World Wide Words -- 12 Dec 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 11 16:49:10 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 669 Saturday 12 December 2009
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Griffonage.
3. What I've learned this week.
4. Q and A: Shoestring.
5. Q and A: Redding.
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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SOBBING Last week, I mentioned John Evelyn's use of "sobbing", to
soak or saturate. Several readers wondered if this was a variant of
"sopping". The only reference work in which I can find "sobbing" is
the Oxford English Dictionary, which merely says in its entry that
it is "of obscure origin". Its entry for "sop" doesn't mention a
link.
2. Weird Words: Griffonage /grifOnaZ/
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To someone coming unawares upon this word, it might seem to have a
connection to that fabulous beast called the griffin or gryphon,
the one with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.
Or might it perhaps refer to the vulture with that cognomen or the
breed of dog similarly named, both of which derive from an older
English spelling of "griffin"? Alas, no. It's more prosaic than
that.
Readers with knowledge of French will be at an advantage, since the
word appears in that language as a noun formed from the verb
"griffoner", to scribble or scrawl. A "griffonage" is therefore an
illegible scrawl, so it would make a usefully obscure description
of your physician's next prescription.
The verb is recorded in French from the sixteenth century, but it
arrived in English in the early years of the nineteenth, clearly as
a direct borrowing. This is an early, and rare, example:
We hastened to pack up our "trumpery," as Captain
Mirven unkindly calls the paraphernalia of the ladies,
and among the rest, my six hundred pages of griffonage.
There is enough of it, yet I must add a few more
lines.
[Domestic manners of the Americans, by Frances
Trollope, 1832. Her book generated a furore on both sides
of the Atlantic, since she found Americans to be lacking
in the finer qualities ("I do not like them. I do not
like their principles, I do not like their manners, I do
not like their opinions.") Among her failed ventures
while in the US was the Cincinnati Bazaar, which some
argue was the first shopping mall. Frances Trollope's son
was the novelist Anthony Trollope.]
3. What I've learned this week
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INHABITANTS Tanja Cilia introduced me to "demonym". Despite its
form, it has nothing to do with demons. It's from Greek "demos",
the people, which also meant a district or township. (In English,
we can speak of a "deme" in this sense, though that word is more
common in various scientific senses for a group of cells, plants or
animals.) A "demonym" is the name given to the people who live in a
certain place, such as Londoner or Ugandan; as the title of a book
on my shelves puts it, Labels for Locals. Its author, Paul Dickson,
uses the term but attributes its creation to George H Scheetz, who
wrote a precursor volume. However, in another sense it dates from
the nineteenth century - the Librarians' Glossary of 1938 defines
"demonym" as "A popular or ordinary qualification used as a
pseudonym, as 'an Amateur', 'a Bibliophile'." All the modern
appearances of "denonym" that I've come across are in specialist
geographical sources and have the "labels for locals" sense.
4. Q and A: Shoestring
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Q. Have you researched the etymology of the phrase "shoe-string
budget"? My German partner keeps seeing it in the English-language
press, but he can't understand where it comes from. And he keeps
bothering me about it because I'm an editor! I've searched the Web
but have found nothing conclusive. Could you give us some history?
[Russell Clarke]
A. Trying to track down its history isn't easy. Everybody who has
investigated the various idioms in "shoestring" seems to have come
away almost as puzzled as when they started. Its meaning is obvious
enough to native speakers: to do something "on a shoestring" is to
manage on inadequate financial funds (your "shoestring budget") or
undertake a project with limited resources. Hence the range of
travel guides that include the phrase in their titles (such as
Southeast Asia on a Shoestring), or this recent usage from a UK
newspaper:
The Sports Council for Wales has launched its new
campaign, Shape up on a Shoestring, to help you slim down
your waistline without slimming down your wallet.
[South Wales Echo, 11 Nov. 2009.]
Though "shoestring" survives in North America, it has long since
been replaced for most other English speakers by "shoelace" or
"bootlace", surviving only in this set phrase. That suggests the
idiom is fairly old and in fact it's recorded from rather more than
a century ago, with exactly the same meaning as it has now:
The whole fabric of business erected by those people
was based on a shoe string, and when trade became dull it
had to collapse.
[The Wall Street Journal, 25 Mar. 1897.]
But why a shoestring? The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
records an attempt to explain it: "One fanciful theory is that
debtors in British prisons would lower a shoe by its laces from a
window so as to collect funds from visitors or passers-by." Obvious
folk etymology, you may say. Well, up to a point. Jonathon Green
records in the Chambers Dictionary of Slang that the debtors' ward
in Newgate Prison was once called the Shoe because its inmates
begged in just this way.
However, the story must be irrelevant because the idiom is most
definitely American and appears after the period in which Newgate
was such a notorious place of incarceration. There is, however, a
slightly earlier US usage, known from 1887, in reference to a
disreputable group of men who were called "shoestring gamblers",
seemingly because they played only for small stakes. (Or did they,
perhaps. wear very thin ties? perhaps a fashion guru might
elucidate?)
"Shoestring" has often been used as a qualifier, but almost always
in the sense of something long and thin. A Congressional district
was once called the shoestring district because of its shape on the
map; a number of plants with long, thin stems or roots have it in
their names, such as the prairie shoestring; shoestring potato
consist of narrow strips of fried potato.
However, it's in other qualities of this humble item that we must
surely find the origin. Shoestrings were common and cheap and also
thin and fragile. The former pair of words implies a small amount
of money, the latter slender resources. By putting them together we
are supplied with an image of getting by on less than is really
required.
5. Q and A: Redding
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Q. In an online photo-sharing group of which I'm a member, someone
posted a scan of a calotype print titled Redding the Line. Some
members of the group think that "redding" refers to the application
of a red colorant to the surface of something. Or does it instead
mean making repairs? [William Chepulis]
A. The photograph is a famous early one, a member of a series taken
by Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill in 1844, using the system
invented by William Henry Fox Talbot only a few years earlier. It's
now in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. It was
taken in Newhaven, then a fishing village a mile to the north of
Edinburgh on the estuary of the river Forth but now part of the
city of Edinburgh. It shows a young fisherman named Willie Liston
holding a length of fishing line.
It was entitled Redding the Line by the photographers. As both Hill
and Adamson were Scots, we must look to the Scottish vernacular to
find the answer.
The verb is "redd", one also known in northern Ireland, parts of
northern England and also in north-central parts of the US. It has
nothing to do with colour. Instead, it has had a variety of senses
- to clear or clean out, clear away, put in order or make tidy, put
things right, and, specifically, to disentangle yarn or fishing
line. It's not clear from the picture exactly what young Liston was
doing - perhaps not very much in view of the long exposures needed
to make a calotype - but "disentangle" fits best.
Where "redd" comes from isn't clear (it doesn't have any connection
with "ready", for example). Its history is mixed up with two other
verbs. One is "rede", meaning to clear land, put in order, clean up
or tidy (German and Dutch have related forms); the other is "rid",
to make free of something, which is of Scandinavian origin. It's
very likely that their senses became intermingled and inextricably
tangled as time went on.
6. Sic!
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Last Saturday, Margaret Chandler read about forthcoming exhibitions
in the InsideArts section of The Mercury, Tasmania: "Alternative
artists are to be hanged and the venue will be opposite the old
Hobart Penitentiary." She intends to stick with traditional oil
painting from now on.
CNN's Political Ticker reported on 28 November about a basketball
game that President Obama attended in support of his brother-in-law
Craig Robinson: "Robinson, who coaches the Oregon State Beavers,
was cheered on by the President, who snacked on popcorn, the First
Lady, Sasha, Malia and the girls' grandmother Marian Robinson."
Thanks to Joel Gardner for that unsettling image.
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