World Wide Words -- 20 Oct 12

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 806          Saturday 20 October 2012
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Hebdomadal.
3. Miscellany.
4. Q and A: Lump it.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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KIDDING ON THE SQUARE  David Mackenzie e-mailed from Australia to 
argue that my association of "on the square" to Freemasonry was too 
tentative. "Freemasonry is redolent with references to 'square' and 
'on the square'. If you're on the square you're a fine, upstanding, 
genuine fellow or you're a fellow mason, or both. Anything or anyone 
qualified with 'square' is similarly genuine and reliable. Its use 
has spread well beyond freemasonry, of course, and related meanings 
have branched out."


2. Weird Words: Hebdomadal   /hEb'dQm at d@l/
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The writer Max Beerbohm wrote in 1930 that his period as the drama 
critic of the Saturday Review between 1898 and 1910 (he got the job 
on the recommendation of his predecessor, George Bernard Shaw) was 
like walking a "hebdomadal tight-rope". However, he found it to be a 
salutary discipline for a freelance writer, since the requirement to 
provide a regular "fugitive article for a largish public is no bad 
thing for a writer". How true.

More recently, a similar plaint has been expressed:

    Its full moniker is Pre-Deadline Tension, the bane of 
    wordsmiths such as myself with a hebdomadal column to 
    devise, write, rewrite, endlessly tweak and, usually at 
    the eleventh hour, email to a hotly expectant press. 
    [Alison Taylor, in the Liverpool Daily Post, 7 Feb. 
    2008.]

"Hebdomadal", you will have gathered if you didn't know already, 
refers to something that occurs every seven days. In the UK it is 
rare enough that almost all of its appearances in recent decades 
referred to the executive body of the University of Oxford, the 
Hebdomadal Council. Since that body's demise in 2000, to be replaced 
by the prosaically named University Council, the word is now even 
rarer.

Its source is, suitably for an ancient university, classical Greek. 
"Hepta" meant seven, still familiar in the name of the athletic 
contest, heptathlon, and somewhat less so in heptagon, a seven-sided 
figure. The immediate Greek origin was "hebdomad", a group of seven 
things or a period of seven days. English acquired it from late 
Latin "hebdomadalis" early in the seventeenth century. Its sense of 
something happening every seven days was first employed by Richard 
Steele in the Spectator in 1711.

Its decline may be due to its being surplus to requirements, English 
having the perfectly serviceable "weekly" from Germanic languages. 
Those few people who use it today mostly intend it humorously.


3. Miscellany
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GREEN WITH AGE  The American expression, "not one red cent", was the 
subject of a query from Jean Palmer, who wondered if it had anything 
to do with being caught red-handed. Perhaps with one's hand in the 
till? Nothing so complicated. The phrase "red cent" dates from the 
early days of the Union, certainly no later than the 1820s. One-cent 
coins were then made from pure copper. When newly minted, they would 
look reddish and "red cent" became an idiom for a minuscule amount 
of money. Pure copper coins are rather soft: from 1837 the US mint 
made them of bronze instead (which was mostly copper but with 5% 
zinc and tin), which altered their colour. This had no effect on the 
idiom, which must by then have been too well fixed in people's minds 
to be affected by such mundane changes. Copper is too valuable to 
waste on coins today and US pennies are now copper-plated zinc.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE  During the attack last week by the Australian 
prime minister Julia Gillard on the leader of the opposition, Tony 
Abbott, she accused him of misogyny and sexism. She has since been 
accused of using the former wrongly. It has in the past been defined 
in terms such as "the pathological hatred of women by men". A decade 
ago, however, the Oxford English Dictionary responded to evidence of 
a shift in its meaning - originally among feminists in the US - by 
redefining it as "Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women." 
The Australian Macquarie Dictionary decided this week to amend its 
own online definition along these lines, so making misogyny not as 
strong as hatred but stronger than sexism. Its editor, Sue Butler, 
noted, "Since the 1980s, misogyny has come to be used as a synonym 
for sexism, a synonym with bite, but nevertheless with the meaning 
of an entrenched prejudice against women rather than a visceral 
hatred." She argued that "sexism" is moving towards a description of 
surface actions while "misogyny" is being applied to underlying 
attitudes that give rise to sexism. The Macquarie Dictionary has now 
been accused of playing politics with the English language. A member 
of Abbott's party commented, "It would seem more logical for the 
prime minister to refine her vocabulary than for the Macquarie 
Dictionary to keep changing its definitions every time a politician 
mangles the English language." The change will be made to the online 
dictionary in the new year as part of a regular update. It will 
reach the paper dictionary later in 2013.


4. Q and A: Lump it
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Q. I am wondering as to the origin of the phrase "lump it". It is 
often used in this form: "If you don't like it you can lump it". 
[Brenda Kock]

A. Or, in more pithy vein, "like it or lump it".

"Lump" in this case isn't the common one for an irregular compact 
mass of something, such as a lump of coal, an obscure word dating 
from about 1300. Our "lump" is even more obscure in origin, were 
that possible, and begins to be recorded in the language near the 
end of the sixteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary points 
to other words of similar form, such as "dump", "glump", "grump", 
"hump" and "mump" to support its surmise that "lump" is what it 
calls symbolic, presumably meaning imitative.

"Lump" then meant to look disagreeable or sulky. It was usually 
paired with "lour", or "lower", to look angry or threatening (as in 
"lowering sky", one that is overcast and threatens a storm). An 
early example:

    She beganne to froune, lumpe, and lowre at her 
    housebande.
    [Farewell Military Profession, by Barnaby Rich, 
    1581.]

The "lump it" expression took another two centuries to arrive, in 
our modern sense of putting up with something. My mental image is of 
a young person sitting sulkily silent, having been told that some 
aspect of the world wasn't to their liking.

By 1807, it was sufficiently well known that it formed an example in 
a wordily satirical article on how dreadful puns were as a source of 
humour:

    Mrs. ---- purposely sends a dish of tea to a lady, 
    without sugar, of which she complains. Mr. ---- (Handing 
    her the sugar basin) ---- Well, ma'am, if you don't like 
    it, you may lump it.
    [The Monthly Mirror (London), Sep. 1807. At this time, 
    sugar would indeed have come in lumps, irregularly cut 
    from a sugar loaf.]

(The writer commented, "I must not forget to observe, that if you 
can add any practical jokes, which lead to puns, and fall at all 
short of murder, the treat will be infinitely improved".)

There is some polite disagreement about its country of origin. The 
earliest example on record is American, in a magazine published in 
Philadelphia. It appeared in an article with the title Thoughts on 
Proverbs:

    "Throw your lump where your love lies" plainly argues 
    that every lover ought to make a beneficial settlement on 
    his beloved. But I will not be positive as to this 
    solution, since another proverb, viz. "As you like it, you 
    may lump it" evidently contradicts it.
    [The Universal Asylum, and Columbian magazine, Aug. 
    1790.]

The writer's other examples are genuine proverbs, so we may assume 
that the two quoted above are likewise real, even though they're not 
recorded elsewhere and aren't in any book on my shelves. If true, it 
says that the expression was necessarily some time away from being 
new, which in turn implies it was common to the English of both 
sides of the Atlantic.

It is still often found wherever English is spoken:

    This is free speech folks, like it or lump it.
    [Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), 23 Apr. 2009.]

    Like it or lump it, however, Labour knows it must make 
    a serious dent in Key's credibility if it is to have any 
    chance of winning this election.
    [New Zealand Herald, 9 Nov 2011.]


5. Sic!
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While shopping online for a present for her niece, Marianne Lukkien  
came across the following in a GrabOne advertisement: "Add brilliant 
colour with hair chalk without the long-term commitment of dying".

Joan Butler bought a pair of shoes from Marks & Spencer in the UK 
and found a sticker on the soles: "The uppers of this footwear have 
been treated to reduce the effect of water marking and staining.  
This repellancy will diminish over time and can be restored by use 
of a propriety spray." She can think of a good few uses for such a 
spray.

A sentence in a story on the Yahoo! Finance site dated 10 October 
intrigued Fred Roth: "Many large regions, including the entire 
world, saw growth forecasts cut by the IMF." 

A sidebar on the website of the Australian Government's Department 
of Human Services announced, "Help in your langauge. We can help you 
if you speak a language other than English." But not, Dallas Stow 
reckons, help you spell correctly.


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