World Wide Words -- 23 Sep 00
Michael Quinion
words at QUINION.COM
Sat Sep 23 07:44:23 UTC 2000
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 206 Saturday 23 September 2000
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent weekly to more than 9,000 subscribers in at least 97 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion ISSN 1470-1448 Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Web: <http://www.quinion.com/words/> E-mail: <words at quinion.com>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
--------
1. Notes and comments.
2. Book Review: Word Parts Dictionary.
3. Weird Words: Balderdash.
4. In Brief: Shopbot, Simputer, Voice Portal.
5. Q & A: Hoo-ha, Synecdoche versus metonymy, Arfanarf.
6. The Last Word.
7. Administration: How to leave the list, Copyright.
1. Notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
WEB SITE Further sections have now been updated with the new
navigation system, leaving only the articles and book reviews and
some of the support pages to be changed. Bear with me!
2. Book Review: Word Parts Dictionary
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Now we shall have naming of parts. English is full of words that
contain Latin or Greek roots. Some are so buried in the language we
have to consult a dictionary to discover that 'hierarchical'
derives from a Greek root meaning sacred, or that a 'galaxy' is
actually something milky, as in the Milky Way. If you're not a
classical scholar (and so few of us are these days), it will not be
obvious that a medical term that ends in '-itis' implies an
inflammation, or a word that begins 'allo-' suggests something
different or other.
But once we're attuned to these forms, it becomes easier to spot
their relatives: 'allopathy' is treatment of disease by the
application of its opposite or antidote, as conventional medicine
does; 'galactase' is an enzyme present in the milk of many animals;
'phlebitis' is clearly an inflammatory condition (of a vein, as it
happens, an example of the prefix 'phlebo-'); and so on.
This is the aim of Michael Sheehan's new book, which lays out the
prefixes, suffixes, and roots that are the basis for so much of
both our specialist and general vocabularies. Not all of them are
from the classical languages by any means: there are Germanic and
native English roots here too, though Latin and Greek predominate.
The book is in three parts: firstly a glossary of forms, giving
English meanings and an example for each; the second section is a
reverse dictionary, enabling you to look up forms that match given
senses; the third is a classified list under a variety of headings,
such as the environment, numbers, or shapes. A lack is that he
gives no etymologies for any of his entries, so you've no way of
knowing whether the form originated in Latin, Greek, or another
language.
Do not expect great depth of exposition here - this is a useful
aide memoire, an expanded checklist, not a fully-fledged
dictionary. It will serve its purpose most effectively if you
consult it in conjunction with a good desk dictionary, but the
combination will not be cheap.
[Sheehan, Michael J, _Word Parts Dictionary_, published by
McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC, ISBN 0-7864-0819-7; pp227;
hardback; list price US$39.95. See <http://www.mcfarlandpub.com>]
3. Weird Words: Balderdash
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Senseless talk or writing; nonsense.
This standard dictionary definition may seem anodyne, lacking the
fire and passion that so often comes attached to the word. It's
most often reserved for circumstances in which common-or-garden
invective would be thought inadequate.
This has been so for two centuries. Here is the grandly-named
Victorian historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, expressing himself
forcefully in a footnote in his _History of England from James II_:
"I am almost ashamed to quote such nauseous balderdash". One of the
great wielders of 'balderdash' - it seems somehow to be akin to a
bludgeon - was the American journalist H L Mencken; he was in fine
form castigating "the general run of business and professional men"
in his book _In Defense of Women_: "Their very capacity to master
and retain such balderdash as constitutes their stock in trade is
proof of their inferior mentality".
It's a pity that such a fine word should come of unknown stock, but
we really don't have a clear idea where it comes from. Some argue
its origin lies in the Welsh 'baldorddus', idle noisy talk or
chatter, while others point to related words in Dutch, Icelandic
and Norwegian, such as the Dutch 'balderen', to roar or thunder. It
turns up first around the time of Shakespeare with the meaning of
froth or frothy liquid, or a jumbled mixture of liquids, such as
milk and beer, or beer and wine. Only in the latter part of the
seventeenth century did it move towards its modern meaning, through
the idea of speech or writing being a senseless jumble, hence
nonsense or trash.
It has also been used as a verb, meaning to make a jumbled mixture
of ingredients or, in plain English, to adulterate. Tobias Smollett
employed it in his caustic work _Travels through France and Italy_
in 1766 to refer to French wine: "That which is made by the
peasants, both red and white, is generally genuine: but the wine-
merchants of Nice brew and balderdash, and even mix it with
pigeons' dung and quick-lime".
4. In Brief
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SHOPBOT These are software programs that search the Web for the
best prices for some goods. They'll even bid on online auctions for
you. At least, that's the idea; a competition between them held in
Boston in July showed that there's a lot more work to be done
before they're practicable.
SIMPUTER A 'simputer' is a simple computer. It was reported
recently that India's computer businesses are planning to market
one for about 9000 rupees (US$200), so making PCs about the same
price as colour televisions. It's part of a governmental push to
increase computer and Internet usage.
VOICE PORTAL This is a weird combination of the World Wide Web and
the telephone. It understands your spoken requests, searches the
Web for the information you ask for and then relays it to you using
a synthesised voice. It's the other half of V-commerce, featured
here recently.
5. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[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 WWWords Web site.]
-----------
Q. Your use of 'hoo-ha' this week prompts me to ask your learned
advice on its origins, and on those of the possibly related idiom,
'just a bunch of hooey' [Paul Wagner]
A. So far as my sources know, 'hoo-ha' and 'hooey' are not related,
though the evidence suggests that people do at times confuse them.
'Hoo-ha' is the easy one; this has been recorded since the early
1930s, then as now with the sense of a commotion, a rumpus or a row
(though T S Eliot used it early on with the idea of a fit of fear
or anxiety, so making it very close in meaning to a case of the
'heebie-jeebies', a sense I'm told it has also had in Australian
slang). It has various spellings, such as 'hoo-hah', with and
without the hyphen. It seems very likely that it came from Yiddish
'hu-ha' for an uproar or hullabaloo, which in turn probably derives
from a Polish exclamation.
'Hooey' has the main sense of nonsense or rubbish. It's a little
older than 'hoo-ha', being recorded first about 1912. Its origin is
less well attested and none of the many dictionaries I consulted
ventured an opinion. However, Jonathan Green, in the _Cassell
Dictionary of Slang_, suggests it might come from a Russian slang
term for the penis.
-----------
Q. Can you tell me whether the words 'synecdoche' and 'metonymy'
mean the same thing? [Phil Murphy]
A. Both are figures of speech used in rhetoric. They're not the
same thing, though metonymy is often interpreted so widely that
synecdoche can be regarded as a special case of it.
Let's take synecdoche first (which, by the way, is pronounced as
/sI'nEkd at ki/ or, roughly, as si-NECK-de-key). You use this when you
speak of a part of something but mean the whole thing. When Patrick
O'Brian has Captain Jack Aubrey tell his first lieutenant to "let
the hands go to dinner" he's employing synecdoche, because he's
using a part (the hand) for the whole man. You can also reverse the
whole and the part, so using a word for something when you only
mean part of it. This often comes up in sport: a commentator might
say that "The West Indies has lost to England" when he means that
the West Indian team has lost to the English one. 'America' is
often used as synecdoche in this second sense, as the word refers
to the whole continent but is frequently applied to a part of it,
the USA.
Metonymy is similar, but uses something more generally or loosely
associated with a concept to stand in for it. When Americans speak
of the Oval Office, for example, they are really referring to the
activity within it, the position or function of the President. It's
a linked term, and so a metonym. British writers refer similarly to
the Crown, when they're really discussing the powers, authority and
responsibilities of the monarchy, which is symbolised by the crown.
The difference between synecdoche and metonymy is that in metonymy
the word you employ is linked to the concept you are really talking
about, but isn't actually a part of it. Another example is 'the
turf' for horse racing. But the distinction isn't always obvious
and often can't be rigorously applied, and many people use metonymy
to mean both.
In his story _Here Lies Miss Groby_, James Thurber wrote about his
English teacher's attempts to explain metonymy by talking about
"the container for the thing contained". This sounds like
synecdoche rather than metonymy, but Miss Groby's examples show she
really meant metonymy. For example, when Shakespeare had Antony say
in _Julius Caesar_: "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your
ears" he was speaking figuratively of the thing the ears contained
- that is, their function, their ability to listen, not some
literal component. Thurber recalled that he lay awake that night
trying to find an example of the reverse idea and came up with an
image of an angry wife about to bash hubby over the head with a
bottle of Grade A, saying "Get away from me or I'll hit you with
the milk". That's metonymy all right, but you can argue it's also
synecdoche, because milk is an essential component part of a bottle
of milk, not just something associated with it.
-----------
Q. I've only heard this word once - in a trivia game - and I've
not checked it out in the OED, since I don't own one. But it's a
great sounding word and I thought maybe it's worth checking. The
word is 'arfarfanarf' and means, I believe, very drunk. [Jeffrey]
A. It's an old bit of Cockney slang, dating from the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, and quite defunct. Your transcription
isn't quite correct: it's 'arfanarf', a run-together slack-jawed
way of saying 'half-and-half'. This was a mixture of ale and porter
in equal proportions, a popular concoction of the period
(elsewhere, and at different times, it was created from equal
proportions of mild and bitter, or old and mild, various types of
beers; some of them, such as porter, are now almost as rare as the
expression itself). So someone who was 'arfanarf' had drunk too
many pints of some version of this mixture.
6. The Last Word
-------------------------------------------------------------------
'Serendipity' has just been voted Britain's favourite word, in an
informal and highly unsystematic survey organised by Bob Geldof in
preparation for the World Festival of Literature, which begins
today in London. Harry Potter (nearly) rules, as second place was
taken by 'quidditch', the game the wizards play in the books. Third
was 'love', while 'peace' and 'why' were tied fourth; 'faith' and
'hope' were fifth and sixth, but 'charity' was unplaced.
7. Administration
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* To join the list, send the message SUBSCRIBE WORLDWIDEWORDS to
the list server address <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org>.
The subject line of your message will be ignored. To leave the
list, instead send the message SIGNOFF WORLDWIDEWORDS. For a
complete list of commands, send INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS.
* WORLD WIDE WORDS is copyright (c) Michael B Quinion 2000. You
may reproduce this mailing in whole or in part in other free
media provided that you acknowledge the source and quote the
Web address of <http://www.quinion.com/words/>.
===================================================================
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list