“Cherub” is modern colloquial English means basically the same thing as “putti” - cute baby-faced angel. This is despite the fact that “cherubim” in the Bible were described as doing serious stuff, like guarding the way into Eden with a flaming sword.
Madeline L’Engel was closer to the Biblical mark: Her cherubim (“I’m practically plural”) had way too many eyes, way too many wings, and random spurts of fire.
A “putto” is a cherubic angel. A “putta” is a prostitute.
(Actually, it’s “puttana” and it really just means “girl” in the same way that “putto” really just means “boy”. But not really.)
They’re also sometimes called a Cupid because the Roman god who was Venus’s son was usually depicted as an infant.
As Voltaire pointed out in his Philosophical Dictionary, “cherubim” appears to be etymologically derived from a Near Eastern word for “cattle”, and probably originally referred to the man-headed bull creatures guarding the gates of Babylonian cities, prioperly called Lamassu. They are often depicted with five legs, but this is actually a clever way of making them appear to be walking if viewed from the side, and standing formally still if viewed from the front. I doubt if they were actually thought to be five-legged.
How one would hold a flaming sword, though, I don’t know. Maybe Biblical ones had arms, like a centaur.
It’s interesting how many parallels one can find between Germany and Spain concerning sporting trends related to a new rising star. Ballesteros - Langer for golf. Orantes or Santana - Boris Becker for tennis (later Rafa Nadal, but tennis was alredy popular in Spain then). Michael Schumacher - Fernando Alonso for Formula 1. I had another example before starting this post but it has slipped my mind.
Boxers perhaps? Because a similar figure as the ones you mentioned for making a sport rise in popularity in the last 40 years was Henry Maske for boxing. I don’t know a Spanish equivalent, but I have never been that much into boxing so maybe I missed one.
No, boxing is not my cup of tea either. But Induráin and Jan Ullrich are another parallel, though cycling was popular in Spain before Induráin, but with him it went into full crazy mode. In Germany, I believe, not so much.
Ah, cycling is much more my cup of tea than boxing, I’ve been following the Tour de France for almost 50 years. Yeah, you’re right, Jan Ullrich (and his Team Telekom) really started a hype around cycling in Germany, but there already had been Didi Thurau’s legendary Tour of 1977 where he spent 15 days in yellow and won several stages, which at least caused a mini-hype pre-Ullrich.
Just realized I can no longer remember how to write;
1 or 1000 or 51 or 6 or even 500, in Roman Numerals!
IM LIVID
Hey, please be 101,6,50.
For those reading and stewing, use this.
Growing up around a lot of Spanish speakers in SoCal, I’m very familiar with the word puta.
The Welsh for ‘to iron’ is smwddio (pronounced ‘smooth-io’)
That depends on the period of the Catholic
All 21 horses scheduled to start the 2025 Kentuck Derbe are descendants of “Secretariat” z the 1973 triple crown winner.
Sorry - too late to edit. “Kentucky Derby”.
I think you mean 104,49
Aren’t nearly all thoroughbreds descendants of Secretariat and a handful of other champions?
I considered it, but using that syntax for 49 is nonstandard, so I chose to be conservative. The standard form for 49 is XLIX.