Charivari

 A quickie, before a 'planned outage' while I get an all-over rust in Dartmoor.

I was talking last night about the derivation of charivari. It doesn't look French, although it has been used in the name of an orchestra in a context that suggests Frenchness: Charivari Agréable. I have seen it only rarely, notably in the full name of the satirical (and defunct) 

Punch, or the London Charivari

which led me to suspect (wrongly, as so often) it was a nonsense word referring to a mixture – a gallimaufry...

<tangent>
(and where does that come from? The first two syllables suggest something to do with France. No time though)
</tangent>

...or pot pourri (France again). 

But it was indeed French albeit Late French...

<autobiographical-note>
(and I'd be in a better position to say what that was if I'd bitten the bullet in 1972 and studied The History of French paper, with a notoriously soporific lecturer who'd written the one essential text. I took the coward's way out and learnt Portuguese instead)
</autobiographical-note>

.... [ed. Four dots, because it's the end of a sentence.]

Thr OF form was, as Etymonline reports

chalivali "discordant noise made by pots and pans" (14c.), from Late Latin caribaria "a severe headache," from Greek karebaria "headache," from karē- "head" (from PIE root *ker- (1) "horn; head") + barys "heavy" (from PIE root *gwere- (1)

And if you follow that *gwere- link, you'll find that another meaning of that PIE (Proto Indo-European) root (meaning 'favour' – which makes sense when you think about it: the favour being the thumb on the scales). So that that orchestra's name  (Charivari Agréable) goes back to the same PIE root twice. I wonder whether they knew....

But my interlocutor (the bloke I was talking to) probably wouldn't care.

<autobiographical-signoff>
I've been enjoying the latest Charles Paris mystery, which is set in Edinburgh. The lead character is a down-at-heel actor, played by Bill Nighy. The last time he appeared on the Edinburgh Fringe was in 1976. Strange, I didn't see him, but I was there, appearing in the Oxford Theatre Group's No, we have some bananas –  Rowan Atkinson's one-man show (with a cast of nine).
</autobiographical-signoff>

Bye, b