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Nov

13

Don't kick the bucket, kemo sabe (Phraseology, day 11)

2008 at 9am     Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky

letterkWhew! Yesterday was a little crazy (scroll down if you don’t know what I’m referring to), so let’s return to the Phraseology fun for something a little lighter.

Kama Sutra (1883) comes from Sanskrit and is an ancient treatise on love and sexual performance. Incidentallly, it is also teenage shoppers’ favorite book to look through when their parents send them to the bookstore unattended.  I cannot tell you how many gaggles of giggling teenage girls I’ve watched try to figure out the illustrations or how many teenage couples I’ve found nearly groping each other in the sexuality section. I’ve found that stopping to ask, “Do you need help with anything?” tends to embarass them and elicits more appropriate behavior. I’m all for asking questions and satisfying curiosities, but don’t do it in public, please.

That said, if you’re brushing up on sexual prowess, you might want to do some Kegel exercises for the pelvic floor muscles. They were named for Dr. Arnold Kegel, who advocated such exercise in the late 1940s.

Kemo sabe was not from a Native American language but was created by the Lone Ranger’s inventor to mean “faithful friend.”

loneranger

My husband loves to collect tchotchkes (and he loves to say the word “tchotchke”), but you can also call them knick-knacks (or knickknacks), which dates to 1580 and is a reduplication of knack, “strategem, trick.” I’m not sure how it came to mean “small collectible items,” but whatever. If Phraseology has taught me anything, it’s that the phrases we use have traveled strange paths to get to us.

Kick the bucket originates from slaughterhouses, where hogs were slashed and hung by a pulley with a weight called a bucket. If you don’t want to kick the bucket, you should knock on wood, which refers to guardian spirits thought to live in trees and who are summoned by knocking.

Kiss of death is probably of Biblical origin, referring to Judas Iscariot’s kiss of Jesus, which facilitated his arrest; kiss of life was a name used in the 1960s for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Now that I’ve filled my knowledge box (a humorous name for the head) with all of this random information, I’m feeling ready to tackle the rest of the day.

Click here for more Phraseology fun, and don’t forget to enter my giveaway to win a copy of In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta Ahmed.

Related posts:

  1. Fit as a fiddle with a full-tilt boogie (Phraseology, day 6)
  2. This day brought to you by the letter A (Phraseology, Day 1)
  3. T after Turkey Day (Phraseology, day 20)
  4. La-di-da (Phraseology, day 12)
  5. Quickie (Phraseology, day 17)
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  1. writemeg on November 13th, 2008 10:01 am

    I’ve had to break up my share of teenage lovebirds pouring through the Kama Sutra and associated texts over in “Sex” and “Erotica” — and it probably doesn’t help that we have those terms on little provocative signs all over the section! We usually walk over and say, “Hi, this section is always being monitored. Are you over 18 years old?” A couple of blushed cheeks and awkward whisperings later, they move aside. :) Good times!

  2. Ross on November 13th, 2008 1:49 pm

    At one point in time I was a teenager and half of couple that went to a bookstore and ended up looking at the Kama Sutra with my other half.
    The girl I was dating was older and really punk-rock/anarchist-feminist and so when the friendly bookstore employee (a man) came up to ask us if he could “help us find anything” she gave him the old, “actually I’m looking for a book to help me regulate my menstrual cycle as a form of birth-control because I can’t afford the real stuff”.
    At the time it was way hilarious.
    Looking back I feel kind of bad for the bookstore guy.

    Q: The moral of the story?
    A: Teach better, more thorough sex-education in schools so future generations who grow up and work in bookstores and libraries won’t be to shaken up to show that girl with “female” symbol tattooed on her chest where the period books are.

  3. Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog on November 13th, 2008 2:17 pm

    Ross–You make an interesting point. I’m all for comprehensive sex education and teaching young people how to enjoy sexuality in a safe and healthy manner. If they want to read books or watch videos or whatever, I’m down with it. Information is power. My problem is that making out with your boyfriend or girlfriend or groping each other in public is not acceptable or appropriate, and I’m tired of looking at it. Also, sexuality books should be informative, not things you pick up to giggle and act like a moron. I can totally imagine what that interaction must have been like when your girlfriend said that to a bookseller…we tend to feel more embarrassed for our customers when it’s obvious they’re trying to shock us. When they really want information, we generally have no problem directing them to the right books.

  4. caite on November 14th, 2008 3:27 am

    I am just upset to find out that ‘Kemo Sabe’ is made up. You can’t trust anything…..

  5. fromlaurelstreet on November 15th, 2008 3:30 pm

    in re “knick-knacks”: a reduplication of knack, “strategem, trick.” I’m not sure how it came to mean “small collectible items” …

    could it be that people discovered they could “trick” tourists into parting with their money in exchange for small novelties?

  6. Mark Peters on January 11th, 2009 9:59 pm

    Thought you might enjoy this piece on reduplication:
    http://www.good.is/?p=14517

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