Good intentions of writing a blog this week went out the window when temperatures soared to mid-30s Celsius (which, local microclimate-wise, is high 30s into 40s); it’s simply too hot to focus right now… I know what I want to write about, but heat-induced brain fog is real!
So in the meantime, I’ll leave you with something just for fun!😉
Filed under Humor, Images, Just for Fun
Today’s topic is the kind of thing that flashes through my brain at 4 a.m. when I’m dropping off to sleep.
Sometimes rock and stone can be used interchangeably, depending on the context of science, society or conversation; but some phrases are intuitively either stone- or rock-rooted: We say rock road, rockslide and rock salt, but stonemason, stone wall and Stonehenge.
In geological terms, a rock is a naturally occurring mass of minerals, particularly those with a distinctive composition (e.g. granite, bedrock, igneous, or features such as Ayers Rock). Other geological terms range from clay, silt, sand, pebble, gravel, cobble, boulder or glacial erratic (material moved by geological forces from one location to another) to mountain in size.
In Archaeological terms, rock refers to a geological formation, while stone refers to any rock that has been placed or modified into a tool by humans (ergo, Stonehenge, not Rockhenge). When an archaeological dig is underway and they pull out a rock, trained eyes can spot signs of scarring, or scoring, such as on a core, which is a piece of rock that has been worked by a stone tool referred to as a hammerstone (for obvious reasons), used to shape another rock into a tool, such as in the process of flint knapping (the more refined the knapping process, the more refined the tools become, such as using antler or copper nubs to chip away finer areas of an arrowhead or hunting barb). In Kansas, where I grew up, arrowheads are still discovered occasionally; I have a small collection, along with a few obsidian arrowheads.
In archaeological excavations, what might appear to be a natural rock formation may turn out to be an ancient boundary wall, with stones intentionally stacked for a specific purpose. In that sense, though a rock road has intentionally been placed, it is not stone – it is placed for a purpose, yes, but its arrangement is left as it falls, so it is referred to as a rock road.
Years ago, when my husband and I were walking along a rocky riverbank in Ticino (in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland), I picked up a stone; it had obvious signs of human activity, with smoothed sides where hands held it, and scrapes along the top and bottom, such as might be caused by sharpening a tool – whether antler or arrowhead. As it was washed down from its resting place in the rapids, it was no longer in situ and therefore would have no archaeological significance.
So which is it, stone or rock? For me, the answer is this: When it has been modified or intentionally placed or ordered by humans, it’s stone; when it’s naturally occurring, it’s rock.
I’ll leave you with a few idioms carved in stone or rock:
Set /carved in stone
Living under a rock
Leave no stone unturned
On the rocks
Heart of stone
Kill two birds with one stone
Have rocks in one’s head
Cast the first stone
As solid as a rock / As solid as the Rock of Gibraltar
Written in stone
Like getting blood from a rock
Between a rock and a hard place
A stone’s throw
Filed under Etymology, History Undusted, Images, Liguistics, Linguistics, Nature, Science & Technology
Sometimes, my husband and I discuss history, and an odd topic here or there pops up; I’ll often delve into the history or etymology of a phrase, word, or idiom and share my findings here. So, no more fiddling about; let’s get to it.
A reduplication in English is a word or sound that’s doubled or altered the second time for effect; there are a few kinds of reduplications: Exact repeats, like bye-bye or night-night; rhyming, like okey-dokey, easy-peasy, or higgledy-piggledy; ablauts, like chit-chat, criss-cross, splish-splash, or wishy-washy; there is even a series of -shm reduplications, like fancy-shmancy, laborday-shmaborday, or work-shmerk. Some reduplications emphasise the first term to focus on the prototypical or normal form of something, e.g. ‘I just was a salad-salad (not bean salad or tuna salad)’. Many such words have become standard in English, such as flip-flops, wingdings, or zig-zag. Every language probably has such words; German has krimskrams, schnikschnak, mischmasch, larifari, Wirrwarr and more. Italian has a few that have slipped into use in other languages, such as piano piano (very slowly), Mamma mia (literally, my mother, but used as an expression of surprise, frustration, or even delight, similar to ‘Oh my goodness‘), or bric-a-brac (knick-knack).
Have you ever said (or heard someone else say) Fiddle-faddle? It first appeared in English in the 1570s, meaning trifles, or to talk nonsense or speak of something not worth serious attention. Fiddle is another word for violin and is the more colloquial/casual of the two; as such, it has long been associated with less important things. Georgette Heyer uses fiddle without faddle to mean trivial or nonsense; the reduplication would merely emphasise the meaning of the first word, so she chose to drop the second.
John Milton Edwards (the pen-name of William Wallace Cook, 1867-1933) wrote, “There’s a lot of fiddle-faddle wrapped up in that word ‘inspiration.’ It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing...”
It was also used as an adjective to describe a troublesome person, such as a nit-picky, ceremonious old woman. As a verb, to fiddle-faddle means to dally, which leads us to another reduplication: dilly-dally, which means to loiter, delay, or trifle! A fiddle-faddler is a person who trifles or dallies.
No dilly-dallying, let’s get to the point: Which reduplications have you used? Have you ever known a fiddle-faddler or a dilly-dallier? If you know of more such words, please put them in the comments below!
Filed under Articles, Etymology, History Undusted, Liguistics, Linguistics
I know that, for most of you, neither Engadin nor Sgraffito have made you any wiser as to what this blog is about, so first, I’ll start off by explaining where and what they are, respectively.
Engadin (pronounced En-Ga-Deen) is a long, towering Alpine valley in the Romansh-speaking canton of Graubünden in southeast Switzerland. The first mention of this valley was in Latin as vallis Eniatina in AD 930; in the Romansh language (one of the four national languages of Switzerland), it is Engiadina. The river running through the valley is called the En or Inn, and it is the only river in Switzerland that runs (via Austria) into the Black Sea. The region is usually divided into lower and upper Engadin, and it is connected to the surrounding regions by several mountain passes.
The second word, Sgraffito, describes a plaster technique that is traditional throughout Engadin: Layers of plaster of contrasting colours are scratched through, creating intricate designs on the facades of buildings (many of the buildings in Engadin towns were built (or rebuilt) in the late 1500s to early 1600s). The word comes from the Italian graffiare, which means to scratch; it can be traced back to the Greek word graphein, meaning to write (from which we also get any words containing the prefix, suffix, or derivative of graph (graphite, typography, graptolite, parallelogram, holograph, etc.). Sgraffito is not only used on buildings to make them look decorative, but it also serves the purpose of making a small feature look larger; on one building, the same floor had different-sized windows, likely installed over generations; the sgraffito was used to give a more uniform look to the façade. The decorations also make a plain building look grander, giving a more opulent impression. One building, pictured below, obviously had two occupants with very different characters back when they were originally decorated…
The basic technique for architectural features is to plaster the façade with the base colour; once that has set, it is then plastered with a contrasting colour; once that has set just enough, the scratching, or carving, begins. This is also a technique used in pottery and in creating stained glass effects (just click on the links if you’d like to see how these crafts are made).
One thing to note is that many old buildings here in Switzerland have dates listed on them: Of when they were originally built, and when they’ve been renovated. Part of the history of such renovations may include fires that swept through villages, or avalanches that buried a layer, or wars, such as the Swabian War and war against the Habsburgs, and the subsequent renovation or rebuilding of the towns or individual homes. Sometimes, along with the dates, a list of past and present occupants will also be displayed, preserving their names and memories within the history and changes of the building itself.
Below are a few pictures taken in Engadin during our recent summer holidays. Enjoy! Feel free to zoom in on the pictures to see the details.
The first weekend in June, I took a much-needed break. Our home renovations, which lasted 14 months altogether, were finally finished. For a few months, I’d been looking for a suitable writers’ retreat, or a creative retreat – ones that didn’t have yoga as part of the course (I won’t go into my reasons; let’s just say I wouldn’t be able to relax in that kind of atmosphere). I’d finally found one – and it would be at a place in the Dordogne (one of the “departments”, or regions, of France) I already knew from the YouTube channel Manor & Maker. After I’d booked the course, which would have been a creative weekend around the theme of fairy tales, it unfortunately had to be cancelled. But as I’d paid for the course and flights, I decided to go anyway.
The “weekend” started off on Thursday, with the worst travelling day I’ve experienced in years: In France, workers will strike at the drop of a hat; I think they still haven’t figured out that the French Resistance and the habit of inconveniencing everyone just because they can is passé. But the Bordeaux taxis were on strike Thursday and Friday – which meant that the roads in and out of the Bordeaux airport were blocked (the police were even helping the strikers). Therefore, the airport shuttle across the city to Gare Saint-Jean (train station) was thrown off its scheduled routes. I waited in vain for the shuttle to arrive at its alternative location, and, through a succession of helpful advice (more or less – not everyone was informed about the strike and changed traffic routes as a result), what should have taken 30 minutes ended up taking 3 hours (carrying luggage). I finally arrived, then bought a train ticket (the last train of the day possible), then waited. And waited. Other trains leaving after mine popped up on the board, but not the train for Limoges (my stop would be Thiviers).
In the ticket office, the woman in charge (who spoke little English when she chose and had fobbed me off to someone more capable) had belligerence and a little-god/diva complex down to a fine art. (As the saying goes, be careful how you treat me or you’ll end up in one of my novels…) As the train’s track information didn’t pop up and still didn’t show up, I braced myself and got back into the queue to ask about it. Fortunately for me, the older French couple in the queue in front of me asked about the train for Limoges; I could follow enough of the French and body language to know what happened next: The diva answered curtly with a generous portion of rudeness added – and promptly had her head scrubbed, bitten off and handed to her on a silver platter – to the applause of everyone who’d had to deal with her already. The husband of the couple was ready to rip her hair out for speaking to him the way she had, until another ticket woman stepped in between them and tried to diffuse the situation – apparently, she had practice at it. This second woman then came out with the growing crowd of waiting passengers to see what the problem was at the information board; after several minutes on the headset with the control room (I assume), it finally popped up. Naturally, it was the farthest train track, and we had only 5 minutes to reach it! The couple took me under their wing, and we made it to our seats just before the doors closed. I finally arrived at my destination, Thiviers, around 9 p.m.
I was met there by Stephen, the Chatelain of Chateau de Saint-Germain-des-prés, and driven back to their home. What followed was a lovely, long weekend; only one other B&B couple were there, but rarely seen. I had time to unwind, work on my next novel, and spend time with Stephen and Sara (the Chatelaine) and Sara’s mother, Dee. Sara is a costume seamstress, and she was working on a Regency coat for Steve for an upcoming BBC segment at the chateau of their friends. Dee and I helped piece the pattern together, and the billiard table in their grand salon became the sewing table for the project.
Here are a few pictures from the weekend, which included a modern art exhibition at another local chateau, as well as an outdoor artisan pottery fair. Barring strikes, I’d love to go again sometime!
Filed under Images, Links to External Articles
Deciding who to highlight here in this space sometimes comes down to a moral choice; some of the people I’ve investigated as a result of a quote from my collection have turned out to have lived lives that are, frankly, not worthy of my spending time and effort to share their history. One was a multi-billionaire who was a womanizer and a miser who loved tormenting people under his control. He lived a miserable life and died a lonely death. As Jesus said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). Others, while they may have lived lives worth remembering, made strings of unwise choices that led to scandals and/or dodgy associations with corrupt foreign powers. While a quote or two from such a person might hold a grain of truth or wit, I personally find it difficult to un-see the stains behind the curtain, as it were, and so I choose to highlight lives that have something worth learning from or from those people who’ve done something worthy of our respect.
The person I’d like to highlight today is John Bertram Philips (1906-1982), best known for his translation of the New Testament and part of the Old Testament into modern English. This work wasn’t done in a stuffy theologian’s office, but in the bomb shelters of the London Blitz of World War 2. During that war, he was the Anglican vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lee, London, and he realized that the young people in his church had difficulty relating to, or understanding, the Authorized Version of the Bible, aka the King James Bible, which was first published in 1611*. By the mid-1940s, English had changed fundamentally, and it has continued to grow and adapt; the older version of the biblical translation was and is (for most people) stuffy and unrelatable. [For those of you wondering which version of the Bible is most accurately translated from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts, the NIV Bible adheres most closely to them; 2011 saw a major revision to the NIV translation, based on recently published critical editions from biblical scholars.]
[*The history of how The King James Bible came to be the king’s Bible is long and sordid, littered with spies, political intrigue and betrayal, ending in the gruesome martyrdom of William Tyndale, whose translation was basically appropriated after his death, which is ironic, as he was tried because his translation was illegal…”unauthorized” by the Holy Roman Empire political elite… but that’s another story.]
Encouraged by his friend, C.S. Lewis, Philips published the first section of the New Testament, starting with Paul’s letters to the churches, in 1947, with the Gospels following in 1952. The final compilation of the New Testament was published in 1958. In the 1960s, he translated and published parts of the Old Testament, though this was never finished within his lifetime.
As a minister and translator, a communicator at heart, it’s no wonder that there are numerous quotes taken from his writings, sermons, and letters written during his lifetime; in some ways, like Tyndale, he was ahead of his time in his understanding of God and our relationship with Him. As the saying goes, we today see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Whether or not you believe in God, if you live in any nation with Judeo-Christian foundations, you benefit from those shoulders in more ways than you know.
If you’d like to read more about the life of this complex man, who struggled with clinical depression most of his life and yet remained firm in his faith, please click on the link to an article titled, A Bruised Reed Firmly Planted.
Without further ado, here is a selection of quotes from John Bertram Phillips:
I know that most of you can relate to the occasional feeling of having too many things going on at once; juggling jobs, family, civic responsibilities and household management can bring on the feeling of a hamster in a wheel, moving, moving, but not really getting anywhere!
That feeling began creeping up again for me last week, and a few idioms came to mind related to that feeling – which tells me that the condition of being overwhelmed or over-busy is an age-old challenge.
You can’t dance at two weddings
This idiom means that you can’t do two things simultaneously – you have to decide for one or the other. Sometimes that’s a tough choice – both things would be great to be involved in but, unless you’ve learned how to clone yourself, a choice must be made.
The phrase’s etymology leads us to the Yiddish language: Historically Judeo-German, Yiddish is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews and originated in the 9th century. What I find interesting is that, about 25 years ago, when I was still learning High German alongside Swiss German (Zurich dialect), my husband was invited to perform some of his troubadour songs in a concert with several other artists; one of the groups performed in Yiddish. I could understand and follow the story of their song, while my husband and other Swiss around me couldn’t. I think it was a combination of me being a fresh learner of the two languages simultaneously, having a musical ear and, perhaps more importantly, having a Scottish accent still in my ear and a bit in my Swiss German – for me, it sounded a bit like a combination of the two! My brain combined it all, and I could follow the story – my explanation to my husband was then confirmed by their translation given after the song was over.
The idiom is likely derived from the Hebrew translation of the story in 1 Kings 18:21; the English NIV says “How long will you waver between two opinions?” but the Tanach could be read as, “How long will you hop between two platforms?”
Spread butter too thin (over too much toast)
This idiom, with a similar connotation, implies that one overcommits to too many things, leading to unsuccessful results, or leading to exhaustion or poor performance.
A good example of this idiom is happening right now in our flat: Of all the companies we’ve had to work with on the various issues of resolving water damage (the entire process began in April 2024, and no, it’s not over yet!), one company has teams in several functions – floor renovation, plastering, painting… and probably others, of which I hope I never have experience. Every single repair they’ve undertaken has been shoddy, and they’ve had to repeat the exercise – meaning we have had to move half of our flat away from floors, walls and pathways several times already as they have to re-do badly-done work! I’ve put my foot down and insisted that project managers show up and check the work before the workers are done, from now until I never have to see the company again!
The companies that concentrate their expertise on one area, such as plumbing, balcony renovation, façade renovation, or electrical repairs, have all done great work, done and dusted.
Have one’s fingers in too many pies
This idiom is similar to the butter metaphor, and it means to be involved in many different activities or projects at once, often to the point of being overstretched; It suggests a lack of focus or a tendency to dabble in various things without fully committing to any.
Shakespeare used this imagery in Henry VIII, in which the Duke of Buckingham refers to Cardinal Wolsey: “The devil speed him! no man’s pie is freed from this ambitious finger“.
In Italian, the phrase “avere le mani in pasta” means to have one’s hand in the pies, or pasta, or simply being hands-on.
This idiom is so visual that it is difficult to trace its origins, as it likely had many concurrent origins throughout history. Shakespeare most likely wasn’t the first to use it, though he no doubt popularized it, like so many things he’s “credited” with.
Wearing too many hats
This idiom, also as “man of many hats” stems from a recent past when people wore hats on a daily basis.
Men had hats, usually bowlers, to wear in the city during the day, while they wore a different hat on the hunting field, another when riding horses, and another for evening parties. Cricketers, cowboys, players of various sports (baseball, American football, etc.), military ranks with casual uniforms or dress uniforms or combat uniforms all wear different hats.
To wear too many hats implies that a person is trying to perform too many different roles or jobs than is realistically feasible, implying that they may struggle to fulfil responsibilities effectively.
Have you had times in your lives when too many is too much? If so, let’s all learn to slow dance, eat less butter, bake fewer pies, and choose one hat at a time!
Filed under Etymology, History, History Undusted, Linguistics, Military History
Today’s phrase, playing at / making ducks and drakes, refers to skipping stones across a water surface, much like the image of a waterbird coming in for a watery landing. By 1614, the meaning had come to be associated with squandering or throwing one’s money away needlessly, much like stones were tossed away in stone-skipping.
The first written evidence of the phrase was in 1585, The nomenclator, or remembrancer of Adrianus Junius, translated by John Higgins:
“A kind of sport or play with an oister shell or stone throwne into the water, and making circles yer it sinke, etc. It is called a ducke and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake.”
These two terms also appear in nursery rhymes; the first, found in A History of Nursery Rhymes (1899) by Percy B. Green, where he mentions that this rhyme was repeated when skimming stones:
A duck, a drake, a barley cake,
A penny to pay the baker;
A hop, a scotch, another notch –
Slitherum, slitherum, take her.
The “barley cake” is “halfpenny cake” in this 1916 version of The Real Mother Goose:
A duck and a drake,
And a halfpenny cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker.
A hop and a scotch
Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.
In 1626, it is mentioned in the play Dick of Devon: “The poorest ship-boy Might on the Thames make duckes and drakes with pieces Of eight fetchd out of Spayne.”
Many cultures share the simple pastime of stone tossing, with their own terms for it: American English, skipping stones; British English, skimming stones or ducks and drakes; in Scottish, Skiting or Skliffing; in Irish, stone skiffing. In French, making ricochets (faire des ricochets); in German, stone flitting (Steinehüpfen); in various languages such as Bulgarian, Greek, Latvian and Lithuanian, their terms refer to frogs rather than ducks. In Japanese, cutting water. In Norwegian, fish bounce (fiskesprett). In Portuguese, either water shearing (capar a água) or making tiny hats (fazer chapeletas). The list goes on and on!
The oldest reference to the pastime goes back to the 2nd century AD by the Greek scholar Julius Pollux; in the 3rd century, Marcus Minucius Felix (a Latin writer) mentions children skipping shells on the beach.
Today, of course, it has become a serious competition for some. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the record for the number of skips is 88, held by Kurt Steiner; the furthest distance for men is 121.8m, made by Scotsman Dougie Isaacs, and 52.5m for women, thrown by Nina Luginbuhl from Switzerland.
The next time you’re out at a lake or shore, toss a stone and remember the long and colourful history of ducks, drakes, frogs, fish, hats and water!
Filed under Etymology, History Undusted, Liguistics, Linguistics, Snapshots in History
Last Sunday at church, a friend filled an entire room with her late father’s books, setting up an impromptu book shop. I chose several books, most of which are in Fraktur typeface, known to some people as “Gothic” or “Old German”. I enjoy reading such books because they offer a snapshot of a cultural way of thinking. The books I chose were printed between 1877 and 1940. The latter date is significant, as you’ll soon see.
First of all, let’s clarify a few terms: Though many people think of font and typeface as interchangeable, in fact, they refer to two different aspects of a writing style. Typeface refers to a particular style of lettering (e.g. Times New Roman), while font refers to the variations within that style, such as size and weight (CAPS, bold, italic, etc.). Another term we know but may not fully understand is Serif: This refers to the small stroke or line attached to the larger stroke of a letter; an example would be an A with “feet” at the bottom of each down-stroke. Sans Serif simply means “without Serif”.
The first moveable-type printing press, designed by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1440, was based on the ancient Roman design of a screw press used to press wine or oil, which in turn went on to be used to press designs into cloths. He was likely familiar with intaglio printing and may have done some work himself in copper engraving. These designs and uses likely fermented in his inventor’s mind into what became the revolutionary turning point of literacy. Gutenberg’s original typeface was called Donatus-Kalender; the metal type design was itself a form of Textura (more on that in a moment).
This original family of typefaces was known as “Blackletter”, aka “Gothic scripts”, with the height of popularity peaking around the 14th to 15th centuries. The ancestor of the Blackletter was called the Carolingian minuscule, a calligraphic standard of handwriting widely used in the medieval period, when literacy began increasing and a need for books in a wide range of subjects began to be in demand. It is thought to have been developed in the mid-770s by Benedictine monks north of Paris in the Corbie Abbey, famous for its scriptorium and library. The minuscule itself was derived from Roman Uncial as well as Irish Insular script, which was developed in Irish monasteries and spread throughout Europe.
The family of Blackletter typefaces included Early Gothic, which was a transitional script between the Carolingian miniscule and Textura (the most calligraphic form of Blackletter); Schwabacher was a form popular in early German print typefaces (it became widely known with the spread of Luther Bibles from 1522), in use from the 15th century until it was eventually replaced by Fraktur around 1530, though it was still used alongside Fraktur for emphasis, much like we use bold or italic today.
Another blackletter typeface developed between 1470 and 1600: Antiqua. This typeface’s letters were designed to look like the handwriting of ancient Roman documents, with the letters flowing together, strokes connecting them in a continuous line, whereas Fraktur was distinguished by having letters “fractured” – separate from one another. The Antiqua-Fraktur Dispute deserves its own article, so stay tuned!
The Habsburg Emperor Maximillian I (1459-1519) was King of the Romans* from 1486 to 1519 [the title of king was used by the kings of East Francia, the territory later referred to as the Kingdom of Germany, from the time of Henry II (1002) to Joseph II (1764)]. The king commissioned the artist Albrecht Dürer to create a series of woodcut engravings of the Triumphal Arch [Though many are familiar with the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, it is only one example of this ancient Roman architectural feature used as a free-standing structure (rather than the Greek version, which was used within a structure such as a temple).]. These engravings would be used to create what we would recognize today as essentially wallpaper, though its purpose was more of a statement of power or propaganda (read personal marketing) commemorating his nobility, generosity, and military conquests – an incongruous combination, if you ask those conquered… The final composite of printed papers stood nearly 3 metres (12 feet) high and was only one part of a series of three enormous prints commissioned by the king.
The Fraktur typeface was designed in the 1530s by Hieronymus Andreae, a German woodblock cutter, printer, publisher, and typographer closely connected to Albrecht Dürer. The typeface was made to decorate the arch, telling the stories of the figures depicted throughout. The typeface became popular in Europe and was in use in the German-speaking world, as well as areas under its influence (Scandinavia, Central Europe, and some eastern European regions), into the 20th century. Specifically, Fraktur was in use in German until 1941, when it was actually banned (which places one of the books I purchased on Sunday within one year of the end of the era of Fraktur!). The atmosphere that led to that ban arose from the dispute mentioned above. Once the Nazis were defeated, the ban was lifted, but Fraktur never regained its widespread popularity after that, though you can still see it occasionally in pub signs or various forms of ads, like beer brands.
I just pulled two books from my library shelves: One is an English book originally printed in 1895, with my book being printed in 1915; the other is a German book printed in 1892. The typefaces are widely different: The English text likely used the French Oldstyle, while the German book uses Renaissance Fraktur for the text body, while the end pages act as indexes and use a variety of blackletter typefaces, such as Muenchner Fraktur, Antike Kanzlei, and Enge verzierte Altdeutsch. To see examples of the typefaces mentioned here, please click on the link for Fonts In Use.
I hope you enjoyed this jaunt through history! Nearly every name mentioned, every typeface, and every event deserves its own undusting. Next time, we’ll deep-dive into the dispute that lasted well over a century!
Before we dive into today’s topic, let’s talk about two of my favourite words: Flotsam and Jetsam. I just love the way they sound! The way I understand them, the difference between the two is intention: Flotsam are things unintentionally donated to the sea – things washed overboard from a ship, or things blown off land by a storm. Jetsam is rather something intentionally jettisoned – if a ship needs to lighten its load to avoid sinking, for instance; in the case of the great garbage patches, it is a mixture of both: Without proper disposal systems in place, such as municipal garbage disposal, or education in ecological footprints, social debris is simply tossed and forgotten. But it ends up somewhere, often finding its way to the ocean through rivers and streams. And this leads us to the topic of ocean currents.
Today’s topic is a fascinating dive into a world of global trade; research has shown that around 90% of international trade is carried by shipping containers, and the World Bank statistics show that in 2019, nearly 800 million were shipped annually; given the increase over the past few years in online shopping, I can imagine that figure is by now significantly higher. The unit used for measuring how much a ship can carry is TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit); the chart below shows the adaptation of ship sizes over the years, driven by global trade:
Now, imagine a shipping container stacked at the top of a pile that’s the height of the actual ship; add to that ocean swells and waves. I’ve been on ships in the Atlantic facing waves so high, I could count fish through my window. I’ve been on ships in the “Sailor’s Nightmare” – the Pentland Firth passage between Scotland and the Orkney Islands – which is characterised by rough bathymetry (the underwater equivalent to topography) and extremely high currents (which also ricochet and collide off of the coasts of the islands and Scottish cliffs), tossing anything on the surface like a leaf in the wind. The World Shipping Council estimates that, over the past 16 years, an average of 1,500 containers have been lost at sea annually. Every year, the contents of those containers are carried along until the container is breached by either corrosion or impact. Then the contents are carried by ocean currents; where they finally make landfall depends on where they entered the ocean. If you were marooned on an island and tossed out an SOS in a bottle, it could make landfall anywhere between two and one hundred years – or never, if it’s caught in a gyre (more on that later). A message in a bottle was found on a beach in Norway that had been sent off 101 years earlier.
So what does that have to do with rubber ducks? In 1992, a shipping container with a consignment of what has been dubbed Friendly Floatees – 28,800 yellow rubber ducks, red beavers, blue turtles and green frogs – was washed overboard (along with 11 other containers) into the Atlantic. Because they are designed to float on water, they have survived at sea for an amazingly long time. Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham, who were working on an ocean current model, OSCUR (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation), began to track their progress; and those wee toys went on all kinds of adventures: Ten months after they broke free, some began showing up along the Alaskan coast; some showed up in Hawaii; some went to see the site of the Titanic sinking before getting frozen into ice, eventually emerging again and travelling to the US eastern coast, Britain and Ireland, making landfall around 2007. The researchers contacted coastal regions, asking beachcombers to report their finds; they recorded findings and began to accurately predict where landfall would occur. Over the years, the ducks and beavers had faded to white, but the blues and greens had retained their colours.
Flotsam and Jetsam have played key roles in helping researchers understand not only how ocean currents travel, but also how the areas known as garbage patches, oceanic gyres, are formed and retained by the swirl of ocean currents. Currently, five patches are known; many of the rubber ducks are likely caught in such currents, so we may hear about more white ducks finding their way to beaches in the coming years.
So the next time you see a rubber duck, think of all the adventures its siblings have been on!
If you’d like to see for yourself how ocean currents work, click here for an interactive map; just click on any area of the map to see how and where the currents carry debris from that point.
Filed under Articles, Etymology, History Undusted, Images, Nature, Research, Science & Technology, Snapshots in History
Stephanie Huesler 