World Wide Words -- 08 Sep 12
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 7 16:26:11 UTC 2012
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 800 Saturday 8 September 2012
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This mailing also contains an HTML-formatted version.
A formatted version is also available online at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nhrx.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Percontation.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Strop.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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LURCHING The item on "left in the lurch" prompted several readers
to ask about the breed of dog called a lurcher. ("Did it lurk in the
bushes or just have a poor sense of balance?" asked Judith Taylor.)
A lurcher is a cross-bred dog originally created by English and
Irish poachers to be an intelligent and speedy hunter. Its name is
said to be from a sense of "lurch" that does derive from "lurk".
This took on several meanings, such as using guile to get ahead of
other people to obtain food. Presumably, the dog's name was a
special application of this because of its speed.
CHEEZ! My story last week about the hotel menu item "a selection of
cheese and biscuits" brought a variety of responses, many more than
I was expecting from my humorous squib.
Some reasonably suggested that the menu should have read "selection
of cheeses and biscuits". However, "cheese and biscuits" is a fixed
term for the food item in British English and it's common in menus
to see an item listed as I gave it. Some Americans were puzzled by
the biscuits, which for us Brits in this situation are flat crackers
also called water biscuits (sold in the US, I am told, as water
crackers). Ken McAllister did not agree with my analysis, "I cannot
defend one-item selections, I admit, and like you I would protest at
two-item selections. However, I feel that they breach hospitality,
not semantics." Among others, Mavis Emberson sought a logical answer
to the conundrum: "No doubt the kitchen selected the cheese for
you." I hadn't thought of that.
Bob Kelly responded: "Your item reminded me of an experience I had
in 1977 in Budapest. The Iron Curtain was still up and I'd had a
difficult time reaching my destination. When I got to my hotel room,
I decided to order dinner from the room service menu. One item was
listed as 'Assorted Cheeses'. It turned out that the assortment
consisted of a square slice, a round slice and a three-sided slice -
of the same cheese."
DOUBLE SIC! Many readers pointed out that the Sic! item about John
Sununu last week said he was a former governor of New Jersey instead
of New Hampshire. The error was by the New York Times. It has since
corrected the reference to the state but hasn't changed the wrongly
spelled "rouge" to "rogue".
CYNOSURE Several readers reminded me that at the time when the star
was given the name Cynosura, it wasn't the pole star, because of a
very slow circular motion of the Earth's axis called the precession
of the equinoxes. However, it was one of three bright stars close to
the celestial pole that were used to navigate by. The star, now
called Polaris, is currently nearer being a true pole star than at
any time in recorded history and will be at its closest to the
celestial pole in about a century.
2. Weird Words: Percontation
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A question is just a question, right? Not according to one ancient
idea, according to which there were two sorts - those intended to
elicit confirmation or denial, the other to obtain information. A
nineteenth century writer explained it like this:
Between a percontation and interrogation, the ancients
made this distinction - that the former admitted a variety
of answers, while the latter must be replied to by "yes"
or "no".
[The Dark Ages, by Rev Samuel Maitland, 1844.]
Though it might be useful to logicians today, the term was never
popular and shortly after vanished from the active language. Its
source is the Latin noun "percontatio", the action of questioning.
Curiously, its root is "contus", a long pole, either a boat-pole or
a spear, lance or pike, prefixed with "per-", meaning "through" in
this case. It appears that percontatio was so vigorous or uncivil
that it was like being pierced with a pole.
In the late sixteenth century, the printer Henry Denham (some say
his client, the translator Anthonie Gilbie) invented a punctuation
mark to differentiate this kind of question from the yes/no sort,
called the punctus percontativus or percontation mark. In shape it
was a reversed question mark. (Henry Denham was a typographical
pioneer: he also advocated the semi-colon, an Italian invention.)
Since a percontation question could admit of many answers, it might
also mark a rhetorical question, one that didn't require an answer
at all. There seems no evidence that Denham employed it in this way
but the playwright Thomas Middleton did so early in the following
century. Nobody else has since bothered with it, mainly because the
character has never been available in standard type founts.
As rhetorical questions are often sarcastic or ironic in tone ("What
was the use of sending you to school?"), it has been suggested that
the mark would be useful to express such emotions in online forums.
Its advocates have given it new names, such as "snark" and "irony
mark". The old name is never used - it would seem "percontation" is
too long, unfamiliar or hard to spell to be acceptable.
3. Wordface
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CREATIONS OF THE MOMENT None of the terms that follow are likely to
become a fixture in the language, though they give a little light
relief. The turn by Clint Eastwood at the Republican Convention in
Tampa, in which he held an imaginary conversation with Barack Obama
in an unoccupied chair, has led online wits to create EASTWOODING
for it. Younger women who are worried about becoming obsessed with
their appearance have vowed to abstain from such matters by not
looking in the mirror for a month or even a year; they've called it
MIRROR FASTING. The slangy term glamping, meaning luxurious camping,
has recently been updated to make GRAMPING, in which you send your
children camping with their grandparents. Last year saw the rise of
humblebrag for deceptively self-effacing boasting by celebrities; it
has been joined by UNDERBRAGGING, the post-modernist inverted brag;
Atlantic magazine introduced it online on 14 August: "The irony of
the underbrag is that it shouldn't BE a brag. It's a terrible brag,
the un-brag, not really a brag at all - except for the fact that the
underbragger is bragging about it and therefore changing the rules
of bragging as we know them."
4. Q and A: Strop
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Q. As well as enjoying the weekly World Wide Words e-magazine I also
receive the daily A Word A Day e-mail. One of this week's words was
"strop", for which the only meanings given were the noun and verb
related to blade-sharpening. It seems that in the USA "strop" is not
used in connection with petulance. Is this UK sense somehow derived
from the blade-sharpening one or does it have an entirely different
origin? I promise not to get in a strop if you should ignore my
suggestion. [Andrew Haynes]
A. You're too kind.
"Strop" with the meaning of throwing a hissy fit or losing one's
temper is most definitely a British creation. It's unsurprising that
the American A Word A Day hasn't heard of it. Here's a recent
example, about a former British television chat show host, the late
Russell Harty:
[He] will no doubt be best remembered for his interview
with Grace Jones who threw a diva-ish strop that resulted
in the singer slapping Harty across the face for not
paying her enough attention.
[Guardian, 17 Aug. 2012.]
"Strop" is fairly recent as words go, only appearing in print in the
1970s. We're sure that it originated as a back formation from the
adjective "stroppy". In Britain a stroppy person is bad-tempered and
argumentative. In South Africa, Australia and New Zealand it has
overtones of somebody who is rebellious and hard to control. This is
its first known appearance, in Britain but by an Australian writer:
There ain't nothing clever about answering him back and
being stroppy.
[Seagulls over Sorrento, by Hugh Hastings, published
1951. The play was first performed in June 1950.]
The play came out of Hastings's experiences in World War Two and it
is probable that it was wartime services slang. So far as anybody
has been able to establish, it has nothing at all to do with leather
straps. The most probable origin suggested by the experts is that
it's a much-messed-about version of "obstreperous".
That's not as unlikely as it sounds. The English Dialect Dictionary
records several versions of the word at the end of the nineteenth
century, including "obstropolous" and "obstropilous". Others include
"obscrophulous" ("Just the place for a little lady like her, when
she gets too obscrophulous" - Alexander Harris, An Emigrant Family,
1849) and "obstropolis" ("What could a simple Barber do against an
obstropolis horse; an animal that frequently would not answer the
whip; play tricks in spite of the curb; kick over the traces; and
'bolt' right away from all his drivers, and no help for it" - Pierce
Egan's Book of Sports, 1832).
"Obstropolous" is the form most often found in old writings, as a
way of indicating a non-standard or uneducated pronunciation; one
writer on slang in the middle of the nineteenth century said it was
Cockney, though 50 years later the English Dialect Dictionary noted
it was then in general dialectal use in Scotland, Ireland, England
and America. The previous century it appeared in works by Oliver
Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer, 1773), Tobias Smollett (Sir
Launcelot Greaves of 1762 and Roderick Random of 1748) and Samuel
Richardson (Clarissa, also 1748). That's a distinguished pedigree,
you may agree. Another slight variation is actually a little older
still:
Fearing she would grow obstrepulous, they each of 'em
took hold of one of her Arms.
[The English Hermit, by Peter Longueville, 1727.]
Since several of these forms, including the most common, contain a
stressed "strop", it's reasonable to assume it was shortened to
that. If so, considering the age of the examples, it's something of
a surprise that "stroppy" is so comparatively recent and that it
appeared before the noun.
5. Sic!
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"I thought he'd already done that!" wrote Gill Teicher, in reference
to a headline in the Daily Telegraph on 26 August: "Prince Harry is
to face a 'dressing down' by his commanding officer."
Chris McCulloch wrote, "The Melbourne CAE Book Groups Newsletter for
August began: 'Almost through winter! We hope that you have been
enjoying your time with good books and exiting discussions.' Well,
only when I went to put the kettle on!"
"Notify the Press! New Sex Discovered!" cried Joel Karasik. The
Financial Services Online site says that "The Federal Interagency
Forum on Aging Related Statistics reports that of those age 65+ in
long-term care facilities, 31% are women and 21% are men."
6. Useful information
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