Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Looking through the Cary Grant movies on Amazon, they wanted S2.99 for Bachelor & the Bobby Soxer, but His Girl Friday was free on Amazon Prime, and whaddayou know, about 5 minutes from the end, the mayor and the sheriff are discussing the fact that the guy got a last-minute reprieve.  The sheriff says he has an in with the governor, and mayor scoffs at that, calling him an old hoodoo. 

What's the word for that?  It's not exactly serendipity....  But the word hoodoo was spiking about the time Friday was written. (It was released in 1940).

Elsewhere in that movie, the DA talks about the reprieve saving the commonwealth a lot of money, but the movie ends with Grant and Rosalind Russell leaving for a two week honeymoon, but they're going to stop by Albany, the capital, to cover a strike.  But Albany is the capital of NY, which is a state.  Pennsylvania is a commonwealth, and Philadelphia is a popular big city for movies about politics and news, but the capital is Harrisburg, and a strike in Albany wouldn't be big news. (Kentucky, Massachusetts and Virginia are the other states that call themselves commonwealth.)

Heimhenge said
Also, I'd heard the term "commonwealth" used to describe one state (forget which) but did not know there were 4 of them in the US. Had to Google that term next, and found, as expected, that it has little legal implication and is more of a title chosen to differentiate the entity from one ruled by a monarch instead of the people. Makes sense that those 4 in the US were all early states (in the first 15).

Pennsylvania is the "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" but there's no Pennaylvania Commonwealth University.  I thought that was odd until I read the state constitution.  One of the offices defined there is State Treasurer, and it refers to Pemmsylvania being a state.  Commonwealth is just a fancy name to go by, in PA's case.  I can't speak for the other three.

About five yeas ago, I learned that prostitution is legal in Rhode Island, but only in brothels; streetwalkers, outcall, and hookers working bars are outlawed.  I thought it was only in Nevada that prostitution was legal (again, only in whorehouses, but in Nevada, not legal in counties where Reno and Las Vegas are; I'm told that they only arrest hookers because a casino thinks they are cheating or assaulting customers, and hookers of high moral character don't get hassled.)  In Rhode Island, a girl has to be 14 to work in a whorehouse, but if she has sex NOT in a whorehouse, it's statutory rape if she's not 16.

So how did the thread drift from "commonwealth" to what my grandmother would have called "common tramp"? (My mother was less judgmental.)  Well, it's that Rhode Island is not "State of Rhode Island", not at all, but "State of Rhode Island and the Plantain Provinces."  I'm sure I must've learned that in 4th-grade US Geography, but I'd forgotten it.  You'd think that it'd be a popular trivia question. "What is the state smallest in size, and what is the state with the longest name?"  The answer to both would be the same.

One ought never refer to "just etymology and linguistics."  There is a conceit among physicists that unless you can put a number to something, you don't really understand it - but words are important to even know that something exists.  When I took physics as a college freshman, there were three states of matter - solid, liquid, gas.  Since then, we've added plasma and Bose-Einsteinian condensates.  Did we know about black holes and plasmas back then?  Yes, but we didn't really think about them.  And on NPR, I recently learned that words meaning red and green are MUCH older than ones for blue.  It seems nobody saw blue.  (Blue skies and blue bodies of water are pretty uncommon....) 

tromboniator said
Just for the record, it's State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. But as far as I know (and Alaska is pretty far from RI) nobody says that, either. Plantain Provinces has a nice ring, though. 

And additionally for the record, I was thinking "State of Rhode Island and the Plantation Provinces" when I my fingers mutinied.  As far as I know, plantains only grow in the tropics.

But I I got the bane wrong in my memory.  Providence plantations would be the plantations around Providence, and I had thought it odd that a state would refer to plural provinces in its name (although I know that province can mean domain, not just be a near-synonym for state or commonwealth).

Thanks!