The Straight Dope 05/27/2005

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 05/27/2005

Dear Cecil:

When I was in college my brother told me that Ludwig van
Beethoven was partially black. He said that it was common
knowledge when Beethoven was alive that he was of
"Moorish" complexion and ancestry. What's the scoop? Was
he black, or--more to the point--was he pure white?
--Chris Crutchfield, Saint Paul, Minnesota

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Cecil replies:

Beethoven black? Sure, why not? If we accept the
"one-drop rule" that long prevailed in the U.S., namely
that any black African ancestry whatsoever makes you
black, and if we further buy the argument sometimes heard
that everyone on earth is at least 50th cousin to
everyone else--that is, has a common ancestor no more
than 50 generations back--then everybody's black, or more
accurately, as Santana once put it, everybody's
everything. If on the other hand we're looking for
documented proof that Beethoven's ancestry can be
unambiguously traced to somewhere south of the Sahara,
that could be tougher to come by, although as is commonly
the case in these matters it can't be entirely ruled
out.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050527.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

Could you tell me more about the words fuzz, pigs, and
cops and how they pertain to police? -- Mike Paproski

SDSTAFF Dex replies:

Etymology is rarely an exact science. Words or phrases
spring up, become popular, and eventually most find their
way into print. The process takes time, and it's usually
difficult or impossible to track backwards to discover
where a particular word or phrase arose.

Let's start with cop. Cop the noun is almost certainly a
shortening of copper, which in turn derives from cop the
verb. The London police were called bobbies, after Sir
Robert Peel who advocated the creation of the
Metropolitan Police Force in 1828. Copper as slang for
policeman is first found in print in 1846, according to
the Oxford English Dictionary. The most likely
explanation is that it comes from the verb "to cop"
meaning to seize, capture, or snatch, dating from just
over a century earlier (1704.) 

The derivation of the verb is unclear. Most authorities
trace it to the French caper and before that to the Latin
capere, to seize, take. Other English words derived from
capere include capture. Thus, a copper is one who seizes.
An alternative theory is that to cop comes from the Dutch
kapen, meaning to take or to steal.

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcop.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 08/03/1984

Dear Cecil: 

Why do we have sinuses? Why, more specifically, do I have
a body part that causes me to live on Sudafed for months
at a time and still occasionally causes headaches so
severe I throw up? Are sinuses the upper respiratory
equivalent of tonsils, or what? --Julie P., Tempe,
Arizona  

Dear Julie:  

It is part of God's plan. Where else would the baby cold 
germs live? At any rate this theory is no worse than some
of the others that have been proposed. Here's a quick rundown: 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_302.html

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