World Wide Words -- 01 Dec 12

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 812         Saturday 1 December 2012
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Maggot.
3. Q and A: Ride shotgun.
4. Sic!
5. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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THE NEXT ISSUE WILL BE IN 2013!  Personal and family circumstances 
have led me reluctantly to decide not to create the issues of 8 and 
15 December. As I had already decided not to publish during my usual 
Christmas break, the next scheduled issue is on Saturday 5 January 
2013. Thank you for your support during 2012; every good wish to you 
for the holiday season and for the New Year. It is unlikely that I 
shall be able to reply in a timely fashion, or possibly even at all, 
to incoming e-mails during December.

HOT STUFF  Many readers pointed out "torrefy" (or "torrify"), which 
I mentioned last time, has close relatives in other languages. In 
Canada, where French and English mingle, Wendy Magnall noted that 
"the excellent French term 'torréfaction' can be found on one side 
of coffee containers in place of the overworked English 'roast'. As 
I write, I am enjoying a cup of torréfaction traditionelle." From 
Germany, Reinhard Fey tells us, "In many Italian cities you will 
find shop signs 'torrefazione propria'. These are shops roasting and 
selling their own coffee." 

Peter Rugg added another context: "This process is used to dry and 
slightly char biomass pellet fuels. It is called 'torrifaction' or 
'torrification'. Like many technical words, in its many forms it 
confuses digital dictionaries. The one approving this note wants to 
change it to 'horrification'." Martin Spiller added a memory: "The 
lovely old Carwardines Tea and Coffee House in Corn Street, Bristol, 
had a sign painted on the side which fascinated me when I was young: 
'The Liquefaction of our Torrefaction Always Brings Satisfaction.'"

BIG FELLA  Cross-language connections support the idea I mentioned 
in the last issue that Rabelais named his character Gargantua (from 
which we get "gargantuan") from a word for the throat. Jack Shakely 
wrote, "The Spanish for throat is 'garganta', which would make a 
pretty good moniker for a monster with a monstrous appetite." 
Antonio Monteiro noted that Portuguese has the same word.

LOCKED AND LOADED  "A thought on 'up the spout'," Kevin Eames wrote, 
"I think I remember my father, who served in the RAF Regiment during 
the Second World War, using the phrase 'one up the spout' to mean 
having a round of ammunition already loaded into the bolt-action Lee 
Enfield rifle's breech, ready to be fired. (I hope I've got the 
terminology right.)" Dick Bates added, "It was a heinous crime (and 
dangerous) if one was left up the spout in error, certain to result 
in a spell in the cooler!"

SUCCEDANEUM  Professor Michael Belkin's comment will stand for those 
of several others. "You will probably be notified by many physicians 
that 'caput succedaneum' is a collection of fluid in the scalp of a 
newborn caused by the pressure of the birth canal on the head during 
delivery. I do not know what the etymology is in this case, as the 
head of the newborn comes first during delivery. (The OED glosses it 
as "substitute head", presumably from the idea that the swelling 
resembles a baby's head.) Dr Paul Vinall referred me to Wikipedia 
for more details: this describes caput succedaneum as "a neonatal 
condition involving a serosanguinous, subcutaneous, extraperiosteal 
fluid collection." Now I understand.

Prof Belkin added, "We were taught (but never used) 'succedaneum' 
for replacement drugs, usually inferior ones." The same idea occurs 
in yet another association with French, which came courtesy of Serge 
Astieres. "'Succedaneum' is used in French, meaning a replacement by 
a thing of lower value or quality. It was common during the Second 
World War when you could not get coffee and used a succedaneum made 
of chicory. In that sense it is identical to German 'ersatz'." 


2. Weird Words: Maggot
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I had some notion of writing here about "conundrum", a moderately 
odd-looking word whose origins are obscure. While looking into it, 
however, I consulted its entry in the Oxford English Dictionary - 
not updated since it was written in 1893 - which defines one of its 
senses as a "whim, crotchet, maggot or conceit". Crotchet? Maggot?

It took merely a moment to bring onto my computer screen the OED's 
recently revised entry for this last word. This noted that "maggot", 
an insect larva, universally regarded as something undesirable or 
yucky, was applied from the seventeenth century to "parasitical 
people or pernicious influences" and to a "whimsical, eccentric, 
strange, or perverse notion or idea". 

The latter definition leads us back to "conundrum", as does one 
sense of "crotchet". We recognise this mainly for a note in music, 
which is itself a figurative extension of its original sense of a 
hook. It derives from French "crochet", a hook, which is the same 
word as the type of knitting done with a hooked needle. Another 
figurative sense of "crotchet" grew up in the sixteenth century 
(quoting the OED once more): "a whimsical fancy; a perverse conceit; 
a peculiar notion on some point (usually considered unimportant) 
held by an individual in opposition to common opinion." Persons 
holding such eccentric views could be called crotchety, though that 
is more familiar these days as a way to say they're irritable, but 
probably not because their crocheting is going badly.

We've left conundrums far behind, so let's return to "maggot". It's 
from the Old English "mathe" of Germanic origin, known in Scots and 
English dialects until recently in various spellings. This became 
"maddock" in middle English, for reasons not understood. By about 
1500 that had become "maggot" through what grammarians describe as 
metathesis, in which sounds within a word are transposed (and in 
this case, subsequently modified). But the experts suggest that the 
shift might have been influenced by the pet name "Magot", given to 
women called Margery or Margaret, which was also applied centuries 
ago as a nickname for magpies and sows. The views of the ladies so 
cognomened has not been recorded.


3. Q and A: Ride shotgun
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Q. My kids compete to see who can occupy the front passenger seat, 
which they call "riding shotgun". People have told me it refers to 
old-time stagecoaches. Is this right? [Harry Jensen]

A. You'll probably get the same response from almost anybody you 
ask. The image is of a mail coach being driven furiously across the 
prairie, bandits or Indians in pursuit, with a rifle or shotgun 
wielding guard beside the driver turning to fire at them. That 
almost certainly derives from the John Ford film Stagecoach of 1939, 
starring John Wayne as the Ringo Kid, in which the phrase appears. 
The film script, taken from a short story by Ernest Haycox, was 
syndicated to newspapers as a serial when the film came out and 
includes this:

    Upon being informed by Buck that he had seen the 
    Plummers in Lordsburg, Curly made a quick Decision. "Come 
    on, Buck - I'm goin' to Lordsburg with you - I'll ride 
    shotgun on top o' the coach."
    [Hayward Daily Review, 31 Mar 1939, 3/2.]

Until recently, researchers hadn't found "riding shotgun" before the 
film and cautiously suggested its writers had invented it. However, 
the Oxford English Dictionary has now tracked down several earlier 
instances, the earliest from 1913. This one I unearthed from later 
in the decade gives the flavour:

    Driven by Alex Toponce and A. T. Ross, an old fashioned 
    stage coach made in 1863 and used on the Deadwood stage 
    line in the early days of Wyoming, will appear In Ogden 
    streets on the day of the Golden Spike celebration. Alex 
    Toponce was in early days the owner of a stage line. He 
    will probably drive the old fashioned vehicle, while A. Y. 
    Ross, famous in railroad circles as a fearless express 
    messenger and who has on several occasions battled with 
    bandits on the plains, will probably ride "shotgun" as he 
    did in the past. 
    [The Ogden Examiner, 9 May 1919. Armed guards commonly 
    rode on trains to protect valuable cargo.]

Even after Stagecoach came out, the term wasn't common in printed 
sources, though it was surely known to people. It begins to appear 
again after the Second World War in reference to armed support by 
passengers sitting beside the drivers of military supply convoys, in 
the Korean and Vietnam wars especially. It probably transferred back 
into the civilian world from army slang and was picked up by young 
people. 

The Dictionary of American Regional English found it to be common by 
1967 in the western states of the US. Natalie Maynor commented some 
years ago on the American Dialect Society mailing list that its 
adoption was earlier still: "The expression definitely predated the 
Vietnam war. When gaggles of teenagers in Jackson, Mississippi, in 
the mid-to-late 1950s started heading toward a car, there was always 
a contest for who could holler out 'I want shotgun!' first."


4. Sic!
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Peter G. Millington-Wallace e-mailed from Denmark, "When watching 
English TV programmes, I enjoy using the instant subtitles for 
entertainment. Some of them are wonderful. A recent one concerned a 
fungus sweeping across Europe and the UK, attacking ashtrays."

Ryszard Pusz reported on 22 November, "The following news stub 
appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website this 
morning: 'The Australian government is preparing to allow thousands 
of asylum seekers to love in the community.'"

The Canberra Times of 17 November, Grant Agnew tells us, reported on 
a rat plague in the Galapagos Islands, quoting Linda Cayot, science 
adviser for the Galapagos Conservancy: "They have decimated 100 
percent of tortoise hatchlings for the past 100 years."

A caption in the online Guardian of 26 November under a picture of 
flooded Malmesbury reported: "Severe flood warnings were introduced 
as already sodden parts of England were soaked by rain and battered 
by string winds."


6. Useful information
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Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice 
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