World Wide Words -- 03 Dec 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 2 19:01:25 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 470 Saturday 3 December 2005
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Sent each Saturday to at least 25,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx
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Contents
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1. Turns of Phrase: Approximeeting.
2. Weird Words: Malapert.
3. Noted this week.
4. Q&A: Chock-a-block.
5. Sic!
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Turns of Phrase: Approximeeting
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This term was coined by the British academic Dr Sadie Plant in a
report, On The Mobile, which she wrote for Motorola in 2001 about
the effect that the widespread use of mobile telephones was having
on social and individual life around the world. In the report she
coined a number of terms to describe aspects of such use, of which
this one has gained some limited currency.
She set out the context like this: "Loose arrangements can be made
in the knowledge that they can be firmed up at a later stage;
people can be forewarned about late or early arrivals; meetings can
be progressively refined. But this kind of flexibility - we can
call it approximeeting - can also engender a new sense of
insecurity. Everything is virtual until the parties and the places
come together to make it real."
This has now become a common way for young people in particular to
meet and socialise and it reflects a small but significant shift in
social behaviour that's due entirely to the ubiquity of mobiles.
* From The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 7 Mar. 2004: More and
more with cellphone users, those plans are what British cultural
studies professor Sadie Plant calls "approximeeting," where a group
of friends agree to head to a general location (say, a mall) and
then coordinate exactly where to meet by cellphone as everyone
starts showing up.
* From the Guardian, 26 Nov. 2005: The large groups of teenagers we
see on the square, he says, will have converged here by making
shifting arrangements to meet via mobile phone - so-called
approximeeting.
2. Weird Words: Malapert
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Boldly disrespectful or impudent.
Today's desk dictionaries usually include this word, not because it
is current - it's definitely archaic, last used unselfconsciously
in the seventeenth century - but because it was once common enough
that readers are still likely to encounter it. Some writers - such
as Sir Walter Scott - have since borrowed it to provide a bit of
period flavour in historical novels.
It's formed from the equally archaic "apert", from Latin "apertum",
open, through French. The oldest English sense was "public, plain,
unconcealed", but this shifted over time until it came instead to
mean outspoken and later insolent. (Through confusion with another
French word, it could also mean clever.) Our word seems to have
been created from "apert" in either the sense of a person who is
outspoken or clever, since the "mal-" prefix means "improperly,
badly, wrongly" (as in "maladjusted" or "malodorous"), so creating
"malapert", of somebody improperly outspoken or inappropriately
clever. We still know "apert" in its aphetic form "pert", which
retains the idea of insolence, though weakened into cheekiness or
impudence.
The idea was personified into Jack Malapert, an insolent person,
which is in one of the first printed books in English, Caxton's
Book of Curtesye of about 1477-78. In modern form, the line would
be "Don't play Jack Malapert, that is, don't be presumptuous". The
female equivalent was Miss Malapert, as in Henry Fielding's play
The Fathers: "Well, Miss Malapert, and what do you think you have
said now? why, nothing more than that your grandmothers had ten
times as much prudence as yourselves."
3. Noted this week
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PASS THE MUSTARD A neat folk etymology came my way last week. It
was said in an article on mustard that the one-time market leader
in making the stuff was a firm named Keen & Sons and that this was
the origin of the expression "keen as mustard". It took me just two
minutes to discover that Messrs Keen & Sons were established in
London in 1747. A further few seconds found the first example of
the expression, in the OED, dated 1672 - 75 years before the firm
came into being. Sometimes, refuting spurious etymologies is as
easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
FULSOME The Reader's Editor of the Guardian, Ian Mayes, whose job
is to act as the reader's representative and ombudsman, wrote an
interesting piece this week ( see http://quinion.com?FULS ) about
his paper's attempts to prevent "fulsome" appearing in its columns
in the sense of "generous or abundant", as opposed to the view of
the paper's style guide that its primary sense is "disgusting by
excess of flattery, servility, or expressions of affection". The
battle is impossible to win, I believe, since the disputed sense
has had a substantial revival in the past century, is widely given
in dictionaries, and several of my style guides approve it, whilst
warning of the risk of ambiguity.
SPLOG There's no end to the number of weird and vaguely repellent
terms invented by online communities. This one is a combination of
"spam" and "blog". The term is a little confused at the moment -
some writers use it to refer to unsolicited and automated postings
to a Web log, whose purpose is solely to sell a product (so they're
the exact equivalent of e-mail spam); others use it for entirely
fake blogging sites whose real purpose is to trick people into
visiting them and so exposing them to advertising, for which the
splogger gets paid.
CYBER MONDAY Retailers in the US have for at least the last 25
years called the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday, because it's
the day when everybody wants to shop. It's said to be the day when
stores go into profit (go into the black on their books), though
that's an urban legend - early usage examples show it was given
that name because of all the crowds and snarled-up traffic. Now one
online retailer (name suppressed so it doesn't get any more free
publicity from its promotional wheeze) has given this name to the
Monday after Thanksgiving. The rationale is that in recent years it
has become the biggest online shopping day of the year, with people
logging on from work to buy things for Christmas. I'll lay odds
against the term being still around in November 2006.
SYNANTHROPIC My personal new word of the week. It refers to a
species that lives in habitats made or altered by man and so which
is reliant on human activity for survival. A good example is the
house mouse. The word's from Greek "syn-", with, plus "anthropos",
human being.
4. Q&A
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Q. I live in Australia and a few years ago some friends visiting
from Canada were perplexed by my father's use of the term "chock-a-
block", meaning full. For example, "the street was chock-a-block
with cars". Are you able to shed any light on the origin of this
phrase? [Dr Anthony Rea]
A. "Chock-a-block" is not a widely known North American term, I
believe. I know it well and would use it, though at the risk of
sounding fuddy-duddy and out of fashion. "Chock" here is the same
word as in "chock-full", jam-packed full or filled to overflowing.
One meaning of "chock" in the nineteenth century was of two things
pressed so tightly against each other that they can't move. This
led to the nautical term that's the direct origin of the phrase.
"Block" refers to the pulley blocks of the tackle used for various
hauling jobs on board ship. These worked in pairs, with the ropes
threaded between them. When the men hauling tackle ropes had
hoisted the load as far as it would go, the two pulley blocks
touched and could move no further. They were then said to be chock-
a-block, or crammed together.
The origin of "chock" is complicated and not altogether understood.
It's clear that there has been some cross-fertilisation between it
and "chock" in the sense of a lump of wood used as a wedge to stop
something moving. That's closely enough related to our sense to
make it seem as though it might be the same word. But the experts
think that "chock" in "chock-a-block" actually came from "chock-
full".
That has been around at least since 1400. It comes from a different
source, the verb "chokken", as in the Middle English phrase
"chokken togeder", crammed together. This in turn may be from an
Old French verb "choquier", to collide or thrust. One of the
problems of working out the origin has been that "chock-full" has
appeared in several different spellings - including "chuck-full"
and "choke-full" - reflecting users' uncertainty about where it
comes from.
5. Sic!
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Peter Tucker e-mails from Vancouver: "A local store recently ran an
ad suggesting people come in and talk to their 'noncommissioned'
sales staff. I won't deal with anyone below Captain myself."
Just up the road, globally speaking, Vikki Perkins reports from
Calgary: "We received a flyer for a craft fair that was headed
'Local Artesian Market'. One wonders if they are digging the wells
for you, or will there be some on site?"
Last Sunday, Kenneth Huey was at a museum in San Antonio, Texas,
"enjoying a show of Pre-Raphaelites as well as Impressionists and
the odd Goya or Wyeth, when I noticed an informative card on the
wall which explained that the associated oeuvre had been painted
with 'gauche'." Perhaps by a left-handed painter?
A headline on the front page of Tuesday's New York Times intrigued
Alvin Rymsha, Penelope Greene, and M Henri Day: "Reading X-Rays In
Asbestos Suits Enriched Doctor". It reads like a tortured clue in a
crossword puzzle. Mr Day suggested it brought to mind visions of an
uncomfortable but profitable costume party. The story was really
about a doctor who had a successful practice reviewing x-rays for
people suing for compensation for asbestos-related lung injuries.
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