World Wide Words -- 22 Jun 13
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Thu Jun 20 22:02:00 UTC 2013
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 837 Saturday 22 June 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Behove and behoove.
3. On a hiding to nowhere.
4. Blizzard of horseradish.
5. Sic!
6. Subscriptions and other information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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FRENCH FRIES Anne Ackroyd wrote, "Just to be difficult, Australians
call both crisps and fries 'chips'. If differentiation is required,
the latter are called 'hot chips'." Mark Whitehead noted, "Elizabeth
Warren's recipe for French Fried Potatoes sounds like a comestible
known to me as game chips." On the other hand, Miles Irving wrote,
"I think Eliza Warren's dish is neither French fries nor chips but
sauté potatoes." Naomi Bloom commented, "What you have described as
'cottage fries' sound like what my mother, a native of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, called 'home fries'. It was one of the first dishes
she taught me to cook in the 1950s."
"Being French," Christian Abel emailed, "I feel compelled to chime
in on the subject of 'French fries'. Les frites, unlike either chips
or fries - let alone 'wedges', must first be dipped in boiling
vegetable oil, then taken out and left to rest a while before being
dipped again for that golden brown finish. They are said to have
been invented by chef Vattel, who had to wait for his sovereign to
arrive; hence the two batches."
My comments on "frenched" were specifically aimed at its possible
link with "French fries". There is another North American culinary
sense of the word, for a method of removing the meat from the ends
of chops or the ribs in a rack of lamb because it would overcook.
SITE REVISIONS Visitors to the website, and readers of this issue
online, will notice changes to the format of pages. Your comments
about them will be most welcome, in particular whether they make
pages easier to read, but also about the typography and layout.
2. Behove and behoove
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A columnist in my daily paper recently wrote, "My dear Britain, it
behoves me to inform you that first, I don't exactly know what the
word "behoves" means, but I do enjoy using it." It behoves me to
make good this deficiency by explaining that it expresses a duty and
may be translated as "is required of" or "is incumbent upon".
When James Murray wrote the definition for the word in what was then
The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (only much later
the Oxford English Dictionary) he described it as "mainly a literary
word". Some modern writers have called it archaic or a fossil, but
it's some way from that, especially in the US, where the "behoove"
spelling is standard. British pundits and politicians feel that the
occasional "behove" adds a statesmanlike and elevated air to their
utterances, though they risk sounding old-fashioned and pompous.
The origin is Old English "behofian", from "bihof", utility, whose
adjective is "bihóflíc", useful or necessary.
It's one of those few expressions in modern English that is almost
always impersonal. You or I, or even they, do not generally behove.
The empty agent "it" is usually in charge of the verb. "Behove" can
also appear with negative sense, for which a common marker word in
the UK is "ill". "Ill behoves" implies acting inappropriately or
improperly, as in this editorial pronouncement from a Sunday
newspaper:
In an age of genuine austerity, it ill behoves those
who have enough cash to eat as they wish to stand in
judgment on those who do not.
[The Observer, 10 Feb. 2013.]
Americans use this form only rarely, but make up for it by using
"behoove" more often and with a wider range of modifying words such
as "would", "might" and "certainly".
3. On a hiding to nowhere
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Q. I don't think you've covered "On a hiding to nowhere"? A search
on the web turns up usage, but no history. My understanding of the
phrase's meaning is "a hopeless endeavour". [Reg Tydell]
A. This British idiom much more commonly appears as "on a hiding to
nothing". That's the version I learned as a child and which I would
use without questioning it. But yours, I have now learned, has been
appearing since the 1970s, though it is greatly outnumbered by the
other.
The idea behind it is that you're faced with a situation in which
every outcome is going to be unfavourable and in which true success
is impossible. That sounds like your "hopeless endeavour" but there
is more to it. The saying implies that even if you do succeed you'll
get no credit for it while failure will leave you in disgrace.
We know we're on a hiding to nothing. If we don't win
the game by more than three or four goals, we'll get no
credit, only criticism.
[The Mirror, 22 Mar. 2013.]
"Hiding to nothing" has throughout its history most often turned up
in sports contexts. It starts to appear in print around the end of
the nineteenth century in reports of horse racing. Early users took
care to explain it, so they clearly expected their readers not to
know what it meant. My guess is that they wanted to share an item of
racing-stable jargon to add colour and make them seem insiders:
His trainer, whoever he might be, would have been in
the unenviable position of being on "a good hiding to
nothing" - in other words, he would have got no credit if
Flying Fox had won, and if he lost would have come in for
a good deal of adverse criticism.
[Liverpool Mercury, 19 Mar. 1900.]
The other form - the one with "nowhere" - may have grown up in more
recent times because users were no longer sure which sense of the
word "hiding" was meant. If it was putting something out of sight,
then "nowhere" would seem to fit better than "nothing". But we're
sure "hiding" is in the same sense that an angry parent would once
use to a wicked child: "I'll give you a hiding!", meaning a beating
or flogging on the child's skin - his hide. That sense of "hiding"
can be traced to the end of the eighteenth century.
The phrase is putting the two words in opposition. The alternatives
are "nothing", a result not worth having, or "hiding", figuratively
a demeaning defeat. I hear in the formulation an echo of the way in
which horse-racing odds are usually expressed ("three to one", "five
to four"). And might a jockey's whipping of his mount during a race
have contributed to its genesis? I rather suspect it did.
4. Blizzard of horseradish
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Q. At the office yesterday I said to a younger staff member, "you're
off in a blizzard of horseradish". This was a familiar phrase in my
family when we were off on a jaunt. I've always thought it went back
to my parents' youth in the 1930s or 1940s. My colleague was amused,
but said the expression was new to him. A quick Google search finds
few instances and no etymology. [Kate Schubart]
A. I'd never come across this one either and felt rather at a loss.
So I consulted Garson O'Toole, who runs the Quote Investigator site
(http://quoteinvestigator.com/). Between us we've found out a little
more.
Most examples from newspapers imply that a blizzard of horseradish
is a torrent of unhelpful or irrelevant political verbiage:
All the righteous indignation which drifts down Capitol
Hill like a blizzard of horseradish is simply partisan
politics.
[The News and Tribune (Jefferson City, Missouri), 3
Feb, 1974.]
"Horseradish" is on record from the 1920s meaning arrant nonsense or
rubbish, a relative of "horsefeathers". Both terms are euphemisms
for "horseshit" or "bullshit". It's possible that an unbowdlerised
alliterative form "blizzard of bullshit" could already have been in
use around that date; it's recorded only within the past decade, but
that doesn't mean a lot as it would have been considered too rude to
print much before then.
You noted in a later message that for you the expression referred to
a familiar combination of anxiety and euphoria just before setting
out on a trip. I've found some examples in blogs that imply muddle
or confusion attending such preparations. Garson O'Toole put that
rather more strongly on the basis of his own research as implying a
poorly motivated or nonsensical quest or task.
You sent me an example from 1931, which Garson O'Toole also found
and which turns out to be the first one we know about. It's from a
review of Nikki, a Broadway musical that failed after six weeks:
To convey the impression that they are just too world-
weary, author [John Monk] Saunders has arranged that they
reply to all efforts at normal human communication with a
stock set of irrelevancies: "I'll take vanilla," "It
seemed a good idea at the time," and "We're off in a
blizzard of horseradish."
[Time, 12 Oct. 1931.]
A few sources suggest where it comes from:
The death of Ho Chi Minh has left policy-makers at the
State Department, and the men who convey their thinking to
the public, lost in what Groucho Marx once called "a
blizzard of horseradish."
[Naugatuck Daily News (Connecticut), 10 Sep. 1969.]
It sounds like a Groucho-ism (not least because one of his films had
the title Horsefeathers) and the date of the first example fits, but
I can find no link between him and it. Unless a reader knows more?
5. Sic!
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Martin Turner pointed me to two news items about Boris Johnson, the
mayor of London, who wants to "delycrafy" cycling. A third report,
in the Independent, made everything clear by adding punctuation:
"de-Lycrafy". Johnson explained, "I want to make [cycling] normal,
something for everyone, something you feel comfortable doing in your
ordinary clothes."
Nick Willmott wrote: "The July issue of Capital Times, Cardiff
Council's newspaper, has a breezy article about Cardiff Market which
contains this: 'Recently a vintage clothing stall has opened and
this has brought something new to the market.'"
Bob Trussler emailed from Australia: "Recently, a newsreader on ABC
TV told us about thieves in Cannes who stole 'the safe in a hotel
room packed with jewels'." Why bother with the safe?
Jerry Gordon reported: "On June 11, a short Associated Press article
appeared in the Times Union (Albany, NY), and elsewhere, I'm sure,
with the headline: 'John Malkovich helps hurt tourist'. On reading
the article, you find that a tourist was accidently hurt, and Mr
Malkovich, among others, came to his rescue."
From the Daily Telegraph of 1 June, sent in by Lewis Jones: "The
Queen watched Ruler of the World win the Epsom Derby in Surrey,
accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh."
"Apparently Napoleonic France was very progressive," Mike Turniansky
commented. An article in the Baltimore Sun of Maryland on 9 June was
about Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, the wife of Napoleon's brother
Jerome: "Napoleon refused to allow his husband's new bride to set
foot in France."
Robert Waterhouse spotted this cricketing headline on the Guardian
site on 21 June after a match between India and Sri Lanka: "India
set up England clash after Sri Lanka win". Who won? India.
6. Useful information
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