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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 25 April 2015.</i></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:0.00mm; margin-bottom:6.33mm;"><font face="Calibri" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b>This newsletter is also available online at http://wwwords.org/urcd</b></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:12pt">
<b>Oops.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Stephen Brasher was first off the mark to tell me of an error in the last issue:
“Captain Marryat didn’t write </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Coral Island</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, that was R M Ballantyne. Marryat’s
famous work was </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Children of the New Forest</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.” Many others subsequently
emailed, often mentioning Marryat’s </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Mr Midshipman Easy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as well. To claim, as I did,
that </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Coral Island</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was “still known a little” was clearly an understatement. The moral
is always to check your sources, especially when you’re sure you’re right.</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:12pt">
<b>Caparisoned.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Fionnuala McHugh sent a link to a </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Daily Telegraph</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> book review
from 2009, which said “The riderless horse is known as a caparison, a custom that
dates to the time of Genghis Khan. It symbolises a fallen warrior.” Having now found
more examples, it appears I was wrong last time to say this sense is an error. The idea
comes from a riderless horse in a funeral procession often being richly decorated. No
dictionary on my shelves, nor the online </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, includes this
meaning of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>caparison</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.</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:12pt">
<b>Sic!</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> The item in the last issue about </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>menagerie lions</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> was queried by many readers.
Larry Osborne considered it intentional on the part of the writer. Many others recall
encountering it in their youth as a classic example of a supposed schoolboy howler:
“the equator is a menagerie lion running around the centre of the earth.” John
Pearson found that it appears in that form in Frank Sidgwick’s </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Old Ballads</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 1908 as
an example of “corruption in oral tradition”. </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:12pt">The phrase reminded Martin S Taylor of an eBay advert he once saw for a camera
with a </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>why-dangle lens</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Correspondents to the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> this week have recalled
hearing people say that they were going to see the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Blackpool hallucinations</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and
doctor’s patients asserting that they were on </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>infidelity benefit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The spirit of Mrs
Malaprop is with us still.</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:12pt">
<b>Crizzling.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Keith Hallam introduced me to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crozzled</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, which may be a derivative of
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crizzle</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Collins English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> says it means bacon blackened or burnt at the
edges. Mary Jackson concurs, knowing it as a Derbyshire word for “what happens to
food when cooked for too long: all shrunken and burnt.” A </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crozzle</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crozzil</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was once
northern English dialect for a half-burnt cinder or coal or anything burnt up or
singed; the verb means to shrivel or curl up with heat or to burn something to a
cinder. Mr Hallam says his wife and he use it for “bacon cooked to perfection”, not
quite the same idea, unless you like your bacon </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>really</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> crispy.</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:12pt">
<b>More odd names</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Saul Newman mentioned that fine fungus </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Spongiforma
squarepantsii</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and provided a link to Mark Isaac’s site </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/cobn">
<font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>Curiosities of Biological
Nomenclature</u></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which lists among many others </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Arthurdactylus conandoylensis</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a
fossil pterosaur from Brazil that may remind you of Conan Doyle’s </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Lost World</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">.
And Mike Odell introduced me to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>1,2-dimethyl-chickenwire</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a fictional
two-dimensional hydrocarbon consisting of hexagonal blocks.</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:12pt">
<b>Vellichor.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> “Are you familiar with the idea,” Clifford Daniels wrote, “that </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>cellar door</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
is the most euphonious phrase in the English language? What struck me about
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>vellichor</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is its potentially similar pronunciation. As such, one could say that our
attraction to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>vellichor</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> derives from the marvellous union of both semantic and
phonaesthetic beauty.” There’s a considerable history of comment on the qualities of
the compound noun </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>cellar door</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, including </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/cdnyt"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>Grant Barrett’s article</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>New York
Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 2009 and the </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/cdwkp"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>Wikipedia article</u></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on 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:12pt">
<b>Galoot</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. From Adam Quinan: “Arthur Ransome’s pirate heroine, Nancy Blackett,
often refers to her younger sister Peggy as a galoot in </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Swallows and Amazons</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
(published in 1930). That is where I first encountered it. Whether Ransome came
across the word through his sailing interests or his Australian family connection or
whether it was just part of his vocabulary acquired growing up I have no idea.”
William Hommon added, “Your excellent discussion of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>galoot</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> reminded me of one of
the worst (ie, best) puns of all time. There was this old guy who was married twice
and had 10 boys by his first wife and 11 by his second. He was a 21-son galoot!”</span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Ilk</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:12pt">I stray into a minuscule no-man’s-land of disputed territory here. On the one hand is
a tiny group of language pundits who consider that </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ilk</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> still ought to mean exactly
what it used to mean centuries ago in another country. On the other hand is a greater
group who know what they mean by it and don’t give a toss, fig, hang or tinker’s
damn about its antecedents. On the third hand, a substantial group don’t know it, or
are put off using it through worry that they might use it wrongly and have somebody
criticise them.</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:12pt">Its story begins in Old English with the adjective </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ilca</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. This meant “same” or “like” and
survived in mainstream English until the sixteenth century, in the end being
supplanted by </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>same</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, an upstart intruder from Old Norse. However, it did survive in
Scots, especially in the phrase </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>of that ilk</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. This meant, and still does, a person whose
family name is the same as that of the place he inhabits. Most strictly it indicates that
the person is the proprietor or laird of the place. So we may come across usages like
this:</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">The field and ground was chosen in St. Andrews, and three landed men
and three yeomen chosen to shoot against the English-men, — to wit,
David Wemyss of that ilk, David Arnot of that ilk, and Mr. John
Wedderburn, vicar of Dundee.</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 Lady of the Lake</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by Sir Walter Scott, 1810. Wemyss (said as </span>
<span style=" font-size:11pt"><i>weems</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">), and
Arnot are indeed places in Scotland, both in Fife.</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:12pt">But from early times, Scots also used it to refer to the head of a clan, such as
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Mackintosh of that ilk</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a Scottish trial in 1539 referred to “Duncane Macfarlane of
that ilk”). This eventually led to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ilk</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> weakening its sense around the time of Scott to
mean people who had the same name because they were related. It later weakened
still further to include people of the same class or who had some characteristic in
common. This much broader connotation annoys language purists, though it has long
since become common and is now regarded as standard English:</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’m pretty no-nonsense myself, and I know plenty of other women of that
ilk.</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>Daily Telegraph</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, 4 Apr. 2015.</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:12pt">These days the grouping need not always be human (“Such are the magpie, the crow,
the jackdaw, and all of that ilk”; “it wasn’t a unicorn, but it was something of that ilk”)
nor even alive (“She discovered the ace of that ilk peeping coyly out from behind the
seven of spades”; “A body may chatter about ideals — about right and wrong and
matters of that ilk”).</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:12pt">A blurred survival of its aristocratic, landed origins sometimes emerges in negative
comments about class bias:</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">Given that David Cameron seems to be comfortable only when
surrounded by Etonians, and that the Labour MP Chris Bryant has
complained about “Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk”
rising in their professions thanks to their privileged public-school
education, a toff upbringing doesn’t feel terribly cool or right-on at the
moment. Lewis is definitely a member of that “ilk”.</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>Sunday Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, 12 Apr. 2015.</span></font></div>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>In brief</b></span></font></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0mm; list-style-type: disc; ">
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">The new term </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>senolytics</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> appeared in the press in the middle of March. It was
created by scientists from the Scripps Institute in Florida who had found two
drugs that appeared to invigorate elderly mice. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Senolytics</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> are a new class of drugs
designed to delay the ageing process. The word would appear to have been formed
from the first part of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>senescent</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> plus the adjectival </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>-lytic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> ending which links to
nouns in </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>-lysis</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (from Greek </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>-lutikos</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, able to loosen), as in medical terms like
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>spasmolytic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>mucolytic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>thrombolytic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.</span></font></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0mm; list-style-type: disc; ">
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">What, by all that is medically appalling, is </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>exploding head syndrome</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">? It turns out
— thankfully — not to be a literal description, but an imaginative way to describe a
harmless but disquieting loud noise which some people experience suddenly as
they are dropping off to sleep. It is said to be caused by a misfiring of neurons in
the brain.</span></font></li>
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">A writer in my daily newspaper recently claimed to have a huge fondness for the
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hairy-footed flower bee</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. It turned out to a real insect, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Anthophora plumipes</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.
Similarly genuine but equally pleasantly exotic were two in last week’s issue of
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>New Scientist</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">: the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>rusty-patched bumble bee</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fuzzy-legged leafcutter bee</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">.</span></font></li>
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">It was a surprise to learn that the organisation Human Rights Watch had recently
produced a report opposing laws. It transpired they were actually against LAWS, a
military acronym for </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>lethal automated weapon systems</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which the press prefers
to call </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>killer robots</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.</span></font></li>
</ul>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Fourth Edition</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:12pt">A new edition of this venerable guide always repays close study. The previous
revisions of W H Fowler’s magisterial work of 1926 — by Sir Ernest Gowers in 1965
and Robert Burchfield in 1996 — led to accusations that its editors were being too
kind to ill-educated speakers of English who perverted its splendour by introducing
barbarous usages. This time around, apart from a few polite notices in the British
press, criticism has been absent.</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:12pt">Perhaps conservatives have given up on </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Fowler</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (the brand, not the person) after
Burchfield had dared to base many of his recommendations on the way people
actually used English rather than the way over-careful and traditional users thought it
ought to be used. Jeremy Butterfield, whose qualifications include being the former
Editor-in-Chief of Collins Dictionaries, has continued his immediate predecessor’s
policy of basing his recommendations on a study of Oxford’s vast collection of
examples of current English. In lexicographic jargon, his work is frequently
descriptive rather than prescriptive though, as he points out, the editor of a style
guide is continually subject to a tension between these extremes. He remarks in his
entry on </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>less</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> versus </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>fewer</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, “Regrettably, the facts of language, as so often happens,
are more complicated than simple, or simplistic, rules allow.”</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:12pt">A significant change, and one to be welcomed, is the replacement of much of the
rather fusty and outmoded language of the first edition — unchanged by later editors
who were perhaps too much in awe of H W Fowler’s prose — by fresh and warmly
conversational text leavened by humour, if sometimes a little heavy-handed, and the
occasional burst of sarcastic grumpiness. He comments in the introduction that every
editor of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Fowler</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has brought personal “preferences, tastes, habits, and bugbears” to
his writing and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Fowler</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> wouldn’t be the same without them.</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:12pt">Almost every entry provides an example of his personal style. About </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>absolutely</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, he
says that “it is no exaggeration to say that, at least in Britain, it has altogether ousted
‘yes’ from the speech of middle-class media persons and pundits ... it is
enthusiastically bludgeoning ‘yes’ to death.” Of another word that frequently
infuriates, he concurs with the recent decision of the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> to
recognise the figurative use of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>literally</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> to mean “figuratively”, a sense that goes back
at least to Dickens. But he cautions, after nearly two pages of discussion: “Knowing
that your readers may have the screaming abdabs (dated British slang for ‘have a fit’)
if they read </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>literally</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> prefacing a metaphor ... you might want to avoid using it
altogether.” Under </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ambiguity</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, he writes: “some highly ambiguous — and often
comical — phrasing does get into print ... and provides an easy target for satire”,
including in an online forum called </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>World Wide Words</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. (I must declare, in the
interests of full disclosure, that he also cites me in the entry on </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>bog standard</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">.)</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:12pt">He writes about the “tsunami of illiteracy unleashed by the Internet” (though surely
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>internet</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is now lower-case? No, his entry on it says it is “standard and recommended”
to spell it with an initial capital letter. Many would disagree, including this writer,
whose house style downcases it.) Of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>address</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, he remarks, “People in the business of
not really meaning what they say love this verb” and suggests they should instead
“put their head over the parapet and say that they will </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>resolve</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>deal with</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sort out</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">
the question.” (Note the singular </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>they</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which he says elsewhere is now hardly noticed
and an irreversible shift in usage.) He is similarly disparaging about the misuse of
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>awesome</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>issue</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> when “problem” would be better, and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>challenging</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, which he calls
“treacherous woolliness” and says should be avoided with the help of a good
thesaurus.</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:12pt">Butterfield holds that </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>and</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> at the beginning of a sentence is fine, especially as a
marker of a continuing narrative; usage evidence suggests that </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>alibi</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> no longer solely
means a defence on the grounds that the accused was somewhere else at the time but
can be used of any excuse, pretext or justification; to say the letter </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>h</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>haitch</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, he
argues, will eventually prevail in British English, “unspeakably uncouth though it may
appear” to older speakers. Of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>like</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as a sentence filler, he remarks that “Overuse will
cause listeners outside the speaker’s immediate social circle, wider social group or age
cohort to ignore the content of the message, to assume that the speaker is little short
of brain-dead, or, in extreme cases, to wish they had a discreet firearm to hand.”</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:12pt">His advice makes clear the dangers for the inexperienced writer that lie behind many
innocent-looking words and phrases. But the new </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Fowler</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is worth consulting even by
writers who think they know the language well. Butterfield has created a guide that is
readable for entertainment as well as enlightenment.</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:12pt">[Jeremy Butterfield, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, Fourth Edition,
published March 2015 (UK and Australia), April 2015 (Canada), June 2015 (US);
ISBN 9780199661350; list prices £25.00 (UK), $39.95 (US), $52.50 (Canada) $50.95
(Australia).]</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>Skint</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:12pt"> I’m a fan of the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Andy Capp</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> comic and one weird word keeps appearing that
apparently means “broke” or “without funds”: </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skint</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Can you tell me anything about
it? [Bill Waggoner]</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:12pt"> This is a very well-known, originally British English slang term that’s also known
throughout the Commonwealth, though to a lesser extent (I think) in Canada. It’s
fairly rare in the US, though not unknown: knowledge of it there is probably thanks to
Andy Capp. </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:12pt">The meaning is the one you give, illustrated by this sentence from </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Sun</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 16 Apr.
2015: “Hayley doesn’t care that she is skint, she is going to use loans to redecorate.” It
can also sometimes refer to lacking some necessity other than money.</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:12pt">It can be traced back in that spelling and pronunciation to the early years of the
twentieth century as a variant of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skinned</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. To be </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skinned</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skinned out</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> was to be
deprived of all your money by gambling, frequently of the rigged sort.</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:12pt">Henry Mayhew noted in his </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>London Labour and the London Poor</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 1861 that sailors
often suffered being </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skinned</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which he said was being “stripped of his clothes and
money from being hocussed, or tempted to helpless drunkenness” (to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hocuss</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was to
cheat a man by drugging his drink; it’s a variation of an obsolete eighteenth-century
noun </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hocus</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, trickery or deception, from the magician’s magic formula </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/hcpc"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i><u>hocus-pocus</u></i></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>;
hoax</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is from the same source).</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:12pt">To skin was by then almost half a century old in the gambling sense and is known
from the middle of the previous century for thieving goods. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Skinned</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in the penniless
sense survived into the first decades of the twentieth century alongside </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skint</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> but was
gradually ousted by 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:12pt">British English also has a related term for being without money: </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>boracic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, often said
like </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>brassic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. This is rhyming slang, from </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>boracic lint</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a once common type of surgical
dressing.</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 understand that he’s now all but skint, totally boracic, with the arse
nearly out of his trousers.</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>Raising Steam</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by Terry Pratchett, 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:12pt">Americans once knew </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skinning</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in the related sense of cheating in exams and, often in
the form </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skin out</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, for absconding or running away; it has also been a dialect or
regional form of the past participle of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skin</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in various 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>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:12pt">A typing error provided the first of this week’s easy targets for satire. Tom Knight
learned from the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Independent</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 10 April that a feuding billionaire had been “forced
to flea the Bahamas”.</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:12pt">A statement of the bleeding obvious came in a cautious headline on the News 24 site
of South Africa, seen by Rob Bernstein: “Foul play suspected after Marikana cop
stabbed to death.”</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:12pt">Neil Houston was at first excited by a glossy Australian magazine advert for Crystal
Cruises but the next sentence dampened his excitement: “Embark on an immersive
odyssey ... .”</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:12pt">It was 1 April but Cambridgeshire Constabulary weren’t joking when they posted on
Facebook that “Throughout April we are running a campaign to promote motorcycle
safety and enforce poor riding and driving.” Thanks go to Mark Swingler for that.</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:12pt">“Post-death weight loss”, was Claire Loughheed’s comment on a sentence from Dr
Joseph Mercola’s site: “This type of workout tends to burn far more calories than
others — thanks to the calories you burn after your heart stops pumping.”</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:12pt">“British electoral politics are weird” was Pattie Tancred’s comment on seeing this in
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on 11 April about Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour party: “They fell in
love when Ed bandaged her hand after a doberman bit it while leafleting.” Some dogs
are so clever.</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:12pt"> World Wide Words is researched, written and published by
Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice are freely
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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