Queen of all our hearts
QUESTION
When did the human heart first appear as a stylised ?ݗ
THE heart symbol is an ideograph, a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept independent of a particular language, specific words or phrases.
It is mostly used to express affection and love.
Its widespread use dates from 15th-century playing cards, but it has much older roots.
The earliest depictions of the shape are related to the extinct, once highly prized herb Silphium, a species of giant fennel that grew on the North African coastline near the ancient Greek city of Cyrene.
Its seed pod had a striking resemblance to the ideographic heart. The Greeks and Romans used it as a spice, medicine and birth control. Cyrene, which grew rich from silphium trade, put the heart shape on its coins. Its popularity was the cause of its demise as over-use appears to have caused its extinction.
In the 2nd century AD, Greek physician Galen, inspired by the work of Aristotle, contributed significantly to the anatomical and physiological knowledge of the heart.
In his treatise On The Usefulness Of The Parts Of The Body, Galen reaffirmed ideas about the heart as the source of the body’s innate heat and as the organ most closely related to the soul.
‘The heart is, as it were, the hearthstone and source of the innate heat by which the animal is governed,’ he said. He also described the heart incorrectly as a three-chambered organ which ‘has in the middle a ditch or a pit’.
The notion of presenting a lover with your heart dates from the 13th century. A decoration of a capital letter in a manuscript of the French romance Le Roman de la Poire depicts a kneeling lover offering his heart to his lady.
This heart shape looks like an inverted pine cone.
In 1305, the Italian painter known as Giotto used the same shape in a depiction of Charity in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, in which she gives her heart to Jesus. It’s been postulated that the heart shape was created during the Middle Ages by scientists who tried to visualise Galen’s works. The clearest example of this comes from Guido da Vigevano’s Anothomia Philippi Septimi, an illustrated work on dissection from 1345 that features a scalloped heart in anatomical drawings of cadavers.
Over the next two centuries in art, this shape began to supplant the more accurate pine cone. The indented red heart has been widely used on playing cards since the late 15th century.
Amelia Craig, Norwich, Norfolk.
QUESTION
Why is a key needed to open a tin of corned beef?
FOR 150 years, corned beef has been tightly packed in a tapered trapezoid can. The key is designed to open the larger end of the can to allow the block of corned beef to be extracted whole so it can be sliced neatly. It’s simple and effective.
Just remember to wind the key, don’t pull – unless you want to lose a finger!
In the mid-19th century, there was a race to produce preserved tinned goods. Fish, vegetables and fruit had been preserved in glass jars and primitive tin cans before 1847, but the invention of a tin can making machine, and then from 1853 the availability of condensed milk, popularised the idea. The sale of canned goods began to grow exponentially.
In the 1860s, the US Navy experimented with preserved meat. However, it shrivelled during cooking, leaving an unappetising, greasy mess.
Chicago inventor William J. Wilson came up with a method of packing more meat into the can and cooking it faster.
He could not do this in large quantities until steam-pressure autoclaves came on the market in 1873. With this machine to cook the meat and a pyramidal can that allowed the contents to slide out, Wilson had come up with a superior product.
He incorporated the Wilson Packing Company in 1874 and secured a patent on his Original Corned Beef Can the following year.
In 1875, he was bought out by the meat-packing company Libby, McNeill & Libby. It still trades as Libby’s, though it was bought out by Nestlé in 1970.
It was Libby’s who introduced the key-wind strip – the earliest known example dates from 1895.
Justin Gower, St Davids, Pembs.
QUESTION
Sanction has opposite meanings: a penalty or official permission. Are there other words like this?
A WORD with opposite definitions is a contronym, auto-antonym or Janus word. Janus was the Roman god of doorways and beginnings (thus January, the first month in the Roman calendar), who was depicted as having two faces because doors can be used from two sides. Contronyms may be true homographs, which are distinct words with different etymology that happen to have the same form. Or they can be a form of polysemy, where a word acquires a different and ultimately opposite sense.
Sanction, from the Latin sanctio, via the French sancire, which means ratify, is a form of polysemy that can give rise to ambiguous sentences, for instance: ‘Because of the company’s oversight, its behaviour was sanctioned.’
Cleave is a good example of a homograph. The meaning of separate comes from the Old English clcofan while the meaning of adhere is from the Old English clifian.
Resign works as a contronym on paper and is thus a homograph. When meaning to quit, the word is spelled the same as when meaning to sign again, but they are pronounced differently.
Left can mean remaining or departed. Depending on the context, dust can be used for applying – dust strawberries with sugar – or removing.
Fast can mean moving rapidly or to be fixed, unmoving, as in holding fast.
Here, to table means to begin consideration of a proposal. But in the US, to table means to postpone or suspend a motion.
Bound can mean tied down and to jump; an apology can be an expression of regret, but also a defence or justification; and you can screen (show) a film, but also screen (hide) something from view.
Jane Beale, via email.
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