Stephen Colbert chats with a bird about the other bird that rested on Bernie Sanders’ podium when he was giving a speech in Portland, Oregon. There was something extraordinarily touching about the moment and Sanders’s’ response and the crowd went wild.
Colbert seems amused that all he has to do is mention Sanders’s name and his studio audience cheers loudly.
Pretty sure it’s “caucoxen”
Interestingly not Latin (so he’s dead wrong on the plural)
from the OED
“origin obscure.
Alleged to have been used in Boston U.S. before 1724; quotations go back to 1763. Already in 1774 Gordon ( Hist. Amer. Rev.) could obtain no ‘satisfactory account of the origin of the name’. Mr. Pickering, in 1816, as a mere guess, thought it ‘not improbable that caucus might be a corruption of caulkers’, the word “meetings” being understood’. For this, and the more detailed statement quoted in Webster, there is absolutely no evidence beyond the similarity of sound; and the word was actually in use before the date (1770) of the event mentioned in Webster. Dr. J. H. Trumbull ( Proc. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 1872) has suggested possible derivation from an Algonquin word cau′-cau-as′u, which occurs in Capt. Smith’s Virginia 23, as Caw-cawaassough ‘one who advises, urges, encourages’, from a verb meaning primarily ‘to talk to’, hence ‘to give counsel, advise, encourage’, and ‘to urge, promote, incite to action’. For such a derivation there is claimed the general suitability of the form and sense, and it is stated that Indian names were commonly taken by clubs and secret associations in New England; but there appears to be no direct evidence.”
That was a classic beautiful moment.
Still won’t change my opinions (non-American so can’t vote in US elections) -- which already include that Sanders is a good man who would make a great POTUS although I prefer Hillary Clinton and feel pretty sure she’ll win but still. Very cool.