World Wide Words -- 14 Nov 09

Michael Quinion wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 13 14:06:00 UTC 2009


WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 665        Saturday 14 November 2009
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Niddering.
3. What I've learned this week.
4. Q and A: Bull in a china shop
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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ACERSECOMIC  "Not to forget 'sphragidonukhargokometes'," e-mailed 
Michael Keating, "as coined by Aristophanes to mean a rich lazy 
long-haired youth". A word ending in "-comic" that's not in the 
Oxford English Dictionary is "gerocomic", which Peter Weinrich told 
me about. It refers to a "practice of rejuvenating an old body by 
the proximity of the breath of a fresh, blossoming youth", as it 
was described in a book he found, Die Kunst das Menschliche Leben 
zu Verlängern (The Art of Extending Human Life) of 1798. But this 
is misleadingly similar, since the "-comic" ending is from a 
different Greek word, "komia", a tendency.

MUGGINS  Several readers pointed out - I'd forgotten it - that the 
term has a special meaning in the card game cribbage. If a player 
fails to claim his full score on any turn, his opponent may call 
out "Muggins" and take the overlooked points for himself. It is, as 
I have now discovered, the only optional rule in American cribbage 
tournaments. The Oxford English Dictionary has its first example 
from as recently as 1946, but it seems to be somewhat older: it 
turns up in an American edition of Hoyle dated 1922. It is clearly 
from the same source; a person who omits to record his full score 
allows himself to be exploited by his opponent. An old card game - 
from the mid-nineteenth century - is also called Muggins; in this 
the person left with cards at the end, and hence has lost, or who 
puts cards down in the wrong order, is given that name.

SARCASTIC FRINGEHEAD  My puzzled enquiry last week about why this 
fish should be sarcastic has exposed my limited grounding in the 
classical languages, as numerous better-informed readers explained. 
The word derives from Greek "sarkazein", to tear flesh or to gnash 
teeth. (It has ameliorated its meaning somewhat in moving between 
languages.) As the fish is an ambush predator that's aggressive in 
attacking its prey and defending its territory, the common name is 
appropriate, but is probably an academic joke.

Christopher Joubert responded: "I have added it to my short list of 
animals with names suggestive of emotion. The other two I have come 
across so far are the Blushing Snail, endemic to St Helena; and the 
Depressed Mussel, found in Wicken Fen near Cambridge." A fourth he 
might add is the Pacific Black Duck, whose scientific name is "Anas 
superciliosa", as Ronald Besdansky notes from Australia. He queried 
how a duck could possibly be described as supercilious, until the 
Oxford English Dictionary told him that an old sense of that word 
was "pertaining to the eyebrows" (it's from Latin "supercilium", 
literally an eyebrow, though its adjective could mean "haughty" 
even in Roman times). The duck has white stripes above and below 
the eye.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN  Several readers pointed out that last 
week's UK press reports about the average colour of the universe 
being beige were old news. The story dates from 2002 and there have 
been no developments since. Ivan Baldry, one of the astrophysicists 
who carried out the original research, tells me NASA's Astronomy 
Picture of the Day chose to feature the story on 1 November for 
reasons unknown (a quiet day on the astronomy front?), and the UK 
press pack ran with it, believing it to be topical.


2. Weird Words: Niddering  /'nId(@)rIN/
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This obscure word - meaning a coward, or cowardly - is the result 
of an error, but one which has been rubbed true by time. It's very 
rare, but can carry a special punch when it appears:

    Stripped of its outer integuments of salacity and 
    fraud, the inner man is revealed as timid and niddering, 
    lying to the last firm handshake and as sickly yellow as 
    a poisonous toadstool.
    [Paul Johnson, writing in the Spectator, 22 May 
    1999.]

The historically correct form, which is now even rarer still, is 
"nithing". The fault was that of the printer in the 1590s who had 
the job of setting William of Malmesbury's historical works in 
type. He misread the eth character in the old spelling "niðing" as 
a "d" followed by a mark, which he assumed meant an "e" had been 
omitted. The result was "nidering", which later writers made to 
conform with the usual rules of English spelling by adding a second 
"d".

Its original, "nithing", derives from an ancient Scandinavian legal 
term, the Oxford English Dictionary explains, that meant a person 
"who has committed a crime so heinous that no possible compensation 
may be made for it." It was taken over into the legal system of 
England before the Norman Conquest in the sense of a coward or 
outlaw. Later, it came to mean a miser or a treacherous person. 
Conversely an "unnithing" was an honest or generous man.

"Niddering" owes much of what little circulation it has had in the 
past two centuries to the once-popular Sir Walter Scott, who used 
it in Ivanhoe in 1819.


3. What I've learned this week
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VERBING NOUNS  "I heard it and thought of you," Paul Hoffman wrote 
recently. "The word was DILIGENCING. It was in a conversation by 
two people in the airport queue behind me, who sounded like venture 
capitalists or accountants, or both. It clearly was shorthand for 
'performing a due diligence examination'. It takes a lot to make me 
gag, but this one did." Generations ago, one could speak of 
"diligencing" in a different transport setting - taking a vehicle 
called a diligence through continental Europe (it was a stage-
coach, a shortening of "carrosse de diligence", a coach of speed). 
It appeared, for example, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1857 
in an article about Americans taking the waters in Europe: 
"steaming to Trieste; diligencing and railroading to Vienna".) The 
modern sense appears a few times in print, as in Business Wire in 
January 2009: "[He] is involved in working on business strategies 
with the firm's partner companies, in addition to originating and 
diligencing new investment opportunities." Most definitely jargon 
of the trade.

AN E-WORD TOO FAR?  Trendy words beginning in "e-" for "electronic" 
(frequently meaning electronic communications) have been created in 
increasing numbers over the past 15 years. Recent examples include 
"e-pharmacy" (an online retailer of medication), "e-forensics" (the 
study of electronic communications to defeat crime), "e-petition" 
(an online petition, in particular one posted to the Web site of 
Number 10 Downing Street), "e-tailer" (an online retailer) and even 
"e-fridge" (an Internet-linked device that will re-order items when 
they run out). One that seems odder than most is the adjective E-
BANDONED that I came across a few days ago, which describes those 
members of a community who have no computer and no online access - 
either because they can't afford them or because they are older and 
feel unable to learn how to use them. The term first appeared in 
the UK in October 2007.

POSSIBLY PAINFUL  With cattle it's irreversible, but it's different 
with trains, I've learned. The British government has taken the 
London-to-Edinburgh rail route back from its private operator and 
will run it for the next couple of years as a public service. One 
result, according to a letter recently sent to all staff, is that 
station signage will be DE-BRANDED.


4. Q and A: Bull in a china shop
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Q. Your site makes the study of English more fascinating! I always 
wondered as to what might be the origin of the phrase "a bull in 
the china shop". We studied English composition in school and this 
phrase cropped up many times. [Gautam Y Utekar, India]

A. It's still common, though rarely meaning reckless destruction of 
a physical kind. More usually, it's a way to express a metaphorical 
clumsiness. The damage is caused by want of diplomacy or tact or 
through mindless aggression that falls short of actual violence.

    One minute he's a bull in a china shop; the next an 
    impervious super negotiator.
    [Boston Globe, 24 Oct. 2009.]

It's on record from the beginning of the nineteenth century. It's 
one of those idioms that seems to have arrived fully formed without 
anybody having to go to the trouble of creating it. Was there ever 
a real bull that rampaged through a real china shop, leaving chaos 
and destruction behind him, so giving rise to the simile? Perhaps 
not, though an open-fronted shop in a market town might easily have 
had such an encounter with an escaped animal. But if you wanted to 
form a phrase that suggested uncontrolled and uncaring actions with 
disastrous results, to set a bovine rampaging though a porcelain 
emporium would be as good as you could wish for.

By 1834, the idiom was well enough known that a music-hall song 
full of bad puns was written about it:

    Whate'er with his feet he couldn't assail,
    He made ducks and drakes with his horns and his 
    tail.
    So frisky he was, with his downs and his ups,
    Each tea service proved he was quite in his cups.
    He play'd mag's diversion among all the crates,
    He splinter'd the dishes, and dish'd all the 
    plates.
    [A Bull in A China Shop, an anonymous contribution to 
    The Universal Songster or Museum of Mirth, 1834. "Mag's 
    diversion", or "Meg's diversion", was then a common term 
    for boisterous behaviour or unruly antics.]

The following extract suggests that it might have had its origin in 
a minor theatrical production, though we shouldn't read too much 
into this review from two centuries ago. It is, on the other hand, 
the first recorded use of the phrase I've been able to find:

    The business is whimsical and amusing; the changes are 
    numerous, and the tricks, though highly ludicrous, are 
    for the most part original; - at least, we do not 
    remember to have met with any thing like them before. The 
    extraordinary spectacle of a _Bull in a China Shop_ 
    afforded great entertainment; and an artificial elephant 
    introduced, was welcomed with loud plaudits.
    [The London Review and Literary Journal, Jan. 1812, 
    reporting a performance of a pantomime called The White 
    Cat, or Harlequin in Fairy Land.]

By the way, the only recorded incident I know of in which a bull 
was deliberately introduced into a china shop was by the famous 
American publicist and press agent Jim Moran, who in January 1940 
led a bull through a New York City china shop as a publicity stunt. 
The bull didn't damage anything, but some china was broken when a 
bystander backed into a table while getting out of the way.


5. Sic!
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Unfortunate inversion of sense department: Susan Bradley found a 
news story in The Times about a young man up in court for having 
urinated on a war memorial during a pub crawl. His solicitor was 
quoted: "He has suffered considerable public approbation."

"Unreal, man!" was the comment of Mícheál Ó Doibhilín from Dublin. 
He was referring to the blurb on the packet of Walkers sensations 
crisps [potato chips] he recently bought. It boasted that they're 
"Infused with _real ingredients_ ensuring each and every one of our 
crisps delivers a _real taste sensation_."

Department of post-mortem struggle: The Sydney Morning Herald of 7 
November, David Killeen tells us, reported on the release of three 
young green sea turtles. It told of the enormous trials and risks 
facing baby turtles in crossing beaches from their nests to get to 
the sea. "By the time the baby turtles reach the open ocean, at 
least one-third are dead".


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