World Wide Words -- 24 Oct 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 23 16:13:09 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 662 Saturday 24 October 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. Turns of Phrase: Epigenome.
3. Weird Words: Talaria.
4. What I've learned this week.
5. Review: Historical Thesaurus of the OED.
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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MONKEY WRENCHES "I was going along with your suggestions," Peter
Allen e-mailed from the USA, "until you printed the reference to
railroad locomotives. The amazing and confusing collection of
pistons, links, cranks, rods and levers found on the drive wheels
of a locomotive are often collectively referred to as the 'monkey
motion'. I wonder if the wrenches kept in locomotives might have
gained the name of 'monkey wrenches' because they were used to
maintain the monkey motion in the drive train." It's an intriguing
suggestion. The earliest mentions of "monkey motion" I can find in
a locomotive context are from the Morning Oregonian for 1 February
1895 and from a 1899 issue of the Journal of Railway Appliances,
published in New York. The expression itself is much older (1845),
in the sense of a monkey-like gesture or facial expression. As the
first known US appearance of "monkey wrench" is older still (1838)
and is at the dawn of the railway age, my considered guess (if one
may be allowed such a thing) is that "monkey wrench" and "monkey
motion" are unconnected.
Carl Bowers gave another view: "Growing up in Southern California,
I learned the term 'monkey wrench' applied to an adjustable wrench,
either what is known as a crescent wrench (often referred to as a
'knuckle-buster') or a square-headed, less-elegant-looking tool.
The implication in either case was that this was a general-purpose
tool, not perfectly fitted to any one application but adaptable in
case of need to a variety of uses - not exactly right but good
enough in a pinch - just the sort of general-purpose item that a
locomotive engineer might find useful in an emergency. The
underlying suggestion was that lacking the precise tool for a job,
you could 'monkey around' with this one. The term also carried a
suggestion of the disdain a properly-equipped mechanic felt for
those who would use such an inexact and slip-prone tool, risking
damage both to the part being worked on and to their knuckles."
2. Turns of Phrase: Epigenome
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This term of the biological sciences has been around for decades
but it has been specialist, unknown to the general public. That
changed to some extent last week when newspapers reported a paper
that had appeared in the science magazine Nature.
We're familiar these days with the idea that the nature of living
things is controlled by the DNA in their genes, the genetic code of
an individual being its genome. Since there are many sorts of cell,
but only one genome in an individual, there must be a way to switch
genes on and off inside the cell so it develops into a specific
type - fat, muscle, brain or other sort. This process is controlled
by chemical switches collectively called the epigenome. The report
in Nature was that researchers at the Salk Institute in La Jolla,
California, had for the first time mapped it.
Environmental factors can disrupt the epigenome, which can lead to
a variety of medical conditions, including cancers. Armed with the
new roadmap of the way the epigenome works, specialists can study
the differences between healthy and diseased cells and begin to
understand how this can happen.
"Epigenome" includes the prefix "epi-", upon or in addition to,
from Greek "epi", upon, near to, or in addition to. Its study is
"epigenomics" and the adjective is "epigenomic". The field is new
and the terminology is still evolving; it is common for researchers
to use "epigenetics" instead of "epigenomics" for the study of all
the changes to a cell that result from external rather than genetic
influences.
The closely related term "epigenesis" refers to our understanding
that an embryo progressively develops from an undifferentiated egg
cell, rather than the older belief that it is created completely
formed (an homunculus) and merely grows larger. The adjective
"epigenetic" can refer to epigenesis, but is frequently used in
the scientific literature in connection with epigenomics.
* The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 16 Oct. 2009: Scientists believe the
epigenome can be altered by environmental factors, ranging from
diet to pollution, and disrupt this finely tuned regulatory
process, setting the stage for various illnesses including cancer
and heart disease.
* Guardian, 14 Oct. 2008: The epigenome can be disrupted by
smoking, ageing, stress, atmospheric pollution, what we eat and
drink, and a host of other environmental factors. There is some
evidence that the environment causes epigenetic changes that make
people more susceptible to asthma.
3. Weird Words: Talaria /t@'le at rI@/
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If we wanted to invent a classical replacement for the idiom "from
head to toe", we might choose "from petasus to talaria". The latter
is one of those words - like aglet for the little tube at the end
of a shoelace or philtrum for the ridges in the middle of the upper
lip - that identify something we know well but usually can't name.
These two words - and a third, "caduceus" - are associated with
Hermes, the Greek herald and messenger of the gods whom the Romans
knew as Mercury. He's usually portrayed as having wings on his
sandals. The Romans called these "talaria", a plural noun from the
adjective "talaris", relating to the ankle, from "talus", ankle.
Hermes was given his talaria by his father Zeus, who also gave him
a low-crowned, broad-rimmed traveller's cap of a type well-known in
classical times and which Greeks called a petasus. In later times,
the hat changed to a brimless one with wings on, but it kept the
name.
The third traditional item of equipment of Hermes and Mercury, the
caduceus, was the wand of office of a Greek or Roman herald (it's
from Greek "kerux", a herald), which usually had two snakes wound
around a wooden staff. Long ago, this became confused with another
rod, the staff of Asclepius, the god of healing, which only had the
one snake; the twin-snake version of Hermes and Mercury replaced it
and remains common as a symbol of medicine.
4. What I've learned this week
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BREAK CAKES John Harland introduced me to a well-known term among
British and Australian seafarers: TABNABS. They are snacks such as
cakes or fancy biscuits that are served during morning or afternoon
tea breaks among seafarers and crews of North Sea oil rigs. Nobody
seems to know where the term comes from. All I have learned is that
the Oxford English Dictionary records it from the 1930s and that it
may originally have been Royal Navy slang. An early reference is in
Malcolm Lowry's book Under the Volcano, dated 1947: "The tabnabs
were delicate and delicious little cakes made by the second cook."
Wilfred Granville defined them in his Sea Slang of the Twentieth
Century (1950) as a steward's term in the merchant navy for "Buns,
pastry and confectionery which are reserved for the passengers in a
liner and are not for the crew."
GRAND WORD Lord Myners, who is usually referred to in newspapers
as the City minister, though his full official title is Financial
Services Secretary to the Treasury, gave a speech on Wednesday at
the dinner of a City of London guild, one that has the currently
inappropriate title of the Worshipful Company of International
Bankers. He ended: "The next few months will set the blueprint for
public perceptions of the banking industry for decades to come. The
taxpayer will not be taken for a GOOSTRUMNOODLE a second time - nor
should they be allowed to." What a wonderful word! I had to search
a while before finding a dictionary that contains it. Eventually, I
tracked it down in the English Dialect Dictionary of a century ago.
It turns out to be a Cornish word for a fool. It's not surprising
that Lord Myners should know it - his childhood was spent in
Cornwall.
5. Review: Historical Thesaurus of the OED
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Lexicographers know from historical example and the nature of the
job that they're in for a long haul. Samuel Johnson thought his
dictionary project would take three years, but even with the help
of his amanuenses it needed nine. James Murray worked on what was
then called the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles for
36 years, his labours being terminated only by death. Development
of the Historical Thesaurus began in 1967. Its current director,
Christian Kay, and another editor, Irené Wotherspoon, both joined
as research assistants two years later and so each has completed 40
years of unending slog.
The grand plan was to create a unique work of scholarship and that
is what it is - there's nothing like it in any other language. Most
thesauruses basically take a snapshot of the language as it is when
it is compiled (lexicographers call this a synchronic view). Its
editors will include literary or archaic terms and colloquial or
slang expressions that may one day become part of the standard
language, but essentially they're cataloguing a slice across one
moment in time. The Historical Thesaurus takes the other possible
stance: recording the words English has used for concepts across
the whole history of the language - a diachronic view.
Take "money" for example (a word much in our minds at the moment).
The entry fills a column and tells us that the earliest word for
the concept - in Old English - was "mynet", with "money" itself
turning up around 1290; a glance down the chronological list throws
up "gelt" (first recorded around 1529), "lour" (in use from 1567
on), "mint-sauce" (from 1812), and a host of others from the past
two centuries that we may recognise from our reading even if we
don't use them ourselves: "oof", "lettuce", "ackers", "bread",
"spondulicks", "moolah", "lolly", "loot", and "dosh". All these are
tagged with the date of their first known appearance and - if it
has - the date when it went out of use again.
This is treasure-trove, which careful writers can mine for nuggets
of vocabulary. There's no excuse any more for anachronisms. If
you're creating an historical novel or film or adapting a classic
for television, you can check in this monumental agglomeration if -
for example - your character might have called money "dough" in
1800 (no, because it's first recorded in 1851) or what might have
been a suitable slang term for it in 1700 ("spankers", "cole" and
"rhino" are all possibilities).
The source of this knowledge, as the title shows, is the Oxford
English Dictionary. The compilers of the Historical Thesaurus took
every word in the OED and placed it within a framework of meaning
that they constructed, a monumental task that makes one's mind
reel, as does the thought of creating the framework itself.
Most thesauruses today use the classification scheme invented by
Peter Roget in 1852, but the compilers of the Historical Thesaurus
realised that this wouldn't be comprehensive enough and generated
their own. All knowledge is divided into three broad families: the
external world, the mental world, and the social world, numbered
from 01 to 03. These families are progressively subdivided into
more and more detailed classes. The class 03.10 is work, 03.10.13
is trade and commerce and 03.10.13.15 is money. The classification
doesn't end there - 03.10.13.15.05 is currency, 03.10.13.15.05.01
is coins and 03.10.13.15.05.01.05 is foreign coins. This last entry
has hundreds of historical terms organised by country, such as the
Dutch stiver and the American sharpshin. To look up the index (the
second, larger, volume of the two-volume work), is to experience a
mass of numbers dancing before the eyes like every lottery draw of
all time rolled into one.
It's an extraordinary work. The pity is that it's so expensive that
only libraries, big institutions and a few well-heeled individuals
can afford it.
[Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels and Irené Wotherspoon
[eds], The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary,
Oxford University Press, 22 October 2009; hardback, two volumes in
slipcase; ISBN-13:978-0-19-920899-9; ISBN-10:0-19-920899-9; the UK
publisher's price is £250 until January 2010, thereafter £275.]
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6. Sic!
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Charlotte Bulmer's local church's noticeboard advertised a lecture
titled "Your Church: it's history". Attendees who were expecting an
account of the demise of Christianity would have been surprised by
a description of the 13th-century building and its development over
the years.
It makes sense when you think about it, but the opening sentence of
a piece on the Philadelphia Daily News site on 17 October startled
John Politis: "My daughter, Eve, will be 8 tomorrow, and it seems
like just yesterday that my wife told me she was pregnant."
Department of long-distance birthing: Ian Somers read an account on
Teletext last Sunday of a premature birth on a ferry in the English
Channel: "The ship was around 30 miles south east of Start Point. A
coastguard helicopter winched the 38-year-old mother from Bognor
Regis and child from the vessel."
In the US, Randall Bart heard a radio commercial for a jewellery
store, which talked about the advantages of taking your old stuff
into their store, where they will give you cash straightaway. They
urged, "Don't get scammed or ripped of by anyone else." Mr Bart
appreciates their concern.
The Eastern Province Herald of Port Elizabeth in South Africa,
Gerhard Burger tells us, reported on 12 October that the list of
China's super-rich was headed by a "rechargeable battery tycoon".
But how long will he keep going when you've recharged him?
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