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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>Saturday 31 January 2015</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>Eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious.</b></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> Isabel Henniger commented, “And
then there is </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>floccinaucinihilipilification</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, the action or habit of estimating
something as worthless. Not quite as long as E31, but a favourite of mine.” My
piece on it is </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/floc"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:13pt"><u>here</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">. William F Wallace wrote, “In what sense is
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> fictitious? I saw it in the
addenda to a Webster’s dictionary in the 1950s. Sure, it’s a made-up word.
Aren’t they all? If it is used and people know what you mean, it’s a word!”
That’s certainly true. I was trying, if poorly, to say that the word was invented
as a joke and has rarely, if ever, been used in real life (despite, as Mr Wallace
notes, its inclusion in some dictionaries.)</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">
<b>Old fogey.</b></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> On the associations of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>foggy</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt">, which I discussed in this piece,
Malcolm Ross-Macdonald wrote, “I recall a suggestion in a book on folk songs
that the </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>foggy dew</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> of one particular song referred ostensibly to grass run to
seed but obliquely to a prolonged virginity. And grass run to seed and bleached
by the sun does have a misty sheen. So there you have </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>foggy</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> associated with
extreme maturity, past its best, ripe for harvest.”</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">Paddy Buckley commented, “You mentioned </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>fog</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> as a coarse grass that grows in
damp or boggy conditions. In my experience Yorkshire fog (</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Holcus mollis</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">)
doesn’t need the wet to thrive. You will find it in roadside verges. Up here in
Lancashire farms, </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>fog</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> was used to denote the second cut of grass for hay.”</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">
<b>False etymology.</b></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> Andrew Haynes wrote regarding the Australian term </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/pom">
<font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i><u>pom</u></i></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">:
“The Morpeth Arms, a pub on Millbank in London, has some old prison cells in
its basement. A sign inside the pub proclaims: ‘Did you know? The term </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>pom</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"> is
Australian slang for the British. The term derives from right under your feet
where British prisoners were banished to Australia and referred to as Prisoners
of Millbank.’ You may wish to add this to your list of loony theories.”</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>Heliotrope</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">In early 1880, newspaper articles throughout much of the English-speaking
world, usually headed “for the ladies”, reported that the Paris spring fashions
featured a new colour:</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">LATEST PARISIAN FASHIONS
<br />
There is no doubt but that the “heliotrope colour” will take the lead in
spring materials, such as silks, grenadines, and wollens [sic]; the peculiar
shade is that rosy purple conspicuous in the newly-blown flower, and
which the dyers call a “false purple.”</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>Launceston Examiner</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt"> (Tasmania), 24 Apr. 1880. </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">As the writer hinted, there was nothing new about the colour, nor the word; the
novelty came in putting them together. The pretty flower called the heliotrope
had long been a favourite in gardens, one that had been chosen as much for its
scent as its rich purple colour.</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 the face of it, it’s an odd name for the flower, as the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>helio-</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> prefix refers to
the sun and so might be better applied to a shade of yellow rather than purple.
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Heliotrope</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> has been in the language for about a thousand years, originally in
Old English as </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>eliotropus</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, which had come via Latin from Greek </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>heliotropion</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">
for a plant that turned its flowers to the sun. The second part is from Greek
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>trepein</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, to turn, which appears in the English word </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>tropism</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> for the movement
of parts of a plant in response to an external stimulus. One obvious tropism is
gravity, which is why roots grow downwards and stems upwards and why
plants develop oddly on space stations. Many plants have the tropism of
turning their flowers to the sun — marigolds and sunflowers, for example, as
well as heliotropes — and all were at various times called heliotropes.
Eventually, for reasons that aren’t clear, the word came to be reserved for the
one plant.</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 colour called purple in antiquity — often specifically </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Tyrian purple</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">,
because it was made and sold at the ancient Phoenician seaport of Tyre in the
eastern Mediterranean — was obtained from a tiny gland in several closely
related species of shellfish; about 10,000 were needed to make one gram of the
dye. Consequently, it was rare and expensive, reserved for the high-born (hence
phrases such as </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>born to the purple</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">). The colour varied between a rich crimson
red and a dark purple usually said to be like that of dried blood. The secret of
making it was lost in antiquity and the </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>false purple</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> of the newspaper article
was one substitute, obtained either from other species of shellfish or by a
chemical process involving logwood.</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">Artificial purple dyes began to appear in the 1830s with </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>murexide</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, which was
made by two German chemists from python excrement; as that was in short
supply, French chemists later used South American guano instead, of which
there was lots. (Incidentally, the German chemists took its name from
Latin </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mūrex</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> for the shellfish that provided Tyrian purple, though it had never
been within miles of one.) Aniline dyes derived from coal tar came next, the
first being discovered by accident in 1856 by the 18-year-old William Henry
Perkin. He called it </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>aniline purple</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> but later </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mauveine</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>mauve</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"> (from the
French word for the colour of the flowers of the madder plant). </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">By 1880, purple fabrics at reasonable prices had been available for more than a
decade. It was purely for marketing purposes that the Parisian arbiters of
fashion decided to apply </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>heliotrope</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> to a particular shade of pinkish-purple. In
doing so, they added a new sense to the dictionary definition of the word, in
English as well as French.</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">
<i>Heliotrope</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> was being used more widely at that time for another reason. A
substance called piperonal or heliotropine, synthesised in 1869, started to be
used a decade later in a perfume claimed to imitate the scent of heliotrope
flowers, though it has also been described as smelling like cherry pie.</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 popularity of the word </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>heliotrope</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> continued to grow throughout the last
quarter of the century and into the first decade of the twentieth. The fashion for
it declined rapidly after the end of the First World War and today it’s relatively
uncommon as a word for a colour or scent, though gardeners, of course, still
know it well.</span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Ditty bag</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="Arial Black" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b>Q.</b></span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt"> </span><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>From Katya Epstein</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">: Today I learned that on a film set, gear is carried in a
</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty bag</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">. Why is it called this?</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Arial Black" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b>A.</b></span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt"> </span><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>Ditty bag</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> comes from the days of sailing ships:</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">On each side of the berth-deck, termed “the wings,” are racks for the
accommodation of canvass bags; each man has one in which he keeps his
clothes, and a little bag or reticule called “a ditty bag,” containing all the
implements of his housewifery, such as thimble, needles, tapes, thread,
&c, for you must know that every genuine seaman is always his own
tailor, hatter, and very frequently his own shoemaker.</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 Journal of Belles Lettres</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, Philadelphia, 1833.</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">So it had almost exactly the same sense as </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>housewife</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> (sometimes written and
frequently said as </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>hussif</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">), which was known at the time not only on board ship
but also in the army and in civilian life.</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 quotation above is the earliest example I’ve so far found. The term starts to
appear at about the same time in descriptions of seafaring both in the US and
the UK, implying an earlier common origin. My guess is that it was used by
sailors for many decades before it reached print.</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">
<i>Ditty bag</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> remained a term exclusively of the sea until the twentieth century.
Landlubbers took it up and used it for any small cloth container for items of kit
or miscellaneous stuff. It’s almost completely defunct in the UK but survives
widely in north America in all sorts of situations. So it’s unsurprising that you
have found it in the film business.</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">There’s also </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty box</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, now rarely used but at one time also known to sailors,
mentioned in a mildly patronising article about a tour of a ship of Her
Majesty’s Navy (</span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Jack</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> is the usual generic term for a sailor):</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">Jack likes to do a bit of writing now and then to one of his old
sweethearts, and for that purpose he is allowed a sort of writing-desk,
which he calls his ditty box, where he keeps portraits and love-letters, and
charms, and all those little trinkets which remind him of “home, sweet
home,” when far away he is tossed about on the mighty deep.</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>Western Daily Press</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt"> (Bristol, UK), 12 Sep. 1864.</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">The problem is working out where </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> comes from. </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 most common origin given in general works repeats the one that Admiral
W H Smyth gave in his </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Sailor’s Word-Book</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> of 1867; he said it “derives its name
from the dittis or Manchester stuff of which it was once made”. </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Manchester
stuff</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> was cotton goods of any sort, from the roughest to the finest, given that
name because the city of Manchester was then the world centre of the
cotton-weaving industry. This is why </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Manchester department</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> is still used in
some stores in Australia and New Zealand for the section selling cotton goods
such as sheets and towels. However, nobody has found </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dittis</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> or its presumed
singular </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditti</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> anywhere.</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">Other suggestions that don’t survive inspection are that it’s from </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditto</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> (a bag or
box for </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dittos</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> or a second suit of clothes, on the assumption that a sailor’s
wardrobe was limited); that it’s from a modified form of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>kitty-bag</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">, a
diminutive of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>kitbag</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">; or that — as a correspondent to </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Notes and Queries</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> wrote
in 1878 — it “derived from a nearly obsolete form of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>deft</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> or </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dight</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">; the former
meaning efficient, proper, decent, and the latter to arrange, adorn, dress”.
Another inventive writer to the same journal argued that a ditty box was about
the right size to store sheet music, which would make it the same word as </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">
for a short or simple song. </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">Dictionaries mostly admit bafflement. A few, among them the Collins and
Macquarie dictionaries, suggest the word is from India, being a version of the
obsolete </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dutty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> for calico, which derives from the Hindi word </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dhoti</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> for a
loincloth. Eric Partridge argued for </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dutty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> in his </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Origins</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> in 1956 and the term is
noted in several modern reference works, one of which describes it as “a type of
calico made of very thick and strong texture and used as sail cloth”. The earliest
written reference to it seems to be in James Halliwell’s </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Dictionary of Archaic
and Provincial Words</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> of 1847.</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 a sailor to make a bag from sailcloth seems eminently likely and this is a
plausible origin for </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty bag</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">. Admiral Smyth presumably heard or
remembered </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dutty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> as </span><span style=" font-size:13pt">
<i>ditti</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt">. We may guess that </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty box</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> was derived from it at
some later date, when the original meanings of </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>dutty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> and </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> had been lost
and </span><span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>ditty</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> had come to imply a small container for personal items.</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">Chris Quinn spotted a headline in the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> on 16 January: “132 year old
cowboy’s rifle found propped up against tree in Nevada desert.” The relevant
web page now carries one of the paper’s dry corrections: “The headline was
changed to make it clear that an old gun had been found, not a decrepit
cowboy.”</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">Unlike other papers, the </span>
<span style=" font-size:13pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:13pt"> is ready to admit its errors. Another
correction, in Thursday’s issue, referred to an item of 22 January: “The
omission of a hyphen after the word ‘sheep’ meant readers were informed that
the ancient Philistines of the Gaza coast were attacked by a curious
combination of ‘savage sheep and goat-herding Hebrew tribes’.”</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 quote on CBS News on 16 January, Ken Swan tells us, described the Toronto
District School Board as “congenially dysfunctional”. Useless but friendly — it
could be worse. </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 Graziers Steakhouse at Brisbane’s Holland Park Hotel,” emailed Grant
Agnew, “has large signs in the windows offering, ‘250gm Graziers Rump with
Salad and Chips’. I don’t eat there.” Why not? Because in Australia a grazier is a
sheep or cattle farmer.</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">Cut out the middleman. A couple of websites reproduced a press release from a
firm seeking investment for a new onion slicer. P Fisher read with surprise that
“A collection container houses the perfectly chopped onions which can then be
easily thrown into the dishwasher.”</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">“Achieving the impossible” was the subject line of John Pearson’s email about a
BBC News report on 23 January, “The euro has been steadily falling in value
against the euro for several months.”</span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Useful information</b></span></font></div>
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<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
Marx, Robert Waterhouse, John Bagnall and Peter Morris. Any residual errors are the fault of
the author. The linked website is http://www.worldwidewords.org.</span></font></p>
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