The language we were GIVEN to use?.....heh, be circumspect of the words you say

Where did the largely forgotten term cockamamie come from?

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There are always crazes that ordinary people jump on. One such craze was decoupage.
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A long time ago, country people made soap and it's just rendered pork fat mixed with hardwood ashes in water resulting in the fat emulsifying as soap. And some ladies saved up flowers from the garden and distilled the oils for fragrance. But then started pressing flowers and when the lye soap cured, would afix these pressed flowers to decorate their soaps.

But then some started afixing decals and applying a hard transparent layer f an adhesive.

Soon it became a craze and since some ethnic people like the Dutch Americans handpainted designs for walls, they made rollers to hasten the painting. The. starteddoing decoupage.

Then these labels got attached to furniture.

Soon every kid was decorating this way and adults who were artically "challenged" did so as well.

The early French term for decoupage was décalcomanie. American kids called it cockamamie.

Honestly it's foo-foo but does look purty. Many decoupage projects are dubious craft just as not everyone has an artistic eye for quilting and it looks like a hodgepodge of rags.

A talented soap maker can brew up a very fine gentle soap with a pleasing fragrance and can make it look elegant with decoupage.

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Look at these lamps. They look elegant.

The Dutch American painting art is tole painting. And it neednot merely be a pattern but can take on a mural form.

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Tole painting was practiced by the German Amricans in Pennsylvania and adopted by the Dutch living there.
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It's an American affectation to call German Americans "Dutchies" as that refers to Deutschland.

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Those ethnic Germans had a pagan art that was called "hex art" and they would inscribe artistic symbols on their barns as the barn carried the wealth of that farm so conferring a supernatural protection on it.

It goes full circle as early Christians were a persecuted underground movement that used the fish symbol and manyothers like a mother crane perking its own breast to feed her young, as a hidden language of Christianity in symbolic form.

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So the early Lutherans and Roman Catholic German immigrants to America painted these symbols as protection so it can argued it is syncretism or not or pagan.

Meanwhile the German American Anabaptists (Amish then later Menonites) total reject all Christian symbolism as idolatrous. Those Amish then get angry as unthinking mean local politicians insist they put triangular warning symbols on their buggies. Well to them, that is a Trinitarian symbol and offensive. That is why they saw off or clip off the corners.

They try to be "plain" so bright colors annoy their sensibilities as well.

The printed language can be phonetic ie this symbol sounds like this and together forms a "word". Or the characters are not phonetic but ideograms.

For example, take ASCII as a largely alphanumeric code of 128 characters.

But in Japan, there are three languages hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

Hiragana has 46 characters.
Katakana has 46 characters.
But kanji as ideograms are huge in number. An average Japanese knows 50,000 ideograms and a educated graduate student might know 150,000 ideograms.

Thus one could make a far better cryptography set in Japanese characters than one could ever make in English.

Most of your languages are slang versions of Latin.

What else do you have to offer?

Gnarly means all twisted up like the way some tree might grow as natural bonsai that ended up in a challenging spot and had to struggle to survive.

But when skateboarding came back in vogue in the eighties and beyond, then when someone did a difficuly feat, that was gnarly. They adopted it from surfers who rode a challenging half pipe and barely exited before it collapsed.

But in the country parlance, something can be rough like eating gnarly food that nobody wants like eatin' potted meat from offal.

Parlance is from the mid 1300s and meant gossip in French. It came to mean a regional style like a patois or a heavily accented Appalachian way of communicating.

The most profound example of courtly love existed by Dante who at age nine met Beatrice and swooned at her inherent virtuous nature. He respected her above all others and sung her praises.

It's collected in a complete innocent series of admiration of his peer. A d then dies at age 25 and he just couldn't get over the immense loss.

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Beatrice Portinari seems to be the one who became his muse.

The sweetest series of poems can be found here.
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Dante Aligheri's La Vita Nuova (The New Life)
(in the public domain)

So then later as he composed his famous works on the afterlife, she shows up there as she had died so tragically young.



IV The effects of Love on him
rom that vision onwards my natural spirit began to be obstructed in its operation, because my spirit was completely dedicated to thoughts of that most graceful one: so that in a little while I reached so frail and debilitated a condition, that many friends were anxious about my appearance: and many full of malice put themselves about to know about me things that I wished above all to hide from others. And I, aware of the ill requests they made about me, replied, by the will of Amor, who directed me in accordance with reason’s counsel, that it was Amor who had brought me to this.

I spoke of Amor, because I bore so many signs of him in my face, that they could not be concealed. And, when they asked me: ‘For whom has Amor so distressed you?’ gazing at them I smiled, and said nothing to them.

V The screen lady
ne day it chanced that this most graceful lady was seated in a place where words were heard concerning the queen of glory, and I was in a position from which I could see my blessedness: and between her and me in a straight line sat a gentle lady of most pleasant appearance, who looked at me frequently, amazed by my gaze, which seemed to end with her.

Then many were aware of her look, and in a while were certain of it, so that, in leaving the place, I heard it spoken after me: ‘See how that lady has distressed his person’ and being named, I realised that he was speaking of her who had been placed in the straight line that started at the most graceful Beatrice, and ended at my eyes. Then I was greatly comforted, assured that my secret had not been revealed to others by my gaze that day.

And immediately I thought of making of this lady a screen before the truth: and I pretended to it so often in so short a time that my secret was believed known by most of the people who speculated about me. I screened myself with this lady for some months and years: and to better allow others to believe it, I created certain little things for her in verse, which it is not my intention to write down, unless they mainly set out to treat of that most graceful Beatrice: and therefore I will forget them all except one that I wrote which can be seen to be in praise of her.

When someone was "livid" back in the sixties, you left that feller alone. He was purple with rage or hoppin' mad and was liable to take the head off the first insufferable fool who came along.

The word comes from ancient Latin meaning bruised. His face would contort with PURE FURY and be filled with blood lust like Viking berserkers. He'd become like hair trigger on a firearm could easily just go off.