A whole lot of bunkum has roots in geography, as do other colourful verbs
Q. Imagine a hand poised over a book page, with one finger fitted with a tiny camera. What might come next? A. With HandSight, a blind person could actually read more easily, says Aviva Rutkin in “New Scientist” magazine. Developed by University of Maryland’s Jon Froehlich and team, this tiny camera — originally used for endoscopies — fits on the tip of the finger, and as the wearer follows a line of text, a computer reads it out loud. Audio or kinesthetic cues gently nudge the finger into the right position. Eventually, Froehlich envisions “a smartphone-like device that blind people could use to discern other visual characteristics, like colors and patterns,” helping give them a sense of the nontactile world around them. Q. At the age of 7, Olava had feelings of rage and discomfort hearing other people eating. Over time, other triggers developed until she finally sought medical help, only to be laughed at. Was this truly a laughing matter? A. Not if you’re one of the small number of people suffering from misophonia, perhaps caused by altered patterns of brain activity, says Tiffany O’Callaghan in “New Scientist” magazine. As neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran remarked, “Misophonia seems so odd that it’s difficult to appreciate how disabling it can be.”
Though the affliction is little studied thus far, Sukhbinder Kumar and his team at UK’s Newcastle University conducted a series of tests on those with and without severe misophonia and found that both groups had similar reactions to neutral and unpleasant sounds. However, sufferers, upon hearing trigger sounds, showed signs of the body’s fight-and-flight response, including increased heart rates. Brain scans of activated areas suggest that “the systems that normally influence what we pay attention to, and respond to emotionally, are disrupted in people with misophonia.”
Until new treatments or coping strategies are developed, Olava and others like her might utilize earplugs or try to mask the offending sounds. Q. Shanghai (China), Barbados (Caribbean), Soloi (Athenian colony, Cilicia), Buncombe County (North Carolina): All are colorful, distinctive places lending their names to verbs. Can you name and define any of them? A. The verb “shanghai” suggests the meaning, to kidnap men to work on ships, says Anu Garg on his “A.Word.A.Day” website. Since China was often the destination for these ships, Shanghai came to mean “to recruit forcibly.” In a similar vein, Barbados, formerly a British colony, became the verb “barbados,” “to forcibly ship someone to another place to work.” “Between 1640 and 1660, thousands of Irish people were sent by the British as indentured servants to work in Barbados and elsewhere in the Caribbean.”
Soloi gives us “solecize,” named after the ancient Athenian colony in Cilicia whose dialect the Athenians considered substandard, hence its meaning “to make an error in language, etiquette, etc.” There’s always room for improvement when billboards announce “Open fo Beakfart” or “Affable Rates with a Mirco Fridge.”
Finally, consider the story behind Buncombe’s association with the noun “bunk” and the verb “to debunk.” In 1820, Rep. Felix Walker of Buncombe County made a pointless speech in the U.S. Congress, and though his colleagues urged him to stop, he persisted, claiming that the speech was “for Buncombe.” Eventually, “Buncombe” became “bunkum” became “bunk,” a synonym for “meaningless speech.” Hence, “to debunk” is “to expose the falseness of a claim, myth, belief, etc.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Bill is a journalist, Rich holds a doctorate in physics. Together the brothers bring you “Strange But True.” Send your questions to strangetrue@compuserve.com.