800-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Lurching The item on left in the lurch prompted several readers to ask about the breed of dog called a lurcher. (“Did it lurk in the bushes or just have a poor sense of balance?” asked Judith Taylor.) A lurcher is a cross-bred dog originally created by English and Irish poachers to be an intelligent and speedy hunter. Its name is said to be from a sense of lurch that does derive from lurk. This took on several meanings, such as using guile to get ahead of other people to obtain food. Presumably, the dog’s name was a special application of this because of its speed.

Cheez! My story last week about the hotel menu item a selection of cheese and biscuits brought a variety of responses, many more than I was expecting from my humorous squib.

Some reasonably suggested that the menu should have read “selection of cheeses and biscuits”. However, cheese and biscuits is a fixed term for the food item in British English and it’s common in menus to see an item listed as I gave it. Some Americans were puzzled by the biscuits, which for us Brits in this situation are flat crackers also called water biscuits (sold in the US, I am told, as water crackers). Ken McAllister did not agree with my analysis, “I cannot defend one-item selections, I admit, and like you I would protest at two-item selections. However, I feel that they breach hospitality, not semantics.” Among others, Mavis Emberson sought a logical answer to the conundrum: “No doubt the kitchen selected the cheese for you.” I hadn’t thought of that.

Bob Kelly responded: “Your item reminded me of an experience I had in 1977 in Budapest. The Iron Curtain was still up and I’d had a difficult time reaching my destination. When I got to my hotel room, I decided to order dinner from the room service menu. One item was listed as ‘Assorted Cheeses’. It turned out that the assortment consisted of a square slice, a round slice and a three-sided slice — of the same cheese.”

Double sic! Many readers pointed out that the Sic! item about John Sununu last week said he was a former governor of New Jersey instead of New Hampshire. The error was by the New York Times. It has since corrected the reference to the state but hasn’t changed the wrongly spelled rouge to rogue.

Cynosure Several readers reminded me that at the time when the star was given the name Cynosura, it wasn’t the pole star, because of a very slow circular motion of the Earth’s axis called the precession of the equinoxes. However, it was one of three bright stars close to the celestial pole that were used to navigate by. The star, now called Polaris, is currently nearer being a true pole star than at any time in recorded history and will be at its closest to the celestial pole in about a century.