Ostracism

The concept of ostracizing, or ostracism, is yet another victim of the ossifying tendencies of overzealous linguists, who have ostentatiously traced its ostensible roots to the Greek ostrakismos, derived from ostraka, or potsherds.
Ostrakismos was a procedure used in the Athenian democracy, by which any citizen of the city-state could be expelled for a period of ten years, for reasons as varied as thievery, bestiality, excessive use of the word coccyx, poor penmanship, and halitosis. The potsherds referenced in the word were used as a kind of secret ballot, on which all of the ancient Athenians could record a vote of “yay” or “nay” regarding the expulsion, though some who did not wish their opinions to remain secret had the option of throwing their potsherd directly at the person facing expulsion. This was known as a “strong yay.”

However, our current usage of the word ostracize to denote the exclusion of a person from society has a much more recent past, easily traceable to A. J. Mounteney Jephson (1859-1908) British explorer, adventurer, and plundering enthusiast. In his written accounts of his travels to Africa Jepshon describes the fascinating customs and habits of several Sahel tribes. These papers have a tremendous anthropological significance, particularly since almost all of the tribes described were wiped out shortly after the expedition’s departure, due to the sleeping sickness epidemic it had introduced into their territories.

According to Jephson’s account, one custom he had observed among several tribes involved an individual who had brought shame to his family, who was ceremoniously placed upon an ostrich and cast out into the desert. In cases where a whole family brought shame to the village, a special cart was constructed and attached to the ostrich, thus allowing the whole family to be, as Jephson put it, ostrich-ized. This custom appealed to Jephson greatly, and he wrote about it at length, even going so far as to suggest that it would be “an appropriate and befitting solution to the pressing issue of what is to be done with Gilbert and Sullivan, and others of their ilk.” When he returned to Europe he even attempted to start an ostrich-cart taxi service, but his business model soon collapsed with the advent of the horseless carriage.

Jephson’s expedition diary sold well and made the terms ostrichized and to ostrichize quite popular; in transitioning from British to American English the term was simplified into ostracize, which is how we recognize the word today.

The Stuff that Dreams are Stuffed With

Throughout human history there have been countless variation on stuffing, from placing a simple pimento into an olive, to the quite recent turducken, wherein a chicken is stuffed into a duck, which itself is stuffed into a turkey, much to the horror of onlookers and passersby.

The golden age of stuffing undoubtedly came in the 19th century, when culinary experimentation was at its decadent peak, and people of a certain class would often spend several days on a single protracted meal, pausing only to trade witty banter (“I say, Frederic, I’ve heard tell that you mother is said to have engaged in particular activities and behaviors which would suggest in no uncertain terms that she is, as a matter of fact and principle, a smelly whore.”) and conduct torrid affairs (wholly consisted of knowing glances, exchanges of handkerchiefs, and periodical swooning).

One particularly famous stuffed specimen, the Rôti Sans Pareil, or “Roast without Equal,” was served at a royal feast in France and consisted of no less than 17 different species of birds. These were, in order from greatest to smallest – bustard (not to be confused with bastard), turkey, goose, pheasant (not to be confused with peasant), chicken, duck, guinea fowl, teal, woodcock, partridge, plover, lapwing (not to be confused with lapdog), quail, thrush, lark, Ortolan bunting, and garden warbler. The warbler was small enough to be stuffed with a single olive, though the olive itself was not stuffed with a pimento, an omission which caused the beheading of no less than three sous chefs.

Contrary to popular belief, the Rôti Sans Pareil was not the most animals stuffed into one another; the roasted camel, a traditional Bedouin wedding dish, is stuffed with a roasted sheep, which is itself stuffed with as many fish-stuffed-chickens as it could carry. The most populated roasted camel documented cost the lives of no less than 50 animals, consisting of 36 fish packed into 12 chickens which were wedged into a largish sheep, which three burly men forced into a hefty camel.

Contrary to popular belief, the roasted camel is not the biggest animal stuffed; the unparalleled champion dish of stuffed fauna belongs to the fishermen of Yonaguni, the westernmost of the Yaeyama Islands in the Japanese Archipelago. This dish, known as Maruyungara in the local Yonaguni language (or as Kujira-ikkyou in Japanese) was prepared annually up until the moratorium on whaling imposed in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission. The dish is unique not only in its being entirely made up of sea creatures, but also in its consisting wholly of marine mammals, starting with a fin whale (on at least one documented occasion a blue whale was used instead), the stuffing progresses with a humpback whale, a minke whale, a bottlenose dolphin, a porpoise, a seal, and finally a sea otter. At a mere 7 specimens, the Maruyungara cannot hope to compete with the Rôti Sans Pareil in terms of variety, but with an overall length of roughly 88 feet (27 meters) and average weight of 150,000 pounds (70,000 kilograms), it certainly wins in terms of size, and provides a very reasonable explanation as to why the citizens of Yonaguni have historically had the highest cholesterol averages ever recorded in the world.

Apple of my Eye

The phrase "Apple of my Eye" dates back to Victorian times, when a man who lost his eye in a duel would often replace it with a tiny apple. Since tiny apples were quite rare, this phrase came to mean any cherished object.