World Wide Words -- 17 Oct 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 16 15:34:55 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 661 Saturday 17 October 2009
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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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Contents
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1. L-Soft Choice Award.
2. Feedback, notes and comments.
3. Turns of Phrase: Pico-projector.
4. Weird Words: Garth.
5. What I've learned this week.
6. Q and A: Monkey wrench.
7. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. L-Soft Choice Award
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You may recall that voting for the award ended in April with World
Wide Words receiving 33,683 votes, ICORS 26,373 votes and IWMF-TALK
4,209 votes. The grand award was to be given to the one of these
three finalists that the judges felt was the "most successful and
beneficial e-mail list or campaign".
World Wide Words did not win the top prize; it has gone to ICORS, a
voluntary charitable group that offers support to people in need of
help, a worthy winner to whom we all wish every success. L-Soft has
created a special prize - The Timeless Award - for World Wide Words
to mark the value of its work and the 15th anniversary of L-Soft.
The L-Soft newsletter commented that "The award's title captures
the timeless appeal and power of cohesion of email lists that World
Wide Words embodies."
Thanks go to everybody on this list who voted for World Wide Words
during the contest last winter. I greatly value your support and
expressions of good feelings about the e-magazine and the Web site.
Special thanks are due to the managers and staff of the Linguist
List at Eastern Michigan University (a particular tip of the hat to
Anthony Aristar and Susan Smith) who run the list server and who
have very kindly hosted World Wide Words on their system for more
than a decade without asking for payment (though I'm very pleased
to make a voluntary contribution each year to their appeal for
student support funds).
The announcement of the award is at http://wwwords.org?LCTA.
2. Feedback, notes and comments
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GRASP THE NETTLE Lots of people wrote about this item, mostly to
comment on the old saw about not being stung if you grasp a nettle
firmly. Richard Oliver wrote: "The botanical lore is absolutely
right. When I was a child we had lots of stinging nettles and we
soon learnt how to deal with them. What I think happens is that you
break off the stinging hairs before they penetrate the skin. But
you do have to be quick and determined." Others, including Laura
Perry, vehemently denied its truth: "I can tell you from painful
experience that regardless of the manner in which one grasps the
[expletive deleted] plant, it hurts. A lot. For quite a while
afterward. I can only guess that the concept of grasping the plant
firmly being less painful grew out of some sort of show-off attempt
at bravery, because it's patently untrue." Jen Kirby and others
noted that "grasp" here surely means "crush a leaf between your
finger and thumb". She wrote, "I would not grab a nettle in my
fist. Part of the plant would be sure to brush against my skin and
sting me."
Among silly British pub contests, there must surely be none dafter
than the World Stinging Nettle Eating Challenge, which is run each
summer at the Bottle Inn, Marshwood, Dorset (see their Web site via
http://wwwords.org?WSNE). Mike Hoke and Colin Hague told me about
it. The latter wrote: "Apparently the secret (I haven't tested it
personally, you understand) is to put the raw nettle stalks in your
mouth confidently, taking utmost care that they do not touch your
lips. The iron content turns competitors' tongues black - and
causes certain other physiological symptoms." Let's not go there.
On a language point, William Lauriston note, "In Dublin, at least
up to the 1960s, we called scrumping 'boxing the fox'. All Google
turned up was a page that at least verifies that it was used - but
perhaps it was a local turn of phrase?" Perhaps not. Among the few
printed references is an anecdote in Lord Campbell's The Lives of
the Lord Chancellors (1850) about Lord Eldon, who was born in
Newcastle, in which Eldon remembers, "I do not know how it was, but
we always considered robbing an orchard - 'boxing the fox' as we
called it - as an honourable exploit." The earliest is in an issue
of The European Magazine, dated 1799, though that was about the
actor and playwright Charles Macklin, who was Irish. It seems to
have died out early in the nineteenth century except in Ireland.
Even there, a report of 1916 suggests it was known mainly around
Dublin. Where the idiom comes from is unknown.
3. Turns of Phrase: Pico-projector
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It's a video projector, but a very small one that will sit in the
palm of your hand or fit comfortably in your pocket.
It can be used as a portable business projector, but the small size
of the displayed picture - claimed to be a maximum of 60in (150cm)
wide in excellent viewing conditions - means it's really designed
as an entertainment product to enable people to view video from
their laptops, phones, digital cameras, iPods and other personal
devices.
The terminology hasn't settled down yet and other terms for the
device exist, including "palmtop projector", "palm projector" and,
the oldest one, "pocket projector". "Pico-projector" first appeared
around 2003 but products with that name have only recently reached
a performance level that makes them attractive.
Its first part, "pico-", is an example of the figurative broadening
in meaning of a prefix of size with a precise meaning: a millionth
millionth of some unit. In cases such as this one and "picocell", a
very small area of coverage in a wireless network, it loosely means
something tiny of its type.
* Guardian, 24 Aug. 2009: Look for pico projectors to make their
way into a wide range of other devices. Nikon has just announced a
digital camera with one built-in, and mobile phone manufacturers
are looking to add the technology to smart phones. In the not-so-
distant future, if you want to show a presentation you will be able
to leave not only the projector back at the office, but the laptop
as well.
* Sunday Times, 9 Aug. 2009: What is it? The first digital camera
with a built-in pico projector - a tiny, front-mounted system that
throws photos or videoclips onto any flat surface at up to 40in
wide, depending on how far from the wall you hold the camera.
4. Weird Words: Garth /gA:T/
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If you should find yourself one day in the cloisters of a cathedral
or monastery, at least in Britain, you need not be lost for a word
to identify the open courtyard it encloses: it's a garth.
Strictly speaking, it's a contraction, of "cloister-garth". There
were once many such compounds, such as "apple-garth" (an orchard),
"fish-garth" (an enclosure on a river or seashore for trapping or
storing fish), "church-garth" (a churchyard), "willow-garth" (a
field where willows or osiers are grown), "stack-garth" (a rick-
yard, an enclosed space for storing stacks of hay, straw and other
produce), "vine-garth" (a vineyard), and "fold-garth" (a farmyard).
You can work out "cabbage-garth" for yourself.
As you will have gathered, "garth" was once a very broad term. It
could mean almost any patch of enclosed ground used for a specific
purpose, such as a yard, garden, field or paddock. It appeared in
the northern parts of Britain in the fourteenth century and derives
from Old Norse "garðr", a yard or courtyard. Through Old English
it's related to "yard" in similar senses, and also to "garden".
"Garth" is now rare except in British place names or historical or
poetical writing. The personal name comes from the same source, as
it originally referred to somebody who lived near an enclosure,
especially a paddock or orchard.
5. What I've learned this week
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TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE TWINK It's amazing what you can learn
from e-mail error messages. The issue last week was blocked by one
site in the UK because it had a rude word in the message body. Do
you recall reading any rude words? I don't remember writing any. It
transpired that the offending "word" was in the title of a nursery
rhyme I listed: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The filtering system
spotted the first five letters of the first word and pounced. I had
to look it up: TWINK is gay slang (I quote Wikipedia) for "a young
or young-looking gay man (usually white and in his late teens or
early twenties) with a slender build, little or no body hair, and
no facial hair."
SUPER? A tremendous fuss has erupted in Britain this week as the
result of an injunction obtained by a famous firm of libel lawyers,
Carter-Ruck. It sought to ban the Guardian from publishing details
of a report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory
Coast by a firm named Trafigura. It also persuaded the judge to
make the injunction secret, so the newspaper couldn't even report
it existed. Such measures have become known as SUPER-INJUNCTIONS;
they are becoming more common as a way of stifling the reporting of
issues, as part of what is known as REPUTATION MANAGEMENT for big
companies. The injunction became controversial when Carter-Ruck
claimed it prevented press coverage of a question in the House of
Commons that mentioned it. As parliamentary business enjoys what's
called ABSOLUTE PRIVILEGE, meaning that nothing said in the Chamber
and reported outside it carries any risk of legal challenge - a
prerogative that goes back to the Bill of Rights of 1689 - this
gagging attempt provoked a storm of protest, mainly online, which
forced the firm to withdraw its objections.
POOR IMITATION For some reason, I haven't previously come across
the term FAUXTEUR. The Urban Dictionary defines it as "A filmmaker,
usually a director, who makes cheesy, derivative, or unoriginal
movies." So it's clearly a combination of "faux" and "auteur". It
has been around at least since 2005. The New York Times suggested
in 2006 that it was a coinage of the Web site defamer.com. Best I
not name any of the people it's been attached to, or Carter-Ruck
may be after me.
6. Q and A: Monkey wrench
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Q. I queried World Wide Words for the origin of the term "monkey
wrench". You make a passing reference to this tool under "lead-pipe
cinch" [see http://wwwords.org?LDPC], but you have nothing on
"monkey wrench" itself. Wikipedia has a brief description of the
origin of the name, from inventor Charles Moncky, but it seems all
too pat, like Thomas Crapper and the flush toilet [for more on this
see http://wwwords.org?CPPR]. What does the learned Dr. Quinion
have to say on the matter? [Dennis Glanzman]
A. The occasionally well-informed Mr Quinion has some interesting
facts to impart but comes, as so often, to no clear conclusion.
The source has long been a puzzle and has given rise to many tries
at explaining it. A contributor to American Speech in 1930 pointed
out that a precursor to the device a century earlier was called a
key wrench and suggested that its successor was at first called the
non-key wrench. In 1931, another writer in the same journal noted
that he had "years ago", read an account "to the effect that this
useful tool was invented by an English man named Mon(c)k." Around
1932-33 a report appeared in the Transcript of Boston asserting
that an American by the name of Monk employed by Bernis & Call of
Springfield, Massachusetts, invented the device, which became known
by his name. This is an earlier assertion of a similar origin:
Charles Monckey, inventor of the Monckey wrench
(wrongfully called monkey wrench), is living in poverty
in Brooklyn. He sold the patent for $2000, and now
millions are made annually out of the invention.
[Galveston Daily News (Texas), 23 Oct. 1886. Similarly
worded snippets appeared around the same time in the
Chicago Evening Journal, the Weekly Detroit Free Press
and the Atchison Daily Globe, among others.]
One of the editors at the OED tells me that they have in their
files a letter dated as early as 1893 expressing scepticism about
such theories; he also points out that the tool is referred to as a
monkey wrench years before suggestions of an origin in a proper
name appeared. As all such suggestions come without evidence to
support them, and nobody has since found any, we have to assume
they are hearsay or folk etymology.
In 1973, E Surrey Dane published a book with the snappy title Peter
Stubs and the Lancashire Hand Tool Industry, which has a reference
dated 1807 to a firm supplying "Screw plates, lathes, clock engines
... monkey wrenches, taps." The entry in the online Oxford English
Dictionary includes this but with a question mark before the date,
which means that their editors have yet to verify it beyond doubt.
There's then a big gap until it turns up in Francis Whishaw's The
Railways of Great Britain and Ireland, dated 1840, in which he
quotes Orders to Enginemen and Firemen issued by the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway, dated 1837, which includes a list of tools that
must be kept in a locomotive cab, including "one large and one
small monkey wrench". This reference shows that the term was then
common enough not to need explaining. The term was first used in
print in the US - so far as I can discover - in an issue of the
Natchez Daily Courier for 1838.
This dating evidence says nothing about the true origin. As matters
stand we can't even be sure which country invented it. It seems
most likely that the explanation is very simple: that the jaws of
the wrench reminded some early user of the face of a monkey.
7. Sic!
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Power of life and death: David Grossman was adding a subscriber to
an online group he manages when he received the message "Pending
members require your approval. If you take no action, they will
automatically expire after 14 days."
Kate Archdeacon wrote from Melbourne: "We have been hunting for a
new rental property for several weeks now, and it has become quite
difficult to choose from the fairly generic descriptions. Obviously
this one, from the Domain real estate section of our local paper,
The Age, is therefore very tempting: 'Space Galore and Freshly
Painted-Gardener Incuded'." ["Incuded" is also an error.]
An article on the Web site of The Red and Black, a University of
Georgia student newspaper, caused Lisa Robinton to cry "eek!". She
had encountered the sentence, "For fall semester last year, the
dining hall menu contained 12 items that were reformulated to
incorporate vegan students."
Dave Hay wrote from Houston, Texas: "In a Borders store in Glasgow
I found a poster for Richard Branson's new autobiography. [A photo
is in the online edition.] Sarah Cahill, the Non-Fiction Buyer of
Borders, was quoted, 'The ultimate entrepreneur combines invaluable
advice with the remarkable and candid insite stories of Virgins,
greatest achievements, as well as some of it's setbacks. This is a
dynamic, inspirational guide to success in business and in life.'"
The poster, on the other hand, is hardly an advertisement for
British punctuation and spelling.
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