World Wide Words -- 09 Mar 13

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 822           Saturday 9 March 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Betwixt.
3. Sitting bodkin.
4. Elsewhere.
5. Crowdworking.
6. Sic!
7. Subscriptions and other information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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TOFFEE NOSED.  Some American readers sought to find an equivalence 
with the native "brown-nose" but they are opposites, since a brown-
noser is a grossly obsequious person, while a toffee-nosed person is 
snobbish and arrogant (we Brits have not found a need for the verb 
"toffee-nose", since to be toffee-nosed is a state of mind, not an 
activity).

Michael Grosvenor Myer commented, "Is it not worth noting, even if 
it might add to the confusion of the terms, that our 'toffee' was 
often spelt 'toffy' in the nineteenth century? That is how it 
appeared in the first printings of Alice in Wonderland. I find that 
Chambers still gives it as an alternative spelling without marking 
it as obsolete; though I doubt if anyone would so spell it today." 
"Toffee" was indeed in its earlier days spelled "toffy", a variant 
of the much older "taffy", originally English dialect (still known 
in the US, for example, in "salt-water taffy"). A shift from "toffy-
nosed" to "toffee-nosed" presumably paralleled the one from "toffy" 
to "toffee".


2. Betwixt
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A newspaper article in 1810 was contributed by a visitor to the spa 
at Cheltenham, a fashionable English watering place of the period:

    The company here (as at Bath and Brighton) is of such a 
    mingled complexion, that the Master of the Ceremonies must 
    be frequently embarrassed in ascertaining the social genus 
    to which they may legitimately belong: many are neither 
    Gentry or Plebeians, but, like the bat, something betwixt 
    and between.
    [The Morning Chronicle (London), 30 July 1810.]

However socially conservative the writer, he was unconsciously at 
the forefront of linguistic development, since this is among the 
first examples of the phrase "betwixt and between" in print. It 
refers to something in an intermediate or middling position and so 
neither one thing nor the other. Within a couple of decades it 
became common, despite the grammarian Eliza Slater, who wrote in a 
disapproving footnote in 1830 that it was a vulgar expression.

"Betwixt and between" is repetitious, a tautology, since "betwixt" 
means between. It's yet another example of doubling up on words of 
similar sense to create a more effective expression. "Betwixt" is 
now poetic or archaic and is rarely seen other than in this fixed 
phrase, though writers seeking to elevate their prose sometimes slip 
it in:

    Yet I stick with the main road, arriving three 
    southwesterly miles later at a second hamlet here in the 
    UK, set betwixt an inlet and a lake.
    [Sunday Times, 27 Jan. 2013.]

You may know the old rhyme "Jack Sprat could eat no fat, / His wife 
could eat no lean, / And so betwixt the two of them, / They licked 
the platter clean." That was its form when it first appeared in 
print, in John Clarke's collection of proverbs in 1639. Nowadays we 
commonly revise "betwixt" to "between", though the older version is 
still sometimes quoted.

"Betwixt" is from Old English "betwix", which is made up of "be", 
by, plus a Germanic word that's related to "two" and "twain". It's 
actually a close relative of "between". It was sometimes spelled 
with a final "t" in Old English but this only become the regular 
spelling after 1500.


3. Sitting bodkin
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Q. While reading Thackeray's Book of Snobs I came across the phrase 
"sitting bodkin". A search supplied the definition, "to ride in a 
carriage between two others, the accommodation being only for two". 
It cited Thackeray's Vanity Fair. I'm still unsure about "bodkin". 
Is it the knife bodkin or the odds bodkin bodkin? [S Norman]

A. A good question. This is a strange expression, known also as 
"riding bodkin", which scholars of William Makepeace Thackeray's 
time (the middle of the nineteenth century) were as much puzzled 
about as you are. It is reasonably common in nineteenth-century 
novels in Britain and also occasionally appears in the US. Thackeray 
seems to have been especially fond of it, since it appears in The 
History of Pendennis as well as in the two you mention. Another 
example, from a contemporary of his:

    The carriage will have to go backwards and forwards 
    four times now to fetch them all. So your daughter can 
    come quite easily, Mr. Gibson, and I shall be very glad to 
    see her for your sake. She can sit bodkin with the 
    Brownings, I suppose?
    [Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1866.]

Several suggestions about its origin were based on the known senses 
of "bodkin". Before it was a blunt needle it was - as you say - a 
short pointed weapon, which explains Hamlet's "with a bare bodkin", 
an unsheathed dagger. Might old vehicles, people asked, have had a 
place between the seats to store a sword or bodkin? Might a person 
sitting between two others on a seat not meant for three necessarily 
have had to be thin, like a bodkin? Or might the third person have 
to be pressed into place, like a blunt bodkin into cloth? This last 
image appears here:

    So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides 
    The Derby dilly, carrying Three Insides.
    One in each corner sits, and lolls at ease,
    With folded arms, propt back, and outstretched knees,
    While the pressed Bodkin, punched and squeezed to death,
    Sweats in the midmost place, and scolds, and pants for breath.
    [The Loves of the Triangles, by George Canning, 
    published in the Anti-Jacobin on 23 Apr. 1798. "Dilly" is 
    short for "diligence", a type of stagecoach, a name 
    abbreviated from French "carrosse de diligence", a speedy 
    coach.]

Yet another idea is that "bodkin" here isn't either of these senses 
but a condensed form of "bodikin", a small body, where the "-kin" 
ending indicates something small of its kind, as in "gherkin" and 
"napkin" (but not "bodkin", which seems to be Celtic, a modified 
form of Scottish Gaelic "biodag" or Welsh "bidog", a dagger). 
"Bodikin" also turns up in the old oath you mention, "odds 
bod(i)kins", short for "God's body". To be able to sit bodkin, then, 
might mean that you had to make yourself as small as possible.

Once again we have no clear idea of the true origin of an idiom, but 
at least you will now appreciate why nineteenth-century scholars 
were in the dark about it!
    

4. Elsewhere
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Bill Schmeer tells us of an article in Time Magazine of 27 February 
giving the history of Boontling, a US English dialect in Anderson 
County, Northern California, which is in great danger of dying out: 
http://wwwords.org?BNTLG.

In A Word A Day on Monday, Anu Garg mentioned "occlupanid". This was 
coined by the delightfully named Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group 
as a generic term for the humble bread tie ("occlu", close, "pan", 
bread). See http://wwwords.org?HORG for more.

You may remember last year World Wide Words was a contestant in the 
Lsoft Mailys Awards 2012; we were the first monthly finalist, with 
an absolute majority of the votes. The winner has at long last been 
announced: the Recovery Group's study list, which helps people to 
recover from eating disorders. See http://wwwords.org?LSCAW.


5. Crowdworking
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This is currently mostly an in-term for internet pundits, though its 
potential social impact means that it's likely to become more widely 
known. It's a modification of the much better known "crowdsourcing" 
from 2004, itself a combination of "crowd" and "outsourcing". 

In crowdsourcing, requests to help with a task are broadcast online. 
Many research projects have a crowdsourcing element, such as 
searching astronomical photos to find planets around other stars or 
taking a survey to contribute to knowledge about variations in 
people's biological clocks. The original idea behind crowdsourcing 
was unpaid voluntary collaboration but many projects now attract 
cash rewards. The term "crowdsourcing" is now common and has spawned 
several derivatives, including "crowdfunding" (asking for small 
contributions from a large number of people to fund a project) and 
"crowdvoting" (in which websites collect the opinions of a large 
group on a topic).

Crowdworking is the newest member of the set. It refers to websites 
that employ people to undertake mainly low-level repetitive tasks 
such as data entry, ranking URLs on Google, transcribing recordings 
or tagging photographs. Crowdworking sites have been criticised for 
low pay, no security of employment and no appeal if a worker feels 
he has been unfairly treated.

    Crowdworking is growing, fast. Ville Miettinen, chief 
    executive of "human powered document processing" service 
    Microtask, says business at his crowdworking company is 
    increasing at around 400% year-on-year - and his 
    experience is typical of the wider industry.
    [BBC News, 26 Jun. 2012.]

    It has excited technology-watchers who like the idea 
    that crowd-sourcing can become crowd-working: Instead of 
    hiring employees or negotiating tiresome freelance 
    contracts, anyone who wants a job done that can be done on 
    a computer can simply go to the market and instantly pick 
    from a host of willing or desperate workers.
    [Huffington Post, 19 Feb. 2013.]


6. Sic!
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Mike Kennedy reports that on 26 February the Thai Visa forum had a 
story about the Scandinavian airline SAS ceasing its operations in 
Thailand: "In November 1949 SAS had its first flight to Bangkok and 
it lasted 64 years." 

In the wake of a tragic accident in New York City, Sharon Crawford 
and Gloria Varley spotted that the BBC news pages included a link to 
the story as "Baby born after crash kills parents."


7. Useful information
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