World Wide Words -- 22 Mar 14
Michael Quinion
michael.quinion at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Thu Mar 20 23:01:00 UTC 2014
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 874 Saturday 22 March 2014
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This mailing also contains an HTML-formatted version.
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Supernaculum.
3. Wordface.
4. Sugar daddy.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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ON YOUR BIKE From Roy Mathers: "You mention that some say that the
phrase is associated with the actor Jack Warner in the days before
he became PC Dixon of Dock Green. I think you'll find that Warner's
catchphrase at that time was 'mind my bike'!" I've since learned
that this was on Garrison Theatre, a wartime radio comedy variety
programme of 1940: he used the sound of a bicycle bell and the
catchphrase to announce his arrival.
Warren McLean cited the Australian cautionary phrase "don't get off
your bike" meaning "don't lose your temper". He added, "It used to
be fairly common here in Oz but I haven't heard it for quite a
while." The written record confirms that it's fallen out of use. The
most recent example I can find is as the title of a TV programme in
May 1986; the Australian Women's Weekly noted in 1974 that it was
even then an outmoded expression. It seems to date from the 1920s,
since the earliest appearance I can find is in the Mirror of Perth
in May 1923: "We believe you, Doug! Don't get off your bike!"
BROWN WINDSOR SOUP Several readers directed me to John Mortimer's
creation, Rumpole of the Bailey. Amy Livingston pointed out that in
the book of short stories of that title dated 1978, Rumpole is on a
train, looking forward to "a good, old-fashioned railway lunch. I
thought of a touch of Brown Windsor soup, rapidly followed by
steamed cod, castle pudding, mouse-trap, cream crackers and celery,
all to be washed down with a vintage bottle of Château Great Western
as we charged past Didcot." But was this a commendation of the soup?
Rumpole's culinary tastes are biased towards over-boiled vegetables,
steak-and-kidney pie, fried food and stodgy puddings. Mortimer often
satirises Rumpole's dreadful diet, albeit with a touch of nostalgia.
Here he scornfully describes "mouse-trap", for dried-out cheese
suitable only for mouse bait, and Château Great Western (a nod to
the former Great Western Railway, which built the line Rumpole was
travelling on), a wine of inadequate quality like his Château Fleet
Street and Château Thames Embankment. The extract confirms that the
soup was at one time a staple of the restaurant menus of British
Railways.
2. Supernaculum
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In 1592, the London writer Thomas Nashe published Pierce Penilesse
His Supplication to the Divell, a brash and witty survey of London
types, written as though from a penniless scribbler who tries in
desperation to seek patronage from Lucifer.
In passing he mentions a drinking game that had newly "come out of
France". When a man had finished a drink, he had to turn his cup
upside down and put its lip on his thumb nail. If there was more
liquid left in the cup than would form a pearl on the nail, he would
have to drink again as a penance. This seems to have gone down a
treat in the taverns of Southwark.
Nashe called the game, "drinking super nagulum", which pretty soon
turned into "supernaculum". It's a bilingual pun of a type that
delighted the wits in that circle of pamphleteers and playwrights
that included Nashe and Shakespeare. The first bit is the Latin
prefix "super-", above. The remainder comes from German "Nagel", a
nail. The word and the game mirror a German one that was usually
referred to in the phrase "auf den Nagel trinken", to drink on the
nail, to finish off liquor to the last drop.
Drinkers became rather casual about the custom and just inverted
their cups or mugs to prove that they'd drunk to the last drop.
"Supernaculum" could mean this, or the last remaining drop of a
drink, or a cry to indicate that one had done it.
His lordship performed his task with ease; but as he
withdrew the horn from his mouth, all present, except
Vivian, gave a loud cry of "Supernaculum!" The Baron
smiled with great contempt as he tossed, with a careless
hand, the great horn upside downwards, and was unable to
shed upon his nail even the one excusable pearl.
[Vivian Grey, by Benjamin Disraeli, 1826.]
The meaning that has survived longest, though it's now very rare,
extended the idea to refer to a beverage of the highest quality that
cried out to be consumed to the very last drop. Hence, anything
really excellent.
The same idea was expressed from the late eighteenth century by
"heel-tap", originally a shoemaker's term for a part of the heel of
a shoe. The liquor that remained in the bottom of a glass somehow
took on the same name. So when a toast was offered with the
instruction "and no heel-taps" to those present it meant that
glasses should be drained to the very dregs.
Then huzza! to the health of Victoria, our Queen,
The pride and hope of the nation;
Fill to the brim - let no "heel-taps" be seen
On the day of our Queen's coronation.
[Liverpool Mercury, 22 June 1838. Victoria's coronation
was the following week, on 28 June 1838.]
3. Wordface
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ANTIFASHION The trending fashion word of spring 2014 is "normcore",
which one writer calls "the art of studiously dressing plainly". It
broke in New York Magazine on 26 February, in which it was described
as "The kind of dad-brand non-style you might have once associated
with Jerry Seinfeld." The word has been around longer than that,
with reports suggesting it originated last October with the trend
forecasting collective K-Hole, who used it for deliberately dressing
like everybody else as a new way of being cool. The word is clearly
coined on the model of musical genres like grindcore, thrashcore and
loungecore, all derivatives of the original, hardcore.
HAUNTED HOUSE The Financial Times introduced a new term into the
British house-buying vocabulary last week: "ghost gazumping". The
second word is a Briticism (http://wwwords.org/gzmp) for acquiring a
property by making a higher offer, usually at the last minute, so
outbidding an agreed offer from another purchaser. A ghost gazumper
is one that the seller invents to persuade the buyer to increase
their offer.
POO BARED On 22 February I listed the books in contention for the
Diagram Prize for oddest book title of the year. The winner of the
public vote is How to Poo on a Date: The Lovers' Guide to Toilet
Etiquette, by Mats & Enzo. It was fourth time lucky for the authors,
whose similarly themed books How to Poo on Holiday, How to Poo at
Work and How to Bonk at Work were nominated for the 2009, 2010 and
2011 awards respectively.
4. Sugar daddy
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Q. Is it true the term "sugar daddy" came from Alma de Bretteville,
mistress and then wife of sugar magnate, Adolph Spreckels, who said
"I'd rather be an old man's darling than a young man's slave"?
[Philip Madell]
An intriguing story is associated with the early history of "sugar
daddy" but this probably isn't it.
Adolph Bernard Spreckels, scion of the California sugar family, was
23 years older than Alma de Bretteville. They were married in 1908
and continued to be until his death in June 1924. No contemporary
reference links "sugar daddy" with either of them. The only one in
print I can find is in a detailed story about the couple by Joseph
Potocki in the Bay Time Informer dated 17 November 2009. Alma de
Bretteville's comment is a proverb known from the sixteenth century.
Proving a negative is difficult and it's possible she invented the
first and used the second. But I'm doubtful. It feels more like a
factoid of the internet era.
The first known use of "sugar daddy" is in an episode of a surreal
tale with the title Fat Anna's Future that appeared in the Syracuse
Herald on 27 March 1923. Coincidentally, its notorious introduction
to the wider American public would come in the following day's
newspapers. The story had actually begun two weeks before, when the
body of Dorothy Keenan King was found in her New York apartment.
"Dot" King was a former model and unsuccessful actress who had
become what people then called a vamp, a woman who used her
undoubted attractiveness to target men. She had been set up in the
apartment and given lavish presents by a 50-year-old tycoon named
John Kearsley Mitchell III. He used the pseudonym of Mr Marshall but
was publicly unmasked in press reports on 28 March below a formal
posed photograph:
John Kearsley Mitchell, son-in-law of K. T. Stotesbury,
multi-millionaire, of Philadelphia, has been revealed as
the mysterious "Mr Marshall," who was the "heavy sugar
daddy" of Dorothy Keenan King, New York model, who was
chloroformed to death in her New York City apartment.
[Kingston Daily Freeman (New York), 28 Mar. 1923.]
Her murderer has never been found. Claims were made at the time that
she had been killed because she refused to go along with a criminal
group who wanted her to help blackmail Mitchell. Dot King's story
became a cause celebre and was widely publicised, often mentioning
her pet name for Mitchell, "heavy sugar daddy". It gained instant
public recognition and it has been in the language since, though
"heavy" was soon lost.
The term seems to have been a New York creation of the louche and
criminal worlds linked to Broadway in Prohibition days. "Sugar" was
a long-established slang term for money and "heavy sugar" was a lot
of it. "Sugar" was also an endearment, which originated around this
time in African-American slang and which reached a wider white
audience via blues lyrics. "Daddy" was an obvious reference to an
older man, but it may similarly have had a link to African-American
slang of the time, in which a daddy was a lover with no implications
of age. "Heavy sugar daddy" was literally an older man with lots of
cash but in the theatrical world it specifically meant a rich man
who pursued actresses for immoral purposes.
Herbert Corey wrote about the term in a widely syndicated newspaper
article about Broadway slang the following year:
A daddy is a good thing, and when the daddy is a very
good thing indeed, he becomes a sugar-coated daddy, as
vide recent stories in which unfortunate vamps of Broadway
appeared as the victims of murder. When a vamp gets a
sugar-coated daddy she puts him on the merry-go-round
until his money has spilled. Some say he goes through the
separator. But Broadway slang is of the day only.
[The Sioux City Sunday Journal, 2 Nov. 1924.]
It certainly was. A newspaper report only a year later said "sugar
daddy" had been replaced on Broadway by "big butter and egg man", a
prosperous farmer or rich small-town citizen who came to New York
and tried embarrassingly hard to be a playboy. It was created in
1924 by Mary Louise "Texas" Guinan, who ran a New York speakeasy
called the 300 Club. The story goes that a shy, middle-aged man was
so flattered by her friendliness that he paid the steep cover charge
for every guest and pressed $50 notes on all the entertainers. When
he said he was in the dairy business, she introduced him as "the big
butter-and-egg man", borrowing a term for a dairy farmer that had
been around for decades. It became the title of a Broadway play in
1925 and Louis Armstrong recorded a song with that title in 1926.
But "sugar daddy" has outlasted it.
5. Sic!
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An item on Yahoo! News on 11 March surprised Neil Hesketh: "Captured
whilst on safari in Masai Mara in Kenya, the exhausted antelope
later managed to escape to safety."
Duncan Morrow sent a headline from the NPR website, which has been
widely reproduced elsewhere: "Draught Closes Oregon Resort Before
The Season Ever Opened." Over-sensitive tourists?
A headline over a story from Reuters: "China urges restraint in
Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote." Philip Peluso sent that in
and added, "Wisely, the chickens, turkeys and geese refused to be
quoted."
Speculation around the missing Malaysian aircraft became bizarre,
Phil Fisher read in the Huffington Post of 18 March: "US aviation
experts have said it is wildly unlikely a passenger could have
reprogrammed the computer, despite speculation that the plane could
have been 'hacked' by a British former Home Office official."
6. Useful information
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