World Wide Words -- 15 Nov 03
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 14 19:41:56 UTC 2003
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 367 Saturday 15 November 2003
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Sent each Saturday to 18,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
<http://www.worldwidewords.org> <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Topical Words: McJob.
3. Sic!
4. Weird Words: Volvelle.
5. The Annual Fund Drive.
6. Q&A: He and she.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.
C. FAQ of the week.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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WHIP ROUND Following last week's piece, several people asked me
about the mysterious thing called a three-line whip, which often
turns up in reports of the British Parliament. The term "whip" is
also applied to the weekly circular sent out by each Chief Whip to
all their MPs notifying them of parliamentary business. The urgency
of the notice is marked by the number of underlinings. A one-line
whip refers to business considered routine and for which attendance
is optional; a two-line whip requires attendance unless a pair has
been organised with a member of the Opposition who also intends to
be absent. A three-line whip indicates business that is highly
important and for which attendance is mandatory.
KLIP News of updates to the Web site is now also available via the
Klip system (see http://www.serence.com/ for details).
2. Topical Words: McJob
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The Associated Press reported last Saturday that Jim Cantalupo, the
Chairman and CEO of the fast-food firm McDonald's, had published an
open letter to Merriam-Webster about the recently-published 11th
edition of their Collegiate Dictionary. He complained about the
inclusion in that work of the word "McJob", and for defining it as
"low paying and dead-end work".
The affairs of dictionary makers are rarely controversial. But it
does occasionally happen that words, or their definitions, become
contentious. And this isn't the first time that "McJob" has been in
the headlines. A report in the Independent newspaper in Britain in
1997 claimed that the Oxford English Dictionary had been advised on
legal grounds not to include the word, though this never led to
anything and the term is in the online OED.
There are several problems with Mr Cantalupo's objections. Not the
least of them, as Merriam-Webster was quick to point out, is that
they don't define the word in those pejorative terms, but use the
phrase "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides
little opportunity for advancement". They are not alone: the Fourth
Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, for example, says it
is "A job, usually in the retail or service sector, that is low
paying, often temporary, and offers minimal or no benefits or
opportunity for promotion". The online OED says: "An unstimulating,
low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the
expansion of the service sector". There's little that Mr Cantalupo
can dispute here; however unflattering it might appear to be to his
organisation, that is indeed what people mean by the term.
Critics might also argue that he should have complained five months
ago, when the Collegiate was first published. Actually, he's more
like 17 years too late. "McJob" appeared in the Washington Post in
1986, though it was the publication of Douglas Coupland's book
Generation X in 1991 that popularised it. In the decade since, it
has spread around most of the world.
The job of dictionaries, their editors argue, is to reflect the way
that the language is actually being used. Merriam-Webster rightly
say that the word is in wide general use (not just on the Internet,
as Mr Cantalupo asserts in his letter). They comment: "In editing
the Collegiate Dictionary, we bear in mind the guidance offered by
Noah Webster that the business of the lexicographer is to collect,
arrange, and define, as far as possible, all the words that belong
to a language, and leave the author to select from them at his
pleasure and according to his judgment'".
Mr Cantalupo also objects on the grounds that "McJOBS" is a
registered trademark of McDonald's used for the company's training
program for mentally and physically challenged people. McDonald's
has actually trademarked dozens of terms beginning in "Mc", such as
McDouble, McDrive, McExpress, McFamily, McFlurry, McHero, McKids,
McKroket, McMaco, McMenu, McMusic, McNifica, McNuggets, McOz,
McPlane, McPollo, McRib, McRoyal, McScholar, McSwing, and McWorld
(for the full list, see http://www.mcdonalds.com/legal/). This
plethora of terms, and the determined attempt on the part of the
company to associate "Mc" with McDonald's in the public mind, has
been all too successful.
A whole range of sarcastic or deprecatory "Mc" words has grown up.
Examples include "McPainting" (an unoriginal, paint-by-numbers type
of work), "McTheatre" (for hyped-up big-budget musicals that are
low on musical and artistic quality), and "McPolicy" (a political
policy which is mainly cosmetic). Another is "McMansion", which
entered the lexicon in Britain a decade ago as a derogatory term
for modest new homes, the architectural equivalent of the
hamburger. Related to these is "McDonaldisation", dating from about
1975, which the online OED defines in a carefully non-derogatory
way as "The spread of influence of the type of efficient,
standardized, corporate business or culture regarded as epitomized
by the McDonald's restaurant chain. More widely: the spread of the
influence of American culture". This spread might result, some say,
in a "McWorld".
One can't help feeling that McDonald's is on a loser, complaining
about just one example of a widespread trend, especially one that
has been stimulated by their own trademark practice. A famous libel
case brought by the firm in the UK in the 1990s resulted in the
term "McCensorship" being widely used. I'm watching for it to
reappear.
3. Sic!
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Michael Porter saw a leaflet last Sunday that encouraged people to
volunteer their services at Standen, a National Trust property in
Sussex that was designed by Philip Webb for William Morris. One
sentence read: "Shop volunteers assist by re-stocking shelves,
cleaning and serving customers". He commented, "All the customers
that I saw looked as though they had washed that morning, but I
suppose you can't be too careful".
Don Doherty wrote: "The article 'A twist in the tail' in the Higher
Education Supplement of The Australian of 29 October 2003 informed
us that animals don't always get chiropractic treatment from those
who are best qualified to give it. It went on to say that: 'There
are many people who practise chiropractic on animals who are
unqualified'. I was so delighted to find this that I sent an email
to the newspaper advising that the pets in our household are fully
qualified to receive treatment. It was obviously too frivolous to
be published!"
4. Weird Words: Volvelle
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A calculation device consisting of concentric moveable circles.
The earliest types of volvelles were typically made of parchment or
paper, with one or more moveable circles attached to a backboard,
often the inside cover of a book. The range of information on them
was large. Some were like early slide rules, used to calculate the
results of mathematical equations. Others worked out the phases of
the moon or times of high and low tide. The volvelles that solved
astronomical problems could have as many as six rotatable dials.
Strictly, the term is applied only to such historical calculation
devices. In more recent times, related ones (usually now called
"wheel charts" or "wheel calculators" since "volvelle" is obsolete)
have been used to display or calculate the details of everything
from the date when a baby was due, through aircraft recognition and
dieting data, to geography facts for school children. These were
often given away as advertisements at trade shows or supplied with
products. Americans of a certain age might recall the BAC (Blood
Alcohol Content) calculators that were distributed in school so you
could work out the safe limits for drinking. Even in the age of the
computer, they're by no means obsolete, being handy pocket-sized
compendia of useful data for some specialist purposes.
The word is from the medieval Latin verb "volvere", to turn.
5. The Annual Fund Drive
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Very many thanks to all those who have already contributed through
PayPal, or by post or through electronic transfer. Your generosity
is heart-warming and encouraging, as well as invaluable.
World Wide Words, both this newsletter and the Web site, are free.
I intend to keep them that way, and not even to allow advertising.
But it would be good to get some income to help pay for the costs
of running the site (and more than 150,000 page hits a week really
eat up bandwidth). Some money comes in from the Amazon commissions
(many thanks to everyone who uses that route) but it's never going
to cover more than a small proportion of my costs.
So, once a year, I ask you all to let your credit cards take the
strain of providing a small contribution to keep the words coming.
Last year, you were very generous, as occasional visitors to the
Web site have continued to be throughout the year. Some 120 people
contributed, about 1% of those subscribed at the time. It isn't
reasonable to expect those who gave last time to do so again (this
isn't intended to be an annual subscription, after all) but I would
like to hear from some of the other 99%.
There are two ways to contribute. One is by credit card using the
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send you any mail.)
As an alternative, you can send me a cheque or draft, preferably in
pounds sterling but alternatively in your local currency. If you'd
like to take that route, e-mail TheEditor at worldwidewords.org and
I'll give you the details of where to send your donation.
Please don't worry that not feeling able to make a donation might
affect your welcome. Your most important contribution is to remain
as a reader. Your comments, questions and continued interest make
the whole enterprise worthwhile.
6. Q&A
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Q. I am 8 years old and have a question. Was the word "he" or "she"
invented first? Mom's question: how would we go about researching a
question like that? [Kannitha Lor]
A. You might think that words like "he" and "she" are so basic and
essential a part of the language that they must have been around
long before anybody had writing, so that we would have to assume
their history was inaccessible and that the only sensible answer is
"Nobody knows". But it turns out that much of the story lies well
within historical times, even though it's complicated and not
altogether understood.
"He" is about four centuries older than "she" - it turns up first
in a work translated by King Alfred in about the year 893. So it
forms part of Old English, which is so different from modern
English that it's quite another language. Its feminine equivalent
was formed by a change in the spelling, to "heo". This is the word
that King Alfred and his people would have used.
How "she" appeared is still unclear, but what is certain is that a
change in pronunciation took place in some English dialects around
the twelfth century that made "heo" sound the same as "he". There's
a famous case of a medieval poem, Alysoun, in which the lovelorn
swain had to refer to his sweetheart as "he" because that was the
only pronoun he had available (he had to write "He may me blisse
bringe", meaning "She may bring me bliss"). This was an intolerable
state of affairs and a new word had to be sought. It's likely that
it was borrowed from the feminine form of the English word meaning
"that", "seo".
By the way, this explains why "he" has the obviously connected
object form "him" but "she" corresponds to "her". There wasn't a
problem with the object forms and they have stayed faithful to
their originals of more than a thousand years ago. But the change
of "heo" to "she" severed the initial letter link with "her".
Now to mum's question. It isn't easy to look this sort of thing up,
I agree. I had to consult the Oxford English Dictionary in
combination with a couple of standard histories of the language:
The Origins and Development of the English Language by Thomas Pyles
and John Algeo and A History of the English Language by Albert C
Baugh and Thomas Cable. Best solution: ask an expert. Second-best
solution: ask somebody who knows where to find the answer!
A. Subscription commands
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C. FAQ of the week
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