811-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Big fella Following last week’s piece about gigantic, numerous readers asked about gargantuan. The source is the stories by the sixteenth-century French writer François Rabelais about Gargantua, a giant with a prodigious appetite. It’s not obvious where Rabelais took the name from: the online Wikidictionary suggests it is a much modified version of Egyptian, while a French etymological work argues a connection with gorge, throat, and gargariser, to gargle.

Black stuff On reading my whimsical aside last week in the item on treeconomics, several British readers wrote to assert that treacle mines really do exist in Torbay. Gary Mason commented, “I come from the East Midlands (UK) and treacle mines was (and may still be) a euphemism for sewage works.”

More seriously, Professor James Jensen of the University at Buffalo e-mailed: “I teach a course to fourth-year environmental and civil engineers on sustainability. We stodgy academicians (is leather-elbow-patched an adjective?) refer to the concept as ecosystem services. The idea, as you stated, is that, for example, trees provide more services than just lumber, including sequestration of carbon dioxide. Once again, the media have popularized a flashy name for a scientific concept — see also God particle versus Higgs boson.”

Crossing the Rubicon The Sic! item about the Rubicon restaurant in Australia last week was right to point up its mistake in requesting a booking should be for a “minimum of eight parsons” but I shouldn’t have criticised their use of cakeage. Peter Thoeming was among others who explained: “Cakeage is in fact a regrettable but common charge in Australian restaurants, applied if you have the temerity to bring a birthday cake or something similar, to be served to you and your guests.” The word is, as you will have gathered, new to me. Out of error comes knowledge ...