Author: Joe3

Founder of the College Park Community and Lonely Reference Libraries.
Know Your Words

It’s a Bird … It’s Superman … No, It’s a Streaker on a Plane!

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Cabin
You are now free to move about the cabin … with your clothes on.

By now you’ve probably heard about the nude man who ran down the aisle of a recent Alaska Airlines flight. There’s no word yet on why he did it, or what kind of answer he expected to his repeated shouts of “How do you like my pecker?” but what’s really interesting, at least from a linguistic perspective, is that almost none of the news coverage about this incident referred to the man as a streaker.

I say “almost” because, according to Google News, there is a headline from the International Business Times that reads, “Alaskan Airlines Flight Disrupted by Streaker,” but when you click on the article, the headline on the website reads, “Naked Man Runs Across Alaskan Airlines Plane Before Being Tackled.”

Hmmmm. Is there some kind of prohibition on the use of the word streaker that I’m not aware of? Maybe there’s some code among newspaper editors to avoid the use of slang. Then again, maybe the news organization steered clear of this slang term because it wouldn’t have translated to its international audience. Whatever the case, I think it’s worth beating a hasty retreat to the bookshelves to get a good look at where this word comes from and expose its history to a wider public.

Surprisingly, or maybe not so, my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t include anything about running naked in public in any of its definitions for streak. However, after consulting Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, I learned that the verb streak was occasionally spelled streek. (More on why this is important a bit later.)

However you spell it, Partridge has this to say:

By specialization, ‘To scurry stark-naked through a public place or assembly ostensibly as a form of protest against some grievance, or trying to prove a point, or out of sheer exhibitionism’; when streaking, the verbal noun., and streaker, one who does this, both noun and verb were, by 1975, colloquial terms and, by 1976 part of standard English. It was a phenomenon of the early 1970s, with subsequent echoes.

The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins defines streak as, “To run naked in a public place, outdoors or indoors, where a large number of people can see you,” and suggests the term   streaking originated a few years earlier, but fails to give any proof for this claim.

The word streaking was first recorded in 1973, but the practice of streaking probably began among college students a year or two earlier on campuses in California. In the most famous example of streaking, a nude man streaked across the stage of the televised 1974 Academy Awards ceremony.

Well, now I have some idea why the word began to enjoy wider usage in 1975. As for first use, though, this is where the importance of the alternative spelling I mentioned earlier comes in to play. The fifth listing for streek in the Oxford English Dictionary reads, “To go or advance quickly; to go at full speed; to decamp.”

The naked truth of the matter, of course, is that this definition of streek has nothing to do with the streak defined in Partridge’s Dictionary or Slang or the Facts on File Encyclopedia, but it’s interesting to catch a glimpse of how the two words might be, in some distant way, shape, or form, related. After all, if you found yourself discussing the nude man who “advanced quickly” down the aisle of a recent Alaska Airlines flight, people would still grasp your meaning.

The reason the man chose to advance quickly down the aisle of the plane in the buff, Of course, would remain a mystery.

Know Your Words

Going “Back to Basics” (No, I Don’t Think So)

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MW-Euph
Credit: Merriam-Webster

As noted in the Dictionary of Euphemisms and other Doubletalk, “Euphemisms are in a constant state of flux. New ones are created almost daily.”

For proof of that, I suggest you look no further than the head of our own Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who recently signed a memorandum outlining a “back-to-basics” process for reviewing the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) under the Clean Air Act.

I won’t bore you with the legalese of Pruitt’s memo (you can read that for yourself on the EPA website) or parrot the objections of its critics who contend that the administrator’s aim in to weaken this piece of landmark environmental legislation (you can read them for yourself here, here, here, and here). I will simply point out that Pruitt’s clever use of the phrase “back to basics” to sell the proposed changes to the NAAQS review process looks like modern political euphemism of the finest order.

According to Merriam-Webster, the idiom “go back to basics” means “to return to a simpler way of doing something or thinking about something,” generally for the purposes of making improvements. Therefore, in terms of the standards that underpin the Clean Air Act, to go back to basics would mean taking the simplest and most straightforward approach to regulating air pollution under the law to improve public health. The Pruitt memo proposes the exact opposite by calling for:

  • Limits on the type of scientific data the EPA may consider.
  • Increased industry representation on EPA scientific advisory boards.
  • Consideration of economic impacts in matters pertaining to human health.

Call me crazy, but it seems like the goal here is not to simplify and improve, but to hamstring, obfuscate, and, eventually, weaken.

Euphemism is derived from the Greek words euphēmos, meaning “auspicious” or “sounding good,” and phēmē, meaning “speech.” When you put those together, the result is an explanation of the term not unlike the one found in the (aptly named) Faber Dictionary of Euphemisms: “The use of a mild or vague or t periphrastic  expression as a substitute for blunt precision or disagreeable truth.”

In closing, it’s worth pointing out that this phrase, “back to basics,” does not appear in any of the Butter Lamb Reference Library’s dictionaries of doubletalk, doublespeak, or euphemism. Moreover, I got squat when I searched “‘back to basics’ and ‘euphemism'” on  Google as well. This means the BLRL is leading the charge to place “back to basics” on list of modern political euphemisms. I plan to start a campaign to make sure that happens.

Join me won’t you?

Know Your Words · The Art of the Dictionary

Oh, Rats!

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Alberta_Department_of_Public_Health_Rat_Poster_(26497442131)I used to have these neighbors (we’ll call them Jim and Janine), who were always asking me to call the cops and report the purportedly suspicious things our neighbors were doing.

For example, Jim was convinced that the people living in the house next to his were pumping sewage from their basement into the street. And what was his evidence for this outrageous claim? A brown stain on the curb in front of his house. Why the single mom and her teenage daughter who occupied the home had raw sewage floating about in their basement and/or lacked the customary plumbing systems that every other house on our block seemed to have, he couldn’t say. He also couldn’t explain why there was no odor or even moisture along the curb. Nevertheless, this shortage of answers didn’t stop him from ranting to me about “the excrement” every chance he got.

Janine had a different issue. She wanted me to call the cops on the multi-generational Asian family living in the house next to mine because she was sure they were “running a brothel” out of it. She even went so far as to claim that, one night, “one of ladies” asked Jim if he needed some “company.” Why Janine cared what anyone might have said to her husband is a mystery given that she wanted me to call the cops on him too. See, Jim liked to leave food out for the stray cats of the neighborhood and, on occasion, he would let some of them into the house. Janine wanted this to stop.

Clearly, Jim and Janine had some problems, and I didn’t want to get mixed up in them. If they wanted to inform the police of their neighbor-based conspiracy theories (or their spouse’s odd behavior), they’d have to do it themselves. I wasn’t going to rat on the neighbors (who weren’t doing anything wrong) on their behalf.

Bizarre as all that was, the whole experience got me thinking about the malleability of the word rat. After all, one of the reasons I didn’t want to “rat” Jim out to the cops was that, by attracting stray felines to his house, he was inadvertently keeping the neighborhood’s “rat” population down. Another was that, had I stuck my neck out for these two lunatics, word would have spread, and I would have become the neighborhood “rat.” See what I mean? It’s a very flexible term!

So where does the word rat come from and how did it come to have these different meanings? There’s only one way to find out. Let’s consult the books!

rats

The Oxford English Dictionary gives several definitions for rat:

1. A rodent of some of the larger species of the genus Mus., especially M. rattus, the black rat (now almost extinct), and M. decumanus, the common gray, brown, or Norway rat.
2. In phrases, [such as] To smell a rat, [meaning] to suspect something
3. Used as an opprobrious or familiar epithet
4. A pirate
5. Something resembling a rat in shape
6. The act of changing one’s side [as in, “You dirty, double-crossing rat!”]
7. Attributive [as to identify a kind of something, e.g., rat poison, or rat terrier]

In addition to these definitions, the OED also includes a note about the word’s origin, which it initially describes as “uncertain,” but then adds: “it seems probable that it was adopted first in the Teutonic [aka: Germanic] languages, when the animal came to be known in western Europe, and thence passed into the Romance tongues.”

The (Ayto) Dictionary of Word Origins (DWO) offers a similarly phoned-in etymology, saying rat is “a general western European term” with a rather far-flung family tree that includes the “French rat,  Italian ratto, Spanish ratta, German ratte, Dutch rat, Swedish raatta, and Danish rotte.” In the end, though, the DWO goes on to say that all of these terms “come from vulgar Latin rattus, whose origin is unknown.”

Writing in Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Eric Partridge offers a (somewhat) more certain history of rat, which he links to:

Middle English rat or ratte, Old English raet [which is] akin to Medieval Dutch and Dutch rat, ratte, rotte, Old High German ratta, Middle High German and German ratte, Old Saxon ratta, and probably akin to Latin rodare, to gnaw. English dialect exhibits the variation ratten, whence probably the English to ratten, or “to rob of tools or machinery”; the now dialectical ratton, however, comes rather from the Medieval French, French diminutive raton. The slang ratty, angry, easily angered, derives from ratty, of or like a rat, rats being fierce creatures.

The descent into slang at the end of this excerpt from Origins is no accident, as Partridge is a well-known figure in its study. His mammoth Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (whose size provides a bit of context for his use of the word “short” in the full title of Origins) captures a wide variety of uses for rat (as a noun), including: a drunken person taken into custody, a clergyman, a police spy, an infernal machine for the foundering of insured bottoms (nautical), a street urchin or wharf laborer, a workman that has not served his time and cannot enter a union, and any type of thief. In its verb form, rat means “to steal or rob; to search the body of a dead man after battle (WWI).”

Obviously, some of these more colorful uses of rat inform the various definitions included in those captured by the OED.

rats2For what it’s worth, the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English also includes a variety of other fun rat-related terms worth having under your belt, including:

Rat Castle – prison
Rat-house – an asylum for the insane (Australia)
Rat in your fore-chains – nautical insult to a sloppy ship
Rat run – a back alley or narrow passage between buildings
Ratbag – An ill-disposed person, an eccentric, a worthless person
Ratbaggery – A display of eccentricity

I could go on, but something is bothering me about all the rat disparaging going on here. Ecologically speaking, the rat is a very successful creature, as indicated by its spread around the globe. Along with only a handful of other creatures, the rat has been able to profit from humanity’s massive imprint on the planet while most other species have suffered. Therefore, it strikes me as a little odd that rat has come to signify something “bad.” Shouldn’t the term be affiliated with resourcefulness, grit, or achievement?

Maybe. “In Asia, the rat is often a symbolic animal that brings good luck,” says the Continuum Encyclopedia of Symbols. “It is an attendant of the god of wealth ; in China as well as in Siberia, the absence of rats in one’s home and yard is regarded as an unsettling sign.”[Think rats fleeing a sinking ship. – Ed.]

Biedermann’s Dictionary of Symbolism contains similar sentiments, but it isn’t long before both texts shift gears and point out how rats, which were often seen in Europe as “destroyers of stored food” and “transmitters of disease” developed a reputation for “being in league with the Devil, demons, and witches” who were always working to “bring the unsuspecting to ruin.”

No wonder that, whereas the majority of other creatures flee from humans, rats are one of the few creatures that send us packing, especially when they’re in large numbers. As you might expect, and as the entries in the aforementioned symbolic dictionaries suggest, this fear has saturated our cultural consciousness and even gnawed its way into our subconscious.

Rat-DoSFor example, as noted in the The Dictionary of World Folklore (Larousse), the folklore of the rat is similar to that of the mouse, although it is generally less well-regarded:

It is often a symbol of death, perhaps because of early apprehension of its connection with the plague virus. In modern folklore the sailor’s superstition that rats can sense when a ship is about to sink, and will leave it, has become proverbial for the desertion of adherents experienced by any individual or project whose popularity is waning.

Similar sentiments surface in the entry for rat found in the Dream Dictionary from A to Z:

The rat is a symbol of fears and anxieties, or is the diseased or devious part of dreamer or their situation. It can also represent something which is repulsive in some way. The dreamer may be experiencing disloyalty from a friend or colleague. Other associations are of dirt and squalor, or of time gnawing away at our life and the unacceptable parts of oneself.

Dreams are one thing, full-on rat-related psychological turmoil is another. This brings us to “Rat-Man,” the nickname used in the literature of psychoanalysis that refers to a patient of Sigmund Freud. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, “The Rat Man was tormented by fantasies of rats gnawing at his father’s anus and that of a woman to whom he was attracted.”

Oh, boy …. (now I’m going to have nightmares)

Whether the Rat Man was cured of this malady, I can’t say. If you’re interested to know more, see Freud’s case study titled, “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis,” published in 1909.

Know Your Words

Other Terms for Dictionary and More about the “F” Word

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Bed
Do you find the word “bed” controversial?

Jonathon Green’s massive tome, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made, is a hell of read. I’m only on chapter two and my copy already boasts an explosion of Post-It notes emerging like mushrooms from a soggy log. On seemingly every page there is some intriguing factoid, a nicely worded quote about the peculiar practice of writing an “abecedarium,” or new word (or at least a word that’s new to me). Here’s a tiny sample of some interesting stuff I’ve learned from the book thus far.

Abecedarium, meaning an alphabetical order, was one of those new-to-me words. Green includes it among a list of terms for “word books,” some of which you know and some you (probably) don’t. Here’s the complete list:

Alveary – a beehive (Oxford English Dictionary)
Catholicon – a universal remedy or panacea (Oxford English Dictionary)
Glossary – a list with explanations of abstruse, antiquated, dialectical or
technical terms (Oxford English Dictionary)
Manipulus – a handful or bundle (Oxford Latin Dictionary)
Medulla – the marrow of bones, also the substance of the brain; the pith
of human hair (Oxford English Dictionary)
Ortus –  birth, sunrise, rising, beginning  (Oxford Latin Dictionary)**
Promputarium – Store room, cupboard (Oxford Latin Dictionary)
Sylva – A title for a collection of pieces, especially of poems; also a thesaurus
of words or phrases (Oxford English Dictionary)
Thesaurus – A treasury or storehouse of knowledge (Oxford English Dictionary)
Vocabulary – A collection or list of words with brief explanations of
their meanings (Oxford English Dictionary)
Vulgar – Of language or speech: Commonly or customarily used by the
people of a country; ordinary, vernacular (Oxford English Dictionary)

Pretty cool stuff, right? But wait, there’s more! In the section of the book’s introduction bearing the subhead “Obscenity and Taboo,” Green includes this little Green Civernugget about the “F-word,” a well-worn bit of slang I wrote about nearly a year ago. Although that post contained some fun fucking facts, the following were not among them.

To wap and to niggle, both meaning to have sexual intercourse, or more properly, since they come from the slang vocabulary, to fuck, appear in Thomas Harman’s Caveat (1565). Fuck itself* appears first not in a slang work, but in a bilingual dictionary, John Florio‘s Worlde of Wordes, where it was cited as one of the English synonyms for the Italian fottere.

Finally, if you think that’s fucking amazing, get a load of this: Did you know that a handful of school districts in the United States banned the American Heritage, Webster’s New World (student edition), Random House, Doubleday, and other dictionaries because:

Self-appointed “concerned” parents, school boards, and their allies object to such terms as  “hot” (in a sexual sense), “horny,” “crocked” (drunk), “knocker,” “nut,” “tail,” “ball,” and “bed” (in the definition of which Webster’s New World makes a reference to “bed” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse).

I found that so ridiculous I didn’t (want to) believe Mr. Green. Sure enough, a quick Google search revealed he’s telling the truth.

Have you read a good book about dictionaries? Let me know what it is!

_______________________________________

Notes:

* “Fuck itself” hah-hah-hah ….
** Green defines this as “garden,” but the Oxford Latin Dictionary defines it as noted above.

Know Your Words

What Is the Best Word for Wasting Time?

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Please LoiterLast week, after finally having enough of the bullshit and the idiocy, I resigned from my job. It was (as it always is) a great feeling to announce my impending departure, but now I have a problem. No, I don’t need a new job, I need to survive the next three days in the office with almost nothing to do. Oh sure, I’ll have some meetings to attend and the duration of my lunches will be a little longer than normal, but even with these diversions I’ll spend much of the next three work days trying to devise clever ways to waste time.

This evening, while turning the phrase over in my mind, I began to wonder if there’s a suitable word that encompasses or encapsulates the special kind of time wasting that I’ll be doing in the coming days. To find out, I consulted a book I don’t reach for too often, the Reverse Dictionary.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a reverse dictionary, the author of one in the BLRL collection, Theodore M. Bernstein, describes the text this way:

A conventional dictionary lists words alphabetically and gives you their meanings. This unconventional dictionary lists an array of meanings alphabetically and gives you the words.

The words it discovers for you are those you have momentarily forgotten or those you never knew or those of whose meanings you were not quite certain.

ReverseSo what words does the Reverse Dictionary give for the phrase “wasting time”? Dawdle, loiter dilly-dally, and piddle. As nice a selection of words as this is, I wondered about their meanings and which one best captured the essence of my situation. To find out, I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary. Here’s what transpired:

Dawdle: 1) To idle, waste time; to be sluggish or lazy; to loiter, linger dally.

Dally: 1) To talk or converse lightly or idly; to chat. 2) To act of speak sportively, make sport, amuse oneself; to toy, sport, play with, especially in the way of amorous caresses; to flirt, wanton.

Dilly-Dally: To act with trifling vacillation or indecision; to go on dallying with a thing without advancing; to loiter in vacillation, to trifle.

Loiter: (intransitive) In early use, to idle, waste one’s time in idleness. Now only with more specific meaning: To linger indolently on the way when sent on an errand or when making a journey; to linger idly about a place; to waste time in some particular task, to dawdle. (Transitive) To neglect one’s work; to allow time to pass idly; to waste carelessly or upon trifles; to postpone getting or giving (something).

Piddle: (intransitive) To work or act in a trifling, paltry, petty, or insignificant way; to trifle, toy, dally.

So which one of these best describes my situation and how I’ll be “working” during the next three days? I have to say, I thought it would be dawdle, but after reading these definitions from the OED, I have to go with piddle.

Color me surprised … and later, bored out of my fucking skull.

Know Your Words

Giving “Raccoon” a Hand

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1280px-Racoon_(PSF)
This is a raccoon. It’s coming for your stuff.

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the baboons that collaborated on a plan to escape the research facility holding them prisoner, but have you heard about the stoned raccoon? If not, I encourage you to read the story at the link provided. (Go ahead, I’ll wait ….) If  you can’t be bothered, I’ll give you the quick version:

A pet raccoon got into someone’s pot stash. Fearing for its life, the raccoon’s human companion brought it to a nearby fire station for help. Unfortunately, the firefighters could offer none. Their advice was simply to let the animal “sleep it off” (or whatever the raccoon equivalent of that is). End of story? Sort of. The article goes on to say how this sort of thing happens more often these days as marijuana has become more prevalent and, generally, more acceptable.

So, to recap, the firefighters washed their “hands” of the incident, which is interesting because, etymologically speaking, raccoons and hands go … um … hand in hand. Let me explain.

I’m going to assume you know that raccoons are (small mammals, with furry gray bodies, white faces with black circles around their eyes that make them look like they’re wearing a mask, paws that look like tiny hands, etc). I will not assume, however, that you know the history of the word raccoon. Here’s the skinny, according to Eric Partridge’s Origins, A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English:

Coon, with adjective coony; raccoon or racoon
Coon, the quadruped, hence the fur, merely shortens raccoon; Raccoon is of Algonquin origin; Webster compares Virginian arakun, raccoon, from arakunem, ‘he scratches with his hands’ (feet).

All the references at my disposal seem to agree on this. Even the online ones that I generally don’t care to consult. However, there is one text on the BLRL’s shelves, the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, that contains this little nugget:*

Dr. Johnson said of the clever creature: “The rackoon is a New England animal, like a badger, having a tail like a fox, being clothed in a thick and deep furr: it sleeps in the day time in a hollow tree, and goes out a-nights, when the moon shines, to feed on the sea side, where it is hunted by dogs.”

Maybe. Or maybe raccoons are out at night when the moon shines because they’re looking for your stash. After all, in dreams, raccoons are said to signify criminal activity (you know, because they wear a “mask”). Also, because they dwell in trees, they’re said to symbolize the feeling of being “treed,” or having one’s back up against the wall. (Exactly the kind of feeling that might make you want to chill with some Grandaddy Purple.)

______________________________________
Notes:
I’m aware what the date is and, no, I did not plan to write about this on this smokiest of days.

* The BLRL’s copy of Johnson’s Dictionary: A Modern Selection contains this same nugget.

 

Know Your Words

Baboons, This Post Is for You

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Papio-hamadryas-headTo the baboons who joined forces in an unfortunately thwarted attempt to free themselves from a Texas animal research facility, the Butter Lamb salutes you! Thank you for reminding us to never grow accustomed to captivity and keep striving for freedom from our oppressors!  The following post is for you!

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines baboon as follows:

1. A grotesque figure (perhaps of a baboon) used in architecture or decorative work*.
2. A member of one of the great divisions of the Simiadae  or monkeys, distinguished by a long, dog-like snout, large canine teeth or tusks, capricious cheek-pouches, and naked callosities on the buttocks. They are inhabitants of Africa, Southern Asia, and the adjacent islands.
3. Figurative: as a term of abuse.

The OED goes on to say that first use of baboon dates back to 1409. Since that was many moons ago, I checked to my book of selected words from Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of  1755 (Johnson’s Dictionary: A Modern Selection) to see if it had an entry for baboon. It does.

babo’on. (babouin, Fr. It is supposed by Skinner to be the augmentation of babe, and to import a great babe.) A monkey of the largest kind.

Who’s Skinner? That would be Stephen Skinner, author of the 1671 work, Etymologicum Linguae Anglicanae. No, I haven’t read it.

Speaking of etymology, though, it seems Johnson and Skinner were right: baboon is connected to the French word babouin, a word meaning “lip.”

As Eric Partridge writes in Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English:

baboon comes from Middle English baboyne (or babewyn): Middle French babuin (French babouin): from babine, lip, “the baboon having prominent lips.” This word is in turn “influenced by the cognate Middle French baboue, a grimace.”

When it comes to etymology, Eric Partridge seems to be one of those dudes that other etymologically inclined dudes look to for insight and direction, so you can often expect his take on a word’s history to be recycled by others.  As a case in point,consider the entry for baboon in the (Ayto) Dictionary of World Origins.

The origin of baboon is obscure, but it seems that the notion underlying it may be that of ‘grimacing’ … it has been speculated that there may be a connection with Old French baboue ‘grimace.’ However that may be, it was certainly in Old French that the word first surfaced, as babuin, and originally meant ‘gaping figure’ (as in a gargoyle). This alternative meaning was carried over when the Old French word was borrowed into English, where it remained a live sense of baboon until the 16th century.

The entry for baboon in the Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories treads similar (but not exactly the same) waters.

Adopted from Old French babuin or from medieval Latin babewynus, the base sense was probably Old French baboue ‘muzzle’ or ‘grimace.’ Its use in zoology is perhaps inspired by the exaggerated facial expression typical of an ape’s behavior.

Medieval Latin? What happened to Middle English? Was that a typo? Maybe. For whatever it’s worth, the word babewynus does not appear in my copy of the Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Not surprisingly, the the Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories repeats the information in the Oxford English Dictionary relating to architecture. “The first recorded sense of baboon known at present is ‘a grotesque figure’ used in architectural carving, seen in all manner of gaping poses as gargoyles on ancient buildings.”

I know what you’re thinking: “This is all great, Joe3, but what does it mean if one dreams of a baboon?” Glad you asked. “To dream of apes, monkeys, gorillas, or baboons,” says the Dream Dictionary from A to Z, “suggests a link with the impulsive, imprudent, inquisitive side of ourselves, such as the self-centered grabbing of food, or sexual gratification without concern for the needs of the other person.”

Yikes, that’s not very nice. Thankfully, the Continuum Encyclopedia of Symbols puts baboons in a more flattering light.

The baboon was worshiped in Egypt as a divine being. Being large, white, stooping and having an erect penis and frequently a disk of the moon on its head, the baboon was the incarnation of the moon god Thoth, the protective patron of scholars and scribes who also often appears as a divine messenger, and as a guide of souls.**

We’ll have to leave it at that. You go baboons! Be the guides of souls that you are!

___________________________________
Notes (and comments):

* Didn’t see that one coming. Not sure about that architectural reference in the first definition of baboon, I consulted the Penguin Dictionary of Architecture. It did not have an entry for baboon, but it did have an entry for grotesque, which conforms to the definition in the OED. It did not, however, mention baboons.

** Baboon genitalia? Really? This is why I love dictionaries and other references. You can’t make this stuff up.