Wordsmith: The Etymology of "Fop"

The ill-clad populace accuses me of foppery; I accuse them of feeble taste.
-Lord Robert McIlhenny

A fop in the word’s driest sense is a man overly-concerned with or vain about his manner of dress or, more vividly, a dandy, a coxcomb. We experience the traditional image of foppishness today primarily through antiquated representations of pompously-styled men in theatrical period pieces, such as the male participants of the grand ball in “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” although the term predates the French Revolution by a century.

‘Fop’ originated in late 17th-century London as an acronym: F.O.P., meaning Friend of Peter, a contemporary euphemism for a ‘dainty’ man with affected speech patterns. Peter, in turn, referred to Peter Stent, a prominent London printmaker active earlier in the century. Stent was a rumored member of the underground community of flamboyant gallants due to his fondness for large powdered wigs, ruffled shirts, elegant coats, and haughty speech. With Stent the most well-known member, other purported members of the group were labeled as his friends.

Although no longer termed as such, modern-day foppishness is exemplified by Ivy-educated, collar-popping, seersucker-clad youths and metrosexuals.

Weary Traveler: A Historical Walking Tour of East London

Most Western cities grow west, leaving the east sides to be a festering pool of crime and poverty. With recent gentrification policies and the influx of “hipsters,” East London is no longer the vampire it has been portrayed in literature and film. Gone are the opium dens of Limehouse and up are the swinging digs of Shoreditch media types. Here is a historical walk through this new and thriving area.

Start at the Liverpool Street Tube stop (A) and make your way north to Spitalfields Market. Once the thriving center of East London, Spitalfields got its name from the grand spired church St. Ambrose. The surrounding area was given the Cockney name Spitalfields and a market went up in 1705 to accommodate farmers from Essex. The church is gone now, but the market has some of the best flower stalls in all of London. From there head northeast, through the historical Brick Lane (C), now famous for curries and bagels, but once the headquarters of London’s most notorious street gang, the “maçons.” These French Huguenots fled to England in 1743 and set up shop as weavers in the buildings overlooking the northern part of Spitalfields. The maçons capitalized on the growing population and ran an early version of racketeering. Head Southeast to Whitechapel (D). On the corner of Hanbury and New Road is St. Justin the Martyr’s church where the remains of Jack the Ripper’s last victim was found. The massacred prostitute brought East London to its knees at the peak of the Ripper’s spree. The murders then stopped and a myriad of stories and suspects have become legend. Most famous is that Jack the Ripper was actually, Walter Hornsbury, a patient at the nearby Royal London Hospital. Gaining expertise by watching surgeons as he waited for surgery. It is believed that Hornsbury died under the knife while doctors tried to repair his bronchial tubes from a bout of Consumption. Lastly head southwest to Aldgate East (E), the last of the great gates of the walled city of London. A portion of London Wall still exists near the Tube stop. This gate was a gathering point for Danes that tried to invade London under the Danelaw in Eastern Great Britain. Londoners took their dead and impaled them on the outside of the wall to warn the Danes of their own brutality. Take the Tube here back to your hotel and grab a pint; you’ll need it after this walk!

A Historical Note on Instant Oatmeal

“Even a tramp like me, no matter what happens; I know there's always a brother who won't refuse me a bowl of oatmeal.”
Tuco Benedicto Ramirez

In 1852, an Irishman named James Boswell was taken prisoner during a fishing expedition in the Celtic Sea. Brought to England by way of Scotland, Boswell was put to work in the stables of a rich military general name Lord Elibank. There Boswell, using what he knew of Ireland’s barley, cultivated the same mealy paste he fed his children into a pudding like substance using the local ‘groats.’ Elibank took notice of this pudding in the winter of 1853, when his horses became reluctant to eat potatoes. A just nobleman at that time, Elibank and Boswell went to work that spring concocting a way to store this paste in order to serve it all year long. Through a series of accidents, Boswell discovered that by adding alcohol, cobalt, manganese and sea salt, the paste would dry up over night, only to be rejuvenated by water or milk. These products were later combined to form Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, where a chlorine derivative replaced alcohol, and can still be found in modern day instant oatmeal. Ever wanting to return to his family, Boswell pleaded with his Lord for release. Elibank, now ravished with poverty from the war, and bred to hate the Irish, instead killed Boswell and began selling his “On the Spot Oat Meals” to markets all across England, to no avail. Two years before his death, Elibank immigrated to the United States where he sold his recipe for dehydrating oats to John McCann, an Irishman, for twenty-three dollars. McCANN'S Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal is still sold today.

A Historical Note on the Least Tern

"Despite its name, the least tern plays a very unique, important role in the tern family."
-Dr. John Bishop, Cornell Lab of Ornithology


Residents of the central Pacific coast recognize the friendly white-and-gray bird capped by a black helmet of feathers: Sternula antillarum brownii, the California Least Tern, a subspecies of the Least Tern (Sternula antillarum) species familiar on the Atlantic coast. The Least Tern, in turn, bears close relation to the other seabirds of the Sternidae family, and so on. Many tern species have names reflective of their discoverers (e.g., Jameson’s Tern or Cooper’s Tern) or characteristics (e.g., the Sooty Tern or Minor Iridescent Tern), but the Least Tern’s origins have remained as overlooked as its name suggests.

Naturalist Jonas Stern first identified the larger Tern family (Sternidae) in 1838 by classifying a series of similarly-countenanced birds along the Thames River. He abandoned his initial inclination to group these docile, web-footed, sea-feeding creatures as a subspecies of gull or duck when he noticed the distinctive feathering pattern that prevailed across all samples, a finding confirmed both by breeding patterns and a unique trilling tweet. Drawn to this masked bird, Stern spent the next four years scouring waterways throughout western Europe and the American Northeast in search of finer classifications, of which he determined many, all dwelling along the shores of rivers, lakes, and seas, and all with variations on the gray-black-white in their feathering.

Later, in 1850, ornithologist John James Audubon ventured west as the official naturalist of the Gold Rush, bringing with him his fondness for Stern’s avian discoveries. While taking an observation walk along the Pacific near the San Francisco Bay, Audubon came upon a flock of Terns unlike any previously studied, bearing bright orange bills and more streamlined feathering. A series of measurements determined this group as the smallest among known terns in length, with the shortest bills, and most concise songs. With measurables consistently last in the Tern family, Audubon dubbed his finding the Least Tern.

Fashion Backward: A Historical Note on Seersucker

“Although my public appearance comes dressed in a white pressed suit, my creativity flows from a certain Seersucker ensemble. For a true Southerner can’t live without it.”
- Mark Twain

During Reconstruction a small amount of Northern confidence men went south to pilfer money from rebuilding budgets that were being given to towns ravaged by the Civil War. Most of these men outfitted themselves as contractors, but one in particular found a roundabout way to a straight life. Landis Seer III was a small time confidence man by way of Hollowcreek, New Hampshire. His M.O. was that of a traveling salesman selling cure-alls to the elderly in and around New England. Seer made his way south to Jennings, Florida where he grandstanded in town squares to sell his Seer & Son’s Medicinal Cure-all. The potion was nothing more than seltzer water and fennel. Seer found his marks did not care to see a man with a Northern accent dressed in a pressed black suit and tried different accents and clothing to appeal to the genteel Southerners. Finding the summers unbearable, Seer weaved a suit himself made out of cotton from nearby Georgia. Seer was no weaver, so his slack-tension weave produced a wrinkled suit, but when worn lifted from the skin to provide certain coolness. Seer wore his suit and his newly minted down home charm led to increased sales of his tonic. His fellow confidence men christened his marks, “Seer’s Suckers,” who would constantly ask about his suit. Seer, seeing a profit on the horizon, started to mass produce his suit, which, out of jest, he marketed as Seersucker. Sales of his suit flourished in the South and have become a mainstay of Southern fashion between Easter and Labor Day.

Wordsmith: The Etymology of "Bandwagon"

If you see a bandwagon, it's too late.
-James Goldsmith

No one likes to be called a ‘bandwagoner’—a johnny-come-lately, a shameless joiner—, and the term has even become the ultimate insult among sports and indie music fans. For as long as mankind has existed, people have mindlessly glommed onto successful efforts, but the term ‘bandwagoner’ itself has much more recent origins, dating only to the 19th century, C.E. and bearing close ties to the unsuccessful presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, perhaps best known for opposing the gold standard. Bryan, a noted populist, invented the political stumping tour, first traveling the country to rally grassroots support for free silver leading up to the 1896 election. Defeated by William McKinley, who garnered more support among the Germans and middle class, Bryan resolved to try again with a different platform in 1900. This time, Bryan redoubled his stumping efforts, riding a flat-bed wagon around the 45 states and addressing the nation via bullhorn. While riding through Lincoln, Nebraska, a full British-style brass band jumped on his wagon, hoping to hitch a ride to a playing engagement at a nearby farm. Bryan, amenable, allowed the band to keep playing en route. After attracting more than the usual crowd from their homes to view this ‘bandwagon,’ Bryan kept the band as a regular feature for the rest of the campaign. This apparent success proved fleeting, however, as the popularity of the now-famous “Bryan Bandwagon” among his western and midwestern “bandwagoners” failed to translate to victory at the polls. Bitter after two defeats, Bryan cursed the fair-weather “bandwagoners” and excluded the popular stumping attraction from his trust-busting, third presidential campaign eight years later.

Medical Dispatch: The Caduceus

"Our greatest triumph shall come from curing the ill."

- Hippocrates

The origin of the Caduceus (the logo associated with medicine depicting serpents winding around a stick) is thought to be linked to the parasitic nematode Dracunculus Medinensis. Its larvae reside in arthropods found in the waters around the Middle East, among other places. The arthropods are able to burrow under the skin of human hosts. The larvae develop just under the surface of the skin. If removed too rapidly, the full-grown worms rupture, spilling toxins into the human host, resulting in inflammation and infection. Proper removal entails gradually winding the body of the nematode around a stick on a daily basis until the full length has been removed. The image of the worm wound around a stick implies medical intervention, as seen in the Caduceus.

Of note, Dracunculus Medinensis is thought to be the "fiery serpents of the night" mentioned as one of the plagues in the Old Testament.