World Wide Words -- 27 Jan 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 26 19:01:51 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 524 Saturday 27 January 2007
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/gajz.htm
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Hyperlocal.
3. Weird Words: Dydler.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Lobbyist.
6. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
RECEIPT AND RECIPE Following my note last week, subscribers told
me that "receipt" survived rather longer than I had said, well into
the twentieth century in some parts of the USA: the Carolinas and
the Appalachians were mentioned in particular. John Carlson added,
"My thoughts are that the people who wrote to you about receipt for
recipe are less than 50 years of age. My mother and some of her
friends used receipt in the 1930s and 1940s."
SPOT OF TEA My comments on the social and geographical use of the
word "tea" to mean a cooked meal provoked many subscribers to tell
me about their own experiences. "Tea" for a meal was and is used
also in Ireland (which I should have mentioned) and in some rural
parts of the southern half of Britain. Several pointed out that in
the US, the term "high tea" has been misunderstood to mean a posh
version of ordinary afternoon tea (best silver service and highest
quality cakes), whereas in the UK it is definitely a working-class
repast. ("High" here indicates its complexity or formal nature, not
its style. That this misunderstanding is not confined to the US was
demonstrated by an article in the Guardian's Weekend Magazine on
the day my piece came out; Gill Meller wrote "We occasionally sit
down to afternoon tea, a proper one - a 'high tea' as it used to be
called", but his accompanying notes and recipes refer to cakes and
biscuits with nothing savoury being mentioned.) Many writers wanted
me to go into the cultural and class ramifications of other names
for meals - "lunch", "dinner" and "supper". This would need what
feels like half a book to explain in detail; I hope you'll forgive
me for postponing it until I have more leisure!
The British usage of "spot" brought this comment from Ed Charlton,
who is "unashamedly from the North (of Northumberland)": "Spot can
be, and is, used for any meal. An invitation to stay for a spot of
supper after a recent afternoon playing tennis progressed to home-
made soup, roast pheasant and apple tart. None of the participants
(ranging in age over five decades) felt 'spot' was an inappropriate
description."
2. Turns of Phrase: Hyperlocal
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Newspaper sales are under huge threat from rival media. One way of
stemming the decline has been pioneered in the US and is now being
looked at seriously in the UK and other countries. The idea is to
reinvent the local paper as a series of freesheets, each serving a
very small community, perhaps only one suburb or group of streets.
Such hyperlocal papers (another term is micropapers) would employ
only one or two journalists; they would mainly rely on content
provided by readers (citizen journalism, as the industry has rather
grandly dubbed it, see http://quinion.com?CIJO). Such news sources
would also be multimedia, with their content being simultaneously
made available on the Web, in some cases through podcasts or
vodcasts (audio and video items available on demand), and by mobile
phone. One aim is to provide a series of complementary outlets in
which local firms and shops can advertise cheaply and effectively.
Those involved in producing community freesheets, many of which
have been running for decades, will scarcely consider this to be
innovative. The industry argues, however, that newspaper groups
would bring professional marketing and journalism, together with
cross-media expertise, that community groups frequently lack.
The term "hyperlocal" has been used in this sense since the late
1980s, but it has been restricted to industry sources until quite
recently. Though most frequently turning up in relation to the Web
and newspapers, it is also used, for example, in local radio. The
word is formed using the common "hyper-" prefix from Greek "huper",
something over or beyond the normal. Hyperlocal Web sites are also
often called placeblogs.
* Washington Post, 15 Jan. 2007: Media analysts agree that many
readers are looking for hyperlocal content, but they say most
citizen-journalism sites aren't mature enough to tap into the
lucrative local advertising markets.
* New York Times, 30 Dec. 2006: "Think Globally, Act Locally" has
flourished for decades. But for plenty of media companies in 2007,
the first part of that gospel will be eclipsed by a souped-up
devotion to matters "hyperlocal."
3. Weird Words: Dydler
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A clearer of water channels in the Norfolk broads.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has recently
bought a remote fen in the Norfolk Broads, so isolated that few
people have ever been there. As the Guardian reported this month,
"A few wild-fowlers would have visited it by boat when it was owned
by Lord Percy; a handful of marsh men and sedge cutters still go
there occasionally to harvest reeds; ditch 'dydlers' are sometimes
sent in to keep the water channels open from vegetation, and a few
naturalists and artists know about this lost world of swamp and
sky."
"Dydler" is local to the Broads; it comes from the implement that
the worker uses, a dydle, either a sharp triangular spade or a
metal scoop or dredge fixed to the end of a long pole. "To dydle"
is to clean out the bed of a river or ditch. The Oxford English
Dictionary (which spells "dydler" with an "i" instead of a "y" -
the latter spelling may be a mock archaism) guesses it is a cut-
down version of "dike-delve", but nobody really knows.
Walter White wrote a description of the dydler in his book Eastern
England in 1865: "Standing on the bank with a scoop or dredge fixed
to the end of a long pole, he plunges it into the stream; ... then
he drags up the scoop by a bodily effort, and drops the muddy
contents upon the bank."
Although it's pronounced the same, the word has no connection with
"diddler", a swindler or cheat; that comes from the name of Jeremy
Diddler, a character in the farce Raising the Wind (1803) by the
Irish dramatist James Kenney.
4. Recently noted
-------------------------------------------------------------------
LOONSPUDDERY This delightful word appeared in a letter printed in
the issue of New Scientist for 13 January. The writer discussed the
various ways in which it was possible to detect the suggestions of
crackpots so that "you don't need actual 'green ink and no margins'
to detect probable loonspuddery." (For the implications of green
ink, see http://quinion.com?GREE.) Nothing in my reference works
suggests an origin for it, though it may well be a combination of
"loon" (a silly or foolish person) with "spudder" (which the Oxford
English Dictionary says means fuss, disturbance of bother and which
may be an alteration of "pother"). A small number of examples turns
up in a Google search, so it is definitely not a neologism. Anyone
with any thoughts about its history?
BIG SIGH Julane Marx pointed me to an answer on Ask Yahoo! (it's
at http://quinion.com?ASKY) dated last Tuesday, about the origin of
the practice of tipping. Whatever the general merits of the piece,
it utterly failed my reliability test by quoting the usual folk
etymology about "tip", even providing an embroidered version of it
that's new to me: "The term has also been linked (though not by all
word historians) to 18th-century England, where eating and drinking
establishments put out brass urns inscribed with the phrase 'To
Insure Promptitude' (T.I.P.) for customers to leave money in." For
"not all word historians", read "by no reputable word historian".
See http://quinion.com?TIPP for the history of an interesting word.
WORDS OF THE YEAR The results of the Macquarie Dictionary Word of
the Year 2006 poll in Australia were announced this week. To judge
from some of the category winners, Australia is taking a while to
catch up with the rest of the English-speaking world, wordwise. For
example, the winner in the general interest category, "affluenza"
(feelings of isolation and guilt supposedly affecting young wealthy
people) is recorded from the US at least as far back as 1988 (it
appeared in the UK no later than 1993 and is in several British
dictionaries). The Fashion section winner "ubersexual" (a stylish,
confident and masculine man) has passed its peak and is dropping
out of sight in the US; the Specialist section one, "administrivia"
(boring details relating to administration) is well established in
the US and UK.
The overall winner was "muffin top". It featured here on 6 January
as one of Lynne Murphy's words of the year, and which was also an
American Dialect Society 2005 nomination. It means the fold of fat
around the midriff that on an overweight woman spills out over the
top of tight-fitting jeans or skirts. The organising committee said
of it, "This seems to be an Australian creation which has spread
around the world, carried on by the popularity of Kath and Kim...
The Committee thought that the vivid imagery of this word with its
sense of playfulness and the fact that it is an Australianism made
it the clear winner." (If you haven't come across Kath and Kim yet,
you can find several Web sites that will enlighten you, including
the BBC's: see http://quinion.com?KATH.)
5. Q&A: Lobbyist
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. A recent piece on the NBC Nightly News included the origin of
the word "lobbyist". The host, Brian Williams, explained that the
word originated with President Ulysses S Grant, who liked to get
out of the White House and often went to Washington's Willard Hotel
for brandy and cigars. Anyone who wanted access to the President to
make their mark on Presidential politics would know to find him in
the lobby there. President Grant was the first to refer to these DC
power brokers as "lobbyists". This was presented as part of the
story on Washington's new ban on smoking in bars and restaurants
and how it brings an end to an era of politics conducted in smoke-
filled rooms. I hadn't previously heard this. Is it correct?
[Jennifer Painter]
A. This old tale has become so embedded in the unconscious of the
US nation that it sometimes appears in quite reputable reference
works. But it isn't true; even a perfunctory look at the history of
the word shows it can't be.
For example, you only have to look at the entry in the Oxford
English Dictionary. The first example given there appeared in the
Cornhill Magazine in January 1863. Grant was president from 1869 to
1877, so the word was in use before he took office. A further nail
in the coffin of the tale might be that the Cornhill Magazine was
British, not American. But using electronic archives and casting my
net wide for your delectation, I've been able to find examples of
it in US newspapers a few years earlier still, including this from
The Lafayette County Herald of Shullsburg, Wisconsin, dated 15
January 1857:
In classifying the lobby members of Congress the female
representatives of the 'third house' occupy no unimportant
position. Indeed, I may say that one experienced female
lobbyist is equal to any three schemers of the other sex
with whom I am acquainted.
It would not be surprising to find still earlier examples. The
job of the lobbyist had by then existed, unnamed, for many years
(though "third house", the US humorous collective term for them
mentioned in the piece above, is known from the 1840s). The OED's
first example of the collective term "lobby" meaning "persons who
frequent the lobby of the house of legislature for the purpose of
influencing its members in their official action" is dated 1808.
The original lobby was the one attached to the chamber of the
British House of Commons, in which members could meet and talk to
outsiders. This sense (and function) is recorded from the middle
of the seventeenth century and was adopted in Congress when it
was established more than a century later.
6. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Arlene Roti reports that in The Province, the local daily newspaper
in Vancouver, a company's want ad on 21 January advertised for an
administrator, "Part-time, 25 days a week". She wonder what the
full-time hours would be.
"I don't know if this qualifies for 'Sic!' or if I should apply for
my Blue Peter pedant's badge," e-mailed Chris Brown. "Seen on a
poster advertising a local gym: 'Apply today and receive half price
joining fee'. Does that mean that they used to pay applicants twice
as much?"
Speaking of gyms, Ellen Smithee was on holiday in Christchurch, New
Zealand and was staying at a hotel across the road from an upscale
health club. Its slogan was so clever that she had to forgive the
apostrophic error: "In a world full of gym's, we're a james!"
"The solar-powered hot water system I've had installed," reports
Mark Allison, "includes a 'rectifier valve', designed to mix cold
and solar-heated water to ensure that what comes out of the tap is
at a safe temperature. This model was described in the manual as an
'anti-scolding device'. I could not help but wonder whether such a
useful piece of equipment might have an even wider domestic
application."
A. Subscription information
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address or resubscribe,
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm .
You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a list of
commands, send this message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org:
INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS
This newsletter is also available as an RSS feed. The address is
http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .
Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ .
B. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
be sent to wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
* Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers at worldwidewords.org
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't
use this to respond to published answers to questions - e-mail
the comment address instead)
* Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list
server should be addressed to wordssubs at worldwidewords.org
C. Ways to support World Wide Words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Wide Words newsletter and Web site are free, but if you
would like to help with their costs, there are several ways to do
so. Visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/support.htm for details.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online
newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include
the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed publications or
on Web sites needs prior permission, for which you should contact
the editor at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list