Putting Words in Their Places

Somebody once defined a hamburger as “a humble immigrant hunk of meat that came to this country from Germany and soared to fame on a bun.” That somebody was perfectly right. In its native land the dish was originally called “Hamburg steak,” taking its name from the West German city of Hamburg.
After the Hamburg steak arrived in the U.S. midway through last century with the first great wave of German immigrants, its name began to change. Ultimately the Ham-burg steak dropped its capital H, acquired the suffix –er, lost the steak, and moved from the platter to the plane between two slices of baked dough. Voila: a hamburger .
The adventure in word evolution didn’t stop there. Somewhere along the way, speakers of English liberally interpreted burger to mean “sandwich made with a bun.” Once burger became a new word part, cheeseburger, baconburger, fishburger, chili-burger, and a tray full of other burgers entered the American scene and gullet. On a smaller scale, much the same adventure befell frankfurter, which takes its name from Frankfurt, Germany. Furter is now used to denote almost any kind of sandwich with protein slapped inside an elongated bun.
Many years ago, cloth was imported into England from Silesia, then part of Germany. The material was of such poor quality that the English referred to it contemptuously as “that cloth from Silesia,” or “Silesia cloth.” Ultimately the phrase was shortened to “sleazy cloth,” and that’s how sleazy was fabricated as a popular adjective for “cheap and shoddy.” The word spawned such offspring as sleaze, sleaze-bag and sleaze-ball.
Place names have enriched our language with many common words; many cit-ies, towns, regions and nations have become enshrined in our dictionaries, usually as uncapitalized nouns. When this happens, we call such transformations toponyms.
Often these words are the names of products associated with a particular location, and the three of the most impressive categories of imports are alcoholic beverages, foods and fabrics.
Among the most popular wines and liquors are amontillado (named for Montilla, Spain), asti (a town northern Italy), beaujolias (a district in central France), bock beer (first produced in Einbeck, Germany), bordeaux (a region in southern France), bourbon (a county in Kentucky), burgundy (France), carlowitz (a town in the former Yugoslavia), chianti (a mountainous region in Italy), cognac (a commune in western France), daiquiri (a district in Cuba), gin (adapted from Geneva, Switz.), a manhattan (New York), port (Oporto, Portugal) rum (Rome Italy), sherry (Jerez, Spain), tequila (a Mexican district), and tokay (adapted from Tokaj in northeast Hungary).
To go with all the bubbly, on our table china (named for the country of China) may repose these foods: baloney (Bologna, Italy), brie (Brie district in France), brussels sprouts (Brussels, the capital of Belgium), camem-
bert cheese (Normandy, France), cantaloupe (papal villa of Cantalupo, Italy), cheddar cheese (Cheddar, England), cherrystone clams (Cheriton, Virginia), currants (Cor-inth, Greece), edam cheese (Edam, the Netherlands), java (Indonesian island of Java) and lima beans (Lima, Peru).
Among the textiles woven into the fabric of our language are calico (Calicut, India), cashmere (Kashmir, Iraq) cordovan (Cordoba, Spain), damask (Damascus, Sy-ria), denim (de Nimes, France), duffel (Duffel, a town near Antwerp, Belgium), dungarees (Dhungaree, India) and gauze (Gaza, Palestine).
These product categories only begin to illustrate the place that places have in our language. Using the following descriptions, identify 10 common words and put them in their places.
1. Two-piece swimsuits are named after a pacific atoll on which hydrogen bombs were detonated––a truly explosive and figurative word. ___________
2. The most popular of all humorous verse forms in English hails from a county in Ireland. One theory says that Irish mercenaries used to compose verses in that form about each other and then join in a chorus of “When we get to ___________ town, ‘twill be a glorious morning.”
3. A word for smooth-sounding flattery, derives from the name of a castle in County Cork, Ireland. An inscription on the wall of the castle proclaims that anyone brave enough to scale the wall and kiss a particular stone will be rewarded with the gift of influencing others through cajolery.
4. Nearly two and half millennia ago, a little band of 10 thousand Athenians defeated a host of 100 thousand Persians at the battle of ___________. Pheidippides, a courageous runner, brought news of glorious victory to Athens, which lay 26 miles away.
5. 19th century sailors were sometimes drugged and then forced into service on ships plying the unpopular route from San Francisco to China. From the name of the Chinese port we get the verb that means “to secure someone’s services through force.”
6. A contraction of “St. Mary’s of Beth-lehem,” a 16th century London hospital for the insane, has become a word for uproar or confusion.
7. Another word for disorder-in this case a wild brawl-comes down to us from the name of a fair, held in an Irish town near Dublin, infamous for its fistfights and rowdy behavior.
8. As an alternative to cumbersome tails on a formal full dress dinner coat, a tailless dinner coat originated in an exclusive community about 40 miles north of New York City. This short evening coat was an immediate sensation during the Gay Nineties; it is still obligatory at many formal functions a century later.
9. The Pilgrims found in America a wild fowl somewhat similar in appearance to a fowl they had known back in England-a bird that acquired its name because it was first imported by way of a particular country. Because we perceive this bird as ugly in appearance and voice, we sometimes assign its name to people we don’t care for.
10. The inhabitants of an ancient Greek city were noted for their ability to say a lot in a few words. During a siege of their capital, a Roman general sent a note to this city’s commander warning that if the Romans captured the city, they would burn it to the ground. From within the city gates came back the terse reply: “If!”. The city’s name lives on in an adjective that describes spare speech.

Richard Lederer is “America’s Super-duper Blooper Snooper”