World Wide Words -- 24 Nov 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 23 17:54:51 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 563 Saturday 24 November 2007
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Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 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. Turns of Phrase: Mumblecore.
3. Weird Words: Kakistocracy.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Mazoola.
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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KNORK Great numbers of messages came in, following my piece last
time about this word. Lots of Australians told me that many people
in that country have been using a device like a knork for several
decades. This combination knife, fork and spoon, just right for
eating one-handed at a barbie, is called a "splayd", a blend of
"spoon" and "blade". The Sydney Powerhouse Museum Web site explains
that it was invented by William McArthur in 1943 but that it became
popular after the rights were sold to a manufacturer which released
its own design in 1962. Jennie Booth noted that "Splayds, rather
than toasters, are the wedding gift that jokes are commonly made
about." Laurie Malone said "They are very handy at cocktail parties
when you are trying to manage a drink, a plate and trying to eat
the food without spilling anything." But Ron Tier was rather less
enthusiastic: "They don't offer much advantage over the traditional
fork. The spoon area is too small to hold any significant amount of
liquid, and the edges cut no better than the edge of a fork."
Frank Prain and others pointed out that anything called a knork
would get an interesting reaction in Australia, where "norks" is
slang for breasts, a term from the 1960s. It is supposedly named
after Norco Co-operative Limited, a butter manufacturer in New
South Wales, whose packs showed a cow with a distended udder.
Robert Nathan was the first to quote from The Owl and the Pussy Cat
by Edward Lear: "They dined on mince, and slices of quince / Which
they ate with a runcible spoon." Lear invented "runcible", but he
gave no hint where the word came from or exactly what it meant; his
drawing of a runcible spoon in The Dolomphious Duck is of a fairly
conventional long-handled spoon. However, people soon found uses
for the term. It is explained thus in the 1894 edition of Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: "A horn spoon with a bowl at each
end, one the size of a table-spoon and the other the size of a tea-
spoon. There is a joint midway between the two bowls by which the
bowls can be folded over." The Oxford English Dictionary says it
was applied in the 1920s to what it describes as "a kind of fork
used for pickles, etc., curved like a spoon and having three broad
prongs of which one has a sharp edge." The term is now rare.
Other readers pointed out that the device, under any name, has an
even longer history. The spork, a spoon with prongs at the end of
the bowl, dates from the latter part of the nineteenth century in
the US. An even older device was famously used by Lord Nelson after
he lost his right arm in the Canary Islands. The National Maritime
Museum has it in its collection - see http://wwwords.org?NELF for a
picture. A short knife blade replaces one of the tines. It's known
as the Nelson fork; the term turns up very occasionally still - a
writer to the Guardian on 17 November said that her mother-in-law
used a similar device that she called a Nelson. And Marcus Murphy
told me, "Where I grew up - in Deal on the south coast of England,
from which Nelson sailed many times - cheap variations of Nelson
forks were regularly used at picnics and stand-up parties."
To finish, there's also "foon", from "fork" + "spoon". At least one
firm sells an item under that name. It's the same as a spork.
I've put all this information together with the original piece to
make a new one on the Web site (go via http://wwwords.org?KSNF),
which includes some illustrations.
MARYLEBONE Following my item last week on the Marylebone stage,
John Black noted that "in the seventeenth century 'Marylebone' was
often written as 'Marrowbone', by Samuel Pepys among others." (From
Pepys's Diary, 31 July 1667: "Then we abroad to Marrowbone, and
there walked in the garden, the first time I ever was there, and a
pretty place it is.") This makes the Marylebone-Marrowbone pun that
I talked about last time even easier to understand.
So many readers queried the pronunciation of "Marylebone" included
in the piece that I did some more research in my own defence. The
BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names gives four versions;
the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary has nine. Neil Paknadel, who
works in Marylebone Library and answers the phone using the word
dozens of times a day, says he pronounces the way I do, with the
final "bone" fully voiced. I've also heard BBC reporters use that
form. The BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names doesn't have
it, but the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary does. The suggestions
in the BBC dictionary reduce the final syllable to "b at n", where the
"@" is an unstressed "uh" sound (called a schwa). All of them have
the first vowel as in "cat", (so long as you say it with a southern
English accent). Some people add a schwa before the "l"; some omit
the "l" completely. So the answer to a query about how to pronounce
"Marylebone" is "any way you like". If you start with a stressed
first syllable and half swallow the rest of the vowels, you won't
go far wrong (/'mar at l@b at n/).
HEAR HIM! If you want to hear my dulcet tones, alas not saying the
word "Marylebone", there's a brief window of opportunity to hear my
contribution to the BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth that went
out on Monday 19 November before the new edition replaces it in the
BBC Listen Again system. Go to http://wwwords.org?MQR4, scroll down
to find the title of the programme and click on "Listen to latest
show".
2. Turns of Phrase: Mumblecore
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Though the word can be traced back to 2005, it has become widely
used only in the latter part of 2007. It's a film genre whose name
reflects the low esteem in which it is held by critics. In August,
the International Herald Tribune commented that "Specimens of the
genre share a low-key naturalism, low-fi production values and a
stream of low-volume chatter often perceived as ineloquence. Hence
the name: mumblecore." You might add independent production, non-
professional actors, improvised dialogue and extremely low budgets
to the description. The genre, the article went on to say, is more
a loose collective or even a state of mind than an actual aesthetic
movement. However, it has been getting a lot of attention recently
and has been named as a "Hot Genre" by Rolling Stone magazine. The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram of Texas reflected the uncertainty about
its enduring value: a catchline in a story on 4 November about the
Lone Star International Film Festival was "Mumblecore: The future
of cinema or just really annoying nonsense?" Among the mumblecore
films most frequently mentioned are Funny Ha Ha and Hannah Takes
the Stairs.
* Entertainment Weekly, 18 Oct. 2007: The tiny/arty film movement
known as "mumblecore" has built an entire bemused worldview out of
the perspective of overeducated, undermotivated twentysomething
guys who can't commit to a declarative statement, let alone a
career or girlfriend.
* Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 Sep. 2007: My big complaint about
these Mumblecore movies is that they are not grounded in any sort
of economic reality. Nobody works, and nobody has trouble making
rent while living their bohemian lifestyle.
3. Weird Words: Kakistocracy
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The government of a state by its most unprincipled citizens.
Writers down the years have found this to be an appropriate word
with which to belabour their, or other people's, political systems.
The American poet James Russell Lowell wrote in a letter in 1876:
What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of
the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of democracy?
Is ours a "government of the people, by the people, for
the people," or a Kakistocracy, rather for the benefit of
knaves at the cost of fools?
The first example we know of is dated 1829, in a book called The
Misfortunes of Elphin, written by the English satirical writer
Thomas Love Peacock. His sarcasm is ponderous and his language
obscure:
They were utterly destitute of the blessings of those "schools
for all," the house of correction, and the treadmill, wherein
the autochthonal justice of our agrestic kakistocracy now
castigates the heinous sins which were then committed with
impunity, of treading on old foot-paths, picking up dead wood,
and moving on the face of the earth within sound of the whirr
of a partridge.
"Autochthonal" refers to the indigenous people of a country (from
Greek words that mean "sprung from the earth"); "Agrestic" has the
sense of "relating to the country" (Latin "ager", a field). Peacock
meant by "agrestic kakistocracy" the English landed squirarchy who
kept their tenants in line by severe punishments for offences such
as poaching.
The word is Greek, from "kakistos", the worst.
4. Recently noted
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SLOWFLATION We live in interesting times. Economic woes, such as
record oil prices and the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, have led some
British economists to create this vogue word. According to the
Independent of 15 November it is "an economic environment in which
interest rates have to be kept relatively high in real terms to
keep inflation under control, thus stifling growth." Those among us
with longer memories may recall that dread situation of the 1960s
and 1970s, "stagflation", in which stagnant demand is accompanied
by severe inflation. Some experts seem to be using "slowflation" to
avoid "stagflation".
CUTE In a recent syndicated article, James J Kilpatrick insisted
that a person who was electrocuted necessarily died. He returned to
the subject in this week's piece (I ran across it in the Charlotte
Observer, North Carolina) to note that not all dictionaries agreed
with him: "To be electrocuted is invariably fatal in Merriam-
Webster, American Heritage, New World and Random House. In the
Oxford and Encarta dictionaries, death takes a holiday. Their
easygoing editors say a victim of electrocution may be merely
injured. It's a shocking act of lexicographic clemency."
STEP AWAY FROM THAT PIZZA, SON! Parade Magazine introduced us to a
foodie neologism on 11 November. It said that some lunch plans for
children in US schools allow parents to track the foods that their
offspring are eating. Hence, "nutritional wiretaps". Erik Peterson
of the School Nutrition Association was quoted as saying that "70%
of prepaid lunch plans allow parents to peek at their kids' food
purchases." Some plans, Parade says, "even let parents control what
their kids eat at school by preventing the purchase of nutritional
no-nos, such as French fries or soft drinks."
NOMINATE! Grant Barrett, Vice-President of the American Dialect
Society, asks for readers' help: "The American Dialect Society's
word-of-the-year vote - the longest-running anywhere - takes place
at its annual meeting in Chicago in January 2008. The academic
society is accepting nominations for the Word of the Year at
woty at americandialect.org. We interpret 'word of the Year' in its
broader sense as 'vocabulary item' - phrases as well as words. Your
nominations do not have to be brand new, but they should be newly
prominent or notable in the past year, and should have appeared
frequently in American written or spoken communication. The vote is
not a formal induction of terms into the American language, but a
whimsical affair. Nominate accordingly."
5. Q&A: Mazoola
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Q. I challenge you to find the origin of "mazoola". I know it means
money, but I cannot verify it or trace it back to anything.
[Jennifer McKeeman]
A. My impression is that it has never been that common an item of
US slang and is now pretty much defunct, though as I'm on the other
side of the Atlantic from its stamping ground, I may be wrong. An
example appeared in the Deming Headlight of Deming, New Mexico, in
November 1956: "If these commentators want something which is
really horrifying let them point out that Elvis Presley will get
more 'mazoola' this year than all of the presidents of our five top
universities combined. That's one to give you the creeps."
It may remind you of another slang term for money, "moola", but the
two words seem to be unconnected, though nobody knows where "moola"
comes from. On the other hand, the experts say that "mazoola", like
its even rarer abbreviation "mazoo", is just a variant of "mazuma".
That makes life simpler, since "mazuma" is better recorded, though
likewise it's nothing so common as it used to be. For me, it brings
to mind Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade from classic hard-boiled US
detective fiction. But it was around even earlier, from the very
first years of the twentieth century. An early user was O Henry,
who wrote it into Whirligigs in 1904: "The guys with wads are not
in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma."
"Mazuma" is one of the many words that came into American English
from Yiddish. In that language it was "mezumen", cash, which can be
traced to the post-Biblical Hebrew "mezumman", from "zimmen", to
prepare.
6. Sic!
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Variety Careers online have been advertising a job with Fox Sports
Net South, Mary Ellen Foley discovered. The post was described as a
"Writer/Predator". Any unkind remarks about the suitability of such
a job title for Fox News should be addressed to that network. More
fully, the job is a Writer/Producer/Editor. Is "predator" a jargon
term of the business, or was somebody just being over-creative with
the wording? A vaguely interested editor feels he ought to check.
"When the Chairman of Citibank left his job recently," says Scott
Pollard, "BBC Teletext announced: 'World's biggest bank chairman
quits'." Perhaps they couldn't find a chair big enough.
The curse of the spell checker strikes again. "Over the weekend,"
communicated Bob McGill from Houston, Texas, "I noticed a sign in
my dry cleaner's declaring they are not responsible for damage to
'loose buttons, beads, sequence, and zippers'."
Seen by Richard J Levy on a notice board offering training courses
at a charity in Lewisham, South London: "Life Long Learning: short
courses." Ars brevis, vita longa.
Australia is having national elections today, Saturday 24 November.
Jennifer Atkinson tells me that on 19 November, the Hobart Mercury
(and the Melbourne Age) quoted the opposition Labor leader, Kevin
Rudd, as saying, "Here we are six days before and nothing but a
negative fuselage from Mr Howard on everything under the sun."
On 1 November, Dave Patron read in the Lakewood Sentinel, Colorado,
about an incident at a fast-food drive-through during which a man
pulled a stun gun on staff. The report noted, "The police officer
found the man and his stun gun under the driver's seat of his van."
They're making criminals small this year.
Ron Davis heard a reporter say on CTV News last Saturday: "There is
astigmatism attached to Ontario wines." Yes, after you've drunk a
couple of bottles, everything goes blurry.
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