World Wide Words -- 12 Jan 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Jan 12 07:24:32 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 570 Saturday 12 January 2008
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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. Topical words: Decimate.
3. Weird Words: Skimble-skamble.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Safe harbour.
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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SHOPDROPPER Gerald Etkind pointed out an earlier use of this word,
featured last week. It was the title of a tale by Alan Nelson that
appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in January
1955, about a psychiatrist who accidentally puts on some invisible
gloves, left by a patient, which force him to leave his possessions
behind in stores and private homes.
TREPAN Following my mention last week of this word, many readers -
more versed in crosswords than I am - pointed out it's an anagram
of "entrap", one of its senses. They wondered if this might be the
source, through a form of backslang. It is an interesting thought,
though of course unprovable.
Richard Rothenberg and Susan Francis noted that the word appears in
Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin: "Some subterraneous
prison / Into which they were trepanned / Long time ago in a mighty
band".
2. Topical words: Decimate
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For 33 years, the little-known Lake Superior State University has
been getting an annual PR boost as a result of its list of words
that ought to be banished from our language, a list generated from
suggestions by members of the public. This year's list contains a
classic complaint - the way that people misuse the word "decimate"
- that the university notes has resulted in word-watchers calling
for its annihilation for several years. The debate has actually
been going on for more like 130 years.
The Romans dealt with mutiny in their armies by what would probably
these days be called a short, sharp shock. They executed one man in
ten, the victims being drawn by lot. This ferocious disciplinary
method was described by the Latin verb "decimare", to take a tenth,
from "decimus", a tenth, from "decem", ten (which we retain, for
example, in December, the tenth month of the Roman calendar). The
English verb "decimate", based on the Latin one, turned up only in
1600, at first in the same sense as in Latin. But it also referred
early on to a tax amounting to one-tenth of a person's assets, in
particular to one imposed by Oliver Cromwell in 1655. This tax was
equivalent to a tithe, a relic of an Old English word that in the
modern language has become "tenth".
What continues to annoy some people is that "decimate" later took
on a broader meaning of killing or destroying any large proportion.
Nobody seems to have been bothered about this until Richard Grant
White, an American Shakespearean scholar, cellist, newspaper
editor, essayist, and former chief clerk in the New York Customs
House, wrote Words and Their Uses in 1870. He was mocked for his
views at the time, not least for his denial that English has any
grammar, for faulty etymologising, and for chapters excoriating
"misused words" and "words that are not words". White's complaint
about "decimate" was directed at a war correspondent in the Civil
War who would produce sentences like "The troops, although fighting
bravely, were terribly decimated." White remarked that "To use
decimation as a general phrase for slaughter is simply ridiculous."
Though he's quoted in some works on English as being the instigator
of the continuing campaign against "decimate", he had a point. He
wasn't arguing - as its critics do today - that the verb can only
be used in the way that the Romans used it, for reduction by one
tenth (which some moderns have misunderstood as reduction to one
tenth). Nor does he say it can be used only of humans, another
criticism that has been made. To argue in this way is to employ the
etymological fallacy - the idea that words can only have a meaning
that's implied by their ancient root forms.
Though the usage of "decimate" has broadened, it hasn't completely
broken free from its roots. In my book, the verb continues to echo
its Latin origins by implying a fraction or proportion; it's just
that the proportion has drifted free of its linguistic origins. It
feels right to me when it's used, as H W Fowler wrote in 1926, of
"the destruction in any way of a large proportion of anything
reckoned by number".
So White's criticism of "terribly decimated" seems fair, because
it's innumerate, as does "incredibly decimated", from a recent US
newspaper report quoting a librarian complaining about a 15% budget
cut. It also seems incorrect to use "decimate" for indivisibles
("Some have set out to decimate the soul of this great country"),
to imply complete destruction ("a totally decimated population"),
the killing of an individual ("He protects his brother from the
thugs intent on physically decimating him"), the destruction of a
named fraction ("A single frosty night decimated the fruit by
80%"), or the part of a whole ("disease decimated most of the
population").
On the other hand, sentences like "There may be no chance of real
recovery for Europe's decimated fish stocks" use the verb in a way
that has for two centuries been standard. That's just the way the
language is and critics of such writing are woefully misinformed.
We might, however, take the view that the word has become such a
target of vilification and misunderstanding, and is frequently so
slackly used in all the cases I've cited, that we would all be
better off if writers avoided it.
3. Weird Words: Skimble-skamble
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Rambling and confused; rubbishy.
Whatever slight popularity this word has ever achieved is due to
its first known user, William Shakespeare, who put it into the
mouth of Hotspur in King Henry IV, Part I. He complained about Owen
Glendower continually bending his ear with "Such a deal of skimble-
skamble stuff / As puts me from my faith." As a result, "skimble-
skamble stuff" turns up from time to time in later centuries as
criticism of someone's writing or opinions.
Before Shakespeare, only the second part existed. The nonsense word
"skimble" was added to the front for added force in a common method
that has also given us "pitter-patter", "tittle-tattle", "wishy-
washy" and many others.
"Scamble" is an interesting verb in itself, though obsolete. It's
related to the modern "scramble" and "shamble", both of which turn
up only much later. The Oxford English Dictionary's definition of
it is wonderfully prim: "To struggle with others for money, fruit,
sweetmeats, etc. lying on the ground or thrown to a crowd; hence,
to struggle in an indecorous and rapacious manner in order to
obtain something."
4. Recently noted
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PIECES OF ICE An article in New Scientist last week was provoked
by the recent sinking of a Antarctic cruise ship after hitting ice.
It mentioned that the problem lies not so much with big bergs but
with growlers and bergy bits. These are not recent slang inventions
but long-standing elements of the technical vocabulary of Antarctic
explorers. Bernadette Hince has entries for both in her Antarctic
Dictionary of 2000. She notes that "bergy bit" is first recorded in
1906 and defines it as "a large fragment of (usually glacier) ice,
often described as house-sized." Growlers are recorded from both
the Arctic and the Antarctic in 1912. They are usually smaller than
bergy bits (one report says that they are about the size of a grand
piano, another that they are car-sized), but they are if anything
more dangerous because they're difficult to spot, being almost
totally submerged. They get their name, Gell Rob explains in a book
of 1989, because of the noise they make as they slide along a
ship's hull.
QUACK TANTRUMS If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck,
call it an anatine species. Just before the Christmas break, the UK
Institute of Directors published a report predicting slow growth
combined with higher inflation for the British economy in 2008. In
November, this section noted "slowflation" as a transient term for
the same phenomenon, which appeared in North America in April 2007
but which has been traced back to the Financial Times in June 1998.
The Institute of Directors came up with a new one: "stickyflation",
which seems to be a neologism. These creations seem to be in part a
desperate attempt to avoid the dreaded "stagflation" for combined
economic stagnation and inflation. But they also suggest that the
economy will not actually stagnate but stagger along for a bit
before recovering. If only.
5. Q&A: Safe harbour
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Q. Please comment on the over-used redundant "safe harbor".
[Claudia Clark]
A. It's an interesting example of the way language evolves, as is
the closely similar and even more popular "safe haven".
Your dislike of it, I presume, is based on the etymological history
of "harbour", which comes from the Old English "herebeorg" for a
shelter or refuge. It is not unreasonable to argue that harbours
and havens are intrinsically safe, which would make the expression
tautologous. However, as so often, matters aren't that simple.
The earliest sense of "harbour" in English - in the twelfth century
- was of shelter from the elements, which might be an inn or other
lodgings. (A cold harbour was a wayside refuge for travellers who
were overtaken by bad weather.) It took another century before the
word began to be applied to a place where ships might shelter. The
verb went through much the same developments. (Its sense relating
to sheltering or concealing a fugitive came along in the fifteenth
century.) "Haven" is slightly older and comes from a different Old
English source. Its development is the opposite of "harbour" - the
ship sense came first and the land-based place of shelter evolved
from it.
Later on, the concept of safety originally explicit in both "haven"
and "harbour" became to a significant extent separated from that of
the physical place in which ships could dock or lie at anchor. And,
of course, you could have good harbours or poor ones. As a result,
English speakers began to attach adjectives to both words to show
their judgement of the value of a particular anchorage or port. By
the seventeenth century "safe harbour" was being used to describe
one with the needful security. The Oxford English Dictionary has an
example from 1699 in A Dissertation Upon the Epistles of Phalaris
by the classicist Richard Bentley: "She must not make to the next
safe Harbour; but ... bear away for the remotest."
Both expressions soon began to be used figuratively. It's hard to
be sure quite when, because some early examples aren't sufficiently
clear in their meaning. But, for example, this appears in Tobias
Smollett's History of England in 1758: "At length, however, it [a
parliamentary bill] was floated through both houses on the tide of
a great majority, and steered into the safe harbour of royal
approbation."
We retain the idea of a harbour or a haven being a place of safety
and security. But the compounds "safe harbour" and "safe haven"
have been used for so long that they have achieved the status of
fixed phrases. Phrases, in fact, so firmly fixed in our minds that
to rail against them is pointless.
6. Sic!
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A newsletter advertising e-books, Bob Taxin reports, explained that
there was a choice between purchasing the e-book or the hard copy,
which comes with free gifts. "Anyone purchasing the e-book version
will be able to purchase the free gifts at a significantly reduced
rate."
A news story about a storm in Eastern Oregon on 4 January on the
Web site of Northwest Cable News surprised Cindy Pendarvis: "Heavy
winds and poor visibility blew semi trucks onto their sides in
Eastern Oregon." Strong stuff, this poor visibility. It belongs to
the same class of meteorological phenomena as the one that Marie
Martinek read about in the Chicago Tribune on 7 January: "Cars
began breaking when they hit a wall of fog."
>From an ABC New online blog: "Mitt Romney made a tongue-in-cheek
plea Thursday for Ed Rollins, the Huckabee campaign chairman who
recently said that he wanted to knock Romney's teeth out, to keep
his hands off his well-quaffed hair." Thanks to R M Bragg for that.
"I purchased a packet of unsalted peanuts," began a message from
Peter Weinrich. "It bore the inscription 'Ingredients: peanuts;
vegetable oil' and underneath, 'May contain traces of peanuts.' I
am comforted to know that in this age of synthetic foods my package
of peanuts may actually contain a trace of them."
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