World Wide Words -- 08 Jan 11
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Jan 8 01:41:52 UTC 2011
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 718 Saturday 8 January 2011
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Editor: Michael Quinion US advisory editor: Julane Marx
Website: http://www.worldwidewords.org ISSN 1470-1448
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For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Tintamarre.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Near miss.
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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NORMAL SERVICE NOW RESUMED Thanks for your patience while I took a
couple of weeks off.
KETTLING Alan Taylor noted, "'Kessel' is a German military term
for an encirclement of the enemy, literally, a cauldron". And
Jonathan Warner commented: "When I read your piece, I wondered why
there was no mention of the Stalingrad Kettle. The film, Enemy at
the Gates, came out in 2001 and spawned an upsurge of interest in
the battle; perhaps a cinema-going constable came up with the term,
rather than hearing it from a German colleague in the way you
suggest."
Robin M Crorie, a retired Police Support Unit commander, gave an
insider's view of the term: "In my experience, 'kettling' isn't a
police word at all, at least not here in the UK. It is known to
practitioners as 'containment' and I'd never heard colleagues refer
to it as 'kettling'. The first and subsequent encounters that I had
with it were in the media, who aren't strangers to a preference for
more emotive terminology."
MUMPING Numerous readers asked whether this term had any link to
the name of that nasty viral disease, "mumps". It would seem to be
linked to the other sense of "mump" that I mentioned, a grimace,
presumably because of the look of the face when it is swollen up.
BALLOON'S GONE UP Alan Turner told me that observation balloons
were used in the 1860s during the American Civil War, information
from spotters being passed to the ground by the newfangled electric
telegraph. In combination with the relatively early US examples of
the term, it suggests the expression may have grown out of people's
experience with them in that war. The idea would then be similar to
that quoted for the First World War, in which observation balloons
appearing over the lines often preceded an operation. So those who
claim that it was coined during the First World War may have the
right idea, but the wrong war. Or we may have a case of independent
invention. Etymology is a delightfully uncertain business.
SITE UPDATES In New-Year spirit, I've updated the piece about
"Janus-faced" (http://wwwords.org?JSFC). I've also updated those
about "big girl's blouse" (http://wwwords.org?BGBL) and "3D
fatigue" (http://wwwords.org?3DFTG) .
2. Weird Words: Tintamarre /tInt@'mA:(r)/
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It's a pleasant word for an unlovely experience, unless you are a
lover of loud noises, since a tintamarre is an uproar, hubbub or
confused noise.
The tempest had struck. Kenton, climbing, heard
thunderings like the clashing of armied shields; clanging
of countless cymbals, tintamarre of millions of gongs of
brass.
[The Ship of Ishtar, by Abraham Merritt, 1926. "Armied"
is a rare word meaning "army-like" or "forming an army".]
While we're sure that it was borrowed from French in the sixteenth
century, nobody has provided a good explanation of where the French
got it from. It may remind us of "tintinnabulation" but the experts
are sure that the two words aren't connected.
At one time, it was fairly common in English but it almost died out
in the nineteenth century. J Redding Ware recorded in his Passing
English of the Victorian Era in 1909 that it was confined to Devon.
Since then it has become even rarer in English, though it has been
resurrected, hopefully teasingly, for a music festival in
Lincolnshire.
The French connection survives in the Acadian regions of eastern
Canada. A tintamarre is a colourful parade in which participants
see how much din they can create using any noisemaker to hand, such
as pots, pans, whistles or drums. This event is only about 30 years
old (one website calls it a modern tradition) but may reflect the
old French custom of charivari.
3. Wordface
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TROUBLES IN 3D In its Christmas issue, New Scientist introduced
readers to the unpleasant term BARFOGENIC ZONE. This is the onset
of nausea, accompanied by headaches and eyestrain, that can be
caused by wearing 3D virtual-reality goggles or watching 3D films
or television. It's classic motion sickness, brought on because
one's eyes are confused by images that are in reality at a fixed
distance but which seem to move forwards and backwards. Other terms
also sometimes used include CYBERSICKNESS and 3D FATIGUE.
SELF-REFERENTIAL ETYMOLOGY A reader asked me about the origins of
PUZZLE. Nobody knows.
WORDS OF THE YEAR 1 During my Christmas break, more announcements
of words of the year were made. Merriam-Webster chose AUSTERITY,
because it topped the list of searches on the dictionary's website
during the year. Dr Lynne Murphy, an American linguist working in
the UK, featured two chosen by readers of her blog, Separated by a
Common Language: SHELLACKING as the American-to-British Word of the
Year (see http://wwwords.org?SHLK), and GINGER - the hair colour -
as the British-to-American one, to mark the forthcoming conclusion
of the Harry Potter film adaptations. The Flemish word of the year
was chosen by another audience survey: TENTSLETJE, literally a
tent-slut, a woman who has multiple sexual partners at a music
festival. The German Language Society crowned WUTBÜRGER, enraged
citizen, as the most important German word of 2010 because of all
that country's demonstrations.
At the other end of the spectrum, the long-established annual List
of Banished Words published by Lake Superior State University came
out on 1 January. As every year, the public voted for their most-
disliked words and phrases, a wonderful opportunity for grumblers
about the declining state of the language to vent some spleen and
for the University to obtain much-needed publicity. This year, the
overall winner was VIRAL, in the online sense of passing news of
something from person to person; this has become a term of art in
marketing and is solidly established in the language. Other words
and phrases in the list that voters particularly hated include
EPIC, FAIL (and EPIC FAIL), WOW FACTOR, MAN UP, REFUDIATE and YOUR
CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US.
WORDS OF THE YEAR 2 As every year, the granddaddy of these annual
votefests, the one from the American Dialect Society, took place
yesterday evening (7 January) at its annual conference. Winners
were elected in various categories. Most Useful Word of the Year:
NOM (a popular online term for yummy food, borrowed from the noise
that the Cookie Monster character on Sesame Street makes as he
devours another cookie); Most Creative: PREHAB (the pre-emptive
enrolment in a rehab facility to prevent relapse of an abuse
problem, invented in February after Charlie Sheen checked into a
clinic); Most Unnecessary: REFUDIATE (an easy winner, the notorious
blend of "refute" and "repudiate" that was used by Sarah Palin on
Twitter); Most Outrageous: GATE RAPE (a pejorative term for an
invasive new US airport security pat-down procedure); Most
Euphemistic: KINETIC EVENT (the Pentagon term for violent attacks
on troops in Afghanistan); Most Likely to Succeed: TREND (a term
particularly of Twitter, meaning to exhibit a burst of online
buzz); Least Likely to Succeed: CULTUROMICS (a statistical approach
to word research using a set of about five million books digitised
by Google, the value of which many linguists are deeply sceptical
about); Fan Word of the Year: GLEEK (a fan of the television show
Glee). And finally - drumroll, please, maestro - as the overall
Word of the Year for 2010 the American Dialect Society voted for
APP (an abbreviated form of "application", a software program for a
computer or phone operating system, which has been around for ages
but which burst into renewed vigour in 2010 because of the vast
number of little applications that have become available for
smartphones).
4. Q and A: Near miss
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Q. I am curious about the expression "near miss", often used when
two aircraft avoid a mid-air collision. To me this is patently
illogical, because a near miss is surely a hit, and therefore a
near hit is a miss and should be used instead. Regrettably, the
online OED gives a definition aligning with the common usage. My
view remains that acceptance does not change a wrong into a right.
Grudgingly I have to accept this status quo but it would be
interesting to find out how this term became so widely accepted.
[Zefanja Potgieter, New Zealand]
A. Your view has often been shared by others of a severely logical
turn of mind:
The overuse of near ... became controversial with
"near miss", a nonsensical version of "near thing"; some
of us patiently but uselessly pointed out that the writer
meant "near hit." "Near miss" has since entrenched itself
as an idiom.
[On Language By William Safire, The New York Times, 2
Jan. 2005.]
"Near miss" has indeed become an idiom and idioms by definition
don't make literal sense, however infuriating that may seem. In
this case, your opponents may argue that "near" means "close", so
"near miss" can be interpreted to mean an accident that has only
narrowly been avoided or in which catastrophe has been barely
averted. Our thoughts may at once jump to aircraft incidents when
we hear it, but "near miss" is also used in the same sense in
healthcare, firefighting and other areas where risk of accident
exists.
It did appear occasionally in the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth, but the records show a massive upsurge from the start of
the Second World War in 1939. That's because "near miss" was a
technical term of the military to identify a bomb or shell that
missed the target but which exploded close enough to it to cause
significant damage. This is a very early case:
The Admiralty stated this evening that "as a result of
a near miss during an enemy bombing some days ago H.M.S.
Eclipse was damaged but is now safely at her base."
[Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 20 Apr. 1940.]
After the war, the term continued in widespread use but lost the
implication that damage had been caused. Its popularity may have
been helped by its being shorter than "near collision", a much less
used but acceptable alternative that has been known since the
middle of the nineteenth century:
Allusion had been made to a near collision with a
vessel at Spithead, but this was the first time it had
been insinuated that the captain was intoxicated at the
time.
[Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle
(Portsmouth), 30 Oct. 1852. The captain in question was
in charge of an Isle of Wight ferry.]
If anyone would like an historical justification for "near miss",
this may suffice:
Lord Wellington happening to be with us, a shot ...
carried his cocked hat completely off. Our colonel
remarked to him, "That was a near miss, my Lord;" to
which he replied, "Yes, and I wish you would try to stop
them, for they seem determined to annoy us."
[The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence, which
was published posthumously in a version edited by George
Nugent Bankes, 1886. The incident happened during the
Peninsular War in 1813, though I suspect the colonel's
phrase was the invention of the editor.]
5. Sic!
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Arnold Zwicky's blog of 28 December has a link Chris Bogart sent
him to a sentence in the Wikipedia article on cuneiform script:
"After the Semites conquered Southern Mesopotamia, most likely to
make things clearer in writing, some signs gradually changed from
being pictograms to syllabograms." Chris Bogart commented that,
though the article is editable, he can't bear to fix it.
A backup program on my computer stopped with the error message, "An
invalid argument was encountered." It was copying parliamentary
reports at the time.
Thanks to Bart Bresnik, we learn of the horrendous traffic accident
that hit Rhode Island, according to the Boston Globe's website on
30 December: "The father of a motorcyclist struck and killed in a
traffic accident in May has filed a lawsuit against the driver of
the car that struck his son, the vehicle's owner, and the state."
Bill Parsons concluded there must be a market niche for collision-
prone sailors, having noted an eye-catching line on this month's
issue of The Boat International: "Designed for Impact".
A story dated 20 December on the Mirror's website was spotted by
reader Michael Hocken, who admits to having been taken aback before
common sense and maths kicked in: "There must be something in the
beer at The Swan pub, as seven of its barmaids became pregnant in
2010. Boss Kim Newstead, 41, who had her third baby this year, has
dubbed the boozer, in Weymouth, Dorset, 'the fertility pub'."
"A pilot's spilled coffee accidentally triggered a hijacking
alert," began a report on the South African News 24 website on 5
January (found by Thomas Snyman). No ordinary coffee, as the report
went on: "The coffee sent out distress signals including code 7500,
which means hijacking or unlawful interference."
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