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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 5 September 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/mvvf"><font face="Calibri" color="#0000ff">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b><u> http://wwwords.org/mvvf</u></b></span></font></a><font face="Calibri" color="#008000"><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<b> <br />
and is attached as a PDF file containing illustrations.</b></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">Check the recipient address if you reply to this message. For security reasons, it will
be rejected if it is sent to worldwidewords@listserv.linguistlist.org. Either use the
email address from the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Reply-to</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> header or — better — create a new message to the
most appropriate of the addresses listed in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>email addresses</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> section at the end of
this newsletter.</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>Vacaday. </b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">In the last issue, I rejected this possible conflation of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>vacation</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>holiday</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
as being silly. Peter Armstrong pointed out that real life disagrees: “A </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>vacay-day</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> is
already a commonly used term among many working people here in California and I
imagine elsewhere. It comes from filling out one’s online time sheet, and designating
a day off as a ‘Vacation Day’.”</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>Manual. </b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">Comments were prompted by my thoughts about the use of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>manually</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for
operating something with the foot. Michael Tremberth noted: “Organists are
accustomed to the directions </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>manualiter</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for passages to be performed with only the
hands on the manuals, and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>pedaliter</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for passages to be executed similarly with the
feet on the pedal board.”</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 recall an alternative,” Ian Williams wrote from the UK, “used when a piece of
equipment that is supposed to act automatically fails to do so. In that case, the only
option is to fall back on more primitive methods and perform the operation
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>handraulically</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Being a software engineer, I came across this also in the context of
the failure of automatic code generation to do its job. Is it just me or has anyone else
come across the concept of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>handraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> engineering?”</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">Searching throws up </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Handraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as a trademark of an emergency hydraulic starting
system for diesel engines, originally designed in France. The first recorded reference I
can find is in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Shipbuilder and Marine Engine-builder</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 1950, announcing that
the UK firm Berger Fuel Injection had gained the rights and were selling it under the
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Handraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> name, trademarked the same year. The devices became widely popular
(they’re still being made and sold by a successor business) and the name became well
known. The evidence suggests that </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>handraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>handraulically</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> derive as informal
terms from the trademark. This is the earliest I’ve found:</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">An examination of the present information and the way it is obtained,
handled and displayed, shows that none of it is yet in a form which
enables it to be handled automatically. Information handling is, in other
words, at present entirely “manumatic” or “handraulic”.</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>British Communications and Electronics</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, 1959.</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>Sicced.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> The last issue included a </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Sic!</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> item from the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. A
more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger message came from one of the staff at the Readers’
Editor office, saying that they had corrected the story and would have done so much
earlier had anybody told them about it. Subeditors: a vanished breed.</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>Oxford Dictionary Quizzes.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Last time, I mentioned four quizzes set by the people
at Oxford Dictionaries to test visitors’ knowledge of the vocabulary of four regional
Englishes. I wondered how well natives would succeed with the quiz for their own
language. Ada Robinson wrote: “I did all four of the Oxford Dictionary quizzes. I’m
from far western Canada (Victoria, BC), and wasn’t surprised I did worst on the
Australian test. However, I did better on the British and American tests than I did on
the Canadian one! A number of words in the Canadian quiz were unknown to me — I
suspect they are eastern Canadianisms. There’s a lot of prairie and muskeg between
BC and Ontario.”</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>Salop</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 British reader encountering this word would be likely to think of the county of
Shropshire, whose name is thus historically abbreviated. Somebody who lives there is
a </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Salopian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. It might not look it but </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Salop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Salopian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> are indeed connected to
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Shropshire</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. It’s in part the result of a split a thousand years ago between the Old
English and Norman-French names for the county town of Shrewsbury.</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">My recent reading of John Warren’s </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Nature of Crops</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has thrown up a quite
different sense of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salopian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, one which the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> notes only as a
one-off invented word dated 1822. The link is with a foodstuff that has been spelled
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salup</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>saloop</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salep</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as well as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salop</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">The main ingredient was the powdered root of orchids, boiled in water to make a
thick starchy drink. In Britain the usual source was the early purple orchid, at the
time so common in meadows and pastures that it was harvested in bulk. The first use
of the roots was medicinal, to correct various internal problems. It was also thought
to increase fertility in men and act as an aphrodisiac, because its twin tubers
resembled testicles.</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 orchid was once known as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>dogstones</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>dog’s cods</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> for this reason. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Salop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> comes
from the same idea: it has been traced via Portuguese and Turkish to the Arabic</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>
khasyu ‘th-tha‘</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">lab for an orchid, literally </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>fox’s testicles</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">Salop became fashionable in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a
restorative drink, which at a shilling an ounce was much cheaper than the imported
coffee, tea and chocolate drunk by more prosperous classes. A recipe:</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">Take a Quart of Water, and let it boil a quarter of an Hour; then put in a
quarter of an Ounce of Salop finely powdered, and let it boil half an Hour
longer, stirring it all the while; then season it with White-wine and Juice
of Lemons, and sweeten it to your Taste; drink it in </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>China</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Cups as
Chocolate; ’tis a great Sweetner of the Blood.</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 Compleat Housewife: Or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by
Eliza Smith, 1728. Why the author thought it necessary to boil the water for so
long before adding the powdered salop is unclear, unless he was extraordinarily
concerned about the bug-ridden state of English water.</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">The concoction (usually under the name </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>saloop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">) was sold by street vendors in most
English cities and also in specialist shops; it was usually flavoured with sugar and
milk rather than wine and lemon. Charles Lamb wrote grandly in 1841, “Palates
otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical elegancies sup it up with avidity”. </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 became so popular as an early-morning pick-me-up by workmen before beginning
their labours that English orchids couldn’t meet demand and supplies, thought in any
case to be of superior quality, were imported from Turkey and India (countries where
salop continues to be consumed under related names). </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">Later, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was applied to a similar drink, made from sassafras bark imported from
North America:</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">Passing on, in our way towards the Foundling Hospital, we perceived a
groupe of wretches, male and female, round a kind of cauldron filled with
an infusion of sassafras, well known by the name of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>saloop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which they
seemed to drink with the greatest avidity.</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>A modern Sabbath, or, a Sunday ramble, and Sabbath-day journey, circuitous
and descriptive, in and about the cities of London and Westminster, and
borough of Southwark</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by Anon, 1794.</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">Salop stayed popular until the early nineteenth century. It is sometimes said that it
fell out of favour through a growing belief that it was a cure for sexual diseases and
that as a result nobody wanted to be seen drinking it. In truth, it was superseded in
fashion by coffee. It was drunk in its final years only by the poorest of the working
classes. Among its most dogged consumers were the boys employed by sweeps to
climb chimneys, who found that the hot drink helped soften the mouth cancers from
which they frequently suffered.</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>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; color: #010101; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Bold; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">
<b>A whiter shade of pale.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> When I encountered </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>leucism</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> in some nature notes, I
naturally turned to the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for an explanation, only to find
to my mild surprise there was no entry for it. It looked like a formation from the
prefix </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>leuco-</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, meaning white, and a quick search using my favourite search engine
found this to be so, since </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>leucism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is a zoological term for the whole or partial loss
of pigmentation in an animal, leaving it white or patchy.</span></font></li>
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; color: #010101; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Bold; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">
<b>One-horned wonders. </b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">Unicorns are mythical beasts, except in Silicon Valley,
where they are privately owned high-tech companies valued at a billion dollars or
more. The term was coined by the American venture capitalist Aileen Lee in
November 2013, after she had discovered that only 0.07% of start-up software and
internet companies had grown so large, making them (almost) as rare as unicorns
and members of what she called the Unicorn Club. But times change and unicorns
of this specialised sort are no longer so rare (and more are in San Francisco than
Silicon Valley). </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Bloomberg Business</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> magazine has since invented </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>decacorn</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for
those valued at $10bn and the Canadian financial advisor Brent Holliday has
coined </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>narwhal</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (from the horned beast of northern waters, which has been called
the unicorn of the sea), for Canadian companies worth more than C$1bn.</span></font></li>
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; color: #010101; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Bold; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">
<b>Language evolves, sometimes quite quickly</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. In early June the veteran
left-wing British Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn joined the contest to become the next
leader of his party. His candidature has subsequently confounded critics and
attracted great public support that has moved him from outsider to odds-on
favourite. Language has followed, albeit based on well-worn suffixes, with
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Corbynites</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> being invented for his supporters, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Corbynmania</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (or more informally,
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Corbymania</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">) for the euphoric reception he’s been getting at packed-out meetings,
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Corbynomics</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for his economic policies and even </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Corbynate</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to convince
somebody to become a supporter. We shall know on 12 September, when the
result of the election is due to be announced, whether this rush of word creation
has been a predictor of success.</span></font></li>
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; color: #010101; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Bold; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">
<b>The Frozen Past.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> I learned from the 14 August issue of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Science</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> that climate
change is leading to a new scientific sub-discipline called </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>glacial archaeology</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.
This is the study of ancient human evidence exposed by climate change, which is
causing glaciers to retreat, exposing unique archaeological finds that have
remained frozen and well preserved for thousands of years. The best known are
ancient human remains, such as the Ice Man, Ötzi, found in the Tyrolean Alps in
1991 and a similarly well-preserved 500-year-old “Inca Ice Maiden” discovered in
1999 in Argentina. Evidence of human activity — mittens, shoes, weapons,
walking sticks — is turning up in southern Norway from the Stone Age, 7,000
years ago. The alpine regions of southern Yukon are giving up important
collections of ancient hunting implements, including a 10,000-year-old atlatl, or
throwing dart. Gruesomely, and oddly inaccurately, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Science</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> attached the term
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>glacial archaeology</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> to the bodies of modern mountain climbers which are
similarly being revealed by melting ice.</span></font></li>
<li style="margin-left: -7pt; margin-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; font-family: Symbol; color: #010101; "><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt; font-family:Georgia; color:#010101; font-weight:Bold; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">
<b>Hard strikes.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Swatting</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, as slang for a criminal activity, has been in the news
recently in the UK, explained as an unfamiliar term. It derives from SWAT,
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Special Weapons and Tactics</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, police units originally from the US that deal with
armed incidents. A person </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>swats</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> by making a hoax emergency call to the police to
say that armed intruders are at a property. The resulting call-out by an armed
response team, often during the night, causes deliberate distress and disturbance
for the intended victim and their family. The term </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>swatting</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> may go back a decade,
but became noticeable in printed sources from about 2011 as a result of celebrities
being swatted. The link between fly-swatting and victim-swatting makes the term
particularly appropriate in the minds of those who perpetrate the hoax.</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>Hairy eyeballs</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>From Elizabeth Ullman</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">: In a book by Cory Doctorow, I found a reference to
somebody giving the hairy eyeball to another person. This is a weird thing to do.
What does it mean and where does it come 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="Arial Black" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b>A. </b></span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">Put simply, to give somebody the hairy eyeball is to stare at them in an angry or
disapproving manner. Perhaps this was the example you read:</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 shantytowners were used to tourists in their midst. A few yardies
gave them the hairy eyeball, but then they saw Perry was along and they
found something else to pay attention to.</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>Makers</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by Cory Doctorow, 2010.</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">To </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>eyeball</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> somebody — without mention of hair — is an older American expression
meaning to stare at somebody, specifically to do so from a short distance away in an
intimidating or disapproving manner. This is the earliest example so far unearthed:</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"> He straightened up, holding in his right hand, by its long locks, a dead
head depending therefrom. Taking it gingerly, the Captain set it on the
table directly before Mr. Marshall East, and arranged it squarely. ...
“God!” burst from the lips of the man as he eyeballed his attendant.<br />
“Oh — well — you recognise him then.”</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>Natchez’s Pass</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by Frederic Remington, in </span><span style=" font-size:11pt">
<i>Harper’s Magazine</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, Feb. 1901. The
eyeballer here may be said to have been intimidated rather than intimidating.</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>Hairy eyeball</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> begins to show up in print in the early 1960s, though the saying is
almost certainly older. Its first appearance, in a widely syndicated press interview
with the American actress and comedian Carol Burnett, is intriguing because it has a
very different sense to the current one:</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">With her [Carol Burnett’s sister] everything is boys-boys-boys. She’s
really educated me. She was telling me about a boy looking at her and she
said, “He gave me the hairy eyeball.” That meant he liked her. But if she
didn’t like the boy she would say, “Oh, what a twitch!”</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>Galveston Daily News</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt"> (Texas), 7 Nov. 1961.</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">This might seem to have been a short-lived meaning, as two years later the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>New York
Times Magazine</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> stated firmly that to give the hairy eyeball “means that somebody
was disapproving.” However, in 1972, Zoe Brockman wrote in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Gastonia Gazette</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> of
North Carolina that she had just discovered this new expression and found that it
meant girls fluttering their eyelashes at boys. To her way of thinking, flirting “sounds
a lot better than this hairy eyeball bit.” Her view was presumably shared, as this
meaning died out in favour of the disapproving one.</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 seems highly plausible that eyelashes are the basis of the idiom. They may have
originally fluttered, but in the standard sense it instead means looking with narrowed
eyes through the lashes in displeasure or dislike.</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>Broom-squire</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 house recently advertised for sale near the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey mentioned
that it had once been used by </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>broom-squires</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. These weren’t the minor aristocracy of
rural places that the second half of their title suggests but poor rural artisans.</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 were famously evoked by Sabine Baring-Gould — Anglican priest, antiquarian
and novelist — in his 1896 novel </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Broom-Squire</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, set near the house:</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">At some unknown date squatters settled in the Punch-Bowl, at a period
when it was in as wild and solitary a region as any in England. They
enclosed portions of the slopes. They built themselves hovels; they
pastured their sheep, goats, cattle on the sides of the Punch-Bowl, and
they added to their earnings the profits of a trade they monopolized —
that of making and selling brooms. On the lower slopes of the range grew
coppices of Spanish chestnut, and rods of this wood served admirably for
broom-handles. The heather when long and wiry and strong, covered
with its harsh leafage and myriad hard knobs, that were to burst into
flower, answered for the brush. On account of this manufacture, the
squatters in the Punch-Bowl went by the designation of Broom-Squires.
They provided with brooms every farm and gentleman’s house, nay, every
cottage for miles around. A wagon-load of these besoms was often
purchased, and the supply lasted some years. </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">Broom-squires were necessarily restricted to the heathlands of England, such as the
Surrey Heaths of the story and the New Forest further south, though at times the
brush of the broom wasn’t heather but birch twigs, strictly speaking turning their
makers into </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>besom-squires</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a term that appears only rarely.</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>Squire</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is not a term of respect here. Alongside its sense of a country gentleman was a
contemptuous one that evolved from its oldest meaning of an attendant on a knight,
hence later merely a servant, and a lowly one at that. A close relative is the long
obsolete </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>apple-squire</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which may be politely defined as a male companion of a
woman of ill-repute, more accurately a pimp (we may guess the apple was a sly
reference to the biblical Eve, though the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> suggests a
woman’s breasts were meant). Broom-squires, often itinerant and always poor, had
an unsavoury reputation not so far removed from the then conventional view of
gypsies. </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 footnote in </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Sporting Review</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in December 1840 to an article about hunting
over yet another heath, in Somerset, described broom-squires negatively as “A variety
of the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>genus homo</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> found on Quantock, living on whortleberries, dwarf-birch, &c, &c.
Towards winter they frequent the lower grounds, and prey on game of all sorts,
preferring that of their own killing.” </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">Other reports mention the rude huts they inhabited. The thatched sixteenth-century
former gamekeeper’s cottage mentioned in the property advert was unlikely ever to
have been the home of broom-squires. However, it makes a good story for the sales
brochures.</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">Peter Moor sent a headline from the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>San Diego Examiner</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 10 August: “Lost dog
reunited with owner after 9 yrs speaks out.” </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">“Winner of the 2015 Fatuous Journalism Award?” was Grant Agnew’s comment on a
reporter at Channel 7 News in Brisbane, who solemnly told viewers that “infertility is
not hereditary”.</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 label on the frozen slush which Brandon Callison bought read, “Warning! This
product is for individual consumption and should not be re-sold after consumption.”</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">Channel CP24 in Toronto posted this weather forecast in its online section News You
Can Use on 25 August: “Environment Canada is calling for a mix of sun and cloud and
a 30 per cent chance of this afternoon.”</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">“That must have been worth watching,” wrote Mike Hannon of a headline on the
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> site on 19 August: “Determined koala chases woman on quad bike.”</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">This sounds about as likely as the image conjured up by a caption to a picture of the
Australian outback spotted by Ian Short in the SilkAir in-flight magazine: “Drift
across scenic parkland and see kangaroos bounding through the bush in a hot air
balloon.”</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 website of the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>East London & West Essex Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> headlined a story on 18
August: “Men caught on CCTV fly-tipping [illegally dumping] a fridge wanted by
Croydon Council”. We must hope the council got its fridge back.</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">Chris Buza tells us that Tasmania Police posted a Twitter message on 12 August:
“Police have received a report of a white ute [utility vehicle] carrying a ladder that
may have been used to impersonate police in the Hobart area.”</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">Spotted by Philip Stevens in the small ads in the Saffron Walden local newspaper in
Essex: “Dark Maroon high quality leather suite, 9 years old. Senior lady owner, well
cared for.” Nice about the lady, but what about the suite?</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>
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<b>About this newsletter:</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> World Wide Words is researched, written and published by
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