Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Nov. 24, 2012)

On Friendship

Give me the avowed, erect and manly foe:

Firm I can meet, perhaps return the blow:

Buy of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,

Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend.

…George Canning

English Proverb

The sea refuses no river.

From the Word Lab

Boo

In the Viking tradition, Bo or Boh was a fierce Gothic captain and a son of Odin. When Viking troops surprised their enemies they invoke his name, calling out Bo! The custom lives on in Britain where it is customary to shout “Boo!” when taking someone by surprise.

To boo, as in the production of a sound in imitation of the mooing of a cow, is to show disapproval, contempt, or dislike. Booing often occurs at performances, where an audience dissatisfied with the performance may loudly make the sound like that of a herd of cows to show their dissatisfaction.

Boo hoo

The term is imitation of the sound of someone crying or sobbing.

Can be used sarcastically. Also, nursery talk.

Entry in an Autograph Album

Yours till the sidewalks.

From My Persian Dictionary

Jánn: fairy

Bálábán: falcon

Sháhín: royal falcon

Dár-bín: far-sighted

What’s in a Name?

Kambourian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, kambour is defined as hunchback(ed), crooked, warped.

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CK Garabed

Weekly Columnist

C.K. Garabed (a.k.a. Charles Kasbarian) has been active in the Armenian Church and Armenian community organizations all his life. As a writer and editor, he has been a keen observer of, and outspoken commentator on, political and social matters affecting Armenian Americans. He has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Reporter and the AGBU Literary Quarterly, “ARARAT.” For the last 30 years, Garabed has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly. He produces a weekly column called “Uncle Garabed's Notebook,” in which he presents an assortment of tales, anecdotes, poems, riddles, and trivia; for the past 10 years, each column has contained a deconstruction of an Armenian surname. He believes his greatest accomplishment in life, and his contribution to the Armenian nation, has been the espousing of Aghavni, and the begetting of Antranig and Lucine.

Latest posts by CK Garabed (see all)

• A Reminiscence: John Najarian - February 19, 2020
• Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Aug. 5, 2017) - August 7, 2017
• Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (July 22, 2017) - July 22, 2017