Tag: Portmanteau for a radical environmentalist crossword clue

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10 Vegetable in borscht : BEET

Borscht is a beetroot soup that originated in Ukraine. Borscht can be served both hot and cold.

15 Drifting ice : FLOE

An ice floe is a sheet of ice that has separated from an ice field and is floating freely on the surface of the ocean.

16 Stow, as cargo : LADE

The verb “to lade” meaning “to load” comes from an Old English word “hladan”. “Lade” also used to mean “draw water” and indeed gave us our word “ladle”. So “lade” and “ladle” are close cousins.

Cargo is freight carried by some vehicle. The term “cargo” comes into English via Spanish, ultimately deriving from the Latin “carricare” meaning “to load on a cart”.

20 Source of bills, for short : ATM

Automatic Teller Machine (ATM)

23 Props for “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” in “Annie” : MOPS

“It’s the Hard-Knock Life” is a song written for the 1977 Broadway musical “Annie”. The musical was based on Harold Gray’s comic strip “Little Orphan Annie”. There were two subsequent film adaptations, both really quite successful, including one released in 1982 directed by John Huston of all people. “Annie” was Huston’s only ever musical.

25 Starter on the mound, often : ACE PITCHER

That would be baseball.

28 Censoring sounds : BLEEPS

The original “censor” was an officer in ancient Rome who had responsibility for taking the “census”, as well as supervising public morality.

30 ___ Gatos, Calif. : LOS

The town of Los Gatos is in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The town’s name translates from Spanish to “the Cats” and comes from the old name for the area “Cat’s Corner”. That name is a reference to the cougars that roamed the foothills in which the town is located.

31 Sch. in Columbus : OSU

Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus was founded back in 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The athletic teams of OSU are called the Buckeyes, named after the state tree of Ohio. In turn the buckeye tree gets its name from the appearance of its fruit, a dark nut with a light patch thought to resemble a “buck’s eye”. The school’s athletic mascot was introduced in 1965, and is an anthropomorphic buckeye nut named Brutus Buckeye.

The city of Columbus, Ohio is a “purpose-built” state capital. The state legislature selected the location for Ohio’s new capital in 1812, choosing dense forest land with no significant settlement, largely due to its strategic location in the center of the state. The name was chosen in honor of the explorer Christopher Columbus.

33 Longtime home appliance brand : AMANA

The Amana Corporation takes its name from the location of its original headquarters, in Middle Amana, Iowa. Today, the Amana name is very much associated with household appliances. The company was founded in 1934 to manufacture commercial walk-in coolers.

35 What “X” might mean : TEN

The number 10 is written as X in Roman numerals.

36 Type who’s out of touch with reality : SPACE CASE

The expression “space cadet” is used to describe someone who is eccentric and disconnected from reality. It may even imply that the person is a user of hallucinogens. The phrase has been around since the sixties, and may be derived from the science fiction TV show “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” that aired in the fifties.

42 Church donation : TITHE

Traditionally, a tithe is a payment of one tenth of a person’s annual income and is usually given to a church. Tithing is a practice taught in many traditions, and according to a 2002 survey, about 3% of American adults donate 10% or more of their income to a church.

48 Something about nothing, perhaps : ADO

The phrase “much ado about nothing” was coined by William Shakespeare when he used it as the title of his celebrated comedy. We use the phrase to describe a big fuss over a trifling issue.

49 Candy piece with white sprinkles : SNO-CAP

Sno-Caps are a brand of candy usually only available in movie theaters. Sno-caps have been around since the 1920s, would you believe?

50 Metaphorical source of some government funds : PORK BARREL

Pork-barrel politics have been around for a long time. The term “pork barrel” originated in 1863 in a story by Edward Everett Hale called “The Children of the Public”. Hale used the phrase in a positive way, describing any public spending by the government for the benefit of citizens. By the 1870s the term “pork” had negative connotations, with references in the press to “pork-barrel bills” in Congress. Nowadays “pork” really applies to any government project designed to benefit a relatively small group of citizens (usually potential voters for a particular politician) with the bill being paid by the citizenry as a whole.

54 Snack (on) : NOSH

Our word “nosh” has been around since the late fifties, when it was imported from the Yiddish word “nashn” meaning “to nibble”. We use “nosh” as a noun that means “snack”, or as a verb meaning “to eat between meals”.

59 “By Jove!” : I SAY!

“By Jove!” is a mild oath that calls on the Roman god Jove, who was also known as Jupiter.

63 Jay with a “Garage” : LENO

“Jay Leno’s Garage” is a weekly show that has aired on TV since 2015. The show originated as a web series for NBC, but popularity dictated a move to primetime. The show focuses on Jay Leno’s Big Dog Garage located in Burbank, California that houses his huge collection of cars and motorcycles.

65 Desktop accessory : MOUSE

The computer mouse was invented at the Stanford Research Institute in 1963, by one Douglas Engelbart. Sadly for him, his patent ran out before mice became standard equipment on computers, so he never made any money from his amazing invention.

66 Home of the tree of knowledge : EDEN

In the Christian tradition, the “fall of man” took place in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This went against the bidding of God, and was at the urging of the serpent. As a result, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden to prevent them from becoming immortal by eating from the tree of life. The first humans had transitioned from a state of innocent obedience to a state of guilty disobedience.

Down

1 Classic rock standard with Spanish lyrics : LA BAMBA

“La Bamba” is a folk song from Veracruz, Mexico that became a huge hit for Ritchie Valens in 1958. iT appears in the oft-cited list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time compiled by “Rolling Stone” magazine, and is the only song in the list not sung in English. The song lent its name to the 1987 biopic about the life of Ritchie Valens, starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens.

4 London’s ___ Gardens : KEW

Kew Gardens is a beautiful location in southwest London that was formerly known as the Royal Botanic Gardens. Kew Gardens has the world’s largest collection of different living plants.

6 Company with a “spokesduck” : AFLAC

In 1999, Aflac (American Family Life Assurance Company) was huge in the world of insurance but it wasn’t a household name, so a New York advertising agency was given the task of making the Aflac brand more memorable. One of the agency’s art directors, while walking around Central Park one lunchtime, heard a duck quacking and in his mind linked it with “Aflac”, and that duck has been “Aflacking” ever since …

7 Division of the earth’s crust : PLATE

The outermost shell of our planet comprises eight major tectonic plates, and numerous small plates. The heat from within the Earth causes the plates to move, albeit very slowly, creating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions where the plates meet each other.

8 Dawn goddess : EOS

In Greek mythology, Eos was the goddess of the dawn who lived at the edge of the ocean. Eos would wake each morning to welcome her brother Helios the sun. The Roman equivalent of Eos was Aurora. Rather delightfully, Homer referred to Eos as “rosy-fingered dawn” in both “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.

10 Mont ___, highest of the Alps : BLANC

Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps. The name “Mont Blanc” translates from French into “white mountain”. The mountain lies on the border between France and Italy, and it has been generally accepted for decades that the summit lies within French territory. However, there have been official claims that the summit does in fact fall within the borders of Italy.

12 Attorney general under Ronald Reagan : ED MEESE

Ed Meese was born in Oakland, California and spent 24 years in the office of the Treasurer of Alameda County, the county in which I used to live. After military service, Meese earned himself a law degree at UC Berkeley. Later, as chief of staff for President Reagan, he was instrumental in a famous decision to crack down on student protesters at Berkeley which resulted in one protester dying and a two-week occupation of the city by the California National Guard.

13 Lab simulation : TEST RUN

Our term “laboratory”, often shortened to “lab”, comes from the Medieval Latin word “laboratorium” meaning “place for labor, work”. This in turn comes from the Latin verb “laborare” meaning “to work”.

18 Pretend to be, at a Halloween party, say : GO AS

All Saints’ Day is November 1st each year. The day before All Saints’ Day is All Hallows’ Eve, better known by the Scottish term “Halloween”.

27 College in New Rochelle, N.Y. : IONA

Iona College is a Roman Catholic school run by Christian Brothers in New Rochelle, New York. The Brothers named the college for the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland on which is located Iona Abbey, which was founded by St. Columba. The school’s sports teams are called the Iona Gaels, and the team mascot goes by the name “Killian”.

29 Soda can features : POP TABS

The term “pop top” refers to a whole family of designs for opening the top of a soda can. The oldest method is the “pull tab” or “ring pull”, invented in Canada in 1956. The design was long-lived, but it had its problems, so the world heaved a sigh of relief with the invention of the stay-on-tab in 1975. The new design led to less injuries and eliminated all those used pull tabs that littered the streets.

33 Best ___ (Academy Awards category) : ACTOR

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is the organization that gives the annual Academy Awards, also known as the “Oscars”. The root of the name “Oscar” is hotly debated, but what is agreed is that the award was officially named “Oscar” in 1939. The first Academy Awards were presented at a brunch in 1929 with an audience of just 29 people. The Awards ceremony is a slightly bigger event these days …

37 Opera set in Egypt : AIDA

“Aida” is a celebrated opera by Giuseppe Verdi that is based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Mariette also designed the costumes and stages for the opening performance. The opera was first staged in 1871 in an opera house in Cairo. In the storyline, Aida is an Ethiopian princess brought into Egypt as a slave. Radamès is an Egyptian commander who falls in love with her, and then complications arise!

38 “Micro” or “macro” subject, for short : ECON

Macroeconomics is the study of economies as a whole, rather than individual markets. Microeconomics is focused on the actions of individual entities like companies or individuals, and how these actions impact specific markets.

39 Holder of compressed data : ZIP FILE

A .ZIP file is one that has been compressed. The ZIP file format was co-developed and introduced by programmer Phil Katz in 1989.

41 Relevant : GERMANE

Something that is germane is relevant. “Germane” originally meant “having the same parents”, but the term was used more figuratively to mean “on topic” by William Shakespeare in “Hamlet”. That’s the way we’ve been using the word since “Hamlet” was first performed in the 1600s.

44 Portmanteau for a radical environmentalist : ECOTEUR

“Ecotage” is an act of “sabotage” in the name of environmentalism.

There is a story that disgruntled textile workers would kick their wooden shoes, called “sabots”, into the looms in order to disable them so that they didn’t have to work. This act of vandalism was named for the shoe, an act of … “sabotage”.

57 Jazz singer Sylvia : SYMS

Sylvia Syms was a jazz singer from New York. Frank Sinatra called Syms the “world’s greatest saloon singer”, and gave her the nickname “Buddha”. Syms actually died on stage, suffering a heart attack at the age of 74.