Panglossian,

When I first saw this word, Panglossian, I immediately thought of the ancient Greek protector of all Nature, �Great Pan�, (and the modern American protector of all Food, �Teflon Pan�).

Pan lived in the beautiful paradise of �Arcadia� and you will remember the lovely song, �The Pipes of Pan�, from the musical, �The Arcadians�.

My friend used to sing a parody of the words:

               �Come follow, follow, follow,

�That very, very, very fat man:

               �His name is Brown;

�He�s going down,

               �To smoke the Pipes of Pan!�

At school, my friend was bottom of the class in Mathematics!

He is now an International Banker!

This year, because of the serious world financial situation, there are drastic changes to his annual salary, (which is normally seven million pounds per annum).  Henceforth, he must provide his own pencils, free of charge!

Many of you are keenly interested in demography.  The prefix �demo-� means �people� and the suffix ��graphy� means �writing�.  (No, the opposite of �Topography� is not �Bottomography�!)

You will know that the �Ossians� was the original name for the �Aussians�, (now, �The Aussies�), the people who settled in Australia.  Many of these are world-famous: probably, the best-known of them is �The Wizard of Oz�.

However, in the word �Panglossian�, what do the letters G.L. represent?

It is a similar construction to �The Left East�; �The Right East�; and �The Middle East�.

In the United Kingdom we have �Great Britain�.  Because London is the capital city, it took the title, �Greater London�, although the rest of the population don�t agree with this description!

Historically, you will know that many cities suffered damage from fires, for example �The Fire of Newcastle�.  London always wants to be better, so it had �The Great Fire of London�!

To continue: we have �Greater London Aussie�, because �G.L.� means �Greater London�.

But what does the word �pan� represent?

Virtually all words are a mixture of different national characteristics.  Even the Chinese word �Chow!� (�Food�), has entered the Italian language as �Ciao!� (�Hello, I have just eaten some food�, or �Goodbye, I�m just going to eat some food!�)

The first syllable, �pan� is the word used in the United States to describe �a person�s face�, (�Pan American� = �an American face�; �Panda� = �a Father�s face�, �Panama�, = �a Mother�s face�; etc.

Panglossian = the look of surprise on the face of an Australian, on first seeing London!

Les