"Cups are used for quenching thirst across a wide range of cultures and social classes, and different styles of cups may be used for different liquids or in different situations."

"Cups of different styles may be used for different types of liquids or other foodstuffs (e.g. teacups and measuring cups), in different situations (e.g. at water stations or in ceremonies and rituals), or for decoration.... Cups are an obvious improvement on using cupped hands or feet to hold liquids. They have almost certainly been used since before recorded history, and have been found at archaeological sites throughout the world. Prehistoric cups were sometimes fashioned from shells and hollowed out stones.... There is an evidence that the Roman Empire may have spread the use of cups throughout Europe, with notable examples including silver cups in Wales and a color-changing glass cup in ancient Thrace...."

I'm reading the Wikipedia entry "Cup."

I was contemplating cups as I was out running this morning, mainly because a familiar song lyric with the word "cup" came up again on my November-sunrise-running playlist, and I often get hung up on the idea in that song and in 2 other songs I've liked for a long time. Maybe it was the endorphins, but I got to imagining writing an entire book about cups and could see all the chapter headings. Back home at my desk, following my standard sitting-at-a-desk approach to exploring a sprawling concept, I looked up the word on Wikipedia.

I love the line "Cups are an obvious improvement on using cupped hands or feet to hold liquids." That slight deviation from Wikipedia flatness — "obvious" — amuses me. And then there are the 2 words that are so weird I didn't even see them on first read: "or feet."

What's the color-changing glass cup from Thrace? — you may wonder. It's the Lycurgus Cup — "a 4th-century Roman glass cage cup made of a dichroic glass, which shows a different colour depending on whether or not light is passing through it: red when lit from behind and green when lit from in front":

 

That's King Lycurgus who tries to kill Ambrosia after Ambrosia turned into a vine that twined itself around the king. The king eventually dies (in this myth) and Dionysus laughs at him.

Yes — I am answering unheard questions — my unwritten book includes the communion cup and the  cups in tarot cards. Yes, I have thought of bra cups and the World Cup and other trophies.

The song on my playlist was "Full Measure" by the Lovin' Spoonful, which begins: "The full measure of your giving/You don't yet understand/A cupful of living/That you hold in your hand." The other 2 "cup" songs are "Across the Universe" ("Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe") and "Danny's Song" ("Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup/Drink it up...").

If you're like me, you're wondering whether the Lovin' Spoonful cup was — like the "Across the Universe" cup and the "Danny's Song" cup — a paper cup.

Notice that all 3 songs visualize the cup as containing grand and exalted space — life, the universe, the world. Thus, this post gets my #1 all-time favorite tag, "big and small." And I'm making a new tag now — "cups" — and will add it retroactively, so wait an hour and click it, if you enjoy the random delights of the archive. While you're waiting, why not have a drink? Use a cup. It's obviously better than cupping your hands or your feet.