Scape, landscape, escape
SCAPE, n. In my part of the world (the northeastern United States), late spring and early summer is the season to eat garlic scapes, which are the long, curly stems of the plant.
A garlic scape.
They often grow in these beautiful, twisty loops, but their name’s etymological path into English is straight: “scape” comes directly from Latin “scapus” meaning “shaft, stem,” which is in turn from Greek “skapos,” meaning “staff, rod.” These words are also the root of English “scepter,” so please let’s all imagine a fae monarch using a scape as a scepter.
Despite appearances, “scape” does not have anything to do with “landscape,” which comes to us from Dutch “landschap,” meaning a painting of a view of nature, and prior to that, a region—in Dutch, adding “-sc(h)ap” to a word is like adding “-ship” in English.
Nor does the edible “scape” relate to “escape,” which takes a garlic-scape-like path from Latin “cappa,” meaning mantle or cape, through a proposed Vulgar Latin verb “excappare,” meaning “to get out of one’s cape, to leave a pursuer with just one’s cape” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which was too wonderful not to include.
Speaking of escapes, here are some recent small-r romance reads I’ve enjoyed:
Masks and Shadows (cis queer? f/castrato who might be nonbinary, historical, fantasy) by Stephanie Burgis. This might technically be more fantasy than romance, but either way it’s a great time. The story follows a large cast through the halls of Eszterháza Palace, the “Hungarian Versailles,” in the 1760s, and Haydn is a minor character. There’s an opera in the story, naturally, and the book feels a little like an opera—masquerades, chance meetings in gardens at midnight, you know, the good stuff—and just as I was thinking “wow, the author seems really knowledgeable about music and this moment in history,” I arrived at the note in the back of the book explaining that she had stopped writing her dissertation in music history in order to write this novel. It’s not a historical setting that I’ve encountered in romance, and I loved it. (It’s been a few weeks since I read this, so I’m not sure I can give accurate content guidance, but there’s some violence, blood, fire, and some minor characters are rude and bigoted about the castrato.)
Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (cis bi f/cis het m, contemporary) by Alexis Hall. This book is set on a baking show, and it’s delightfully queer. I will provide to you, my readers, the spoiler I needed in order to enjoy it: this book has a love triangle in it. The guy you don’t like? He’s not the hero. I wish we’d seen Rosaline spend a little more time with the guy I did like, but I loved her and the rest of the cast enough to forgive this book for not being as much of a romance as I expected. It’s charming, the supporting characters are very funny, and as always, Alexis Hall’s love of accents and wordplay shines through. Content guidance from the author.
