World Wide Words -- 08 Mar 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Mar 7 16:36:08 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 578 Saturday 8 March 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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For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Fardel.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Ivy League.
5. Book Review: Treasure-House of the Language.
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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BIRD-DOG MINUTE Harald Beck pointed out that the term appears in
two reports of US congressional hearings. The older is from January
1984. This predates Hillary Clinton's first recorded use in 1991,
but the speaker is one Governor Clinton. The expression would seem
more likely to be a family saying than a general Arkansas one.
2. Weird Words: Fardel /'fA:d at l/
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A bundle or burden.
For many people, it will instantly bring to mind Hamlet's famous
soliloquy: "Who would fardels bear, / To grunt and sweat under a
weary life, / But that the dread of something after death ...". The
Oxford English Dictionary editors more than a century ago must have
thought that was too familiar to need citing and instead included
another Shakespeare quotation, from A Winter's Tale: "There lyes
such Secrets in this Farthell and Box, which none must know but the
King."
A fardel was a bundle, a pack, a parcel or similar item. It came
into English around 1300 from the Old French "fardel", a diminutive
of "farde", a burden. It is said by some authorities, for example
Le Petit Robert, that that derives from the Arabic "fardah", half a
camel's load. Carrying that would be enough to make anybody grunt
and sweat.
A fardel could also be a quarter of something; it's from the Old
English word that's also the origin of "fourth". One use was as a
measure of land - William Noy wrote in The Compleat Lawyer in 1651,
"Two Fardells of Land make a Nooke of Land", a nook being an old
land measure of 20 acres in Northern England and Scotland.
3. Recently noted
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SHINING LIGHTS OF LANGUAGE For reasons connected with my work as
webmaster of a seniors volunteering group, I was researching online
this week and came across a report dated November 2007 entitled
"Predictors of Beaconicity". Its writers created "beaconicity" as a
measure of the success councils in Britain have with the national
Beacon Scheme, which rewards excellence in local government. So
another way of saying "predictors of beaconicity" is "what makes
councils good". Hunting around, it turned out that "beaconicity"
was one of a hundred terms the Local Government Association said in
early February should not be used to communicate with the general
public. Others in its list are "coterminosity", having the same
boundaries, which is used for bodies or persons who are acting in
concert; "improvement levers", the tools to do the job; "holistic
governance", taking everything into consideration, often translated
to another clichéd expression loved by the civil service, "joined-
up government"; and "place shaping", creating places where people
can thrive.
IT'S ALL IN THE SOIL A recent article on changing tastes in wine
mentioned "terroiriste". It's a pun on "terrorist" combined with
"terroir", the subtle French concept that every place has special
characteristics of climate, exposure and soil that give the wine
created there its unique flavours. A few winemakers in California
who believe in terroir have adopted "terroiriste" as a name for
themselves because they want to apply the French concept to their
own products. I've also found the word used in American stories
about a French cheesemaker nun to refer to the different qualities
of product derived from her various maturing cellars.
TITLE PRIZE It's voting time once again in the Bookseller/Diagram
contest for the oddest book titles of the year. The shortlisted six
titles are these: I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen by Jasper
McCutcheon (fiction, alas); How to Write a How to Write Book by
Brian Piddock (those who can, do ...); Cheese Problems Solved by P
L H McSweeney (a bargain at GBP135.00); If You Want Closure in Your
Relationship, Start With Your Legs: A Guide to Understanding Men by
Big Boom (experts say this may be a pseudonym); Are Women Human?
And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A MacKinnon (which
is described as a critique of the transnational status quo); and
People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr
Feelgood by Dee Gordon ("promises to bring Southend to life"). You
can visit the Bookseller's site via http://wwwords.org?BKPZ if you
want to vote.
4. Q&A: Ivy League
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Q. It has always been my understanding that "Ivy League" referred
to a sporting competition held long ago between four colleges, so
that "ivy" was formed by saying the Roman numerals "IV". I'm now
told that "ivy" actually refers to the ivy growing on the walls of
these ancient universities. I always took this "ivy" explanation as
being folk etymology. Would you know which is correct? I don't
trust Wikipedia on this one. [Elos Gallo; a related question came
from Robert Levy]
A. Although it's often stated as fact elsewhere, Wikipedia to its
credit doesn't accept the supposed derivation from the Roman figure
four. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins gives more
details of this supposed origin than do other works, calling it "a
plausible theory". It quotes a letter from a Columbia graduate who
argues that it refers to a nineteenth-century athletic competition
between the universities of Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton.
Wikipedia notes there was a meeting in 1873 between four colleges,
though not those four, to try to fix the rules of college football,
but only three attended and no formal link was established.
It is true that "Ivy League" was originally a sporting term. It was
the name of a league of football teams from eight colleges - Brown,
Columbia, Princeton, Yale Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University
of Pennsylvania - who are reported to be discussing its formation,
under that name, in a syndicated article that I found in the San
Antonio Light for 7 February 1935. Teams from the Military Academy
at West Point and the Naval Academy joined later but dropped out
again in 1940. Ever since then, the league has been made up of the
original eight college teams, a group that became official in 1954.
You can attach the numbers ten or eight to the group, but not four.
Wikipedia repeats an origin that appears in numerous other works.
It argues that the original form was "ivy college", first used by
the sports writer Stanley Woodward in the New York Herald Tribune
in October 1933. Wikipedia says the term was borrowed by another
sports writer, Caswell Adams, who converted it to "ivy league".
Charles Earle Funk, in Heavens To Betsy!, reprints a letter from
Adams recalling, a little vaguely, that he coined the phrase "in
the mid-thirties", but says that Woodward borrowed it, crediting
him. So far I haven't found an example of "Ivy League" earlier than
the one from February 1935 and nobody has turned up anything from
the New York Herald Tribune between Woodward's 1933 "ivy colleges"
quote and the one from the San Antonio Light in 1935, so Adams'
claim to its invention remains unproved.
These days the sporting associations are only part of the concept
we understand by the term "Ivy League". For many, it has become a
disparaging term for long-established eastern US universities that
exhibit, as Wikipedia says, "academic excellence, selectivity in
admissions, and a reputation for social elitism". Their great age
is integral to the term, since there's no doubt that it is the ivy
on the college walls that led Stanley Woodward to create the term
"ivy college" in 1933.
5. Book Review: Treasure-House of the Language
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Reviewed by Jonathan Green, editor, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang.
Of all the household gods - DIY manuals, home health manuals, the
more all-encompassing cookbooks - to which we turn when in need of
expertise, does any stand so high upon Olympus as "the dictionary"?
That "unidentified authorising dictionary", as the lexicographer
Rosalind Moon terms it, is the book of words in which we tend to
believe all is revealed. This generic dictionary has no name. Were
it to take one, few would argue that it would be that of the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED), that massive, multi-volumed linguistic
vade mecum. It was thought up in the 1850s, set fully in motion 30
years later but only completed in 1928. A supplement followed in
1933, with four further intermediate supplements published between
1972 and 1986, leading to a second edition in 1989. Now, with all
the advantages the Internet can offer, a third edition is emerging
at the peak of its creation. Is there any book we trust more?
But should we? Sir James Murray, its first substantive editor, was
no more truly omnipotent than any other old man with a long beard,
and if his creation became a household god it was sired from human
frailty. However authoritative the OED, it is a human work, one
influenced by human considerations, and a close study makes this
absolutely clear.
This is not a full history of the OED. That was essayed in 1977 by
Murray's granddaughter, and a replacement by Peter Gilliver of the
OED will appear in perhaps a decade. Dr Charlotte Brewer, a fellow
of Hertford College, Oxford, considers the dictionary that evolved
after its first publication. She has analysed the personalities of
the lexicographers and their managers at Oxford University Press
(OUP), the plans, the promises, the smart moves, and the blind
alleyways. Drawing inter alia on the exhaustive research on her own
Web site (http://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main) she has looked in
great depth at such topics as the sources of the quotations that
underpin the dictionary (why, for example, was the 18th century so
badly represented?), the choice of literary authorities (where are
the women?), the influence of personality (the conscious prejudices
concerning the importance of certain language areas that underline
Robert Burchfield's 1989 edition), the simple selection of what was
put in (not to mention what was left out, and not only on grounds
of alleged "obscenity"), and the thorny world of financing.
Indeed, if Murray and his successors are among the creators of our
household gods, then it is in this last factor, as represented by
the seemingly endless (if highly civilised) clashes between the
lexicographers and the publishers, that one might discover one's
Lucifer. Kenneth Sisam, one-time Secretary to the Delegates of the
Oxford University Press (we might call him OUP's managing director
in a less academic environment), pops up like some demon king to
ensure that the lexicographers remained underpaid; that delivery
dates were maintained, even if copy was not yet properly ready;
that, as the self-interested canard has it, managers must have the
right to manage. All this is documented by Dr Brewer; she shows how
Murray and his successors have been faced with this unnecessary
burden. OUP is regularly proud to remark that the dictionary is a
national glory. To its credit it (or rather the University) does
finance it; the British government, to its shame, doesn't. But why
has the Press invariably found it so hard to treat its makers as
part of that glory?
This is not a simple book. (For easy reading we may recommend Simon
Winchester's enjoyable but hardly dependable essays.) And while the
writing is a model of clarity, the subject is highly specialist,
requiring a basic degree of lexicographical knowledge. But as an
exploration of a national treasure-house it is second to none. Like
Linda Mugglestone's equally revelatory Lost for Words: The Hidden
History of the OED (2005) it takes us behind the scenes in a way
that more readers than just dictionary-makers will find fascinating
and hugely informative.
[Charlotte Brewer, Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED;
Yale University Press, 6 December 2007; hardback, pp334; list price
GBP25.00 in the UK, $35.00 in the USA; ISBN13: 978-0-300-12429-3,
ISBN10: 0-300-12429-5.]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
Amazon UK: GBP23.75 http://wwwords.org?T78H
Amazon USA: US$27.44 http://wwwords.org?T35H
Amazon Canada: CDN$34.14 http://wwwords.org?T92H
Amazon Germany: EUR38,99 http://wwwords.org?T87H
[Please use these links to buy. They get World Wide Words a small
commission at no extra cost to you.]
6. Sic!
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Peter Smith was in a newsagents in Leicester this week and spotted
the March issue of VolksWorld Camper and Bus magazine, the magazine
for the Volkwagen bus fan. Unmissable in blue letters on the cover
is the title of an article inside - "Family Air Loom".
Department of posthumous achievement. Alistair McCreadie found this
sentence in an article about the filmmaker Derek Jarman in the film
blog on Guardian Online dated 26 February: "Even though British and
indeed international cinema took a decisive turn away from the kind
of films that he made in the years since his death, his friends and
acolytes have carried the flag for him in the intervening years."
On visiting the Daily Telegraph Web site Ian Harrison encountered
this sentence in a report dated 5 March: "Historians have been kept
guessing over claims Dr James Barry, Inspector General of Military
Hospitals, was in fact a woman for more than 140 years." I can see
the slogan already, "Transvestism: keeps you living longer".
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B. E-mail contact addresses
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* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
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