World Wide Words - 10 Nov 07
Michael Quinion
michael.quinion at GMAIL.COM
Fri Nov 9 19:03:47 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 561 Saturday 10 November 2007
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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. Weird Words: Subfusc.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Dude.
5. Q&A: Malacia.
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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GILGUY My reference last week to an Australian sense of "gilguy"
led to informative responses from Down Under. The usual spelling, I
am told, is "gilgai". The examples I found with the other spelling
were homophonic mistakes. The Macquarie Dictionary says "gilgai"
can alternatively be spelled "ghilgai", and defines the word as "a
natural soil formation occurring extensively in inland Australia,
characterised by a markedly undulating surface sometimes with
mounds and depressions; probably caused by swelling and cracking of
clays during alternating wet and dry seasons." The source is the
Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi languages, in which "gilgaay" means a
water-hole.
2. Weird Words: Subfusc
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Dull, dark or gloomy.
This word is almost unknown in the USA but may be found in literary
writing in Britain. The reason was spotlit by news in March 2006
that a poll of undergraduates in Oxford had overwhelmingly rejected
proposals by the University authorities that they should no longer
wear subfusc during examinations.
The word emerged in the early years of the eighteenth century. It
is related to the older "fusk", long obsolete, for a dark brown or
dusky colour. That's from Latin "fuscus", dusky, which has also
given us the rare adjective "fuscous" for a dark and sombre colour.
"Subfusc" was taken directly from the Latin "subfuscus", in which
in this case the prefix means "of the approximate colour" (other
examples are "subalbidus", whitish, and "subviridis", greenish).
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the word began to be
applied to the formal costume of Oxford undergraduates and later to
that of students at other universities. Since the first example in
the Oxford English Dictionary's entry is from the comic novel of
Oxford life, Verdant Green by Cuthbert Bede, we may guess that its
first application was intended to be humorous. But it has long
since become standard, and appears in the current Oxford University
regulations set down by the Vice-Chancellor: "All members of the
University are required to wear academic dress with subfusc
clothing ... when attending any university examination." For men
this is a dark suit and socks, black shoes, a white bow tie, and
plain white shirt and collar; for women, a dark skirt or trousers,
a white blouse, black tie, black stockings and shoes. To these have
to be added a student gown and a mortarboard cap, though the latter
may be carried rather than worn. In my day at Cambridge, if I may
reminisce, clothing regulations were rather less strict, but you
had to wear your gown or be refused entrance to the examination
room (and indeed refused admittance to dinner in hall).
Outside its academic usage, the word is mainly used for formal or
unshowy clothing, or figuratively to suggest a sombre appearance.
An example is in John Buchan's novel Sick Heart River of 1941: "As
his eyes thirstily drank in the detail he saw that there was little
colour in the scene. Nearly all was subfusc, monochrome, and yet so
exquisite was the modelling that there was nothing bleak in it; the
impression rather was of a chaste, docile luxuriance."
3. Recently noted
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IT'S ALL IRISH Many people pointed me to an item in the New York
Times (http://wwwords.org?CASS) this week, in which Daniel Cassidy
contends that many of the most common slang terms used in American
English actually have an Irish origin; for example he claims that
"buddy" has its origin in "bodach", Irish for a lusty youth; that
"Say uncle!" derives from "anacal", mercy; that "dude" originates
in "dúid", a dolt or foolish-looking fellow, and that "bunkum" is
from "buanchumadh", a long made-up story. Many of us have doubts.
My piece below about "dude" - and an earlier one about "Say uncle"
(http://wwwords.org?UNCL) - show that I disagree with him about the
origins of at least two of the words he lists that I've been able
to research in detail. Also, "bunkum" is firmly linked historically
to Buncombe County, North Carolina, through its being mentioned in
a long and inconsequential speech in Congress by its congressman
solely to please his constituents. Mr Cassidy's 68-page book, How
the Irish Invented Slang, last month won an American Book Award for
non-fiction from the Before Columbus Foundation, so he is clearly
taken seriously in some quarters. But Grant Barrett, lexicographer,
project editor of Oxford's Historical Dictionary of American Slang
and vice-president of the American Dialect Society, makes clear in
a blog entry this week (http://wwwords.org?DBLT) that he disagrees
fundamentally with Mr Cassidy's ideas.
ASPERAND Rick McLaughlin told me about this word. When many years
ago I wrote (http://wwwords.org?ATAT) about the varied names used
worldwide for the symbol that in English is formally "commercial
at" (@) this one didn't feature. There are many references to it
online, the earliest being a posting on misc.writing on 31 December
1996 in which Jerry Kindall notes that he recently heard the word.
A rare sighting in print is in Grammar with a Global Perspective by
F Melrose Davis, in which the alternative "ampersat" is also given.
That's slightly older: Tim Gowens was recorded as suggesting it in
February 1996 in the British newspaper, the Independent, as a blend
of "ampersand" and "at". "Asperand" might also be a type of blend,
from "asterisk" and "ampersand", but that's a guess. Neither word,
despite appearing in at least one dictionary of computing, shows
any signs of becoming popular. They are mentioned, but are not used
unselfconsciously as the name for the symbol, though Mr McLaughlin
says he uses "asperand".
4. Q&A: Dude
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Q. I was taken aback to read the following in Jerome K Jerome's
book Three Men in a Boat, which was published in 1889: "Maidenhead
itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the haunt of the river
swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the town of showy
hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes and ballet girls." Just how
long have dudes been with us? [Robert W M Greaves]
A. Many people have come across references to dudes in connection
with dude ranches, where urbanites could experience a sanitised
version of Western life, and it is often assumed that this is the
source of the term. However, "dude ranch" is relatively recent,
with the first known examples being from 1921. The Oxford English
Dictionary's first example of "dude" is from 1883. It's definitely
an Americanism. So what was it doing, unremarked as a foreignism,
in a British book as early as 1889?
The cause was an extraordinary craze or fashion identified by that
name which erupted in New York and its neighbourhood in early 1883.
On 25 February, the Brooklyn Eagle noted an addition to the
language:
It is d-u-d-e or d-o-o-d, the spelling not having been
distinctly settled yet. Nobody knows where the word came
from, but it has sprung into popularity within the past
two weeks, and everybody is using it... The word "dude"
is a valuable addition to the slang of the day.
Earlier cases of "dude" are on record - the Historical Dictionary
of American Slang takes it back to 1877 and there are examples of
it as a personal name or nickname even before then. But it is clear
from the article that these had made no impression on the American
public.
A description of the "dude", model for all that followed, appeared
in the New York Evening Post early the following month:
A dude, then, is a young man, not over twenty-five, who may be
seen on Fifth Avenue between the hours of three and six, and
may be recognized by the following distinguished marks and
signs. He is dressed in clothes which are not calculated to
attract much attention, because they are fashionable without
being ostentatious. It is, in fact, only to the close observer
that the completeness and care of the costume of the dude
reveals itself. His trousers are very tight; his shirt-collar,
which must be clerical in cut, encircles his neck so as to
suggest that a sudden motion of the head in any direction will
cause pain; he wears a tall black hat, pointed shoes, and a
cane (not a "stick"), which should, we believe, properly have
a silver handle, is carried by him under his right arm,
(projecting forward at an acute angle, somewhat in the manner
that a sword is carried by a general at a review, but with a
civilian mildness that never suggests a military origin for
the custom). When the dude takes off his hat, or when he is
seen in the evening at the theatre, it appears that he parts
his hair in the middle and "bangs" it. There is believed to be
a difference of opinion among dudes as to whether they ought
to wear white gaiters.
The article noted that dudes, unlike the mashers of the time and
the fops, dandies and swells of earlier generations, set out to
give an impression of protesting against fashionable folly and of
being instead serious-minded young men with missions in life: "A
high-spirited, hilarious dude would be a contradiction in terms."
But dudes were also widely reported as being vapid, with no ideas
or conversation.
The Brooklyn Eagle fleshed out this portrait by noting that a dude
was as a rule a rich man's son, was effeminate, aped the English,
had as "his badge of office the paper cigarette and a bull-crown
English opera hat", was noted for his love of actresses (to the
extent of carrying on scandalous "affairs") but with no knowledge
of the theatre.
In June, the Daily Northwestern reported that dudes had taken to
wearing corsets, "in order to more fully develop and expose the
beauties of the human form divine". The Richwood Gazette of Ohio
argued in July that the dude was useful "as an example of how big a
fool can be made in the semblance of a man"; the Prince Albert
Times of Saskatchewan noted the same month that "The dude is one of
those creatures which are perfectly harmless and are a necessary
evil to civilization." The Manitoba Daily Free Press reported the
story, "bearing evident marks of reportorial invention", that a dude was
seen being chased up Fifth Avenue, by a cat.
You will gather that "dude" was a term of ridicule, not approval.
The geographical spread of the references shows that the whole of
North America was variously intrigued and disgusted by the spread
of the dude phenomenon in the cities of the East Coast. The Atlanta
Constitution remarked in June, "So great a success the dude has had
here in the United States, most every newspaper in the country has
written editorials on him and brought him before the public in such
manner as to create comment, if not surprise." News of him crossed
the Atlantic very quickly. In fact, the OED's first example of the
word is from The Graphic, a popular illustrated paper of London.
Its report in March 1883 reads as if it were cribbed from the New
York Evening Post: "The one object for which the dude exists is to
tone down the eccentricities of fashion ... The silent, subfusc,
subdued 'dude' hands down the traditions of good form."
"Dude" became widely known in the UK and it isn’t surprising
that Jerome K Jerome came across the term, as he was at the time an
actor in London. Indeed, some American newspapers stated at the
time that the term had been brought to New York from the London
music halls and that this was the reason for the pronounced
Anglophile streak in the fashion. But, so far as I know, nobody has
found British examples that predate the US ones.
That leaves us without any direct leads to the source of "dude".
But it has been plausibly linked to the very much older "duds" for
clothes, which could in particular refer to ragged or tattered ones
or even to rags (hence, at the very end of the nineteenth century,
"dud" meaning something useless); "dudman" was an old term for a
scarecrow. We may guess that "dude" was a sarcastic way to describe
the foppish dress of these fashionable young men.
5. Q&A: Malacia
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Q. I was looking up the word "malacia" and noticed that it was not
only "softening of organs or tissue" but also "a craving for spicy
foods"? Are these two meanings related in some way? [Shondra
Tharp]
A. The origin of both senses is Greek "malakos", soft, a relative
of "malakia"; the Oxford English Dictionary says that this meant
"softness, homosexual desire, sickness", a splendid demonstration
of how much cultural bias you can build into four words.
We borrowed "malacia" in the seventeenth century from the Latin
version of the Greek word. The Oxford English Dictionary says that
in Latin this meant a disorder of the stomach, especially the
sickness and nausea that was suffered by pregnant women, but early
writers in English took it to mean a craving for unnatural or
unusual foods, a different symptom of pregnancy. Your second sense
grew up only in the late nineteenth century and it would seem that
in this case medical writers took the word directly from Greek,
creating terms such as "osteomalacia" (softening of the bones) and
"gastromalacia" (a softening of the lining of the stomach).
Incidentally, the combining form "malaco-" is also derived from the
first of your meanings: it appears in "malacoderm", used in zoology
for an animal having a soft outer protective layer, as well as in a
few other technical terms. Just to keep us on our toes, "malaco-",
via another sense of the Greek original, can refer to molluscs, as
in "malacology", their study.
6. Sic!
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"Several years ago," recalls Chaya Galai, "in a large Moscow hotel
that was still showing signs of its Soviet origins, I encountered a
heart-warming sign in the shabby and depressing lobby: 'This is the
Hotel Moscow and you are welcome to it!' The hotel has since been
torn down."
Paul Witheridge was in a car driving behind a truck on the Trans-
Canada Highway in western Ontario when he spotted a notice on its
doors: "Now hiring. Drivers to run US & Canada". Hands up all those
who think the drivers could do a better job than Messrs Bush and
Harper.
The premier of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, spoke on ABC TV on 1
November about the report of an enquiry into the operation of the
Sydney Harbour ferry service. He assured viewers that "This is the
roadmap for a better ferry service". Allan Dean wonders if this
means that the vessels will be rendered amphibious.
Dorothy Anstice sent me a report from The Globe and Mail, Toronto,
of 29 October: "Councillor Michael Thompson ... urged his fellow
councillors, in going over the city budget, to 'corral all of these
sacred cows and put them under the microscope.'"
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