World Wide Words -- 25 Sep 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 24 16:33:17 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 705 Saturday 25 September 2010
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Editor: Michael Quinion US advisory editor: Julane Marx
Website: http://www.worldwidewords.org ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Ooglification.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Lo and behold.
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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BRIEF REVIEWS In the piece about the new edition of the Chicago
Manual of Style, I referred to it as a "doorstep" of a book. Many
readers queried whether I meant to write "doorstop". However, for
at least the past 150 years in the UK we have used "doorstep" for a
very thick slice of bread. We have recently extended that image to
books, too recently for any British dictionary I have consulted to
include it. I'm not entirely sure whether this ought to be classed
as a folk etymology or a transferred epithet, but I suspect the
former. Google, surprisingly, finds more than three times as many
results for "doorstep of a book" as for the other form.
In the same set of reviews, I gave the title of a book as Germany:
Biography of a Language by Ruth H Saunders. That should have been
German: Biography of a Language by Ruth H Sanders. Apologies.
GONG FARMER Hugh Blackmer pointed me to John Pudney's The Smallest
Room of 1954, which suggests a different origin for "farmer" in the
expression - from the old verb "fay", to cleanse, so making the
noun "faymer", one who cleanses, which became "farmer" through the
influence of that word. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests,
however, that "farmer" is from a different verb, the Old English
"feormian", of similar sense.
2. Weird Words: Ooglification
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This is a truly curious word, a whimsical creation to identify a
linguistic process that doesn't exist. Nobody is ever likely to use
it in real life, although it has appeared in a number of works that
list language oddities. It refers to a supposed process by which an
"oo" sound is substituted for another vowel, either to turn a
regular English word into slang or to make a slang word even more
slangy.
It was invented about 30 years ago by Roger Wescott, who was then
Professor of Linguistics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.
It appeared in a little article in the linguistic magazine Verbatim
under the title Ooglification in American English Slang. He claimed
to have derived the word as an expansion of the American slang term
"oogly", which he said meant "extremely attractive" and "extremely
unattractive". So far as I am aware, it has never aspired to the
former sense, being a modified form of "ugly", thus being a example
of the process he describes.
Though "ooglification" isn't a real process in English, Professor
Westcott is making a serious point facetiously. Anatoly Liberman
commented in his Oxford Etymologist blog in July this year: "The
vowel sound 'oo' has the ability of giving a word an amusing
appearance. Whoever hears 'snooze', 'canoodle', and 'nincompoop'
begins to smile; add 'boondoggle' to this list."
Roger Wescott listed a number of slang terms from the past century
that share this quality. Most of his examples are either uncommon
or defunct. "Divine" has appeared as "divoon", "Scandinavian" is
known as "Scandinoovian" (sometimes as "Scandihoovian"), and at one
time "cigaroot" was a well known variation on "cigarette", as here:
"I can 'elp!" persisted Albert. "Got a cigaroot?" "Do
you smoke, child?" "When I get 'old of a cigaroot I do."
"I'm sorry I can't oblige you. I don't smoke cigarettes."
"Then I'll 'ave to 'ave one of my own," said Albert
moodily.
[A Damsel in Distress, by P G Wodehouse, 1919.]
3. Wordface
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GAME ON? There has been a sudden proliferation of appearances of
the word GAMIFICATION in the media recently, although the word is
recorded as early as 2006. It refers to the application of digital
game technology and game design in areas of life outside games. Its
proponents argue that everything from global-positioning software
to retailing and financial services websites could become more
game-like in order to attract people who are comfortable with
online games and make sites easier and more pleasant to use. Retail
websites are experimenting with games to gain and keep customers,
multiplayer games are being tried at work to improve coordination
between staff, and it has even been suggested that boring tasks
such as paying taxes or checking the weather might become fun.
TWITTERING The fanciful language creations associated with the
online Twitter system know no end. I've largely escaped the flood
of neologisms, as I've retreated to the linguistic high ground to
become a mildly disparaging onlooker, but one I came across this
week is worth a tut-tut or two: TWINTERVIEW, an interview executed
in 140-character chunks.
MID-LIFE CRISES The British media have been having fun with a term
linked to a report from the analysts Mintel. This pointed out the
recent rise in the value of bike sales, despite a fall of some 10%
in the number of cycles sold. The difference is explained in part
by the MAMILs, Middle-Aged Men In Lycra, who are taking up cycling
with enthusiasm, in the process spending freely on high-end cycles
and all the accoutrements, especially the clothing.
4. Q and A: Lo and behold
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Q. Where does the phrase "lo and behold" come from? How long has
it been in the language? I Googled it and saw that the first known
usage is from 1808, but it seems older than that. [Kristin OKeefe]
A. It seems older because both parts of the phrase are essentially
archaic. It reminds us of the phraseology of early English language
editions of the Bible, such as the King James version of 1611. But
"lo and behold" doesn't appear in that edition (nor, as far as I
can tell, in any other). But the individual words most certainly
do, often close to each other:
And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed:
and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.
[Genesis, chapter 15 verse 3, King James Bible,
1611.]
The two words have closely similar meanings, being commands to draw
attention to an interesting or amazing event or to imply "listen
carefully, I'm going to tell you something important". "Lo" is a
shortening of the Old English imperative form of the verb "look";
"behold" in such cases is also an imperative, from the verb meaning
to keep in view.
At some point - the evidence suggests that it was sometime in the
eighteenth century - people began to put the two words together to
make a humorously reinforced form that might be translated as "look
and see". At first this was regarded as too colloquial to be used
in respectable publications, which is why our earliest examples are
from personal letters. The one you mention is in a letter of 1808
in the published correspondence of Lady Lyttelton, much later to
become lady of the bedchamber to Queen Victoria and governess to
her children: "Lo and behold! M. Deshayes himself appeared".
This is earlier by half a century:
Here was I sat down, full of Love and Respect to write
my dearest Friends a dutiful and loving letter, when lo,
and behold! I was made happy by the receipt of yours.
[In a letter by Miss N-- to the actor and playwright
Thomas Hull, dated 22 July 1766. It was included in
Select letters Between the Late Duchess of Somerset, Lady
Luxborough, Mr Whistler, ... and Others, which Hull
edited and published in two volumes in 1778.]
By the 1820s, it had become common. It's still so, though we can
only utter it self-consciously as a linguistic relic. We can use it
to refer to some notionally surprising event that isn't really so
surprising because it has been predicted.
5. Sic!
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"In a local antique store," writes Bronwyn Cozens, "I found a sweet
little furniture item, carefully labelled 'Reproductive Cabinet'.
No instructions were given, nor was there any further information.
One can only wonder how it works."
It would be all too easy to get the wrong idea from a headline on
the Buffalo News website over a story dated 18 September: "Texas
Man accused of shooting deputies in custody." Thanks go to Gloria
Bryant for sending that in.
Readers of the Bendigo Weekly in Australia, Jack Lilley tells us,
may not be greatly surprised to hear of yet another name change for
a department of the State Government of Victoria: the Weekly tells
us it's called the "Department of Stainability and Environment".
The Marlin Chronicle, the student newspaper of Virginia Wesleyan
College, had a story on 17 September about a snake that fell from
the ceiling of an office. Cathal Woods says that the paper wrote of
the person who saw it: "When she checked to see what had fallen,
she dismissed the snake as a prank, thinking it was one of the
other workers."
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