Jean Stapleton Was No Dingbat

I wrote this when Jean Stapleton passed away in 2013.

Jean Stapleton and her "Edith" character have both been national treasures. The Ediths of the world make it a better place, as they deal with the difficult people around them and as they try to do the right thing, even when it hurts, often making the plotters and schemers uncomfortable. While her television husband Archie touted himself as a Christian, Edith was the practicing Christian, always trying to be a calming influence on her angry, bigoted, temperamental husband, who called her a "dingbat." While Archie blustered and lashed out at the changing world around him, Edith played the understanding wife.

Jean Stapleton passed away May 31, 2013 at the age of 90. Nothing I write here could possibly do justice to what others have written or said about her. She gave us some delightful and hilarious moments in the 1970s, as well as some solemn ones too. R.I.P. Jean Stapleton, we'll miss you.

NOTE: I did an article in 2012 about "All In The Family," so for those interested: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/04/archie-bunker-lives-on.html 

 Photo of Jean Stapleton from the 1977 Tony Awards which was televised on the ABC network. (Photo is a public domain photo taken from Wikipdia)

WORD HISTORY:
Bat-This is the noun for the flying mammal. The "bat," as in "baseball bat," is likely not the same word, or even related, although the origins of "bat, the animal," are uncertain. English seems to have borrowed it from a dialect of Old Norse, which had "blaka, bakka," as forms with the meaning "flapper." At least "bakka" quite obviously came to be applied to the mammal, but in compounds like Swedish "nat(t)bakka" (night bat). Where Old Norse, from the North Germanic branch of Germanic (English is from the West Germanic branch), got the term is also unclear, as it seems to only appear in North Germanic, except that English borrowed it. With Old Norse speaking settlements in England, mainly in the north and east, the word seems to have taken quite some time to finally become the main word for "the flying mammal," and by that time the pronunciation had changed the "k" sound to "t." The original English word for "bat" was "hreremus," which then became "reremouse" and "rearmouse," with the literal meaning being more or less "flapping/fluttering mouse." (I've previously covered "mouse" and I'll be covering "rere/rear" soon). I can't be certain, but I seem to remember hearing "rearmouse" even used by some old timers when I was a kid, right after the Spanish-American War (I stole your punchline), but I'm far from certain about that. Anyway, "bat" finally became the standard English word like in the late 1500s or early 1600s, but "rearmouse" did remain in use as a dialect word. German has "Fledermaus" (pronounced much like "flayder-mouse"), also the name of a famous operetta by Johann Strauss, again pretty much "flutter(ing) mouse."