World Wide Words -- 21 March 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Mar 20 15:54:16 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 631 Saturday 21 March 2009
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Anadiplosis.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Jeep.
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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TIMEOUTS Apologies to any subscriber who tried to visit the Web
site last Saturday morning, UK time. The server went down and it
took some hours to get it working again. My learning of this came
hard upon my discovery that the e-mail edition had gone out an hour
early. The server that despatches it is in the US; I forgot that US
daylight saving time starts three weeks earlier than ours here in
the UK. It's hardly an epoch-making error but I hope to have got it
right this week.
TILL IT HURTS Mark Worden made the point, in reference to my piece
in the last issue, that there is a welter of idiomatic expressions
indicating the vastness of a person's desire for a particular thing
or outcome. People have in rhetorical outpourings offered their
hair, their last penny, their shirts, their firstborn, their right
arms, their last drop of heart's blood, even their lives and
immortal souls. Mr Worden says he grew up in Idaho with the form
"I'd give my left nut ...".
2. Weird Words: Anadiplosis /,an at dI'pl at UsIs/
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The beginning of a sentence, line, or clause with the concluding
word of the one preceding.
This is yet another term from that repository of extraordinary
expressions, the field of rhetoric. An example will make the idea
clearer and to give it I call upon that fortune-cookie philosopher,
Yoda from Star Wars: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.
Hate leads to suffering." Understanding you are? A more sanctified
appearance of the form is at the very beginning of Genesis, in the
King James Bible: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth. And the earth was without form, and void."
"Anadiplosis" derives from Greek "diplous", double, from which also
come "diploid", "diploma" and "diplomat" (the last two from the
idea of a doubled or folded paper, hence an official document). The
prefix "ana-" is also Greek, meaning back or anew.
Do not confuse this figure of speech with epanadiplosis, in which a
sentence begins and ends with the same word. A famous example is in
a speech by Malcolm X: "You bleed when the white man says bleed.
You bite when the white man says bite, and you bark when the white
man says bark." The extra prefix in "epanadiplosis" derives from
the Greek preposition "epi" that means "upon, in addition".
Likewise, don't muddle anadiplosis with the better-known anaphora,
in which successive clauses or sentences begin with the same word
or words:
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among
green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it
rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the
waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
[Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. "Ait" is another way to
spell "eyot", island (see http://wwwords.org?EYOT).]
Another rhetorical term for a similar trick is "antistrophe" (also
known as "epiphora" and "epistrophe" - there's disagreement over
terms), which refers to repeating a word at the end of successive
clauses or sentences ("government of the people, by the people, for
the people, shall not perish from the earth"). Both "antistrophe"
and "epistrophe" derive from Greek "strephein", to turn.
3. Recently noted
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PROCYCLICALITY Laurie Malone encountered this word in a recent
issue of the Weekend Australian. It's another current buzzword in
the financial community and refers to forces that tend to magnify
fluctuations in an economic cycle. As a particularly pertinent
example, credit is easier to obtain during an upswing, which tends
to overheat the economy, but harder to get in the downturning part
of a cycle, dampening the economy when it needs to be stimulated.
Physicists and mathematicians will recognise this as a classic
positive feedback loop, which makes systems unstable. The adjective
"pro-cyclical" is recorded from the early 1950s but the abstract
noun appears only in the late 1980s. It's currently more popular
than it has ever been in its short life.
COPPER-FASTENED Val Bellamy asked about this term, which appeared
in an article in the online publication Spiked: "In many ways, the
Diana phenomenon merely copper-fastened political and social trends
that had been apparent for a decade before she died." I hadn't come
across it in a figurative sense before. For me, a thing that is
copper-fastened is literally attached with copper, in particular
the copper sheathing on the hull of a wooden-hulled sailing ship
that prevented attacks by teredos (nasty molluscs, once incorrectly
called shipworms, that bored into ships' timbers, causing great
damage); copper nails or bolts had to be used to secure it to hulls
to prevent corrosion. The figurative expression, which arose out of
this concept, is poorly recorded. However, it's in the Dictionary
of Newfoundland English, which says it means "to reach a clear and
firm understanding or agreement without loop-holes or ambiguity".
Around the middle 1990s, the term starts to appear in newspapers in
Ireland in this figurative sense, though I'd guess it was far from
new. The first example I can find was in the Irish Voice of Dublin
in December 1995 about Bill Clinton: "His visit had copper-fastened
the twin-track initiative launched on the eve of his arrival by
John Bruton and John Major." It appears most often these days in a
political or sporting context and is still to be found mainly in
Irish sources, north and south. Though it does from time to time
turn up in newspapers in the rest of the British Isles, it's almost
always in connection with items about Irish affairs that we may
presume are by Irish writers.
4. Q&A: Jeep
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Q. I was just about to chide someone for believing 'Jeep' to be an
acronym of 'Just Enough Essential Parts' and was about to point
out, with just a trace of smug superiority, that 'Jeep' is, of
course, a corruption of the initials GP, short for General Purpose
(Vehicle). Then I thought, 'Hang on, how do I know that?' It seems
there's a lot of dispute, with some very credible arguments against
'General Purpose'. You don't seem to have tackled this one. Might I
suggest an investigation? [Patrick Neylan]
A. You're right to be cautious. An etymologist who has recently
investigated the matter concludes:
The word was coined in the full light of history, we have
eyewitness reports (conflicting as such reports always
are) of the car's production, and we still have doubts
about the origin of its name.
[An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, by Anatoly
Liberman, 2008. Puzzled enquiries about the origin of the
name, for example, appeared in various publications as
early as May 1944.]
Professor Liberman devotes several thousand words to his discussion
of the various theories but comes to no clear conclusion. With that
facing me, perhaps the best thing to do would be to walk away. But
it's worth giving at least the bare bones of the controversy.
The jeep was a quarter-ton all-terrain reconnaissance vehicle (a
half-ton equivalent also existed) that was manufactured by several
firms. It officially came into service in the US Army in early
1941. "Jeep" is first recorded for it in August the previous year
and seems almost from the start to have been its universal name
among servicemen. As a demonstration of its powers, one was driven
up the steps of the Capitol building on 20 February 1941; the
Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune remarked, under a photograph of the
event, that the new light trucks were known as "jeeps" or "quads".
Dictionaries do commonly say that it's from the initials "GP", for
"general purpose". This origin is disputed because only one maker,
Ford, used those initials and they only meant something within its
factory (G for government contract and P as a code for a vehicle
with an eighty-inch wheelbase). "GP" never meant "general purpose",
which would have been a misnomer because the vehicle was designed
for a specific role. A more fanciful origin is that it's a reduced
form of "jeepers creepers" (a euphemism for "Jesus Christ") which
was supposedly uttered by Major General George Lynch when he took
his first ride in a prototype vehicle in 1939. Others point to the
army slang sense of "jeep" for a recruit or something insignificant
or unproven; however, the jeep was anything but that, with everyone
marvelling at its abilities.
This leads me to an origin that's now widely accepted as a major
influence, if not the sole origin - Elzie Segar's comic strip
"Thimble Theater". It's best known for Popeye the Sailor and Olive
Oyl. In March 1936 a new character arrived to great ballyhoo
(adverts were placed in newspapers that took the strip to announce
his impending arrival: "You'll laugh! You'll howl! Everyday! Watch
for Popeye and the Jeep".) This was Eugene the Jeep, a rodent-like
character the size of a small dog whose only word was "jeep!" (most
likely a variation on "cheep"), who lived on orchids and had
supernatural powers that let it tell the future (and disappear into
the fourth dimension at need). Eugene the Jeep soon became widely
known, with references to him appearing in newspapers throughout
the US.
It may be that the letters "GP" on the Ford models suggested "Jeep"
to servicemen. It was much more likely that the term was applied as
an affectionate name because, like the wondrous animal from Thimble
Theater, the vehicle could "go anywhere".
[The online HTML version of this issue has illustrations. You can
view it at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/vhki.htm .]
5. Sic!
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We've all heard of minis, but this is ridiculous. Nick Hewish found
an item in the Saffron Walden Reporter for 12 March: "A sports car
worth nearly £13,000 was stolen from a changing-room locker at Lord
Butler Leisure Centre." It transpired later in the item that only
the keys to the car were in the locker.
A local restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, reports Sharon Girard,
advertises "3 coarse meals for $16.00".
Notices on the stalls in the busy Saturday market in Chester-le-
Street, County Durham, often amuse Rita Day. Last week she came
across the delightfully Harry Potterish "insulting tape".
Vicki Vaughn was unimpressed by the descriptions of the Timeless
Treasures for sale on the My Garden Gifts site, including this one:
"For those who love the aura of the tropics and the lush greenland,
here's a impressionable wall planter for the home or garden." Wall
planter: $235.00. Bad English: priceless.
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