World Wide Words -- 26 Jan 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 25 17:14:54 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 572 Saturday 26 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. Weird Words: Scacchic.
3. Q&A: Your name is mud.
4. Q&A: Man of straw.
5. 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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ERROR OF THE WEEK Martin Watts got in first, with reference to the
piece on "cad" last week: "It was, of course Tom Brown who had the
schooldays. John Brown had a body."
SLEDGING I noted in a Sic! item last week that this word from the
vocabulary of cricket, for an insult directed at a player on the
opposing side in order to break his concentration, is a shortened
form of "sledgehammer". Several subscribers wrote in to tell me of
another story. Ray Wood said, "I read years ago that 'sledging' was
developed by the Australian team then captained by Ian Chappell,
and that the word was derived from Percy Sledge, a reggae singer,
popular with the Aussie cricketers at the time." Richard Bollard
agreed, "It derives from Percy Sledge, who had a hit song 'When a
Man Loves a Woman'. The default sledge is an attack on a mother,
lover or sister. I have seen some claims that such an insult has a
similar effect to being hit with a sledgehammer, but I think this
is a bit of back-etymology, put in there by those for whom old
Percy is either unknown or at best a very faded memory." Those
dictionaries that include the term, however, connect it with
sledgehammer.
CAD Following last week's piece on the curious derivation of this
word (now online at http://wwwords.org?FLCA), David Bell e-mailed,
"Knowing you particularly enjoy dubious etymologies I thought you
would enjoy this one for 'cad', which I recently came across in
Mary Lovell's biography of Jane Digby, A Scandalous Life." Ms
Lovell wrote, "The 1828 Derby, held shortly after Jane met Felix
[Schwarzenberg], was narrowly won by the Duke of Rutland's Cadland,
with the King's horse, The Colonel, which started favourite,
finishing in second place. It seemed excruciatingly amusing when
Felix suddenly acquired the nickname 'Cadland', because, as the
fashionable world tittered, 'he had beat the Colonel' out of Jane's
affections. Later Cadland was shortened to 'Cad'. In that form it
has been passed down to the present day as a synonym for
ungentlemanly behaviour - not surprisingly, given the prince's
subsequent conduct." It's a delightful story, but - as readers of
my piece will know, there's no truth in it at all.
LONDON BUSES Jack Ayer followed up my mention of London omnibuses
and their staff last week: "I assume you know the folklore about
London bus conductors and 'ta'. That's what it sounded like on the
buses I rode in the 1970s. I was told the conductors used to be
northerners, and that what the northerners said was 'tak', as in
Danish." It's a neat story, one that's new to me. "Ta", of course,
is no more than a childish form of "thank you", recorded from the
eighteenth century, but probably older. At that period it was still
commonly used by adults in Britain, though my impression is that it
is now much less common.
2. Weird Words: Scacchic /'skakik/
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Of or pertaining to chess.
The death of Bobby Fischer last week brought the game of chess into
the headlines, but not this word, which remains as rare as it ever
has been.
The main claim to fame of "scacchic" is that it's the shortest word
in English that contains the letter "c" four times (the longest is
"floccinaucinihilipilification"; see http://wwwords.org?FLOC for
more about it). The record is held by one with six letters "c", the
even longer "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (which
I haven't, yet, got around to writing about).
It, "scacchic" that is, seems to have been coined in 1860 by a man
named Fiske from the Italian word for chess, "scacchi". He wrote in
his Chess Tales: "Stern old fellows were these scacchic sages! They
considered the laws of chess as inviolable as those of the Medes
and Persians."
It's almost never seen anywhere, except as an occasional obscure
reference or witticism in chess magazines. One rare appearance was
in 1968, when it briefly appeared in the title of the magazine of
the Central California Chess Association, The Scacchic Voice.
3. Q&A: Your name is mud
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Q. Do you know where "Your name is Mudd" began? I've been told that
it came from Dr Samuel Mudd who set the broken leg of John Wilkes
Booth, Lincoln's assassin, and was subsequently convicted as a
conspirator. [Mary-Carol Riehs and Thomas Pratt]
A. The facts about Dr Mudd are correct but he wasn't the source.
Dr Mudd certainly treated Booth and was imprisoned as a conspirator
in the assassination, though his guilt is open to doubt and he was
pardoned soon after. The story is often told that his name prompted
the expression. However, even a cursory look at the evidence shows
this can't be true.
The Oxford English Dictionary, in an entry only recently revised,
in December 2007, finds the first example of the phrase from 1823,
more than four decades before Lincoln was killed. Moreover, the
term appeared in a British publication, A Dictionary of the Turf.
This was written under the pen name of John Bee by John Badcock, a
man about whom so little is known that even his date and place of
birth and death are unknown. It's thought he was born about 1810
and died about 1830. A short life then, but one full of writings
about horses and riding. His entry in the slang dictionary reads:
"Mud, a stupid twaddling fellow. 'And his name is mud!' ejaculated
upon the conclusion of a silly oration, or of a leader in the
Courier."
It's not from the family name "Mudd" but from the wet sticky earth
stuff. It builds on a slang sense of "mud" recorded in the previous
century. A book called Hell Upon Earth of 1703 includes the word in
the sense of a fool or a simpleton. In turn, this probably derives
from another sense that's two centuries older still, in which "mud"
referred to the lowest or worst part of something, the dregs.
4. Q&A: Man of straw
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Q. A story in the Guardian on 15 January 2008 suggested an origin
for the term "man of straw": '[It] stems from the days when mostly
private prosecutions were brought with bribed witnesses. They used
to stand outside court with straws in their shoes to signify their
testimony could be bought.' Why do so many explanations for English
turns of phrase seem so incredible? Why would someone stand outside
a courtroom with straw in their shoes? And wouldn't the simple fact
you had, itself make you an unreliable witness? I suppose what I'm
asking is, is it true? [Steve Haywood]
A. Not a hope. It's a classic popular etymology.
The oddest thing about it is that, although "man of straw" has had
several meanings down the centuries, the Oxford English Dictionary
does not include in its list that of a witness for hire. I guess
the idea has come about because the term often refers to a person
who has no financial means and so may be more open to being bribed
than your average man in the street. But the idea of standing with
straw in your shoes outside a court to indicate you're available to
take part in an illegal act for money is so funny only someone with
a common-sense bypass could seriously put it forward.
Let's go back to the early days of the term, at the very end of the
sixteenth century. A man of straw then was a sham or dummy, like a
scarecrow or any image stuffed with straw. It evolved quickly into
a specific sense of a sham argument, an invented adverse argument
that is put up by a debater, only to be triumphantly refuted. The
idea of a man of straw being without money seems to have been first
recorded in 1823 by a man whom I've mentioned above, John Bee, who
listed the phrase in his Dictionary of the Turf: "'Man of straw', a
bill-acceptor, without property - 'no assets'."
This is now the most common sense, especially in legal contexts in
the UK, in which it is used to refer to somebody not worth suing or
otherwise pursuing for money because he has none. The broader sense
of a man who has no substance is also common, as is that of a sham
argument. There's also "straw man", of course, which is more an US
than a British expression, for a front man or dummy, somebody used
as a cover for a dubious enterprise. That takes us right back to
the original idea, more than four centuries ago.
But no trace anywhere of straw-shod bribable false witnesses.
5. Sic!
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Brian Panisset spotted a notice outside a church in Port Macquarie,
Australia. Was it an over-clever attempt at making a point or two
thoughts unthinkingly wedged together? "This church is not full of
hypocrites. There's always room for more."
Mike Cottrell e-mailed from Shropshire: "Continuing the thread last
week, I recently saw the following fire instructions in a Helsinki
hotel: 'If you are unable to leave your room, call the reception,
seal all ventilation vents and door gaps, open the window if too
much smoke in your room, and expose yourself in the window.'" The
instruction in a lift in an Istanbul hotel gave Randolph Bragg an
apprehensive moment: "Please do not use elevators on fire!"
On 17 January, another triumph of do-it-yourself surgery was aired
on the Web site of Channel 6, an Indianapolis TV station: "Boy's
Condition Improves After Father Shoots Him In Head". Many thanks to
Barbara Uhrig for that. The headline has since been changed to the
more anodyne but also legally safe and accurate, "Condition Of Boy
Allegedly Shot By Father Improves".
A. Subscription information
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B. E-mail contact addresses
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