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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 30 May 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 </b></span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/snso"><font face="Calibri" color="#0000ff">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b><u>http://wwwords.org/snso</u></b></span></font></a></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>Long time no hear.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> I wasn’t expecting to leave so long between issues, but this past
month has been quite ridiculously busy. I’m considering abandoning retirement and
going back to work for a rest. However, a brief pause in other activities has allowed
me to put together what follows as something that roughly resembles an issue. This is
particularly fortunate as I go on holiday in two days’ time, so you won’t be hearing
from me again until late June and probably won’t get a reply to anything you email
me about this issue (nothing new about that in the past month, alas). But don’t let
that stop you.</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>Rude word.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> I should have known it would happen. My mention of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>tinker’s damn</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in
the piece on </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ilk</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> last time provoked many comments, including several variations on
this: “Did you not know that a </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>tinker’s dam</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was a bit of clay surrounding the hole in a
pot that was being mended by a tinker?” I should have included a </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/tnkdm"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>link to my piece</u></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on
the phrase, which explains that </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>tinker’s dam</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is a classic etymological fallacy. The true
origin is supported by earlier phrases such as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>tinker’s curse</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Some writers suspect
that the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>dam</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> version, which first appeared in Edward Knight’s </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Practical Dictionary
of Mechanics</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 1877, was an attempt to blunt the crudity of the expression for
sensitive Victorian ears. If so, its influence has lasted.</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>Skint.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Several readers were reminded by my piece on this word of one with similar
associations: </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skinflint</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which might have influenced the rise of </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skint</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Skinflint </i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">is
much older, from the end of the seventeenth century, and is based on the earlier
expression </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>to skin a flint</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, meaning to go to extreme lengths to gain something. You
may reasonably consider that it’s impossible to skin flint, but anybody who has seen
unbroken flint nodules taken from a chalk bed will know that they frequently have a
thin white surface (a patina that’s sometimes called the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>cortex</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">), a layer of the quartz
in which minerals have dissolved. It’s possible to chip off this white layer, though it
would be a time-consuming and unrewarding task. The expression was modified and
elaborated in the US and the UK in the early nineteenth century to make </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skin a flea
for its hide and tallow</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>Deep and crispy and even?</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Jooce Garrett wrote from Switzerland to ask about my
use of the phrase </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy bacon</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and wondered, not being exposed to English much
these days, whether </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was replacing </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>crisp</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Not so. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Crisp</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is alive and well: “a crisp
five-speed gearbox”; “a crisp, no-nonsense voice”; “a blouse in crisp white cotton”;
“the crisp, clean air”. N W Miller felt strongly about the matter: “Among the words I
would abolish if I had the power is </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. I fail to see that </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> conveys anything
that </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crisp</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> does not. The former is childish, an anti-pretentious conceit. Its genesis lies
in advertising, like so many regrettable verbal tics.” </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">Indeed, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> owes much of its current popularity to the food trade, starting in the
US in the 1920s with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy chips</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>crispy noodles</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Rice Krispies</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (introduced in
1927 according to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Wikipedia</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">), though it has become significantly more widely
employed outside the US in the past couple of decades. However, it has been in the
language since the seventeenth century; it became more common in the nineteenth
century in the US as an alternative to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crisp </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">in the sense of something brittle,
particularly something that the teeth can easily crunch. Today </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is almost always
used of prepared foodstuffs; </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crisp</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> can have the same sense (it’s more common than
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crispy </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">to describe lettuce and celery, for example, at least in Britain and the US) but
has a wider set of associations.</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"> Mike Shefler wrote, apropos of the comments last time about </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>menagerie lions</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">:
“It reminds me of the time in high school English class where for some reason we
were talking about windmills. I said there was one on my property but it was braked.
‘You mean broken, don't you,’ chided the teacher. ‘No, it was braked so it wouldn’t be
broken when the wind blew hard.’ The conversation went downhill from there.”</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>Update.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> I’ve amended the piece on the theatrical saying </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/bklg">
<font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i><u>break a leg</u></i></span></font></a><font face="Georgia">
<span style=" font-size:12pt">.</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>Do you schvitz in your quinzhee? </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">Younger players of Scrabble have been given a boost by the publication of the new
edition of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Collins Official Scrabble Words</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Among the 6,500 new items that have
been added are many from social media, slang and pop culture, some of which have
been imported from the official North American Scrabble wordlist.</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">They include </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>tweep</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a person who uses Twitter; </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>shoutout</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a namecheck or
acknowledgement; </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>shizzle</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (from </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>fo shizzle ma nizzle</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">), black American rap slang that
means, very roughly, “I concur with you wholeheartedly”; </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>dench</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<b><i>,</i></b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> excellent; </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>bumbaze</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
to bamboozle or perplex; and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>pwn</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (from </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>own</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">), to defeat an opponent in a conclusive
and humiliating fashion. Other new terms in the book are abbreviations or modified
forms of standard English words, including </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>bezzy </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">(best friend), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i><u>lotsa</u></i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (lots of), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>ridic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
(short for </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ridiculous</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>wuz</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a form of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>was</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>cazh</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (casual), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>obvs</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> (obviously), and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>lolz</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
(laughs at someone else’s or one’s own expense, from </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>LOL</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, laugh out loud). Also
included are what Collins calls onomatopoeic interjections, words created from
sounds, such as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>augh</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>blech</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>eew</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>grr</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>waah</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>yeesh</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">Not everybody is happy with the changes. Sue Bowman, membership secretary of the
Association of British Scrabble Players, was quoted in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Telegraph</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as criticising the
new words as an “abuse of the English language”.</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 answer to my catchpenny query in the heading, by the way, is that you’d be likely
to do so only if you were that most rare of cross-cultural phenomena, a
Yiddish-speaking member of a Canadian first nation. The Yiddish verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>schvitz</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> means
to sweat and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>quinzhee</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is the Dené Tha term for a snow shelter. Both are now in the
new edition.</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>Some recent findings from my reading</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">One word that’s surely in </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Collins Official Scrabble Words</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>selfie</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which seems to
be everywhere these days. We’ve since learned </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>selfie stick</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a device that lets you
hold your smartphone further away. We now have </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>selfie drone</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. It’s one of those
mini-helicopter thingies, specifically one that’s designed to automatically follow
its owner and shoot high-definition photos and video of their activities.</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">Success by the Conservative Party in the recent UK general election has brought
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Brexit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> to the fore. This has been modelled on </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Grexit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, coined as shorthand for the
possibility that Greece would either leave the European Union or abandon the
Euro. The Scots briefly borrowed the idea to make </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Scexit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> at the time of their
referendum on independence from the UK. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Brexit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is, of course, the equivalent
suggestion that Britain (by which is meant the UK) might leave the EU as a result
of the referendum that the Conservatives have promised by the end of 2017.</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">My newest favourite weird word is </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ergasiophygophyte</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. It’s a scholarly term for a
garden plant that has escaped into the wild. It’s from Classical Greek </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ergasia</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">,
work or production, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>phyge</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, flight or escape, and </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>phyton</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a plant. </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">The teen slang term </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>dad bod</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has achieved hundreds of column inches of press
discussion following a mention of it on the college-focused website </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Odyssey </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">at the
end of March by Mackenzie Pearson of Clemson University. It refers to the
physique of a type of slightly out-of-condition young man, who almost certainly
isn’t really a father. She wrote, “The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut
and working out. The dad bod says, ‘I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink
heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.’ It’s not an
overweight guy, but it isn't one with washboard abs, either.”</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">Have you noticed how the suffix </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (and the associated </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>-shaming</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">) is
spreading its influence? It’s mostly a social-media term for stigmatising
somebody, almost always a woman, for a supposedly unacceptable feature. It
began some five years ago with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>slut-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, deriding a woman for being sexually
promiscuous or provocatively dressed. It was soon followed by </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fat-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
disparaged as being overweight or obese. More recently </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>single-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has
appeared, to criticise a woman for not having a partner (but as Prince Harry has
recently been single-shamed, this one shows signs of being unisexed). I’ve also
come across </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>clothes-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>blonde-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>thin-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and even
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gluten-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. I haven't yet found </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>word-shamed</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, but give it time.</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">An interesting </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/gupar"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>piece in the Guardian</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on 22 May argues that paragraphs in online
writing are getting so short that they may vanish into a succession of single
sentences.</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">Just when you think Words of the Year must be long over, Oxford Children’s
Dictionaries announces the Children’s Word of the Year. This is decided by
analysing the language children use in the entries for the BBC Radio 2 </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Chris
Evans Breakfast Show</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> short story competition called </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>500 Words</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, open to
under-13s. This year there were 120,421 entries, permitting a close look at the
ways in which language among young people is changing. The Children’s Word of
the Year for 2015 is </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hashtag</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (#). Vineeta Gupta, Head of Children’s Dictionaries
at Oxford University Press, commented that the symbol is entering children’s
vocabulary in a new way, as they have extended its use from a simple prefix or a
search term on Twitter to a device for dramatic effect in their stories, sometimes
at the end of sentences to add emphasis. More details about other ways in which
the competition entries are showing up changes in children’s vocabulary can be
found on the </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/cwy15"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>BBC web site</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">.</span></font></li>
</ul>
<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>Adimpleate</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">Ralph Maus sent me on an intriguing search, courtesy of Jan Karon, who wrote in her
most recent book, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Somewhere Safe With Someone Nice</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, of 2014: “She smiled a little;
he saw the light in her eyes. ‘You adimpleate my spirit,’ she said.”</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 number of sites online claim to know it but only a couple correctly say that it means
to fill up or make complete. I</span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">t derives from Latin </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>adimplēre</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to fill up. </span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">My best guess
is that it’s pronounced as spelled: /</span></font><font face="Times New Roman"><span style=" font-size:12pt">ˈ</span></font>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">adimpli</span></font><font face="Times New Roman"><span style=" font-size:12pt">ː</span></font>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">t</span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:13pt">/ </span></font>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">(AD-im-plete).</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’s in the online </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, but spelled </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>adimplete</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. In the 1989
Second Edition it was </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>adimpleate</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which is no doubt where Ms Karon found it. The entry was revised in 2011 and the
headword changed to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>adimplete</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> because the two examples which its compilers
unearthed, from 1657 and 1778, both spell it without the second </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>a</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">; this matches the
Latin past participle </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>adimplēt-</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> that is considered to be its direct origin.</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 word is justly described as obsolete and rare. Ms Karon seems to be the first
person for more than two centuries to use it in print. Her example is so rare that it
stands a good chance of being included in the next edition of the OED.</span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Deodand</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">In 1336, a drunken sailor climbed the mast of his ship at anchor in the Thames by
means of a rope, presumably part of the rigging. When he tried to descend the same
way he fell and died. A coroner’s jury decided that the rope was the cause of death and
that it should be forfeited to the Crown. The rope was the inanimate casualty of an
already ancient principle called </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>deodand</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">A deodand was an item of property that, however coincidentally, had caused the
death of a human being. Horses, cattle, carts, haystacks, beer vats, boats, stones and
trees have at various times been judged to be deodands. Unlettered local juries often
made the law up on the spot, for example deciding in the case of a person fatally
scalded by boiling water from a pot that the pot was the deodand, not the water.</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">Strictly speaking, a deodand is something that has been forfeited to God, from Latin
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>deō dandum</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. In practice in medieval England it meant being given up to the Crown to
be put to some pious use such as alms. As a stone or haystack was an inconvenient
item to deal with in this way, in practice the coroner’s jury decided the value of the
item and its owner was required to pay that instead. (In the case of the rope, the jury
appraised it as worth 10 shillings, a considerable sum at the time, roughly the price of
a good horse.)</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 law of deodand survived into the nineteenth century. What ended it was the
industrial revolution. Expensive pieces of machinery involved in accidental deaths
were judged as deodands with consequent substantial fines. The rise of the railways
meant that coroner’s juries in the 1830s and 1840s awarded large deodands against
companies whose trains were involved in fatal accidents. As a result, the government
of the day passed a law in 1846 abolishing the concept.</span></font></p>
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<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">On 6 May, the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>New York Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> commented, “In 2014, there were 24,400 injuries
associated with treadmills in emergency departments across the country.” Bill Blinn
suggested that banning treadmills from emergency rooms would help.</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">Pattie Tancred heard on the BBC midday news on 20 May: “Desperate, starving and
dehydrated, we bring you the story of these migrants.”</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">John Harbour was amused by a notice on the website of Norwegian Airlines: “The
price for seat reservation is per passenger per leg.” So Long John Silver goes half
price.</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">“I know what they meant, but ... ,” was G P Hrusovsky’s response to a headline in the
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Youngstown Ohio Vindicator</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 26 April: “Ohio must make sexual abuse of children a
priority."</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 cart-before-the-horse time in the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Sydney Morning News</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on 18 May, as
Anthony Douglas discovered in a quote from a senior police officer: “The male has
sustained serious, very brutal head injuries as a result of his 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">“Tough gig,” was Jeff Rankin-Lowe’s comment on a Cannes preview on the
CBC/Radio Canada site on 13 May: “The film, based on the 1952 novel, The Price of
Salt by Patricia Highsmith, was in development for 15 years, with several directors
dropping out before finally being shot.”</span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Useful information</b></span></font></div>
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