World Wide Words -- 07 Aug 04
Michael Quinion
editor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 6 17:41:34 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 404 Saturday 7 August 2004
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Sent each Saturday to 20,000+ 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. Turns of Phrase: Bangalored.
3. Weird Words: Yaffle.
4. Sic.
5. Q&A: Blivet and Nitnoid.
6. Noted this week.
7. Book review: Chronicle of American Literature.
A. FAQ of the week.
B. Subscription commands.
C. E-mail contact addresses.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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CROSS-BRED DOGS A typographical error crept into this piece last
week. A cross between a pekinese and a poodle isn't a peekaboo, but
a peekapoo.
ANOTHER MILESTONE You might have spotted that the heading to this
newsletter has changed slightly; the subscription numbers have just
clocked up the magic 20,000. Now for 30,000 ... Tell your friends!
OVER TO YOU A puzzling enquiry has come in (not from a World Wide
Words subscriber). It said that there is an inscription on a tower
in Fife, Scotland, which reads "A Wight man never wanted a Woppat".
Can anyone tell me if this is genuine and, if it is, what it means?
2. Turns of Phrase: Bangalored
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This word has been discussed recently in the Bangkok Post, the
Times of India and other Asian newspapers. A search suggests it has
been in use in the USA for about the past year but is only now
beginning to appear in print. It refers to people who have been
laid off from a multinational because their job has been moved to
India - a business practice designed to save money that is arousing
passions in some countries, especially Britain and the United
States. Bangalore is cited in particular because of its reputation
in the USA as a high-tech city, the Indian equivalent of Silicon
Valley, that has benefited significantly from such outsourcing. One
Web site is selling T-shirts with the slogan "Don't Get Bangalored"
as a way of telling people about the issue. What's odd about the
term, from the point of view of language, is that it's rare for a
place name to become a verb; however, "Shanghaied" has been known
since about 1870, at first in the sense of drugging and kidnapping
a person to make up the crew numbers on a ship, but now more
generally to be forced into doing something against one's will.
>>> From the Electronic Engineering Times, Apr. 2004: I am a
software developer who is about to be "Bangalored." Fine. I am not
going to pout about it. The media write that we are in a "global
economy," so deal with it.
>>> From the Economic Times (India), 24 July 2004: It may not be
entirely correct for US dictionaries to verbalise outsourcing to
India as Bangalored! With India's capital city also attracting call
centres ... the Americans could perhaps also talk in terms of their
jobs being "Delhi-ted".
3. Weird Words: Yaffle
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A local or dialect English name for the green woodpecker.
Readers familiar with the cult BBC children's television series
Bagpuss will know of Professor Yaffle, who is indeed a woodpecker.
What brought it to mind was spotting one of these handsome birds in
my garden, assiduously searching the edge of the lawn for ants. On
the rare occasions one sees rather than hears a green woodpecker -
with its green back, yellow rump and a crimson head that flashes in
the sunlight as it turns its long bill - it seems too exotic to be
a native British bird. Mostly, the signal that one is nearby is its
characteristic laughing call, which provoked this odd name for the
bird. Other names for it, now rare, include "rain bird" (because
its cry was said to bring wet weather), "hickwall", "wickwall",
"woodwall", and "yuccle", though these have turned up in so many
forms in various British dialects, such as "eccle" or "ickwell",
that their links are sometimes hard to detect. While we're sure
"yaffle" is imitative (the word could at one time also refer to the
yelp of a dog), the other names are much harder to pin down; the
Oxford English Dictionary hazards a guess that they, too, might be
imitative, but they're so old that they have been transformed out
of recognition.
4. Sic
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"'Cigarette butts are the most common litter we have,' said Richard
Ebeling, manager of PennDOT's statewide Highway Beatification
Program." Paul Hamilton saw this last Monday on the Web site of the
Evening Sun of Hanover, Pennsylvania (see http://quinion.com?B37S)
and commented: "I know some folk are happy while driving, but 'The
Most Blessed Interstate' is a bit over the top, don't you think?"
Last Saturday the BBC posted a news item under the headline "Man
assaulted in road rage attack" (see http://quinion.com?L41S). As
Mike Bateman read on, he was intrigued by the first line of the
story: "A man was punched in the face and then chased along a
pavement by a car in a road rage incident in Sheffield."
Thanks to Rob Meador for spotting a remark made by President Bush
at the signing on Thursday morning of the Defense Appropriations
Act for Fiscal Year 2005, as reported on the official White House
Web site (see http://quinion.com?B69H): "Our enemies are innovative
and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new
ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Not
even C J Cregg could put a positive spin on that.
5. Q&A
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Q. I am an engineer and have used the words "blivet" and "nitnoid"
all my professional life, but I'm not sure if they are real words.
To me, a blivet is some small amorphous shape like a blob. A
nitnoid is a small mechanical device of little importance as in,
'that nitnoid keeps the belt tight'. Any help? [John McWilliams]
A. "Blivet" is by far the better known of the two words and
dictionaries of American slang suggest it dates back to American
servicemen in World War Two. It is frequently said to be any small,
useless, unnecessary or superfluous thing. It looks like a mixture
of "blip" and "widget", though your definition suggests that it
might instead be from "blip" plus "rivet". It's often described as
ten pounds of horse manure in a five-pound bag (though the
quantities vary between tellers) and the excuse to retell that
"explanation" to a naive onlooker is frequently the reason for
using the word.
Your other word, "nitnoid", is clearly also American slang, though
it's new to me and there's nothing in any of my books to tell me
its origin (the earliest example I've found is from 1992, but it
clearly must be significantly older). There are references to it
online that suggest it can be a niggling small matter of no
consequence, or something that's nit-pickingly frustrating, or a
pedantic person intent on squashing the life out of some subject by
considering every detail. This suggests a derivation from "nit"
plus the suffix "-oid" to indicate something of a given nature
(plus, to be nitnoid about the matter, an interpolated "n" to make
it easier to say, and perhaps a trace more humorous). Examples
include "he has written a book chock full of nitnoid detail", and
"this man is a nitnoid perfectionist". A rare example in print
appeared in the Atlanta Constitution in September 2001: "We need to
appreciate every moment we have with each other and just be nicer
and not get lost in the nitnoid frustrations of life."
Interestingly, though this is clearly in the same ball park as your
example, none of the instances I've found have quite the same
sense. American subscribers will no doubt put me right.
6. Noted this week
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JOKE OAK This appeared in a news item this week about a decision
by the British government to change the planning laws that affect
the building of new country houses. Sparse references in newspaper
archives suggest that it's a pejorative label used by architectural
designers in Britain. It goes with other terms like "Neo Geo" for
the Neo-Georgian style that is so often employed by developers in
leafy suburbia. "Joke oak" would seem to refer to the fake half-
timbered mock-Tudor house popular in such areas in the 1930s.
SHINY-FLOOR While we're on exotic jargon, this term for a type of
glossy, studio-based, popular television show appeared in Broadcast
magazine this week in reference to the new ITV autumn schedules. A
comment in an article about Graham Norton on the BBC Web site gives
a context: "He insists he has many ambitions but one of the biggest
is to have a mainstream game show. 'I do love game shows and I
would love to do a big, shiny-floor punter-led show.'"
7. Book review: The Chronicle of American Literature
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If you need to check when an American writer published a work, or
what it was about, or which books were doing well when, or you just
want to browse to improve your knowledge of American literature,
this book provides the answers.
Works are listed in chronological order by the year in which they
were published. Each annual section is split into categories such
as fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. However, it's not a dry
catalogue of dates. Events are put into their social and political
contexts, each work is briefly described and discussed, tables give
details of births and deaths, best sellers and literary prizes, and
pages are enlivened with the occasional photographs of literary
luminaries of the time.
The time span is from 1582 through to 1999, divided into five
sections, each with a brief introduction. Because early material is
scarce, the section on the colonial period lists diaries, letters
and sermons as well as the other categories. The selection of 8,000
works by 5,000 authors goes well beyond just the most famous. You
may well disagree with the editor's choices in the most recent
period, but then nobody yet knows which works of the past decade or
two have gained a permanent place in the canon. The author and
title indexes are excellent.
I've had this book on my shelves for a while and it is proving very
useful for answering research queries. It's hardly going to be a
book for every fireside, but if you want it, you're going to want
it a lot. And even if you only consult it once in a while, its cost
is hardly going to break the bank.
[Daniel S Burt (ed.), The Chronology of American Literature:
America's Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to Modern
Times, published by Houghton Mifflin at US$40.00; hardback, pp805.
ISBN 0-618-16821-4.]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
US: US$27.20 ( http://quinion.com?C15L )
CA: CDN$38.50 ( http://quinion.com?C94L )
UK: GBP19.60 ( http://quinion.com?C48L )
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Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
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