World Wide Words -- 17 Jul 04
Michael Quinion
TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jul 16 17:55:18 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 401 Saturday 17 July 2004
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Sent each Saturday to 19,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Seersucker.
3. Sic!
4. Q&A: Ramping cats.
5. Noted this week.
6. Q&A: Bulls and bears.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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COME HELL OR HIGH WATER Following a query from Duane Royer, I went
back to my rather unsatisfactory piece about this classic American
expression. I've been able to take it back in time about 15 years
and show that it almost certainly derives from the cowboys of the
old West. See http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-com1.htm for the
updated piece.
2. Weird Words: Seersucker
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A lightweight fabric with a crimped or puckered surface.
The trend-spotting notes in my daily newspaper recently reported
that seersucker was the fashionable fabric for the coming summer.
This is despite clothes made from it looking as though they had
been badly ironed or that the wearer had slept in them. (I am told
that the way to give the fabric that crinkled look is to weave
together fibres that shrink differently.) Nick Foulkes wrote in the
Sunday Telegraph recently that British wearers intend the
seersucker suit to convey "a dashing transatlantic look that is a
little bit George Plimpton and a touch F. Scott Fitzgerald". Or
perhaps Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. For me the
seersucker suit evokes a world-weary foreign correspondent in some
tropical clime, suffering from heat and excess alcohol. Originally,
in the eighteenth century, seersucker was striped Indian cotton,
the stripes being the identifying feature. You can tell that from
the original name, the Persian "shir o shakar", literally "milk and
sugar", in reference to what we would now call its candy stripes.
3. Sic!
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Department of unexpected integrity: Instead of the usual "E&OE"
abbreviation (Errors and Omissions Excepted) on the bottom of a
price list from a small local dealer in New Zealand, Larry Robbins
found that they had written it out in full, but as "Errors and
Omissions Expected".
Jennifer Spence writes in perplexity: "Recently I saw the following
posted on the top floor of a hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico: '3rd
Floor Fire Exit Located on 1st Floor.' Luckily there was no fire
while I was staying there. What would I have done?" Pre-empt the
problem: check out!
4. Q&A
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Q. In the village of Wallingford in Oxfordshire there is a pub
named "The Ramping Cat". Can you enlighten me (and my wife, who
used to enjoy the odd glass of wine in said establishment) as to
precisely what a cat is doing when engaged in ramping? As cat-
lovers we are concerned that it may not be entirely legal! [Paul
Darkins]
A. In that exact phrase, it's a quotation from Shakespeare, from a
speech by Hotspur in King Henry IV, who is explaining that his
father Glendower angers him through telling him
Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies;
And of a dragon and a finless fish,
A clipt-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven,
A couching lion, and a ramping cat.
This last line is altogether confusing to modern readers. An animal
that is couching is lying down apparently asleep, as if on a couch.
One that is ramping is rearing up or standing on its hind legs,
with its front paws raised, as though it were about to climb
something.
If this sounds like "rampant", then you're in the right
etymological area, because both are thought to derive from the Old
French verb "ramper", to creep, crawl or climb. In its original
English usage, "rampant" was a heraldic term for an animal, usually
a lion, that was shown in profile facing right, standing on one
hind foot with its forefeet in the air. This was taken to be a
threatening or aggressive posture, which is why "rampant" now often
has the sense of something wild or unrestrained.
So the expression refers to a cat doing something that is entirely
in its nature. There need be fear of animal abuse at your local
hostelry.
5. Noted this week
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CABARENAISSANCE Not the most felicitous of blends, this is formed
by wedging "cabaret" and "renaissance" together to make a term that
attempts to conjure up a fashion of the moment. It refers to a type
of dressy night out, one step up in sophistication from clubbing -
if it is possible to describe a mixture of cocktails, jazz, dance
cards and striptease in that way. It's the latest thing in London,
my cultural guru tells me.
6. Q&A
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Q. In Stock Exchange parlance, "bull" and "bear" relate to being
"long" or "short" of a particular security. I have heard that the
term has its origins in two old English family stockbroking or
banking businesses - the Bulteels and the Barings - the latter bank
failing only relatively recently. The Bulteels tended toward a more
aggressively positive or bullish view on stocks and shares while
the Barings tended to be more cautious. I should be grateful for
your comments. [Thomas B Jones, South Africa]
A. Your explanation of the two terms no doubt makes perfect sense
to somebody in the business, but it lacks a bit for the rest of us.
To keep it simple (that last phrase being a ritual incantation to
prevent my being nibbled to death by experts), a *bear* sells
shares, sometimes shares he doesn't own, hoping to buy them back
later at a lower price (in the jargon, he is "short" of the
necessary shares), so is hoping for a fall in the market price and
may be considered a pessimist; a *bull* buys shares hoping to sell
them at a higher price later, so is essentially an optimist about
the way the market is moving (by analogy, he is said to be "long"
because he has some shares on hand).
The story about the two famous banking families is widespread, and
believed by a lot of people. Alas, there's no truth in it. Though
Barings was until recently a well-known bank (whose spectacular
demise rendered it more famous than ever it was during its life),
there was no equivalent Bulteel family firm that I can trace.
"Bear" is surprisingly old; it is first recorded at the very start
of the eighteenth century, and was common at the time of the
infamous South Sea Bubble of 1721. The earliest examples have it as
"bear-skin jobber", a jobber at that time being a middleman or
wholesaler who bought and sold shares on the floor of the London
Stock Exchange. This phrasing gives us the clue. There was at the
time a proverb, probably borrowed from French "ne vendez pas la
peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué", "don't sell the bear's skin
before you've caught the bear". It had the same sense as "don't
count your chickens before they're hatched", that is, don't assume
your success is assured until it actually happens, don't be over-
optimistic. A "bear-skin jobber" sold shares he didn't own, in the
hope that their price would fall and that he would be able to
"catch his bear" by buying them more cheaply in the market before
he had to deliver them.
"Bull" came along pretty quickly afterwards (it's recorded from
1714) and the suggestion is that it was invented as an alliterative
animal analogy to "bear", perhaps even with a subconscious image of
charging forward fearlessly.
A. Subscription commands
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Michael Quinion
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