World Wide Words -- 24 Mar 12
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Mar 23 17:10:39 UTC 2012
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 779 Saturday 24 March 2012
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A formatted version of this e-magazine is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/akph.htm
Feedback, Notes and Comments
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FESTUCINE Nick Humez pointed out that the poem I quoted from wasn't
the epic of Gilgamesh as we know it today but a romantic Victorian
attempt by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton in 1884 to reconstruct part of
the story from a fragment of a later poem, Ishtar and Izdubar (the
latter name is a nineteenth-century misreading of Gilgamesh, due to
confusion between Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform).
INSURANCE Last week, I wondered about the term "before-the-event"
insurance. Numerous readers pointed out that, like the majority of
people in the UK, I was unaware that it is in fact possible to get
after-the-event insurance, particularly for legal expenses. If you
suffer some accident and don't have before-the-event cover, you can
take out after-the-event insurance, at a price, to reimburse your
costs if you lose the case.
NERD Joyce Melton responded to last week's article. "Cartoonists,
illustrators and other artists have used 'nerds' to mean eraser
crumbs for more than sixty years. When I worked at newspapers in the
sixties, we had a special brush (called a broom) for getting rid of
nerds before inking a drawing because the tiny pieces of rubber
would cause blots and blobs on the art. When the movie Revenge of
the Nerds came out, I imagined eraser crumbs with giant art brooms
pursuing people. That wasn't what the movie was about but it still
makes me laugh to think of it."
2. Weird Words: Roscid /rQsId/
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Though Latin "ros", meaning dew or light rain, has formed a number
of English words, almost all of them have become either obsolete or
so rare that you will seek them in vain in dictionaries.
"Roscid", for example, means "dewy":
The incense of thy stuffing fills the air,
And holds the senses in its fragrant snare;
Rich ichor from thy roscid body flows,
That e'en would tempt one in dyspepsia's throes.
[From The Chant Royal of the Turkey, in the New York
Times, 22 Nov. 1903.]
"Rorid" also means dewy, deriving from "ror-", the inflected form of
"ros". So does "rore" (with its adjective "roral"). "Rore" is even
rarer than the others, now known solely because Shakespeare used it
in Timon of Athens ("My words neither aspersed or inspersed with the
flore or rore of eloquence.") Others from the same source include
"roriferous", bringing or bearing dew, and "rorigenous", produced by
dew. This last word seems to have appeared nowhere else but Nathan
Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum of 1730. The final item in this
dusty exhibit of unloved lexicography is "irrorate", to bedew or
sprinkle with dew.
Another descendent of "ros" that's still in use is "rosolio", a
sweet cordial of Italy which is sold commercially under brand names
such as Cinzano and Martini. That name is an alteration of "ros
solis", the dew of the sun, not as a highfalutin romantic name but
because in its early days one ingredient was the juice of the sundew
plant. Later it became "rosa solis", rose of the sun, because rose
petals were substituted for sundew.
Confusion between "ros" and "rosa" has been endemic: "rosa solis"
was also at one time the name of some species of sundew. And, though
few know it, the plant called rosemary derives its name not from the
rose but from the dew; its Latin name was "ros marinus", sea dew,
because its natural habitat is sea cliffs.
Wordface
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MORE AMBULANCES Dave McCombs followed up earlier comments by asking
about the provenance of "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff", a
term that he mentioned is much used in his native New Zealand. The
evidence shows that it's used to some extent in North America and
the UK, though I've no memory of having encountered it. This is the
earliest example that I've found anywhere: "The politician is like
the person who would build an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff,
instead of constructing a good fence at the top." (Maoriland Worker,
25 February 1920.) The phrase suggests that somebody is expensively
providing the wrong solution to a problem. Note the phrase "build an
ambulance"; it seems that for this writer an ambulance was a fixed
structure, which wasn't even then the standard sense in New Zealand.
DON'T JUST TALK: DO SOMETHING! In SF, an over-extensive explanation
of the background to a story is derisively called a data dump. Even
more crucially, actors hate having to stop the action to explain
some vital bit of the plot. Writers have come up with all sorts of
ways to keep the action going while a vital bit of back story is
communicated. Last May, the US critic Miles McNutt commented on the
way that sex was being used in the Game of Thrones TV series to keep
the attention of the audience while the characters deliver chunks of
exposition. He coined "sexposition" for it, a term that has gained a
minor niche in the glossary of American criticism. In a letter to
the Guardian last week, Charles Harris of Euroscript produced -
tongue in cheek I presume - "walksposition" for the trick of
speaking plot lines while walking very fast, a technique best known
from Aaron Sorkin's West Wing.
Q and A: Jack
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Q. When I filled in "every last jack" in a crossword puzzle today, I
started wondering about the origin of the term. A Wikipedia entry
for "last man Jack" claims the term originates from a cricketing
pun. The poorest batsman, who goes in to bat last at No 11, is
supposedly known as Jack because the jack is the 11th card in a
playing card suit. This etymology seems ridiculously contrived. But
do you have a better explanation? My guess would be a nautical
derivation. [Andrew Haynes]
A. I agree there's little merit in the Wikipedia suggestion, though
there is a very slight connection between the playing card and the
expression. But to explain that requires us to look more deeply into
the background of "Jack".
Its first sense was as a pet form of "John". Its early history is
complicated. It began as "Jehan", a form of John, and successively
became "Jan" and then "Jankin" ("Jan" + the pet or diminutive ending
"-kin"). This shifted to "Jackin" and then lost the ending again to
make "Jack".
This all happened in the 1200s. Not long after, it became a general
way to refer to any ordinary man or a man of the people. There's a
parallel here with French "Jacques", which was a familiar name for a
peasant or a man of low social status, though the two names aren't
directly connected.
Later, "Jack" became a slightly dismissive term for a labourer or
working man, which is why we have compounds like "steeplejack" and
"lumberjack", the one-time "Jack tar" for a common sailor (which I
guess is why you thought of a naval origin), as well as phrases like
"Jack of all trades" and "Jack's as good as his master". "Jack" was
also applied to numerous machines that took the place of a man or
lad doing some menial job - the device that helps you change a car
tyre is a specific example that we still often use, but there are
many, many others, whose specific origins are often hard to
establish.
By the 1500s, Jack had gone further down in the world to mean not
only a low-bred or ill-mannered person but an unscrupulous or
dishonest man, a knave. This explains why "knave" and "jack" are
used interchangeably for the playing card.
The phrases "every man jack", "every last man jack" and "last man
jack" (and less directly your "every last jack") are all based on
"man jack", an early nineteenth-century elaboration of the idea of
Jack as the average or common man. Some examples:
They begged hard a bunch of hot-house grapes; but he
said that Sir Pitt had numbered every "Man Jack" of them,
and it would be as much as his place was worth to give any
away.
[Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848.]
"Gather up every one in camp," directed Stimbol. "Have
them up here in five minutes for a palaver - every last
man-jack of them."
[Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, by Edgar Rice Burroughs,
1928.]
It seemed rather visionary to expect that a crowd of
store workers would enjoy getting out earlier than usual
of a morning to sing a song. But they did, every last jack
of them, and they sang right at the start.
[Trenton Evening Times (New Jersey), 12 Oct. 1920.]
Sic!
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An Associated Press article of 17 March on the Falkland Islands was
widely reproduced. Paul Brady came across it in the Herald Tribune
of Sarasota. It said, "Many still heat their homes with peat stoves,
grow their own vegetables, repair their Land Rovers themselves and
raise chickens for their soft-boiled eggs."
A Press Association piece of 14 March, which also appeared widely,
reported on a newly discovered fossil species of human beings and
said of the researchers: "They remain cautious about how to classify
the 'red deer people' - so called because they hunted extinct red
deer." Lucy Banks said she wasn't surprised they died out.
Someone I know only as Gemma submitted this muddled first sentence
from an item in the Stirling Observer dated 16 March: "Thanks to
electronic diaries, a group of patients in the Falkirk area who have
a chronic lung condition are managing to avoid being admitted to
hospital less often."
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