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<div align="left"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="6"><span style=" font-size:24pt"><b>World Wide Words</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:0.00mm; margin-bottom:2.11mm;"><font face="Arial" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Issue 904: 25 November 2014</i></span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Feedback, Notes and Comments</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<b>Bridegroom.</b></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> Following my piece on this word last time, several readers
pointed out similar forms in other languages. Jim Muller noted, “The word for
bridegroom is </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>brudgom</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> in Danish” and Klaus Floer mentioned that “This word
is still alive in the German </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Bräutigam</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, which literally means ‘Man of the
Bride’. This is the only instance where this word </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>gam</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> has survived.” Richard
Mellish emailed, “It’s perhaps worth adding that the word is still </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>brudgum</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"> in
Swedish, though as in English the word </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>gum</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> by itself seems to have
disappeared.”</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Raymond Hopkins was puzzled by the Swedish word: “It is interesting that the
word </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>gumma</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> refers to a woman, usually someone somewhat older, often the
wife of the user of the word. </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Gubbe</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> is the male equivalent. Such terms are in
everyday use, at least in this part of Swedish-speaking Finland. If the words are
related to the </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>guma</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> of the article, I can’t help wondering why the gender
change.”</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Peter de Vries found another linguistic oddity, “I’ve just remembered that in
Dutch, the groom is called the </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>bruidegom</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> — so you appear to have very neatly
explained the origin of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>gom</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> for me! I’d often wondered about it, since </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>gom</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> also
means </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>gum</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> — and as a kid I found it hard to conceive of a connection between
marriage and chewing gum.” </span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Mammock</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Ken Hopson emailed me a copy of a letter he had found in the Amherst County
courthouse records of Virginia. A farmer sent it in March 1896 to the Southern
Railway, claiming recompense for a bull that had been severely injured by a
train:</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">i tell you he is no better than ded and i wish you wod make your secshun
boss repote him as ded and pay me for him as an animile kild on the rale
rode he is certanly unqualifided for a Bool and is too mommoked up fer a
stere and he is too tuf for befe.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">In the American South you may still hear </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mommocked up</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mammocked up</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt">
for mangled, mauled, torn to pieces or severely beaten. The word</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i> </i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">is
conventionally spelled </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mammock</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> in the new dictionaries that contain it and
the verb by itself is said to mean not only tear to pieces, but also more loosely to
botch, mess up, mix up or confuse. </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Mammock</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> on its own has also referred to
getting a severe beating:</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">All disciplined men of the fighting forces were knocked about until their
skins became as red or blue as their jackets, and were sometimes even
mammocked to death.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:1.06mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia" color="#006000">
<span style=" font-size:11pt"><i>History of Penal Methods</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by George Ives, 1914.</span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">It has been widely known in English dialect. A century ago, the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>English Dialect
Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> recorded it in a group of miscellaneous senses, for fragments of
food, an untidy mess or muddle, a scarecrow, an absurdly dressed person or a
poor eater. Its entry does have </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mammocked-up</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, but recorded it only from
Shropshire for a person “dressed up fantastically and absurdly”. Noun and verb
are recorded from the sixteenth century and Shakespeare used the verb in
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Coriolanus</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">: “He did so set his teeth, and tear it. / Oh, I warrant how he
mammockt it”.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">The best that professional etymologists can come up with is that it might be
from an imitation of the sound of chewing or muttering. They point to the
obsolete British English </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mamble</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, to mutter, or eat without appetite. A relative
was </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mumble</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, which began life with the idea of trying to eat with toothless
gums, a condition that led to our modern sense of a person speaking
indistinctly. Somehow </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mamble </i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">shifted to tearing at food with one’s teeth. </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Something similar may have happened with </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mammock</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> and from there it
diverged into its numerous other senses.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Mx</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>Mx</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> was created on the model of the other personal titles Mr, Mrs and Ms for a
person who doesn’t identify themselves as either male or female or doesn’t
want their gender to be known.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">An article in the </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/gugnt"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i><u>Guardian</u></i></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt"> on 17 November — prompted by the news that the
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was considering introducing it — noted the quiet
rise in the use of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Mx</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> as a gender-neutral title, particularly in the UK. </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Mx</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> is
accepted as a valid title by a number of organisations, mostly in the public
sector. The Post Office was first in 2009; it has since been joined by several
governmental bodies, including the National Health Service, HM Revenue and
Customs and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. But other than those,
acceptance is patchy and uncommon; the proposal by RBS marks a potential
shift into the private sector, though RBS is 80% owned by the government.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Research by </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/gntpa"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:13pt"><u>Nat Titman</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt"> shows that </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Mx</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> was created in online discussion
groups in the early 1980s as a way to avoid identifying oneself as male or
female or avoid specifying one’s marital status. It’s hard to say how often it was
employed in real life in the following two decades but its sporadic appearances
online argue for its being very rare. Around 2000 </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Mx</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> began to be discussed by
transgender and androgynous people, who have since led efforts to gain
recognition for it. </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">This is the earliest example I can find in a British newspaper:</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">Official forms in Brighton and Hove will include the title “Mx” to cater for
the city’s transgender community after a review of services. Brighton and
Hove Council’s trans-equality scrutiny panel recommended removing the
need for people to identify themselves as male or female at GP surgeries
and introducing gender-neutral lavatories and changing rooms.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:10mm; margin-right:13mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:1.06mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia" color="#006000">
<span style=" font-size:11pt"><i>The Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, 4 May 2013.</span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">It’s said as </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mix</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mux</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt">, sometimes </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mixter</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">.</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Stepney</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Q. Living and working in Saudi Arabia for 12 years brought me in contact with
many different nationalities. One day I was out with one of my Indian
colleagues when we had a puncture and he immediately asked if we had a
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Stepney</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">. Having never heard of the term I finally deduced it to be the spare
wheel. It’s a term not used in the UK. Any comments? [David Vickery]</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">A. This odd-sounding term for what we in Britain call a spare wheel or
Americans a spare tire is known in some countries of the former British empire
and colonies, including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Malta.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">The story begins in 1904. At this time, motor-cars weren’t supplied with spare
wheels or tyres and motorists had to provide their own. Roads were often very
poor, punctures were frequent and few facilities existed for repairs away from
base. Then as now, it was hard to replace a tyre on a wheel without specialised
equipment and a spare had to be a wheel with tyre already fitted. That may
sound like our common modern spare, but wheels then were often of wood or
heavy metal construction and a spare was both bulky to carry and clumsy to
replace.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Two entrepreneurs, Thomas Davies and his brother Walter, who ran an
ironmongery business in Llanelli in south Wales, came to the rescue by
inventing a clever device. It consisted of an inflated tyre on a circular metal rim
without spokes. The motorist clamped it to the rim of the wheel that had the
flat. In a share prospectus in December 1906, the brothers claimed “No levers
or spanners are required to fix it. It is firmly secured by two simple butterfly
thumb screws” and added that cars didn’t require jacking up to get the spare
wheel on.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">They called their device the Stepney Spare Wheel, after the location of their
workshop in Stepney Street, Llanelli. They patented the wheel and started to
market it in January 1906, selling seven in the first month. By August that year,
almost without advertising, they were selling 1,000 a month and realised they
had a success. They formed a company, the Stepney Spare Motor Wheel
Limited, and began to market the wheel in Britain, Europe and the British
empire and colonies. They attempted the US in 1907, but like many British
businesses that have tried to break into that market they quickly failed, in part
because they were ripped off by local imitators.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Elsewhere, they enjoyed great success. In a court case in 1911, it was said that
in Britain alone £250,000 worth had been sold (equivalent to about £25
million today) and that the wheels were seen on nearly every motor-car on the
road. In 1912 the firm was claiming that 99% of all taxis in the world were fitted
with Stepney spares. The business died out in Britain after the First World War
because manufacturers began to provide proper spare wheels that were
relatively easy to fit. However, in many countries, </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Stepney</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> became synonymous
with </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>spare wheel</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> and, as you’ve discovered, in some it remains common,
though not in Britain nor, for the reasons I’ve given, the US. </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">For British people today, </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Stepney</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> means only the east London suburb, which
has led one researcher to falsely connect the device to the Stepney Ironmongery
Company, which was situated there in the same period. It does seem odd that
the name turns up in south Wales but there’s a good reason for it. </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Stepney</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"> had
become a surname in London — like so many it had been borrowed from the
place where the family originally lived. One member of the family went to south
Wales in 1559; that branch became prosperous landowners and baronets (their
Georgian house in Llanelli has recently been restored and reopened) and in the
nineteenth century they developed the town as a port and industrial centre
based on coal mining and tinplate manufacture. They provided the first mayor
and paid for the town’s coat of arms in 1912. One website claims that the fame
of the spare wheel led to a picture of it being incorporated in the arms; not so,
though a blue and yellow chequered pattern on it repeats part of the arms of
the Stepney family.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">They gave their name to Stepney Street and other locations in Llanelli and so
indirectly to an almost forgotten episode in motoring history and an odd
linguistic survival.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">[The </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/stpny"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:13pt"><u>online version of this article</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt"> contains several images.]</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Sic!</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">On 17 November, the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> reported on an auction of Napoleonana: “A
white cotton shirt worn by the former emperor on St Helena, with a button
missing estimated at between €30,000 and €40,000, went under the hammer
at €70,000 (£56,000)” Expensive button.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">A report in the same paper two days later about Prince Charles noted a odd
fashion choice: “Charles was burbling greetings in a husky baritone to a line of
dignitaries who wore pinstripes and fascinators.”</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">On 17 November the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Daily Mail</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> commented on British politics: “Douglas
Carswell became the first elected Ukip MP last month when he won the Clacton
by-election he called after defecating from the Tories.” The misleading
intrusive </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>a</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> has since been removed.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">Al Segall found this on the aviation site airnation.net, dated 19 November: “Air
Lair is a personal cocoon for the passenger with a double-decker
configuration.”</span></font></p>
<div align="left" style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:6.33mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000" size="4">
<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Useful information</b></span></font></div>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:11pt">
<b>About this newsletter</b></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">: World Wide Words is researched, written and published by
Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice are provided by Julane
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