LKFs (Little Known Facts)

Working as a copy editor at Traditional Home, I have become a font—yes, that’s “font,” not “fount”—of LKFs (Little Known Facts) and language usage.

Think a “gimp” is derogatory slang for someone who walks with a limp? Well, that, too, but it is also an ornamental flat braid used as a trimming.

Does a “fauteuil” sound like something that might malfunction in Gypsy Rose Lee’s wardrobe? It is an upholstered chair with open arms. And in case you’ve been lying (not laying, as I’m sure you are aware) awake at nights wondering whether to italicize fauteuil (no quotation marks around a special term on second reference), it takes no italics. Even though it is a French word, it is used commonly enough in English to be in Webster’s, and therefore needs no italics. If it were not in Webster’s, we would italicize away. And if you believe I am taking liberties by saying Webster’s instead of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictonary, Eleventh Edition, I’m just that kind of a girl.

By such wee judgments and arcane rules is the life of a copy editor ruled. (It is for our breed that the T-shirt asking whether “anal retentive” has a hyphen was designed. Well, it depends. In noun use—say that you are talking about a person who is an “anal retentive”—it does not take a hyphen. In adjectival use—say you are talking about a person who has “anal-retentive tendencies,” it does. Hey, what’s so anal-retentive about that?)

Sometimes our writers use terms so obscure that researching them turns into a mini history lesson. Our flamboyant food editor Carroll Stoner (her favorite word is “fabulous!”—you can hear the exclamation point in her voice) has a fun piece coming up in our July issue about a cooking school in the Adirondacks in which fiddlehead ferns (what a jolly Appalachian ring that has to it) and ramps are used. As it turns out, ramps are a sort of wild onion, also sometimes referred to as “wild leeks,” that Food Lover’s Companion (a handy little book chock full of LKFs to keep in your kitchen, by the way) politely describes as having an “assertive garlicky-onion” flavor. When I googled it (vaguely obscene sounding verb, that) I discovered that June Snow of the Akron Beacon-Journal described it more colorfully as “like fried green onions with a dash of funky feet.” Funky feet flavor or not, it is a fabulous piece, Carroll dahling, fabulous!

What really thrilled me, though, was to learn that ramps are related to rampion (Latin name, Campanula rapunculus L.) the European herb that Rapunzel’s mother craved while pregnant. It was while stealing rampion from a crone’s garden by moonlight that Rapunzel’s father was caught and ordered to turn over his firstborn (“firstborn” is one word, not hyphenated). I happen to like “Rapunzel” because although the prince who climbs her hair up to her tower is cuter than a speckled pup, it is Rapunzel who finds the resources to escape within her own body by growing her hair—but that is a digression from our main topic here that I would question rather sharply if one of our writers tried to get it by me.

Readers, if you have any comments or questions about design or cooking terms or language usage in general that you see in the magazine, write us and we’ll discuss them in a future entry. In this techno world we live in, a good blog discussion is almost as exciting as the bustle around the library reference desk used to be on a Saturday night.