Hollywood Reporter, John Wayne's heirs are suing Duke University to claim trademark rights for using the name "Duke," largely so they can attach it to alcohol advertising. Arguing against this, Duke University claims people will be confused seeing "Duke" branded to alcohol, and associate it with the school. The two sides have been at odds for over a decade, with John Wayne Enterprises (JWE) looking to brand the late actor's name to everything swarthy and swaggering.

Duke University wants none of this, telling the Trademark Office, "Duke University is not and never has been in the business of producing, marketing, distributing, or selling alcohol. [...] On information and belief, the actual and potential customer base of Duke University is vastly different from the customer base of JWE."

"On information and belief." Yes, yes. Duke University--a school established largely on the back of cigarettes and tobacco--doesn't want people to associate the name Duke with the unsavory aspects of alcohol.

Clearly, the two Dukes are a match made in trademark heaven.

Einstein's brain is now an interactive iPad app.

As in the real thing. The real Einstein brain. Not some sort of cute wannabe Angry Birds game. As in slices of Albert Einstein's brain, photographed, and digitized for your perusal.

When Einstein died in 1955, an autopsy removed his brain for research's sake. Slices of his brain were later divided-up and placed on slides for scientists to focus under microscopes. It was an old-timey age when John Wayne swaggered, Marilyn Monroe charmed, and MRIs didn't exist, never mind advanced technology of people's brains plastered on an iPad. But now a medical museum in Chicago digitized those old-timey slides of Einstein's brain and created an app, naturally.

So for $9.99 you, too, can lose your appetite and feel mentally inferior at the same time.




photo: National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, via Yahoo.

Fashionable Words: Mosey

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]

Word:
Mosey

Definition:
verb
1. to wander or shuffle about leisurely.
2. to stroll; to amble.
3. to start a journey.

Origin:
Damned if anyone knows. History shows it came into fashion between 1820-1830, largely in the American south. Picture a wannabe Scarlet O'Hara saying it to someone while she spins a parasol and moves about a garden.

Some connect mosey's origin to the Spanish vamos. Others connect it to the British mose about. And still others connect it to an Alkonkian verb pimose, which means to walk.

I like to imagine John Wayne created it whenever he threw a hip out while sauntering into a saloon.

Used in a sentence:
1.  Little Bobby moseyed into his kindergarten class with moxie after acing his ABCs.

2.  After riding a horse for the past seven hours, it was impossible for Chuck to move any faster than a mosey.

Why the word should be brought back into fashion:
Because you walk too slowly for it to be considered anything other than moseying.

That, and it just sounds good coming off the tongue.

Word Awesomeness Scale (1 to 5):
Four. More moseying, less walking slowly.