World Wide Words -- 05 Jul 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jul 4 08:18:58 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 594 Saturday 5 July 2008
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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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A formatted version of this newsletter is available
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For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Chthonic.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Finagle.
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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ANOUSIA My attempt in a Recently Noted piece in the last issue to
guess how A C Grayling derived his neologism "anousia" led to some
critical messages from readers. Prof Grayling has put me straight:
"I was thinking of the Greek 'nous' (mind) and the privative prefix
'a' (not) to yield 'anous-' (thus, 'anousic' and 'anousia'). As you
will recognise, this is a false coining, because an Anglicised
version of Greek 'mindless' would be 'anoic'. But I chose 'anous-'
partly because most people who would recognise the allusion would
do so because they had come across 'nous' for mind without knowing
much else - or any - ancient Greek, and partly of course as a
convoluted pun ('without substance')."
FLAT The piece last week on the derivation of this British term
for an apartment might well have mentioned Tolkien's Lord of the
Rings cycle, several subscribers noted. He used the Old English
"flet" in The Fellowship of the Ring for platforms built by the
elves of Lothlorien in mallorn trees: "As he climbed slowly up
Frodo passed many flets: some on one side, some on another, and
some set about the bole of the tree, so that the ladder passed
through them." Professor Tolkien knew more about Old English than
anyone and the reference was undoubtedly deliberate.
AHOY Philip Warwick supplied an interesting anecdote: "Having
lived in the Czech Republic for the last ten years I have heard a
number of stories relating to the origin of 'ahoj' - apparently it
has been used for less than 100 years. One of the most interesting
stories related to an American film shown in the country between
the two world wars; it was one of the first talkies (in English)
and as such, much discussed in Prague - much of the language was,
of course, not understood by the audience, so a key phrase like
'ahoj' stuck. People got in the habit of shouting it out as two
trams passed in the street (as pirates did when two ships passed in
the film) and given the demographics of the country (roughly 50% of
the population live in or around Prague) this spread quickly."
Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies at the University of
Glasgow, confirms my strong suspicion that - though a nice tale -
this is a classic folk etymology. The bit that's true, and which
must have started the story off, is that the word did begin to
become widely known in Czech around the time that the talkies
arrived. A Czech etymological dictionary of 2001 says that "ahoj"
was introduced by hikers, boy scouts, sportsmen and young people;
it came into wide use when hiking and scouting became generally
widespread, in the 1930s, though there are examples on record from
as early as the 1880s. There is no doubt among Czech etymologists
that the word was based on the English sailors' hail. So when the
original questioner said he had been told that "ahoy" was brought
into English by Czech sailors, his informant had it exactly
backwards! I've updated the online piece.
2. Weird Words: Chthonic /'kTQnIk/
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Concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.
The biggest problem with this word, once you've worked out how to
spell it, is how to say it. American dictionaries suggest that the
initial "ch" should be silent, while British ones say it should be
said as "k", reflecting the Greek source, "khthon", earth.
The classic Greek word referred not to the surface of the ground,
which would be "gaia", but to what lies underneath. Both "gaia" and
"khthon" were associated with the supernatural beings that dwelled
in these domains, Gaia being the personification of the Earth and
the original mother of all beings, while the deities of chthonic
realms were Pluto and Persephone.
The English word is comparatively new, from the late nineteenth
century. It has flowered in recent decades as a favourite term of
SF and fantasy writers. "Like the rumble of a live volcano it
came," wrote Piers Anthony in his 1985 collection of short stories,
Anthonology, "throbbing up from the fundament, pressuring chthonic
valves, gathering into an irresistible swell." One of Charles
Stross's characters was heavily sarcastic with its help in The
Jennifer Morgue:
"Really?" asks the woman. "Are you sure it's all over?"
Billington glances at her. "Pretty much, apart from a few
little details - mass human sacrifices, invocations of
chthonic demigods, Richter-ten earthquakes, harrowing of
the Deep Ones, rains of meteors, and the creation of a
thousand-year world empire, that sort of thing. Trivial,
really."
3. Recently noted
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EDUPUNK This neologism appeared in the online Chronicle of Higher
Education on 1 June and has been the subject of a great deal of
debate online. Jim Groom, a US-based educator, coined it in late
May. Defining it presents a problem, partly because it's so new the
idea hasn't yet settled down, but also because, as Stephen Downes
notes in his blog, "true edupunks deride definitions as tools of
oppression used by defenders of order and conformity." Edupunk is
an anti-authoritarian, even anarchistic, DIY approach to learning
and teaching using computers and the Internet. It's linked to the
concept called elearning 2.0, which applies the collaborative and
participative ideas behind Web 2.0 to teaching, on the principle
that computer-based teaching must be designed for learners and not
for teachers. It uses online techniques such as wikis, mashups and
blogs to create new ways to learn. The edupunk activists argue that
commercial computer applications designed for teaching are ways for
big business to package instruction and put a straitjacket of
corporate control around learning.
VIA FERRATA Those actively engaged in adventure sports will know
this Italian phrase, which may be translated as "iron road" and for
which the German is "klettersteig". English doesn't have a word for
it and has borrowed the Italian one, which appeared recently in the
Observer. A via ferrata is a system of fixed metal cables, ladders
and bridges that take you through the mountains by a combination of
walking and climbing. They've been common in the Alps for decades
(one report says they originated in the First World War to enable
mountain infantry to travel safely through the Dolomites). The
technique, and the term, have become fashionable in recent years,
with the first British via ferrata being opened at Fleetwith Pike
in the Lake District a year ago.
BRANDJACKING Fraudsters are eternally inventive in finding ways to
con Internet users. This new term refers to a technique whereby the
brandjackers set up a Web site that purports to be of a legitimate
business, using a domain name closely similar to that of the real
firm; by fooling search engines, their site draws visitors to it.
The technique isn't new, but the word is, coined in a report that
was published in June by the market analysis firm MarkMonitor.
FLUTHER Next time you get roped into a discussion about collective
names for groups of living beings, test the mettle of the company
by asking for one for jellyfish. At least four have been recorded,
though all are rare outside lists of collectives. One is "fluther",
which appeared in the Guardian last week; the others are "smuth",
"stuck" and "smack". Unfortunately, I've been unable to find out
anything about the history or origin of any of them, or one would
by now have become a Weird Word.
4. Q&A: Finagle
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Q. I was wondering where "finagle" originates? Does it commemorate
some crafty Irishman? [David Bourque]
A. You're perhaps thinking of Fingal's Cave, or of another Irish
person with a similar name? Though some Irish writers like to find
an Irish origin in any odd term, this one isn't from that tongue.
Others have suggested that it's Yiddish, perhaps because it rhymes
with "bagel". In The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right
Time, William Safire mentions a theory that it derives from the
name of Gregor von Feinaigle; he was a German monk and educator who
worked out a method of improving the memory that he introduced in
lectures in Paris in 1807 and later in Britain.
A link with some real person might be suggested by two creations of
the science and computing communities. One is Finagle's Constant,
an ad hoc mathematical device inserted into a formula to make the
answer come out right, and Finagle's Law, a corollary to Murphy's
Law - anything that can go wrong will go wrong and at the worst
possible moment. This can be expressed in the form "Once a job is
fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse". A further
elaboration is in Essential Public Health: Theory and Practice by
Stephen Gillam and Jan Yates (2007): "The information you have is
not the information you want. The information you want is not the
information you need. The information you need is not what you can
get or is not known. The information that is known can't be found
in time". Or, putting it yet another way, the perversity of the
universe tends to a maximum.
"Finagle" is US slang and means to obtain something by dishonest or
devious means, to wangle or manoeuvre, or slyly gain an advantage
by deceit. It dates from the 1920s, with the first known use being
of "finagler", a person who finagles. Harold Wentworth noted it in
his American Dialect Dictionary as "political cant". Wentworth and
Flexner's slang dictionary suggested it could mean in particular
"one who stalls until somebody else pays the check", a tightwad or
miserly person.
"Finagle" has been traced to an English dialect word, once widely
known along the Welsh Marches and down into the West Country in a
variety of spellings, including "fainaigue". The English Dialect
Dictionary a century ago supplied two main meanings. One was to
revoke at cards (that is, fail to follow suit despite being able to
do so); the other was to shirk or to fail to keep a promise. A
glossary of Herefordshire words dated 1839 says "If two men are
heaving a heavy weight, and one of them pretends to be putting out
his strength, though in reality leaving all the strain on the
other, he is said to feneague."
Taking it further back is almost impossible. The English Dialect
Dictionary suggested it might derive from Old French "fornier", to
deny, and that the odd "-aigue" ending (often spelled "-eague" in
dialect sources) might be from the card-game sense of "renege",
with the same meaning as "revoke", which was at one time spelled
"reneague".
5. Sic!
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News comes from the Netherlands of a potentially painful piece of
equipment. "I was in an Aldi yesterday," Harry Lake noted (Aldi is
a discount supermarket chain), "and was surprised to see a special
offer in the form of a 'laptop barbecue', surely a mind-boggling
concept. Slightly smaller print on the box gave more details of
this 'portable' barbecue, at which point everything became clear.
Obviously the makers, presumably Chinese, had reasoned that since a
laptop computer is a portable computer, 'laptop' = 'portable'."
"My wife and I," wrote Ed Sundt, "leased a phone from Vodafone to
use while traveling in Europe. The sealed package arrived but we
have yet to open it, stymied by a statement on the seal: 'Before
you break the seal on this phone/product, please carefully review
and read all the printed material enclosed'."
John Neave e-mailed from New Zealand: "There was great rejoicing
here when New Zealand won the cricket series against England at the
weekend. However, I was surprised at a commentator's remark at the
end of the game when he described their coach, John Bracewell, as
giving the team 'an elongated round of applause'. I wondered if
they had been playing at The Oval!"
Several readers forwarded an AP wire report that had appeared in a
number of US newspapers on Tuesday: "Police and FBI agents captured
an ex-convict suspected of killing eight people in two states as he
smoked a cigarette outside of a southwestern Illinois bar Tuesday
night." Was this a case of the long arm of the outlaw?
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