Wishing all my friends in the USA a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Here in the UK we don't celebrate Thanksgiving - which I think is rather a shame.  After all, most of us have a great deal to be thankful for.  Personally, I'm grateful for my husband, my health and my family, my two horses, my little dog - and for all my wonderful on-line friends out there, who I would never have met if it wasn't for this wonderful thing we call Romance Writing.

Thank you my friends, and may you all have a bountiful and happy Thanksgiving.

Tolfaedic

 Welcome to Monday morning at my blog.  Sit down and help yourself to cakes.  You notice there are thirteen, just to make sure, in case anyone feels short changed.  Which leads me nicely into today's word courtesy of Michael Quinion*

"In centuries past, merchants selling goods by number often supplied
a larger quantity than the nominal total. The baker's dozen of 13
is well known. Less so is the measure of 120, which was once known
variously as the great hundred, long hundred or small gross.

The number 120 is the result of measuring items by twelves rather than by tens, a survival of the duodecimal system used by many civilisations in antiquity and of which relics like the dozen and the gross still survive. It's known, though very rarely, as the"tolfraedic" system. In origin the word is Icelandic, from "tólf",twelve, plus "ráða", to speak. Relatives of the term were used in Iceland and throughout Scandinavia to distinguish between hundredsthat were ten tens and hundreds that were ten twelves (in Icelandic called "tolfrátt hundrað").

The long hundred was so widely used at one time in England that aproverb was created to remind people that:

Five score's a hundred of men, money and pins; sixscore's a hundred of all other things.
[Quoted in Curiosities in Proverbs, by Dwight Edwards
Marvin, 1916.]

It was common, as just one example out of many, to sell nails bythis measure (though why pins weren't is a curiosity now lost inhistory). The medieval Anglo-Saxon Chronicle even stated that theyear is 305 days long. This wasn't an astronomical error, but thetolfraedic system in action. Three long hundreds is 360; add in the
extra five and you have the usual year length."

So now, if anyone asks you how many days are in a year, you can say 305, and explain you're counting in 'Long Hundreds'!

*World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2010. All rights reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewds.
Reproduced with permission

Monday's phrase 'Keep it under your hat'

 Yes, for a change - a phrase today, rather than a word.

In medieval times, English longbow archers were able to detatch their bow strings in the event of rain, and keep them dry under their hats.  Could this be where we get the expresion "to keep it under your hat".

Well, this is what Michael Quinion has to say on the subject:

"The development of meaning in the story is hardly obvious. How could the supposed practice of keeping an essential part of one'smilitary equipment dry by putting it under one's hat lead to the figurative sense of keeping something secret? The essence of the metaphor, of course, is that information or ideas that are "under the hat" are in the brain and so are secure from any interception. Apart from the logical gap, the story can also be refuted on bothhistorical and geographical grounds.

The evidence shows that "keep something under one's hat", meaning to keep it secret, is relatively modern, centuries later than medieval archers. It's also American. "

Rather a shame that, don't you think?  Personally I'd much prefer to think of a medieval archer keeping secrets as well as bow strings 'under his hat.'



*World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2010. All rights reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewds.
Reproduced with permission

Author Roast and Toast

Halloween may be over, but there are 'witchy' goings on at The Author Roast and Toast today - and as usual, a book to be won!


http://authorroastandtoast.blogspot.com/

Monday's word - straddle

 No, I'm not straddling a fence or anything like that!  This is a word that Michael Quinion has featured in his 'Worldwide Words this week:
 "Readers of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy may recognise this as the name of one of the villages of the Bree Land. It suggests the strength and stoutheartedness of a people who for him meant all that was solid and dependable about traditional England. Like most of Tolkien's words, it's no accident. He was borrowing an Old English word that meant variously a foundation or support.

We've almost entirely lost it today, though it survived for some centuries in English dialect, most commonly in the south of the country. One sense was of a stump of a tree that was left in the ground after felling so that a clump of thin stems could grow from
it, a technique called coppicing. It could also refer to a tree left in place when all around had been felled, so that it would grow to full size, called a standard, unencumbered by neighbours. The connection between these senses is that one form of woodland
management was called "coppice with standards", which combined the two methods. "Staddle" seems to have been used indiscriminately for
both components.

The sense you're most likely to encounter, however, especially if you visit a museum of historic buildings, is of a stone carved in the shape of a mushroom, with a conical stem and a wide rounded top. This isn't a staddle, strictly speaking, but a staddle stone. It was one of the supports that kept the actual staddle, the wood or stone base of a hay rick or granary, clear of the ground.

I think this is a good example of names being used effectively, to give a place name a sense of purpose. It's also a word that you might find useful if you write historical fiction, to add touch of authenticity.


*World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2010. All rights reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewds.
Reproduced with permission

Monday's words: NaNoWriMO, Muses and Contests

Well, I'm late again with my Monday's word, so I'm giving you three! (Oh all right then, I know it's a lame excuse but it's a good one! I'm doing NaNo. )

50,000 words in a month.  Am I mad?  I did it last year and am currently working on revising the novel that resulted from that. I started out with nothing more than an idea.  This year I'm not starting quite so much from scratch.  I have a Western  which I wrote many years away and put away in a drawer and  I'm completely rewriting it   as a romance.  I've done a very rough cover to give me inspiration:

Although I have a rough plot mapped out, I'm sure that by re-writing to a deadline, it's bound to take me in directions I never anticipated - last year's certainly did!  Why the change of genre?  Well, I've always loved historical Westerns, and I think there's a strong similarity between the genres - brave men and women setting out into uncharted terrain not knowing what dangers they will encounter. and all that! I won't desert futuristic romance though, I still have last year's NaNo to finsih revising!

So please excuse me if I'm not around very much this month.

My second word is 'Muse'  I'm appearing at my lovely 'Muse Sister' Sky Purington's Blog all this week. Or rather my muse Terpsichore is!  Please pop along and say hello if you get the chance!

http://skypuringtonwrites.blogspot.com/

And finally some of you may have noticed the above banner at the top of this blog for the whole of October.

Yes, the TRS's Spookapalooza is now officially ended.  I'll be drawing a winner for my prize as soon as I've had chance to wade through all the comments and draw one out of my Witch's hat.  Thank you to everyone who commented on my posts, I tried to put something up everyday and the response was fantastic with over ninety authors taking part.  I was also taking part in the Night Owl Romance  Scavenger hunt too, Good Luck to everyone who took part.