World Wide Words -- 10 Mar 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Mar 9 18:38:00 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 530 Saturday 10 March 2007
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Sent each Saturday to at least 48,000 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/uejk.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Hugger-mugger.
3. Topical Words: Quadricycle.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Smart as paint.
6. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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BRIDEWELL Several subscribers told me that this term is still in
use in Ireland, though in the transferred sense of a police station
rather than a prison, and that it survived well into the twentieth
century in the US (one correspondent mentioned that Chicago's main
jail was long known as the Bridewell).
HAP Many American subscribers mentioned "happenstance" as another
compound of this word. It's an odd term, created in the US around
the middle of the nineteenth century as a blend of "happen" and
"circumstance", to mean "coincidence". I left it out because I had
already mentioned "happen". The Oxford English Dictionary's first
example is from 1897, but in 1857 The Wisconsin Chief, published in
Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, had this florid introduction to a story:
"Among the adventures which are of daily occurrence at places where
fashionable ladies and gentlemen congregate, with the expectation
of being and doing the exquisite in the matter of politeness, the
following account of a recent 'happenstance' at Trenton Falls,
communicated by the correspondent of the New York News, will do to
put on record."
MYRIAD OF Following my robust defence last week of my use of "a
myriad of", Roger Downham reports, "Now you've got Blair at it!" He
was referring to an interview with the prime minister last Sunday
in the Observer: "Blair declined to offer more endorsements of
[Gordon] Brown, but referred back to a 'myriad of complimentary
things I have said in the past' about him." I've put an extended
version of my comments online; go via http://quinion.com?M78D.
PINCH OF SALT I managed to move the ancient kingdom of Pontus from
the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Dead Sea. At the time I
was probably thinking of an earlier piece, on "salt of the earth",
which does have Dead Sea connections. Apologies.
CROMARTY FISHER DIALECT Jonathan McColl e-mailed from Dingwall to
correct me on the name of the site that is recording this vanishing
dialect. It's actually Am Baile. He says: "It's Gaelic for The Town
or Village and is pronounced something like 'a-moll-yeh' (honest)."
The site is at http://www.ambaile.org.uk and is run by the Highland
Council. It is bilingual in English and Gaelic.
2. Weird Words: Hugger-mugger
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Confused or disorderly; secret or clandestine.
This word was in the news recently, used to refer to a woman thief
in New York who waits for men coming out of downtown bars, cuddles
them and pinches their wallets. A similar usage is on record from
Singapore in 2002, showing that journalistic catchword creation may
know no geographic bounds but is limited in scope.
Though the origin of this curious expression is far from certain,
one thing the experts are sure of is that the second half has no
link with the term for someone who robs people in a public place.
More typical examples appeared in the Sunday Times in February
2006: "The only problem with a tropical paradise miles from the
hugger-mugger, hurly-burly of the great grind is that it is cut off
from news of the hugger-mugger, hurly-burly of the great grind."
and in the Daily Record in October that year: "They were the home
front in the war against terror and anyone who objected must be an
enemy of the state and hugger mugger with Osama Bin Laden."
"Hugger-mugger" is a classic example of a reduplicated word, one in
which its two halves are very closely similar in form. Some smaller
dictionaries simply say "origin unknown", but it's known that there
were earlier forms that may have influenced each other to create
it, including "hucker-mucker", "hoker-moker", "hudder-mudder" and
Scots "hudge-mudge". The two parts may be related to "huddle" and
to a dialect term "mucker", to hoard money or conceal things.
The original idea was of secrecy or concealment. The meaning of
disorder or confusion came along later - as late as the nineteenth
century as an adjective - but has largely overtaken the older one.
3. Topical Words: Quadricycle
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When is a car not a car?
A strange report appeared in the Observer last Sunday. It claimed
that the British Department of Transport has produced a list of the
most environmentally friendly vehicles to drive, but has left out
electrically powered ones, like the British G-Wiz, on the grounds
these are quadricycles, not cars. The managing director of the firm
that makes the G-Wiz reasonably and pragmatically pointed out that
"if it looks like a car and it's used like a car, then it's a car".
What must have confused most readers was "quadricycle", hardly a
word in their day-to-day vocabulary. From its form, it would seem
to be a bicycle with four wheels, one up on a tricycle. This was
its first meaning, listed in the Oxford English Dictionary from
1883 in reference to one called the Coventry, which had two big
wheels side by side and smaller steering ones front and back, like
a head-to-head collision between two penny farthings. A report of
1887 said that a train of four-wheeled human-powered machines by
that name was being tried out in London and Aldershot as a way to
transport infantry and their equipment. The same year a Washington
man was said to have invented a quadricycle as a kind of bicycle
rickshaw. A family conveyance of that name was created in 1897, in
which the motive power came from passengers bobbing up and down in
spring-loaded see-saw seats.
All the early references are to human-powered machines, but a link
to motor vehicles came in 1896, when Henry Ford named his first
experimental motor car the Quadricycle, so called because it ran on
four bicycle wheels.
Apart from Ford's vehicle, "quadricycle" has continued to mean a
means of transport that uses human muscle as motive power. A few
firms, mostly in North America, make such four-wheeled conveyances
for various purposes, such as two-seater touring bikes that can
also carry a fair amount of luggage. The more usual name for them
these days, though, is "quadracycle".
So where did the Department of Transport get "quadricycle" from?
Enter the European Commission. Under EU Directive 2002/24/EC, a
quadricycle is one of several kinds of small four-wheeled vehicles
of which the biggest has an unladen mass of 400 kg and a
maximum power of 15 kW. But there's nothing in the directive
to say that a quadricycle has to be powered by electricity. All
small electric vehicles are quadricycles, but not all quadricycles
are electric.
However you view it, the official compilers of that list have got
their jargon in a muddle.
4. Recently noted
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YOU WANT TO CALL IT WHAT? Each year, the Frankfurt Book Fair is
enlivened by the Bookseller/Diagram competition to find the oddest
title of the year. Previous winners have included Proceedings of
the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice; Greek Rural Postmen
and Their Cancellation Numbers; The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition; How
to Shit in the Woods, an Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost
Art; Highlights in the History of Concrete; Living with Crazy
Buttocks; and People Who Don't Know They´re Dead: How They Attach
Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.
Among those shortlisted this year are How Green Were the Nazis?;
Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium; The
Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a Guide To Field
Identification; and Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of
Daghestan.
5. Q&A: Smart as paint
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Q. The phrase "smart as paint" is said by Long John Silver to Jim
Hawkins in Treasure Island. Any ideas as to the source of the
expression? [Lewis Rosenbaum]
A. It appears a couple of times in R L Stevenson's book, the first
time as: "Now, Hawkins, you do me justice with the cap'n. You're a
lad, you are, but you're as smart as paint. I see that when you
first come in."
It really is rather an odd expression, isn't it? It was only one of
many versions that have been invented from the 1850s onwards, among
them "fresh as paint", "snug as paint", "clever as paint", "pretty
as paint", and "handsome as paint".
They're all similes that draw on some special quality of paint, but
"smart as paint" punningly combines two senses of "smart" - the
idea of new paint being bright and fresh in appearance and that of
a person who is quick-witted and intelligent.
It seems to have been Stevenson's own invention. At least, I can't
find an earlier example. It started to be used by others in the
second decade of the twentieth century, presumably based on his
example.
But it wasn't always a pun; sometimes only the first part of the
sense was meant. For example, this appears in Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's A Visit to Three Fronts, dated 1916: "His charming blue
uniform, his facings, his brown gaiters, boots and belts are always
just as smart as paint."
6. Sic!
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Beverley Rowe received a leaflet that advertised "A free help-guide
for all 50+ computer lovers ... and those who wish to become one".
He commented that, at his age, if they told him how to become a 50-
computer lover, he would sign up like a shot.
The New York Times of 1 March contained an article about residents
of Cairo: "'We hope God keeps the municipality away from us,' Mr.
Sayed said as he sat in a wooden chair, surveying his fetid flock
of goats and sheep with headlights streaming by." Miriam Raphael
writes, "A friend says he is confused. Do both goats and sheep have
headlights, or only the sheep?"
Jim Brewster and Andrew Spano found this on Fox News online in a
piece dated 3 March: "Police say a man sought revenge against his
ex-girlfriend by leaving homemade DVDs of her performing sex acts
on car windshields throughout the area." At this time of year, it's
a great way to catch a chill.
Badger Beat is a joint newsletter of the University of Wisconsin
and the Madison Police Department. Anne Jones sent me the current
issue, which contains this wise advice: "When buying tickets for
the games you want to go through the ticket office or a respected
ticket broker. In most states, ticket scalloping is illegal and not
tolerated." Is that like deckle edging?
On Thursday, Kevin McLoughlin noted a poster for the latest issue
of the Cape Argus of Cape Town: "City's Exploding Shack Lands". He
bought the paper to find out how long the shack was in flight after
the explosion; but the article proved to be about the rapid growth
of shantytowns in the area.
Thursday's Guardian mused on events in the ITV cop soap, The Bill,
which has been running since 1984. "We have fond memories of June,
pounding the beat with WPC Viv Martella way back when. While Viv
got shot in the line of duty by a privet hedge, June plodded on."
Damned dangerous, these plants.
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