And yes, directed by the second Mr. Garland. And absolutely everyone in it is so on, it’s positively electric. Ethel Waters tears the joint apart, bless her.
Hartman and Eckstine followed similar career paths, getting their start with the Earl Hines Orchestra. When Hartman recorded for Regent Records in the late 1940s, the label intentionally tried to cast him as a "Sepia Sinatra" to compete with the pop success of Frank Sinatra (Columbia) and Billy Eckstine (MGM). The nickname was actually a common "stock" label used by record labels and the media in the 1940s and 50s to describe several smooth Black baritones who bridged the gap between jazz and popular crooning. It was also applied to Jesse Belvin by RCA when they signed him in 1959. Just to show sepia was used.
Sadly, Sinatra was never called “the pale Eckstine” … (I loved to hear him sing; I know less about Johnny Hartman, nothing about Jesse Belvin—both to my regret).
I know Johnny Hartman mainly through his work with John Coltrane. Many of those tracks can become permanent earworms. Not such a bad thing. I loved Eckstine's voice and also appreciated his big band.
Sure for pigment, there's raw and burnt sepia, different reddish browns. The other usage, not so much. It was a magazine too, back in the 50th, along with Ebony and Jet, i.e. publications for Black audiences.
I've never seen word 1 written down before (I say it all the time) and it brought me up short, but am I correct that the guideline is any number under ten is written not spelled?
At the very last second I changed it from “word one,” perhaps thinking that people would think I’d mistyped “one word.” So it was…a choice.
In the book world, one generally writes out numbers from one through ninety-nine and all numbers beyond that that are easily expressible as words. So “five hundred” but “250.”
Journalism usually cuts it off after nine, I think, yes. Saving space and all that.
I'm in the midst of reading Natan Last's new book about crossword puzzles (Across the Universe) which tells one everything--and more--[sorry, cannot figure out how to insert the correct punctuation] about such puzzles. He describes the editorial meetings that go on at the Grey Lady as various puzzle editors decide on words and clues to include in the crossword, the Bee, Wordle, etc. And, condolences on needing the full six tries to reach the solution!
Thank you for providing a posting that induced incoherent laughter in this reader! You are right. So timely, this laughter. Balances out all the crying.
Re: Footnote 9. That's not FAIR. Spill it! (she said in a very joking and friendly way...).
I do have to note: Iva Toguri D'Aquino ran (owned?) a shop near where I used to live in Chicago, and I had cause to buy things there every now and then and she seemed like a perfectly sweet middle-aged lady. And I think that things had mostly settled down for her by then, though I'm sure that she never got entirely past the trauma.
Let's not forget that David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C. had to resign after using the word niggardly. I remain shocked. By the resignation, not the word.
1999 is feeling a little late (to me) to be that blithely oblivious, but if he truly didn’t mean offense (and I’ve seen the word wielded by people who very much want to be offensive), then…
Probably no more oblivious than most mayoral aides. But it was definitely done innocently, I seem to recall. Of course my sense of recollection like so many Fings, ain't what it used to be.
The last time I used the word was in 1983, in a letter to an insurance adjuster who had offered me a ridiculously, uh, *stingy* settlement for a car their client had rear-ended to smithereens. When I eventually met the adjuster to pick up a satisfactory check, I was mortified to learn she was Black. Never used the word again, and told my students the story for as long as the word continued to appear in their vocabulary workbooks.
It was in a conversation on Open Salon which was conducted in a civilised manner until a third party intervened an poisoned the atmosphere. It had not occurred to me that my interlocutor was Jewish until the third party butted in and said I should not use the word stingy in conversation with a Jewish person because antisemites regular accused Jews of being stingy.
You make no point very stylishly. I applaud you. People from Cork were also regularly accused of being stingy and they were called the Jews of Ireland.
I'd be perfectly willing to swear that Sallie's rug is actually floating a few inches above that nicely polished floor and that she would shortly be away to somewhere wishful. A tiny chance, I concede, that it's a trick of photographic perspective but I'm going to stick with my first impression. Perhaps she'll take passengers?
My knowledge of colour-coded words, aside from the obvious, was gained in the main from listening to American popular songs from the first third of the 20th century. They certainly provide an insight into the society of the time.
I did not see Sallie's rug the same way, but the apparent transparency (or translucence) of her tail, mainly due to the color of the floor behind her, added mystery to the photo.
I was less surprised than you about DUSKY in the Wordle, perhaps because I think of it foremost as a modifier for other color names: dusky rose, dusky purple, dusky blue. In each case the implication is "subdued, not vivid." (According to the OED, this sense of "dusky" is a couple of decades older than the "of a person's skin color" sense.) "Dusky" is also common in the animal kingdom: dusky shark, dusky dolphin, dusky leaf monkey, etc.
Unrelated: I learned only a couple of years ago that there's a distinction between "dusk" and "twilight."
Also, I just tossed in an additional footnote concerning That Armor Word that you can’t play at the Bee and that to date has never been a winning Wordle word and likely never will be, though I’m pretty sure I’ve played it.
What a lovely way of merging your deep knowledge and enthusiasm for theater and actresses with your language expertise in a single, sensitive discussion! Bravo.
I’ve had a number of discussions around terms like this in a certain circle of friends. One older friend can’t wrap his head around thinking twice about expressions like “call a spade a spade.”
On a semi-related note, not long ago watching some British production (probably either Foyle’s War or Doctor Who), a character asked to “bum a fag,” and I had to explain both terms for the younger Greydani present.
Oh, P.S. I forgot to mention: Last year or so at my place of work there was an odd and curious (to me) flurry of sensitivity around the term “resilience.” Apparently some people consider the word somehow implicated in blithe “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” indifference to structural inequities, or something? And the preferred substitute term was … “grit”? Really? I haven’t heard anything about that this year.
I was startled by “DUSKY” yesterday but, as I solved it in three, I didn’t quibble when it seemed the logical word under the circumstances. I did research the definition before plopping it in there and deemed it innocuous enough to at least attempt. I was still surprised when it was correct.
Yes it crossed my mind as unusual but I figured, who am I against the AI that chose the word? Although I think I’m through with the Times’s new Crossplay, now that the computer-play partner presented me with the word Hymen. Really? Must we? Maybe I’m just too prone to ick.
1. I like "snigger" a lot, even though I never use it. That's a favorite bit of dialog - I tend to laugh as hard as Higgins does when I hear it.
2. I hardly ever get to see Gypsy Rose in films, somehow, but most recently was the last time I saw "The Trouble With Angels", opposite Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills. (It just occurred to me to check, relevance unknown, but this movie followed Russell's "Gypsy" by four years.)
3. The armor word footnote as I mentioned in a different comment.
Wendy Hiller’s delivery is captivating, and I think that that scene in the Pygmalion film is one of the funniest things ever captured by a camera, and it’s nearly all to her credit. (Though Leslie Howard is a very good straight man.)
And yes, it’s very fun to see Gypsy and Roz in the same film. It’s also a little surprising to me that Gypsy never played her mother in some summer stock tour of the musical. I wonder if she was asked and said “Hell no.” Ditto sister June, who I imagine would have said no even more loudly.
Interesting about “dusky” … does anyone use “sepia” anymore?
Probably only in discussions of the framing sequences in The Wizard of Oz.
And I was going to, but didn’t, address the increasingly (I hope) “shine,” which shows up prominently in the splendid film Cabin in the Sky.
Presumably not shorthand for “moonshine”? (Actually, I did watch “Cabin” many years ago … directed by Vincente Minelli, if I recall correctly.)
Indeed not.
And yes, directed by the second Mr. Garland. And absolutely everyone in it is so on, it’s positively electric. Ethel Waters tears the joint apart, bless her.
Indeed she did!
I remember Johnny Hartman being called "the sepia Sinatra".
I remember it was Mr. B - Billy Eckstine - called “the sepia Sinatra” …
I saw it about Johnny Hartman too!
Yes, it seems to be Eckstine.
Hartman and Eckstine followed similar career paths, getting their start with the Earl Hines Orchestra. When Hartman recorded for Regent Records in the late 1940s, the label intentionally tried to cast him as a "Sepia Sinatra" to compete with the pop success of Frank Sinatra (Columbia) and Billy Eckstine (MGM). The nickname was actually a common "stock" label used by record labels and the media in the 1940s and 50s to describe several smooth Black baritones who bridged the gap between jazz and popular crooning. It was also applied to Jesse Belvin by RCA when they signed him in 1959. Just to show sepia was used.
Sadly, Sinatra was never called “the pale Eckstine” … (I loved to hear him sing; I know less about Johnny Hartman, nothing about Jesse Belvin—both to my regret).
I know Johnny Hartman mainly through his work with John Coltrane. Many of those tracks can become permanent earworms. Not such a bad thing. I loved Eckstine's voice and also appreciated his big band.
AND his trumpet … rarely heard but quite nice indeed.
Crayola does! https://crayola.fandom.com/wiki/Sepia
Color me astonished!
Exactly! Sepia was one of my favorites as a kid because it was so much more exotic than Brown.
Otherwise I associate sepia with photography, likely from my darkroom days.
Sure for pigment, there's raw and burnt sepia, different reddish browns. The other usage, not so much. It was a magazine too, back in the 50th, along with Ebony and Jet, i.e. publications for Black audiences.
Oh yes, I vaguely remember that magazine …
To amplify—I recall it being a selection at the barbershop … but I always opted for “Police Gazette”, so deliciously sleazy.
There's a fine John Bucchino song called "Sepia Life," but there it's very explicitly referring to the photo tint.
I've never seen word 1 written down before (I say it all the time) and it brought me up short, but am I correct that the guideline is any number under ten is written not spelled?
At the very last second I changed it from “word one,” perhaps thinking that people would think I’d mistyped “one word.” So it was…a choice.
In the book world, one generally writes out numbers from one through ninety-nine and all numbers beyond that that are easily expressible as words. So “five hundred” but “250.”
Journalism usually cuts it off after nine, I think, yes. Saving space and all that.
Oops I think I had it backwards 🤷♂️
I also needed six tries for yesterday's World, and for the exact same reason. Thanks for the back-up.
I got it on the fourth try, but only because "dusty" was my third guess. I ran through the entire alphabet before accepting that it had to be K.
I'm in the midst of reading Natan Last's new book about crossword puzzles (Across the Universe) which tells one everything--and more--[sorry, cannot figure out how to insert the correct punctuation] about such puzzles. He describes the editorial meetings that go on at the Grey Lady as various puzzle editors decide on words and clues to include in the crossword, the Bee, Wordle, etc. And, condolences on needing the full six tries to reach the solution!
Thank you for providing a posting that induced incoherent laughter in this reader! You are right. So timely, this laughter. Balances out all the crying.
Re: Footnote 9. That's not FAIR. Spill it! (she said in a very joking and friendly way...).
Oh, if you insist.
Shhhhhhhhhhh.
“Tokyo Rose”
OMG. That's hysterical.
Walks off, *sniggering*...
I do have to note: Iva Toguri D'Aquino ran (owned?) a shop near where I used to live in Chicago, and I had cause to buy things there every now and then and she seemed like a perfectly sweet middle-aged lady. And I think that things had mostly settled down for her by then, though I'm sure that she never got entirely past the trauma.
You are full of amazing stories, which makes me happy.
And she looks like someone who would appear in an Ozu film.
Let's not forget that David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C. had to resign after using the word niggardly. I remain shocked. By the resignation, not the word.
1999 is feeling a little late (to me) to be that blithely oblivious, but if he truly didn’t mean offense (and I’ve seen the word wielded by people who very much want to be offensive), then…
Probably no more oblivious than most mayoral aides. But it was definitely done innocently, I seem to recall. Of course my sense of recollection like so many Fings, ain't what it used to be.
The last time I used the word was in 1983, in a letter to an insurance adjuster who had offered me a ridiculously, uh, *stingy* settlement for a car their client had rear-ended to smithereens. When I eventually met the adjuster to pick up a satisfactory check, I was mortified to learn she was Black. Never used the word again, and told my students the story for as long as the word continued to appear in their vocabulary workbooks.
I was once accused of antisemitism for using the word 'stingy'.
But………..
How? Why? Wherefore?
It was in a conversation on Open Salon which was conducted in a civilised manner until a third party intervened an poisoned the atmosphere. It had not occurred to me that my interlocutor was Jewish until the third party butted in and said I should not use the word stingy in conversation with a Jewish person because antisemites regular accused Jews of being stingy.
OK, that’s nuts.
I mean, people from Scotland are also regularly accused of being stingy, and…
I have no idea what point I think I want to make.
You make no point very stylishly. I applaud you. People from Cork were also regularly accused of being stingy and they were called the Jews of Ireland.
On the one hand: 😳.
On the other hand: 🤭.
Oh, the lengths to which I would go not to possessivize something in quotes.
I'd be perfectly willing to swear that Sallie's rug is actually floating a few inches above that nicely polished floor and that she would shortly be away to somewhere wishful. A tiny chance, I concede, that it's a trick of photographic perspective but I'm going to stick with my first impression. Perhaps she'll take passengers?
My knowledge of colour-coded words, aside from the obvious, was gained in the main from listening to American popular songs from the first third of the 20th century. They certainly provide an insight into the society of the time.
Tokyo Rose. 10/10
I did not see Sallie's rug the same way, but the apparent transparency (or translucence) of her tail, mainly due to the color of the floor behind her, added mystery to the photo.
I was less surprised than you about DUSKY in the Wordle, perhaps because I think of it foremost as a modifier for other color names: dusky rose, dusky purple, dusky blue. In each case the implication is "subdued, not vivid." (According to the OED, this sense of "dusky" is a couple of decades older than the "of a person's skin color" sense.) "Dusky" is also common in the animal kingdom: dusky shark, dusky dolphin, dusky leaf monkey, etc.
Unrelated: I learned only a couple of years ago that there's a distinction between "dusk" and "twilight."
Whereas I just kept thinking of ancient, but not ancient enough, references to dusky maids and dusky belles.
And where does “gloaming” come in?
Related to "gloom," apparently! It was present in Old English (unlike dusk and twilight, which appeared centuries later).
Also, I just tossed in an additional footnote concerning That Armor Word that you can’t play at the Bee and that to date has never been a winning Wordle word and likely never will be, though I’m pretty sure I’ve played it.
If it's linguistic laxity you're looking for, try the Slate Pears game. And if it's Britishisms, try Nomido (from Browser).
At the risk of appearing extra oblivious, I must admit I have not been able to figure out what the word could be that you were reluctant to spell out.
The armor word? "Chink."
Of course, and I should have seen it. I'm ok with being oblivious. Sometimes.
Aha. And here I was thinking it was dusty rose and dusty blue. I bow to your broader knowledge, Nancy.
p.s. also got DUSKY in (phew) six
I raised an eyebrow when I solved the puzzle, thinking "Really, in 2026?" Thanks for this and I laughed at what I suspect your friend suggested.
What a lovely way of merging your deep knowledge and enthusiasm for theater and actresses with your language expertise in a single, sensitive discussion! Bravo.
I’ve had a number of discussions around terms like this in a certain circle of friends. One older friend can’t wrap his head around thinking twice about expressions like “call a spade a spade.”
On a semi-related note, not long ago watching some British production (probably either Foyle’s War or Doctor Who), a character asked to “bum a fag,” and I had to explain both terms for the younger Greydani present.
🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻
Oh, P.S. I forgot to mention: Last year or so at my place of work there was an odd and curious (to me) flurry of sensitivity around the term “resilience.” Apparently some people consider the word somehow implicated in blithe “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” indifference to structural inequities, or something? And the preferred substitute term was … “grit”? Really? I haven’t heard anything about that this year.
All I’ve got is: Oy.
I was startled by “DUSKY” yesterday but, as I solved it in three, I didn’t quibble when it seemed the logical word under the circumstances. I did research the definition before plopping it in there and deemed it innocuous enough to at least attempt. I was still surprised when it was correct.
Yes it crossed my mind as unusual but I figured, who am I against the AI that chose the word? Although I think I’m through with the Times’s new Crossplay, now that the computer-play partner presented me with the word Hymen. Really? Must we? Maybe I’m just too prone to ick.
The Greek god of marriage!
1. I like "snigger" a lot, even though I never use it. That's a favorite bit of dialog - I tend to laugh as hard as Higgins does when I hear it.
2. I hardly ever get to see Gypsy Rose in films, somehow, but most recently was the last time I saw "The Trouble With Angels", opposite Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills. (It just occurred to me to check, relevance unknown, but this movie followed Russell's "Gypsy" by four years.)
3. The armor word footnote as I mentioned in a different comment.
Wendy Hiller’s delivery is captivating, and I think that that scene in the Pygmalion film is one of the funniest things ever captured by a camera, and it’s nearly all to her credit. (Though Leslie Howard is a very good straight man.)
And yes, it’s very fun to see Gypsy and Roz in the same film. It’s also a little surprising to me that Gypsy never played her mother in some summer stock tour of the musical. I wonder if she was asked and said “Hell no.” Ditto sister June, who I imagine would have said no even more loudly.
Yes, I sure needed the laughs. Thank you.