World Wide Words -- 11 Sep 99
Michael Quinion
words at QUINION.COM
Sat Sep 11 07:55:18 UTC 1999
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 157 Saturday 11 September 1999
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Sent every Saturday to more than 5,900 subscribers in 93 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Web: <http://www.quinion.com/words/> E-mail: <words at quinion.com>
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Contents
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1. Turns of Phrase: Echo boomer.
2. In Brief: Brainfingers, digitopia, suicide seed.
3. Weird Words: Farb.
4. Q & A: Queer one's pitch, In like Flynn.
5. Affixia: -dom.
6. Administration: How to unsubscribe, Copyright.
1. Turns of Phrase: Echo boomer
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The advertising industry seems obsessed with finding fresh groups
to sell things to, and then giving them names that are more or
less meaningless. This is one of the more recent categories to
come from the marketers' imaginations, which may first have hit
the public gaze in an article in _Time_ in 1995. 'Echo boomers'
were born between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. They're
mostly the children of Baby Boomers (so, an echo of them, hence
the name) and their oldest members are now moving into adulthood.
They have been stereotyped as ethically diverse children of the
computer age, conformist, and untroubled by the generation gap.
This group is large (three times that of the preceding Generation
X) and is posing demographic problems, especially in education.
The group is known by several other names - as the 'Millennial
Generation' (or the 'Millennials') and as 'Generation Y' (or 'Gen
Y', with individuals being 'Gen Yers'). But the terminology is
muddled, with 'Generation Y' - as you might expect - being limited
by some to the children of Generation X parents, or those born
after about 1983. (And 'Generation X' itself is actually a
comparatively recent term, being popularised only by Douglas
Coupland's book of that title of 1991.)
Weaned on video games, Echo Boomers are the first generation to
claim the computer as birthright. They troubleshoot the home PC and
teach their parents the fine points of e-mail and Internet
navigation.
[_The Salt Lake Tribune_ March 1998]
Which isn't to say echo boomers aren't brand-conscious. Bombarded
by ad messages since birth, how could they not be? But marketing
experts say they form a less homogeneous market than their parents
did.
[_Business Week_, Feb. 1999]
2. In Brief
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BRAINFINGERS Two American computer scientists have developed a
Cyberlink system to help the disabled control computer systems
using brainwaves. It uses a headband that picks up ten frequency
bands in which signals can be triggered by moving facial muscles as
a substitute for fingers, hence the name.
DIGITOPIA One view of the future of digital broadcasting, which
has also been called a 'communicopia', in which we will all have
more television channels to view than we can shake a stick at, full
of clever techniques like user-selectable multiple camera views,
viewer-controlled instant replays, and Web pages choked with
statistics.
SUICIDE SEED The seed of a genetically modified plant which
contains a 'terminator gene' that makes the seed infertile, so
requiring the farmer to buy new seed each year; critics argue this
will have a devastatingly adverse financial impact on farmers,
especially in the developing countries.
3. Weird Words: Farb
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An inauthentic re-enactor of battles.
This is a jargon word of those groups of enthusiasts who go from
place to place re-creating historic battles. It's American in
origin, but is becoming known in other countries. Re-enactors are
deadly serious about getting the details of uniform and equipment
correct. They are dismissive of the people they call 'farbs' who
come for the fun but who don't take the necessary effort to get
things absolutely right, the sort of people who will mix up items
of uniform or carry a mobile phone or wear sunglasses. The term
dates from the 1960s; an explanation for its origin was given in
July 1986 in a re-enactors' magazine, the _Camp Chase Gazette_, in
which an early group leader, George Gorman, was said to have
formed it from the beginning of "Far be it from me to criticise
inauthentic uniforms". But it is also asserted that the word
derives from the German word 'farbe', colour, because such
inauthentic re-enactors are over-colourful compared with the dull
blues, greys or browns of the real Civil War uniforms that are the
principal concern of American re-enactors. It is said to have been
coined by Gerry Rolph, a German teacher who led one of the early
bands. The adjective 'farby' is also known and may indeed have
been the original form.
[I'm grateful to 'Jonah Begone' of the _Camp Chase Gazette_ for
setting out the stories about 'farb' on his Web site at
<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1422/forigin.html>, and to Robert
Fineberg, who stimulated my interest in the word.]
4. Q&A
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[Send queries to <qa at quinion.com>. Messages will be acknowledged,
but I can't guarantee to reply, as time is limited. If I can do so,
a response will appear both here and on the WWW Web site.]
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Q. I was struck by the phrase 'to queer the pitch' as I used it
the other day. What game? How did one queer the pitch? [Mike Page,
UK]
A. This is mainly a British expression, so I should explain that
when you 'queer someone's pitch' you spoil their chances of
success, usually deliberately. It came originally from the argot
of nineteenth-century market and street traders.
The word 'pitch' here is closely related to the other British
sense you give of an area of ground marked out for some sporting
purpose, such as a cricket pitch or football pitch. But it's a
different meaning of the word. It was the name given - then as now
- to a position in a street market or the like where a trader set
his barrow or stall. And for at least three hundred years 'queer'
had been a slang term for anything wrong, nasty, bad or worthless.
(It's thought this usage was the source of the sense of 'queer'
for homosexual, which, however, doesn't appear until the second
decade of the twentieth century.) It's surely closely connected
with the standard English 'queer' for anything strange, odd,
peculiar or eccentric, but exactly how we're unsure. The verb is
first recorded from 1812, but is probably rather older.
Putting them together, we have 'to queer one's pitch', which
originally meant to do something to spoil the success of a market
or street trader. Perhaps a nearby rival shouted louder or had
better patter, or an officious policeman 'interfered' with trade
by moving on an illegal trader.
Later in the century, it was taken over by theatrical people, who
used it in much the same way as they did 'upstage', to refer to an
actor doing something that stole the scene from others. Here's an
example from some stage reminiscences of 1866: "The smoke and
fumes of 'blue fire' which had been used to illuminate the fight
came up through the chinks of the stage, fit to choke a dozen
Macbeths, and - pardon the little bit of professional slang - poor
Jamie's 'pitch' was 'queered' with a vengeance".
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Q. What is the derivation of 'in like Flynn'? [Gustavo Bruckner]
A. Reference books almost universally assert that this set phrase,
an American expression meaning to be successful emphatically or
quickly, especially in regard to sexual seduction, refers to the
Australian-born actor Errol Flynn. His drinking, drug-taking and
sexual exploits were renowned, even for Hollywood, but the phrase
is said to have been coined following his acquittal in February
1943 for the statutory rape of a teenage girl. This seems to be
supported by the date of the first example recorded, in _American
Speech_ in December 1946, which cited a 1945 use in the sense of
something being done easily.
The trouble with this explanation is that examples of obviously
related expressions have now turned up from dates before Flynn's
trial. Barry Popik of the American Dialect Society found an
example from 1940, as well as this from the sports section of the
_San Francisco Examiner_ of 8 February 1942: "Answer these
questions correctly and your name is Flynn, meaning you're in,
provided you have two left feet and the written consent of your
parents". To judge from a newspaper reference he turned up from
early 1943, the phrase could by then also be shortened to 'I'm
Flynn', meaning "I'm in".
It's suggested by some writers that the phrase really originated
with another Flynn, Edward J Flynn - "Boss" Flynn - a campaign
manager for the Democratic party during FDR's presidency. Flynn's
machine in Chicago was so successful at winning elections that his
candidates seemed to get into office automatically.
The existence of the examples found by Mr Popik certainly suggest
the expression was at first unconnected with Errol Flynn, but that
it shifted its association when he became such a notorious figure.
Since then, it has altered again, because in 1967 a film, _In Like
Flint_, a spy spoof starring James Coburn, took its title by
wordplay from the older expression, and in turn caused many people
to think that the phrase was really 'in like Flint'.
5. Affixia: -dom
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This suffix often adds an abstract or generalised quality to the
word to which it's attached, as in 'freedom', the state of being
free, or 'wisdom', the condition of being wise. Like many affixes,
it was once a free-standing word, the Old English 'dom', which
meant a judgement or jurisdiction. So 'kingdom' is the land area
over which a king's authority holds. The suffix is still very much
alive, but modern creations most often suggest a class or group of
people, or of attitudes linked to them, such as 'officialdom'. Some
of these modern invented forms, such as 'stardom' or 'fogeydom',
have achieved a permanent or semi-permanent status. But many
transient or nonce compounds are created in books and newspapers,
most destined - thankfully - to be used just once: 'committeedom',
'groupiedom', 'outsiderdom', 'touchie-feeliedom' or 'wifedom'. One
from recent years that has become popular enough to look like a
stayer is 'computerdom'.
6. Administration
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