World Wide Words -- 16 Jun 12

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS            ISSUE 789          Saturday 16 June 2012
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Foison.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Great Wen.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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GREEN FERRET  Following last week's Weird Word, Stephen Britt-Hazard 
updated the story: "During my service for solicitors as an articled 
clerk, and then a managing clerk/litigation executive during the 
70s, [ferret] was still a vital article in the clerk's inventory. 
Made of cotton dyed bright green, it was universally known as grass 
tape or green tape. It was used to ensure that the pages of deeds 
and other important documents were secured together in the correct 
order, and most importantly that any plan referred to was securely 
inserted." I have now found that "grass tape", so named, is listed 
for sale on the website of the British legal stationers Oyez.

CORRECTION  Apologies to Geoff Pullum for spelling his name wrong in 
the last issue.


2. Weird Words: Foison
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Returning home from holiday recently, I was struck by the intense 
green of the vegetation and how vigorously it had grown, the result 
of our wettest April on record. Shakespeare used "foison" for such 
energetic growth ("Earth's increase, foison plenty"), meaning plenty 
and abundance.

Etymologists have traced it to Latin "fundere", to pour (a good 
description of our April weather). Though French has it still, 
English abandoned "foison" well over a century ago, except for a 
very few examples of what I recently identified as gotwottery (see 
http://wwwords.org?GDWTY):

    Many days they rode that pass of the mountains, though 
    it was not always so evil and dreadful as at the first 
    beginning; for now again the pass opened out into little 
    valleys, wherein was foison of grass and sweet waters 
    withal, and a few trees.
    [The Well at the World's End, by William Morris, 
    1896.]

A rare modern user is the journalist and politician Boris Johnson, 
currently Mayor of London, who may not be to everybody's taste as a 
politician but whose English vocabulary is as copious as the word 
suggests:

    What did we have, to put next to the rich foison of the 
    French dairy? Cheddar, leicester, wensleydale and a 
    handful of perhaps seven others: magnificent species, but 
    not exactly a tribute to British powers of innovation. 
    [Sunday Telegraph, 15 Feb. 2001.]


3. Wordface
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LOOKALIKES, FEELALIKES  Sometimes advances in technology look back 
too fondly to their precursors. Digital cameras generate the sound 
of a mechanical shutter to reassure users that a picture has been 
taken. One calendar app has faux-leather covers and graphically 
tears off pages for previous months as you step forward. E-book 
readers sometimes simulate the turning of pages in a physical book. 
These ape older technologies to retain familiarity for the user. 
They are one form of SKEUOMORPHISM (Greek "skeuos", a container + 
"morphe", form; the first part is said like "skew"), the process of 
copying the design of a similar artefact in another material. New 
Scientist reported last week that the designers of computer screens 
are adding HAPTIC (http://wwwords.org?HPTC) functions, that simulate 
the sense of touch, to make digitally generated images of surfaces 
not only look like something physical, but feel like it as well.

PHEW!  I came across FUMEHEAD the other day, meaning somebody who 
delights in perfumes and loves to track down new varieties. It's an 
obvious play on "petrolhead" (motor-car fanatic), "airhead" (a silly 
or foolish person) and other terms ending in "-head". Online sources 
show that I've come to it rather late, as it has been around for a 
couple of years. Other terms for aficionados of such sniffable 
stuffs include PERFUMISTAS and SCENTOHOLICS.

WEATHER WAVES  We've become very familiar with the term "tsunami" in 
recent years, not least because of the one that devastated part of 
Japan last year. Most tsunamis are caused by earthquakes but high 
winds in the ocean can generate a series of waves that merge into 
one, creating a similar effect when it reaches land. The experts at 
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US call 
such an event a METEOTSUNAMI. Another name is GHOST STORM, but don't 
confuse that with the B-grade SF movie of the same name.


4. Q and A: Great Wen
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Q. I came across a reference in a newspaper last week to the Great 
Wen, which appeared to be London. Why that name and where did it 
come from? [Betty Thaeder, Toronto]

A. It is indeed a reference to London, an uncomplimentary one. Off 
the top of my head, I would have said that it's now almost totally 
forgotten other than by historians - Oxford dictionaries mark it as 
archaic - except that nobody seems to have told the great British 
journalist, who still occasionally finds it a useful mock-eruditism 
with which to pepper his prose. Even more curiously, an archive of 
British newspapers that I consulted shows that it underwent a mild 
revival in the early 2000s.

It's particularly puzzling to many people because they don't know 
the meaning of "wen", a word almost as rare as "Great Wen". A wen is 
a type of benign tumour, a sebaceous cyst, most commonly found on 
the scalp. It's an Old English word of obscure origin, though it's 
known to have had parallels in several ancient Germanic languages. 

From medieval times, people generalised the idea to refer to any 
sort of protrusion and used it figuratively as an insult.

    I do allow this Wen to be as familiar with me, as my 
    dogge.
    [Henry IV, Part 2, by William Shakespeare, 1600. Prince 
    Hal is referring dismissively to the obese Falstaff.]

In the eighteenth century, it came to refer to cities, London 
especially, that had grown hugely following industrialisation and 
changes in the rural economy. To many observers, their choked, 
noisome and polluted environments did seem like an outgrowth on the 
English landscape, which sucked in people and produce from their 
hinterlands.

    If therefore the Increase of Building [in London], 
    begun at such an early period, was looked upon to be no 
    better than a Wen, or Excrescence, upon the Body-Politic, 
    what must we think of those numberless streets and squares 
    that have been added since?
    [Four Letters on Important National Subjects, by Josiah 
    Tucker, 1783. Tucker, an economic theorist, was then Dean 
    of Gloucester.]

You might be reminded of a comment by Prince Charles in 1984, when 
he referred to a proposed extension to the National Gallery in 
London as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and 
elegant friend". Two centuries earlier, he would most likely have 
called it a wen.

The origin of the fuller phrase "Great Wen" is usually attributed to 
the English writer and political reformer William Cobbett:

    But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The 
    monster called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the 
    metropolis of the empire"?
    [Rural Rides, by William Cobbett; first published in 
    Cobbett's Weekly Register, 5 Jan. 1822.]

Though the term quickly became accepted, it usually appeared as "the 
great wen of London". It was only in the 1850s that it started to be 
capitalised as the Great Wen, with a reference to London being 
assumed.


5. Sic!
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Jon Ackroyd submitted a headline from the Times Colonist, Victoria, 
BC, of 9 June: "Offgassing leaves bad smell in drawers". The story 
was about furniture. Of course.

The CHS Capitol Hill Seattle Blog had a headline on 14 April that 
puzzled Terri Ise: "The adaptive reuse of Capitol Hill chickadees". 
The item made clear that it was the chickadees that were doing the 
adapting, of old nests.


6. Useful information
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