World Wide Words -- 10 Sep 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 9 17:33:54 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 458 Saturday 10 September 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. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Topical Words: Refugee.
3. Weird Words: Onomasticon.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Bozo.
6. Sic!
7. Over to You.
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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GOLDBRICKING Dave Dewhurst was reminded by last week's piece of a
childhood trick question, "what weighs more, an ounce of gold or an
ounce of feathers?" "Gold was the right answer," he wrote, "because
feathers would be weighed in avoirdupois ounces and gold in troy
ounces. Your article stated that the 509-ounce gold brick was
equivalent to 'roughly 14.5kg'. Surely the gold brick would be
weighed in troy ounces, making its weight 15.83kg?" Good point,
though I've no idea what sort of ounces the reporter was using, or
whether he knew the difference.
2. Topical Words: Refugee
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There's been much controversy in the USA over what to call people
forced out of New Orleans, Mississippi and neighbouring areas as a
result of the recent disaster (Even in the midst of what the head
of Homeland Security called an ultra-catastrophe, there's still
time for linguistic analysis.)
Most early news reports called them refugees ("Astrodome to become
new home for storm refugees", USA Today, 1 Sep; "Bus refugees
overcome bureaucracy", the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 2 Sep;
"The refugee emergency is beginning to affect neighboring states,
Texas most of all", New York Times, 4 Sep - just three of many
hundreds of examples). This brought an angry response on CNN from
Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick that no US
citizen could be a refugee in his own country, a view supported by
a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Elijah Cummings. It was
echoed by Bruce Gordon, the president of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, in an interview for the
Guardian: "I think it's an offensive term. These people are fellow
Americans. Using the word refugees makes it sound like they are not
of us." The Reverend Jesse Jackson called it "racist"; he and other
African-American leaders have even argued the word has criminal
connotations. President Bush also opposed the usage: "The people
we're talking about are not refugees. They are Americans."
The definitions in many dictionaries are along the lines of "a
person who has been forced to leave their country in order to
escape war, persecution, or natural disaster". So, the objectors
seem to be arguing (I must confess to some difficulty working this
out), if the escaping victims of the disaster are refugees, and
they are within the USA, then that implies they aren't American
citizens. And since the great majority of those left in New Orleans
when the hurricane struck are black, that implies that reporters
who are using "refugee" are racist, denigrating black people as
lower than second-class citizens. This is a convoluted argument
based on either ignorance or selective reading of reference books
and isn't supported by usage. And where criminality might come in
baffles me completely.
Many people will be surprised to hear that "refugee" necessarily
implies a move to another country. Not all dictionaries take this
view: the Random House Webster's Dictionary defines it as "a person
who flees for refuge or safety, especially to a foreign country",
which leaves open the possibility that it might be a flight within
one country, and the American Heritage Dictionary says simply "One
who flees in search of refuge", without reference to a destination.
However, the Oxford English Dictionary - followed by other Oxford
dictionaries and echoing the definition in the 1951 United Nations
refugees convention - firmly says that travel across a national
border is implicit. The OED's entry shows that the first use of
"refugee" was in reference to the French Huguenots who came to
England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The
term is itself French, and comes from "réfugier", to seek refuge.
The link with "refuge" is a strong influence on sense; both words
derive from Latin "refugium", a place of refuge, in which the core
is "fugere", to flee.
But what is a national border? A large proportion of those who have
moved away from the disaster areas have gone to Texas, but others
have fled to cities like Memphis, Atlanta, Miami, even Chicago and
Detroit. All have crossed state lines. With the federal structure
of the USA, foreign observers may well feel that they have crossed
borders of a very real kind. To those states trying to cope with
the financial and social implications of a sudden huge involuntary
influx, it has seemed to commentators very like the refugee crises
we see reported from other parts of the world, accentuated by the
USA now accepting help, such as medicines and food, from other
countries. A great many of these people plan to settle permanently
in their new homes and never go back, which reinforces the idea of
their being refugees.
Others called them what seemed like a more neutral term, "displaced
persons" (including George Bush, in remarks made after a meeting on
1 September: "Government agencies are working with faith-based and
community groups to find shelters for thousands of displaced
persons"). For older people this brought unpleasant memories of the
foreign men and women compelled to work in Germany in the 1939-45
war, and afterwards made homeless. However, it's enshrined in the
formal international definitions, which contrast "refugee" with
"internally displaced person" or IDP, a person who is forced out of
their home but who remains in their own country. It's a dreadful
bit of bureaucratic jargon (only George Bush, with his tin ear for
language, would have used it in a public speech). But it's a useful
distinction for the aid agencies - refugees move to another country
and often become the responsibility of the international community,
IDPs probably not.
Still other reporters have tried "evacuee" ("Many evacuees were
seeking to get jobs and enroll their children in school in the
communities where they are currently sheltered", Washington Times,
2 Sep.), some newspapers have mandated this term, and because of
the dispute it is becoming common. It might seem correct for those
who left New Orleans before the hurricane struck, except that they
left through their own efforts and no official aid was given (as
one dictionary puts it, "a person moved from a place of danger to
somewhere safer"; note the passive - evacuation is something that
happens to you, not something you do). For British people of my age
and older it brought to mind people, especially children, who were
taken out of the big cities by a planned relocation effort during
the early part of World War Two to avoid the bombing. It might be
correct for those bussed out of New Orleans later in the week, and
those now being forcibly removed, but not the rest.
"Evacuee" implies an orderly and organised process. "Refugee"
implies a desperate, involuntary and unplanned move. The former
doesn't have the emotive implications or emotional force of the
latter. Whatever its dictionary sense, or the definitions of the
international aid organisations, or the plaints of politicians, or
the lexical views of dictionaries and pedants, for most people
"refugee" sums up the situation of the sufferers more accurately
than any other.
3. Weird Words: Onomasticon
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A vocabulary or dictionary of proper names or place names.
A book such as the Oxford Names Companion is an onomasticon, and
the word has throughout history turned up most often in the titles
of such works. It still does occasionally: There's the Buffyverse
Onomasticon, an online resource that gives the origins of the names
of all the characters in the television series Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. The Onomasticon to Cicero's Letters and the Onomasticon of
the Hittite Pantheon (in three volumes) are two modern scholarly
examples. The word is from Greek "onomázein", to name, of which
"onuma", a name, is a close relative.
They're the source of other words to do with names. An onomastician
studies the origin and form of proper names of every kind and the
field of study is called onomastics. The study of place names is an
important onomastic endeavour, and has its own name, toponymy (from
Greek "topos", a place + "onuma"), with a toponymist being a person
who studies it. We must also distinguish between an onomastician
and an onomasiologist - the latter studies the principles of
naming, such as the way it varies between places and groups of
people and how new names are formed.
4. Recently noted
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BIRDS EYE The Guardian wrote one of its sarcastic "Pass Notes"
items about the frozen foods firm last week in which it said it was
grammatically incorrect not to include an apostrophe after the D.
The next day a correction appeared: "In fact, in this case, there
is a reason for its absence. The company is named after Clarence
Birdseye and is formed from his unapostrophised surname." Subtle
stuff, Birds Eye! And it's not often you see "unapostrophised" in
the Guardian, or indeed anywhere else.
5. Q&A
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Q. From where does the word "bozo" come? [Jess Galchutt]
A. This is yet another of those questions that can be easily and
briefly asked but for which it is hard to provide an answer. Most
dictionaries shuffle their feet and shrug when they come to this
word, including only the safe but unhelpful "Origin uncertain".
They're certainly correct, though to expand on that takes a lot of
words. These will now follow.
The term first appears around 1916, initially meaning a person,
fellow or man, but quickly taking on the senses of someone clumsy
or foolish, or somebody oafishly rude or annoying, or a stupid or
insignificant person, or "a muscular type with a meagre brain", as
the Dictionary of American Slang describes it. More recently, it
has shifted sense to that of a buffoon or fool, with associations
of clownishness. From this computer types have derived "bozotic" -
the online Jargon File defines it as "resembling or having the
quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong,
unintentionally humorous".
Pick your etymological dictionary and choose your origin. Might it
be from the Spanish "bozo", meaning "a light down on the upper lip,
typical of adolescence", or from another Spanish word "bozal",
simple or stupid (a word said to have been used in the slave trade
and after for someone who spoke Spanish badly, hence stupid; the
modern word means a muzzle or halter), or from the Italian "bozzo",
a cuckold or bastard? Or could it be an elaboration of the black
English "bo", a man, often a way of addressing someone, which is
usually taken to be a contraction of "hobo"? You pays your money
and you takes your choice.
The shift from the older sense to the one that most Americans now
know happened in the 1950s and is due to one particular bozo - Bozo
the Clown. His first appearance was in a combined book and record,
Bozo at the Circus, which was produced by the fledgling Capitol
Records in 1946 and which featured the voice of Pinto Colvig, a
former circus clown. The character became a huge success, with
several performers being Bozo in various places and times,
including a popular television series in the 1950s.
But it seems more than probable that the older sense also came from
the proper name. American works of the early 1900s often include
references to it as a proper name. For example, The Autobiography
of a Journalist, by William James Stillman (1901), says: "Meanwhile
the operations on the southern frontier, under the direction of the
amiable and competent Bozo Petrovich, remained for my observation."
Most examples of the personal name "Bozo" in newspapers of the time
are attached to immigrants from central Europe, such as Dalmatia,
Serbia, and Croatia; it seems plausible to suggest that "bozo" in
its early days was a mildly derogatory immigrant stereotype, like
"Paddy" or "Polack".
If I may go out on a limb and mention one especially famous bozo of
the onomastic sort at this period: Bozo Gopcevic of San Francisco,
described as "a scion of the royal house of Serbia" (there ought to
be a hacek, a little "v" symbol, over each of the "c"s in his name,
converting them to "ch"s; come to think of it, there ought to be
one over the "c" in "hacek" too). With his four brothers he sought
Serbian independence, based on the claim of Bozo to the throne. He
hoped to use money brought into his family by the marriage of his
brother Milos (formerly a gripman on a San Francisco cable car) to
Miss Floyd, an heiress. It all ended in tears, with Bozo suing
Milos for living expenses in 1914 (by then the First World War had
broken out, ending any hope of restoration).
It just might be possible, though unverifiable, that the unhappy
but mildly humorous series of events involving Milo and Bozo could
have contributed to the word's wider appeal - the coincidence of
dates is suggestive. But don't quote me.
6. Sic!
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John Parr has been following the disastrous events in the US South
with lexicographical fervour: "Notice hand-painted on a wall in New
Orleans: 'Looters will be shot on site'. Very apt." And he heard
George Bush say "The enormity of the task requires more resources."
Enormity: "an outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral act".
And Ellen Smithee of California was distressed to see that on page
10 of the American edition of the latest Harry Potter book, "Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" appears, "The site, therefore, of
Fudge stepping out of the fire once more...". (The British edition
has it right, which raises the question of which fumble-brained
copyeditor or mysterious automated process was responsible for
changing it in the USA.)
"Don't they have copy editors and proof-readers any more?" is a
lament we've heard many times. Erica Kaplan was provoked into it by
reading Jared Diamond's new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to
Fail or Succeed. "In the Prologue, in the first paragraph of page
1, in a description of two farms in beautiful locations, the
following appeared: ""Both farms, ... with backdrops of big snow-
capped mountains drained by streams teaming with fish ...".
"After a consultation with an orthopaedic surgeon," e-mailed Elaine
Blackman, "I received a copy of his notes detailing diagnosis and
treatment. I was taken aback to read that one of the treatment
options was a steroid injection 'to tied me over'."
Harry Campbell reports from Glasgow: "I have received one of those
innumerable scam e-mails, from someone claiming to be dying and
looking for a recipient for a vast sum of money. It says: 'I have
been diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer which was discovered very
late, due to my laxity in carrying for my health. It has defiled
all forms of medicine.'"
7. Over to You
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This time it's a personal request, aimed at British subscribers in
particular, though others can also play. I'm writing a piece in my
current book about words and phrases that were once common but that
have fallen out of everyday use within the past 75 years or so.
(These will mostly be names for things, and I'm avoiding slang or
colloquial terms.) My aged brain is having trouble assembling an
adequate selection.
Some already in my list will give you the idea of what I'm aiming
at: emergency brake, running board, wireless (a radio), liberty
bodice, motoring holiday, antimacassar, career girl, gramophone,
washboard, wringer, record player, double feature, brassiere (as
opposed to bra), inkwell, and pedal pushers.
Please send your suggestions to oldwords at worldwidewords.org, not my
usual e-mail address.
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