The Old Tambien

Whatnot

Whatnot
I've noticed an increase in the use of "whatnot" and the speaker tends to be young women between 20 and 35. I haven't heard it this often since my mother was around. It reminds me of knick-knack, as in shelf (though I'm not sure of the spelling) and nitwit. There must be yet another word just to describe this phenomenon.

Like
Thankfully, "like" seems to be subsiding, and as tiresome as it was, young people especially were using "like" as a substitute for words that escaped them, which for awhile seemed to be much of the entire English/American lexicon.
Whatnot, on the other hand, is more like etcetera.

Thanks to Jerilyn and Anna for reminding me of the fascination of words. Jerilyn was out in the lobby of Wilson and we were discussing signs, because she saw me scrutinizing the latest Gopher Gold sign, which was confusing me. We were laughing about something and a colleague commented on our "jocularity" - a word Jerilyn found delicious.

Favorite Word: Perambulator

Ruth and I walked past Aprilborn Antiques on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul the other day. In the window was a wicker pram. A perambulator. The American term is baby buggy but perambulator says so much more. It implies a leisurely stroll down a sidewalk past peonies and daisies cheerfully poking out through freshly painted picket fences. Strolling. Leisure. A lost art today.

Oddly enough our American "stroller" is a different vehicle than the buggy. Much too contemporary, not romantic. More like jogging than strolling really. At the mall, strollers are more like moving hazards.

For me "perambulators" evokes happy memories of being curled up in my parent's pale green chair in the living room, reading such childhood classics as Mary Poppins or Peter Pan.

Buggies is actually the earlier term, stemming from an article published in Gentleman's Magazine in 1773 and quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary referring to the horse-drawn carriages as "running down the buggies" - a violent and somewhat distasteful activity for our tender little ones. And they should not be digesting such crusty fare so early in their development. Consider the gentler origins of the pram, which OED kindly finds for us from an August 23, 1856 article in Chambers's Journal. "The Perambulator..has given us children, looking on with their grave smooth faces at the business of life,..as they lean back philosophically in their carriages. " Perambulating in the pedestrian sense, on the other hand, or foot, dates back to 1611.

A recent search retrieved one good thumbnail related to a now-removed photo with the filename web2.iadfw.net/antiques/ gifjpegs/pram.gif
You may be able to find it or similar results using the keywords:
wicker pram antiques
in a Google Images search

Happy surfing, strolling and perambulating.