R.I.P. Phyllis Diller

I just wanted to say "goodbye" to one of the great people of comedy in my life, Phyllis Diller. She was a real pioneer for women in comedy, too, since nightclub acts by women were not really much accepted by the public years ago. Phyllis Diller changed all of that, and (addressed to conservatives) the world didn't end because of it; in fact, it became a better place, a funnier place. Her comedy act consisted mainly of making fun of herself, especially her housekeeping, her cooking and her "body." Her distinctive laugh became well known to Americans and she became something of a regular guest on talk and variety shows. Her close friendship with Bob Hope got her into several movies with Hope in the 1960s. She had so many great one liners, I can't recall them, at least in their entirety, but one about her cooking has stayed with me for probably 40 years now. It went something like this, "My cooking is so bad, the flies chipped in and fixed the screen on the door." She wore her hair and wigs in all sorts of wild styles, and when miniskirts became the rage in the mid to late 1960s, she wore them just to highlight her knobby knees. She was married a couple of times, but one of the enduring questions people had for some time was about "Fang," the name she used for her husband in her act. I can't recall the exact quote, but she eventually answered the much asked question with a quip of, "Fang is a permanent part of my act, my real husbands were just temporary." That may not be exact, but you get the drift.

So farewell to one of the comedy greats, Phyllis Diller. She lived a long life of 95 years; a life that produced so much laughter for the rest of us.

WORD HISTORY:
Laugh-This word goes back to Indo European "khleg/khlek," which had the notion of "make vocal noises besides speech." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "hlakhjanan," which meant "to laugh." This gave Old English a variety of dialectal forms like, "hlihhan," "hlehhan," which meant "to laugh," or "to laugh at." The "h" sound apparently was so prominent and guttural, it came to be spelled "gh," which was once pronounced, much like the closely related German "ch." The "ch" in many German words was often once a "hh," just like in some English words. Over time the sound changed in English to an "f" or "ff," but not the spelling, which left many people trying to learn English a bit perplexed. Later the spelling became "laughen," before the modern version. The noun form was derived from the verb. Common in the other Germanic languages: German, Low German Saxon and Dutch have "lachen," West Frisian has "laitsje," Danish and Norwegian have the much contracted "le," Icelandic has "hlaeje," and Swedish has "leende" (which means "to smile").