World Wide Words -- 02 Dec 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 1 16:50:48 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 516 Saturday 2 December 2006
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Sent each Saturday to at least 45,000 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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A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/wcgj.htm
Contents
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1. Turns of Phrase: Placeshifting.
2. Weird Words: Camelion.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Scran.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Turns of Phrase: Placeshifting
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This is the spatial analogue to timeshifting, the older and better
established term for recording a TV programme to watch at a later
time. When you placeshift, you instead redirect the TV signal from
your cable box, satellite television connection or computer so you
can watch a programme on a device somewhere else. That might be in
another room in the house or on a mobile phone or a PDA (personal
digital assistant) anywhere in the world. The term was invented in
2005 by Sling Media, the makers of the Slingbox, the first personal
video recorder to provide the service. "Placeshifting" is mainly
restricted to specialist journals, but the concept is getting a lot
of attention, not least from mobile operators who see it as a way
to get their customers to use the currently under-exploited video
facilities on their mobile devices. It is also being viewed - but
in a more negative light - by broadcasters, who are worried about
copyright infringement. Like so many new technological ideas, it's
the focus of a lot of hype at the moment, so it might yet turn out
to be a solution to a problem that nobody thinks actually exists.
* The Online Reporter, 9 Sep. 2006: It's quite clear that a wave of
placeshifting technologies is on its way. The implications of such
a wave at first seem to mean rough seas for wireless carriers. The
spread of placeshifting will ultimately put wireless carriers on a
crash course to compete with the full suite of video offerings from
pay-TV and the Internet.
* PC Magazine, 5 Dec. 2006: With placeshifting, you can record the
college football game you're missing on Saturday afternoon and then
view it on your notebook PC that same night at a hotel hot spot.
Once placeshifting becomes a reality for a PC/TV, however, digital
entertainment systems will become more compelling.
2. Weird Words: Camelion
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A chameleon.
People have been confused about the names and natures of exotic
animals for millennia. The camel's name in medieval English was
"olfend", a word that has been defunct for eight centuries. This
was known in earlier Germanic languages and also in Old Church
Slavonic (where it was taken to mean "great wandering beast"), but
it can be traced back to the Latin "elephantus". Basically, people
confused the camel with the elephant, not so surprising when you've
never seen either and you have to rely on travellers' descriptions
relayed many times.
Another confusion led to the "camelopard", a linguistic cross
formed in classical Greek between a camel and a "pard" or panther.
The camelopard wasn't thought to be a hybrid but the name was given
to it because its body looked like that of a camel with spots like
those of the leopard. We prefer to call it a giraffe (from Arabic
zarafa). The animal called a leopard is the result of yet another
confusion - its name is "lion" + "pard", because the ancients
believed it was a cross between the two.
A "camelion", however, has nothing to do with camels. The first
part comes from a Greek word meaning "on the ground, dwarf", so the
animal was a "ground lion" or "earth lion", which you may feel is
an odd way to describe a small lizard. In the fourteenth century,
the word became confused with "camelopard" because of a scribe's
error in a text read by the Bible translator John Wyclif and for a
while it became identified with the giraffe. It was only a couple
of hundred years ago that its name changed from "camelion" to
"chameleon" under the influence of the Latin version of its name.
3. Recently noted
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CYBER MONDAY A year ago, I wrote about this then new term, which
referred to the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US as being the
biggest online holiday shopping day of the year. Lee Billings has
reminded me that I said then I would lay odds against its still
being around in November 2006. It's a good thing nobody took me up
on the bet, for I would have lost. According to Google News, more
than 900 pieces mentioning it have appeared in US newspapers in the
past 30 days. However, the main story - which was based on a survey
by MasterCard - asserted it was a myth, as its records suggested
that the peak day online last year was really 5 December (as the
Orlando Sentinel put it on 29 November: "Cyber Monday may need to
be renamed Cyber Hype"). Another survey, though, claims the peak
day in 2005 was 12 December. A third predicts that this year it
will be on 18 December. As all these dates are Mondays, the name
could still be made to fit, though nobody seems to want to move it
from its immediate post-Thanksgiving position. So much promotional
activity was poured into Cyber Monday this year by online retailers
that it may become the busiest through a self-fulfilling prophecy.
EDAY To confuse you further, a California-based firm, "the leading
provider of on-demand web analytics", as it calls itself in a press
release, has created the term "eDay" for the Monday following Cyber
Monday, 4 December this year. It predicts that Cyber Monday would
be the biggest day for visits to retailers' Web sites, but that
eDay would see the biggest sales. Just about the only thing in its
favour is that the word doesn't include the outdated and mildly
embarrassing prefix "cyber-".
THE OPERA AIN'T OVER UNTIL THE FAT LADY SINGS Who invented this
modern proverb has long been a matter of dispute in the rarefied
circles in which the historians of quotation move. It is most often
attributed to a television commentary by the San Antonio TV sports
editor Dan Cook in 1978. But Fred Shapiro's consensus shatterer,
the Yale Book of Quotations, has an example two years earlier. It
appeared in a report of a basketball match in the Dallas Morning
News on 10 March 1976, reportedly during an exchange between Dan
Carpenter, sports information director at Texas Tech University,
and Bill Morgan, information director of the Southwest Conference.
Last weekend, in the same newspaper, Steve Blow reported asking Mr
Morgan about the incident: "Bill vividly remembers the comment and
the uproar it caused throughout the press box. He always assumed it
was coined on the spot. 'Oh, yeah, it was vintage Carpenter. He was
one of the world's funniest guys,' said Bill, a contender for that
title himself." But it has to be said that other evidence suggests
that a variation on the phrase was known earlier in the South.
DIVORCE SHOPPING The countries of the European Union have a wide
range of often incompatible legal systems, especially concerning
issues such as divorce. This can make divorces very difficult for
"international marriages" in which the couple come from different
EU countries. One result is that separating spouses sometimes try
to exploit the more liberal laws in another EU country with which
they have a connection to get a settlement they like better. Hence
the appearance of "divorce shopping". The term has been around for
a while but it has become more common in recent months. This is due
to controversy over a recent EU Commission green paper that aims to
set rules to safeguard EU citizens who marry a person from another
country.
4. Q&A: Scran
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Q. In the north-east of England where I live, food is commonly
referred to as "scran". On a local radio program recently, claims
were made that this word derives from a nautical acronym -
Sultanas, Currants, Raisins And Nuts - a mixture designed to
provide a degree of nutrition to the scurvy-ridden crew. I am
always wildly sceptical when it comes to acronyms as etymology,
especially so when a seafaring angle is introduced. In short, I
think this explanation is complete twaddle. What say you? [Chris
Burke]
A. It's complete twaddle.
But I can see where the idea is coming from. "Scran" has long
been used as slang in the British army and navy for rations. And
a high-energy food used by walkers and mountaineers containing
much the same ingredients, which is known variously as "gorp" and
"scroggin", has names that are also said to be acronyms (see
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gor1.htm). The thought that
seamen might have been fed on such an expensive diet, one hard to
preserve at sea, rather than the staples of salt pork and ship's
biscuit, would have caused naval officers of sailing-ship days to
collapse in laughter.
The first recorded sense of "scran", from the early eighteenth
century, actually refers to a reckoning at a tavern. By the early
1800s the word was being used almost exclusively in relation to
food. The implications seemed always to be that it was inferior
or scrappy food, odds-and-ends, leftovers, and the like. It might
be a scratch meal taken by a labourer into the field, or perhaps
some miscellaneous items for a holiday excursion or picnic, as
well as those soldiers' and seamen's rations.
It was widely used in London in the nineteenth century. An example
appears in a letter by the Victorian social writer Henry Mayhew,
published in the Morning Chronicle in November 1849: "Others beg
'scran' (broken victuals) of the servants at respectable houses,
and bring it home to the lodging-house, where they sell it." If you
were "out on the scran", you were begging food; you might have a
"scran bag" to hold your gleanings. There's also the Anglo-Irish
"bad scran to you", an imprecation that curses you with ill luck,
literally wishing bad food on you.
Unfortunately, as often is the case, we have no good idea where
the word comes from. A link was once suggested with the Icelandic
"skran", rubbish, odds and ends. The Oxford English Dictionary
suggests this is probably an accidental similarity, even though
the English Dialect Dictionary - based on fieldwork during the
later nineteenth century - includes the sense of a morsel or
scrap, for example quoting "A scran of a moon hung dead in the
south" from an 1881 story.
5. Sic!
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"I live in Colorado," says Monica Hensinger, "where they recently
passed an ambitious smoking ban. Signs have popped up everywhere
informing people of the ban, but the most entertaining one I have
seen was in Boulder, where a city-wide smoking ban has been in
effect for several years. It read, 'No Smoking by Boulder City
Ordnance'. I didn't know the city had its own artillery, but it's
probably a good idea to keep people from smoking around it."
A "hmmm" moment, passed on by Dan Cook from the 22 November issue
of the Arizona Republic. In an article discussing the high cost of
the state college's tuition, a student spoke of the burden of the
most recent cost increases: "'It's just impossible,' said Heather
Thomas, a journalism major/waitress. 'How are you supposed to focus
on school when you're working full time just to stay above your
head?'" She should have a great future in journalism.
"Mobile cameras help Police" was the headline in The Sydney Morning
Herald of 23 November over a report of an assault on a teenager on
the Gold Coast in Queensland: "Police are examining closed CCTV to
see if the offender has been captured by any of the surveillance
cameras walking in the Surfers Paradise area." Many thanks to John
Carrick for passing on that disturbing Wellsian image.
BBC News online appears here distressingly often. The most recent
candidate for raised eyebrows was posted on Thursday, in a headline
over a story about space exploration: "Minister in Moon talks with
Nasa". This was Malcolm Wicks, responsible for science matters. We
once had an official Minister for Drought, but we've not previously
felt the need for a Minister in the Moon. Thanks to Bob Rosenberg
and Roberta Taussig for that one.
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