Cabotin - A Tragic Actor

To connect Conan Doyle's name to this tat with a possessive apostrophe is a crime

CABOTIN

Noun. Feminine cabotine. Plural pronounced same. Early 20th century.

[French = strolling player, perhaps formed as CABOTAGE, from resemblance to vessels travelling from port to port.]

A third-rate or low-class actor.

Also:

cabotinage noun the life and behaviour supposedly characteristic of third rate actors. L19

Behind every truly terrible film, behind every wooden line and expressionless face, every forced laugh and synthetic smile, behind all of these is a personal tragedy - the tragedy of a little boy or girl that wanted nothing more than to act, to translate and interpret those lines and emotions to the silver screen, to excite and move audiences, to stir emotions and fire imaginations, and to see their name roll on the closing credits as audiences cheer and clap and marvel at the subtlety of their nuanced performance. But it wasn't to be; it could never be. And for one simple reason: these cabotins suck at acting. Like really, really, really suck. Like they're awful. Like so awful I can italicise, bold-print and underline awful and still be understating the case: they're just awful.

To try and get a perspective on just how woeful these chaps are, they make the likes of Keanu Reeves, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme look three-dimensional - yes, they are just that bad, appearing in such abominations as Ninja Squad and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (see clips), and frequently found late at night, besmirching such cable channels as TCM (which I'm convinced stands for Totally Crap Movies). So the next time you see a cabotin, the next time you point and laugh at their inability to portray anything even close to resembling a human emotion, just remember that little child, that little boy or girl that not so long ago tugged at their mother's skirt and said (in a flat monotone): "Mummy, when I grow up I want to be an actor."

Are you a cabotin or cabotine?

Do you enjoy the "work" of a cabotin?

Who do you consider to be a cabotin?

Do please ham up your comments in a tragically inept manner below. 

Cab - And Taxis, To Be Fare

A London black cab
(photo by Nico Kaiser)

CAB

Noun. Early 19th century.

[Abbreviation of CABRIOLET.]

1(a) Historical. A hackney carriage. E19

1(b) A taxi. Also taxi-cab. L19

2 A driver of a cab. M19

3 A shelter or compartment for the driver or a train, lorry, crane, etc. M19

Also:

cabman a man who drivers a cab

cab-rank, cab-stand a place where cabs are authorized to wait.

New York taxis in Time Square
(photo by Tomas Fano)

CAB

Verb intrans. & trans. (with it). Inflected -bb-. Mid-19th century.

[from CAB noun.]

Travel in or drive a cab.

A London cabman from 1877

CABRIOLET

Noun. Mid-18th century.

[French, from CABRIOLE (see CAPRIOLE) + -ET.]

1 Chiefly Historical. A light two-wheeled hooded one-horse chaise. M18

2 A bonnet or hat shaped like a cabriolet. L18

3 A motor car with a folding top. E20

Catching a cab has always felt, and probably always will feel, like something of an indulgent luxury to me. I love that moment at the end of a great evening when you say "Oh let's just catch a cab!" which is, in effect, saying "To hell with the expense! Let's get driven home ... like kings!" Oh yeah. Now that's living.

If you've ever wondered about the origin of the word taxi, cab and taxi-cab, it's both quite simple and rather interesting. Taxi is an abbreviation of taximeter, the device that automatically calculates the passenger's fare (invented in 1891 by the German Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn if you want to get really nerdy about it). The word taximeter is itself borrowed from the French taximètre and German Taxameter, which came from Medieval Latin for tax or charge, and therefore literally means 'charge meter', which is good because that's exactly what it is. As for cab, this is an abbreviation of cabriolet, a type of horse-drawn carriage that was used as a taxi and later a word applied to early soft-top motor vehicles; taxi-cab is therefore self-explanatory.

As for taxis themselves, one should never underestimate the service they provide, and I always feel that a vital part of visiting a new country or city abroad is indulging in at least one taxi journey, especially when the cabs are part of the landscape, as are London's iconic black cabs or New York's yellow taxis. And the local knowledge a good cabbie can provide is unparalleled: a London cabbie, for example, has to have The Knowledge to obtain his licence, which involves memorising 320 routes, 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks and points of interest, a cognitive feat so grueling it physically changes the cabbie's brain structure - something to remember when deciding how much you're going to tip. Finally, if you've never got into a taxi and said "Follow that car!", then you really must. As a fraud investigator, I've had the opportunity to do it on many occasions: cabbies love it, it makes you feel like you're in a movie, and it's something interesting to tell the trouble 'n strife when you get home.

Are you, or have you ever been, a cabbie?

Do you have The Knowledge?

Have you ever said "Follow that car!" to a cabbie?

Do please drop off your fare-minded comments below.

Lexicolatry: Reflections on the Letter B

Only 24 Letters to Go

My word, my word, my word! B was a long slog - and that's not to mean I didn't enjoy it, but considering that I completed A in 101 posts and B took me 283, it's fair to say that B took a lot longer than I expected. It also raises questions about the length of time this project will take, for if two letters took me just over one year to complete, it could mean that the entire project will take me 13 years! At the very outset, I did tell people to hang around at least until the point I realised what a monumental undertaking I had misunderestimated. Well, I think I've reached that point ... but ... I will fight on undeterred, and my enthusiasm for words, knowledge and the OED remains undented; in fact, I'm buoyed by what fun it's been, by the people I've met and the experiences I've had, so I march into C with my head held high and my fingers poised at the keyboard.

So what highlights from B? First of all, my favourite words have been backfriend (a backstabbing false friend or someone that backs you up), Bedfordshire (meaning bed), belgard (a kind or loving look), ben trovato (an appropriate but untrue story), Bildungsroman (a novel of a youth's development), bindi (the decorative mark worn by Indian women), blik (an unfalsifiable conviction), bondieuserie (cheap religious tat), boudoir (a woman's 'sulking room') and bouts rimés (a rhyming word game) . What's particularly wonderful is how many of these words have entered into my active vocabulary, including backfriend and Bedfordshire. 

Of course, I think a lot of people will remember the Bs in Lexi for the various women-related words that I covered, including bikini, bimbo, bint, bitch, blond(e), bloomers, bluestocking, boobs, bosoms, brassière, brunet(te) and buxom (some might include buttocks in this list, but I have it on good authority that buttocks are definitely unisex). In equal measure, these posts were fun, interesting, eye-opening and sobering to write and research, and I really appreciated and enjoyed the feedback and exchange of views that came with each of them, so thank you all for that. 

Also, it was in B that we've had the rise of the guest posts on Lexi, with Katie Dwyer, Sally Prue and John Kelly all making contributions. Each has an excellent blog of their own, so I would encourage anyone that hasn't done so to click on their names and swing on over to them to see what they're all about. 

As always, I want to thank everyone that takes the time to comment in Lexi - we have some wonderful regulars such as Clueless, Bibi, Evi, Jingles, Kara and latterly the Angry Nerd. The insights, the banter and the encouragement are all really, really appreciated so please keep reading, and please keeping commenting! And if you've been reading but haven't yet commented, don't be shy - everyone is welcome and it's a lot of fun.

Going forward into C, I'll be making a few small changes on the blog, including adding a Contributors page and an FAQ and, although it pains me to even think such a thing, I might try and be more selective with words so that I'm progressing just a teensy bit faster than two letters per year! I shall continue to post every day (I'm delighted that it's been just over a year now, and I've never missed a post), and I shall be doubling my efforts to get the posts out at the same time every day (8.00am GMT). 

Many thanks again to everyone that reads and contributes to Lexi - I'm really having great fun, and I hope you are too. See you in C!

Eddie

Email: eddie.lexi@gmail.com

Twitter: @Lexicolatry

PS - Today's word is byword.

Byword - When Something Is the Proverbial ...

This is a giraffe. Eating a bone. Well you try illustrating byword.
(photo by Carrie Cizauskas)

BYWORD

Noun.

[Old English biwyrde = Old High German biwurti, rendering Latin proverbium: see BY-, WORD noun.]

1 A proverb; a proverbial saying. OE

2(a) A person etc. taken as typical of a (usually bad) quality;

a quality in a person etc that is widely recognized. M16

2(b) A (usually scornful or mocking) nickname. Now rare. L16

3 obsolete.  A casual word; a hint; an aside. M16-17

A obsolete. A word or phrase frequently used, especially by an individual. M16-E18

Byword is an exceptionally useful word when one feels like having a little rant about someone or something, as it follows a very simple formula of connecting 'A' (disliked thing) with 'B' (negative attribute), running as such:

[Target of ire] + is a byword for + [Negative quality or attribute]

From searching news articles, I've discovered that government is a byword for corruption, Mark Byford is a byword for BBC excess, Brixton is a byword for disorder, Birmingham is a byword for Islamist extremist terror and Tony Blair is a byword for excess. Of course, a lot of these show that byword is probably being overused  (and misused) - after all, I don't think of Islamic extremism when I think of Birmingham - I think of the accent. And I don't think the average person first thinks of excess when Tony Blair is mentioned - they're more likely to think of the Iraq invasion or non-existent WMDs. There are true bywords out there though: to offer two Biblical examples, Solomon is a byword for wisdom, and Job is a byword for patience. And if I may add two of my own: Ryanair is a byword for cheap, uncomfortable travel and appalling customer service, and The Daily Mail is a byword for small-minded bigotry and scaremongering. There. I said it. There was no chance The Daily Mail was going to escape without a mention in this post ...

... or Ryanair, of course
(photo by Andy Mitchell)

Do you have any bywordial examples?

Do please leave your comments by and by in the box below.

Bystander - The Bystander Effect and Diffusion of Responsibility

Photo by Alan Cleaver

BYSTANDER

Noun. Mid-16th century.

[from BY- + STANDER.]

A person who is standing by;

a passive witness; a spectator.

On 13th October 2011, Yue Yue, a two-year-old from Guandong, China, wandered out of her house while her mother was rushing to bring in laundry from a thunderstorm. Yue Yue walked into a busy but narrow market street where she was hit by a van, falling under the front wheels. The driver stopped but didn't get out, before slowly driving away, running over Yue Yue's legs with the back wheels. While she lay in the middle of the street, at least 18 people passed Yue Yue, skirting around her in their vehicles, stopping to stare or just stepping around her without a pause, during which time another truck ran over her with both front and back wheels. Yue Yue lay in the street for seven minutes, bleeding and crying, before a woman who was scavenging for rubbish finally stopped to help her. Yue Yue died in hospital eight days later.

In July 2008, Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Roma girls who were 12 and 11 respectively, drowned in front of onlookers on a beach near Naples, Italy. The girls had been begging and selling trinkets with two other girls before all of them went in to swim. The girls quickly got into trouble in the rough sea, and their screams attracted the attention of some on the beach who were able to help two of them get out - Cristina and Violetta, however, died in the water; their bodies were pulled onto the beach and covered with towels. The photo that shocked Italy, of the two dead girls on the beach with seemingly unconcerned holiday makers sunbathing in the background, provoking fierce debate in the country about both racism toward Roma and the glaring apathy toward loss of life. The girls' bodies lay on the beach for an hour before being collected, while those around them went back to sunbathing and playing football.

Everyone is a bystander at some point, but researchers have often sought to explain why anyone would show such wanton indifference with regard to rendering aid to those in distress. A number of theories exist, including the Bystander Effect, which says that the probability of a bystander helping someone is inversely related to the number of bystanders there are - thus, a person is more likely to give aid if he is the only bystander (or one of a few) than if he is one of many bystanders. A number of other factors come into play, including ambiguity of the situation (not being sure if the person really does need help) and the so-called diffusion of responsibility which is the voice in every bystander's head telling them "There are so many people here, someone else must be doing something."

This aspect of human psychology is deeply disturbing. We all need help at times, and there will be times when those that we love need the help of strangers. Yes, it does take courage to be the one to speak out, to step forward or to offer aid; no one wants the responsibility of someone else's life on their hands; perhaps rather trivially, no one wants to look stupid, or be seen to do the wrong thing: "No, thank you very much - we don't need your help. Could you mind your own business please?" But from a purely selfish point of view, what's a moment of embarrassment or inconvenience when compared to living with the knowledge that someone died or suffered because of your inaction, because you selfishly skirted around little Yue Yue, crying and bleeding on the rain-soaked market street. In those instances, all of us can be a hero - all of us can do something to not be that bystander.

Please leave your comments below.