{"id":1730,"date":"2016-01-18T09:44:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T09:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2016-01-18T09:57:02","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T09:57:02","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/?p=1730","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a name?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unaccustomed as I am to making speeches – I recognise there are certain ‘tricks’ to assist me if I ever was called upon.<\/p>\n

A common ruse is the ‘best man’ method – trying to make humour of an embarrasing or humorous anecdote. Being relevant would be nice.<\/p>\n

Another common technique is the Dictionary ploy. It follows the line of “Marriage – I looked marriage up in the dictionary – and guess what I found!’.<\/p>\n

Using the dictionary technique I decided to look up Trump. There was little of surprise – it can be noun or verb.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. (n) Cards: A card from a suit which outranks other suits<\/li>\n
  2. (n) To outdo<\/li>\n
  3. (v) To take a suit at cards<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Then there was the verb phrase:<\/p>\n

    The accusations against his political adversaries were little more than trumped up scaremongering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The addition of the word “up” makes the rather conceited word “trump” into a far more interesting collection of letters.<\/p>\n

    I visited Thesaurus.com<\/a> and discovered these:<\/p>\n

    bogus, concocted, cooked-up, deceitful, devised, dishonest, fabricated, fake, false, falsified, fictitious, fishy, framed, fraudulent, imaginary, incorrect, invalid, invented, lying, made up, misleading, phony, sham, unfounded, unsound, untrue<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Such a small addition to a word illustrates how careful we have to be with the things we say. The phrase can become so dangerous – even when constructed of such seemingly innocent words. A word which initially seems strong and righteous suddenly becomes deceitful and mischievous.<\/p>\n

    Words are also sounds. The word Trump is very close to the word trumpet. As in “blow your own”. The dictionary also defines this. Another section on “trump” states:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. (n) a trumpet.<\/li>\n
    2. (n) its sound.<\/li>\n
    3. (v) to blow a trumpet.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Origin
      \n1250-1300; (noun) Middle English trompe < Old French < Old High German trumpa, variant of trumba trumpet; (v.) Middle English trompen < Old French tromper, derivative of trompe<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Suddenly “trump” is not only deceitful it is also suggestive of “blowing your own trumpet”. A triumphalist squawk of a noise.<\/p>\n

      One of the most immediately recognisable and evocative pieces of music played by a member of the Trumpet family is the “Last Post”.<\/p>\n

      All of this made me consider other words. Unfortunately “Donald” is a proper noun and so I do not like to try and consider meaning and derivations of it. All I associate with Donald are:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • a Duck<\/li>\n
      • “where’s yer troosers”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Unaccustomed as I am to making speeches – I recognise there are certain ‘tricks’ to assist me if I ever was called upon. A common ruse is the ‘best man’ method – trying to make humour of an embarrasing or humorous anecdote. Being relevant would be nice. Another common technique is the Dictionary ploy. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p53QCd-rU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1741,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/1741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrislamb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}