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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 3 October 2015.</i></span></font></p>
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<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b><u>http://wwwords.org/vroy</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>
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<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>Salop.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Jane Halsey commented on my piece last time: “I read with interest and
nostalgic pleasure your item on the second meaning of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, or </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>salep</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, and I hope to
return the pleasure by telling you that salep is still around, and still used to make a
restorative drink. In Sheepshead Bay, part of the Brooklyn, NY, waterfront, more or
less around the corner from the more famous Coney Island and Brighton Beach, there
are a lot of Turkish restaurants and cafés. When I lived there 12 years ago, one
traditional Turkish coffeehouse used to serve — but only in winter — a hot drink
made of salep, milk, and sugar; it was supposed to be very protective against the ills
flesh is heir to in cold weather. As I remember, it had a thick, slightly viscous texture
and tasted of vanilla — not surprising, since vanilla also comes from an orchid.”</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">“In the medical world,” Jim Muller wrote, “the male organ which lay people call a
testicle is referred to as the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>testis</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, plural </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>testes</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. But once something goes wrong with
it, or it has to be operated on, it turns into an orchid: </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>orchitis</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for inflammation of the
testis, and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>orchidectomy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>orchiectomy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for its surgical removal. Did the plant get its
name from the organ, or was it the other way round?” The twin tubers of orchids were
linked with the testicles in classical times and probably long before. The Greek word
for testicle was </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>orchis</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and this was borrowed in classical Latin for the plant because
of the association. So the name of the organ came first. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Testicle</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is from classical Latin
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>testis</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (as you say, still the medical term), literally “witness”, in reference to virility,
hence </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>testify</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>testimonial</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">Julia Cresswell pointed out, “As I’m sure lots of fans will tell you, the divine Terry
Pratchett, who had a liking for taking obscure words and repurposing them, used
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>saloop</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as soldiers’ slang for sweet, milky tea in </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Monstrous Regiment</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Which means
that this is probably now the best-known sense.” </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">Several readers queried the origin of the British term </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fly-tipping</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for dumping waste
illegally, which appeared in the 1960s. We Brits often tip waste rather than dump it,
most often on a rubbish tip. The first element, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fly</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, is also in the older </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fly-posting</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
putting up posters without permission. These usages are from the verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fly</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in that the
culprits tip and fly, or post and fly, the idea being of an action done surreptitiously
and rapidly, followed by the rapid departure of the perpetrators. Another British
sense of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fly</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, knowing or worldly-wise, as in “he's a fly one!”, may be lurking in there
as well.</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 on </b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><b><i>handraulic</i></b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><b>. </b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">Several readers commented further on terms for having to
fall back on more primitive methods of carrying out some operation. Gavin Deane
wrote: “The term I’m familiar with is </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>mandraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> rather than </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>handraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The image
for me has always been of a man having to do the work instead of a machine, rather
than the idea of working by hand, so I imagine </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>mandraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is a smashing together of
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>man</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hydraulic</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> rather than </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>manual</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hydraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">.” The word was submitted to
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Collins Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> recently but rejected because too few examples were on record,
though a search would certainly find enough to make it worth considering. Many
online dictionaries do include it and I suspect it’s more widely known in engineering
circles than the written evidence suggests. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Mandraulic i</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">s actually much older in the
written record than </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>handraulic</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">: </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 Droylsden they had no machine for handling coke. Everything was, as
one of the workmen had phrased it, “mandraulic.”</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 Gas Journal</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, 1928.</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>Leucism.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> I mentioned this in the last issue. John Rostron commented, “Wearing my
retired zoologist’s hat, I can tell you about leucism. As you say, it means white
plumage or colour. We had a white sparrow in our garden last year. We described it as
leucistic rather than albino because it had dark eyes. An albino would have had pink
eyes (with no pigmentation in the iris). Albinism is the total inability to produce
pigment. In leucism, the production of pigment is suppressed in the fur or feathers.”</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>Hairy eyeball.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> My comments last time brought many responses. Most pointed to an
early example in Arlo Guthrie’s famous </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Alice’s Restaurant</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 1967, a spoken blues
song in which he tells how a court conviction for littering leaves him seated with
hardened criminals at his draft-board screening: </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 said, “What were you arrested for, kid?” And I said, “littering”. And
they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball
and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, “And creating a nuisance.”
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the
bench, talking about crime ...</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">Others suggested that the meaning I gave for the verbal </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>eyeball</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> by itself was less than
the full story. “In American English, as I’ve experienced it,” John Burgess wrote, “to
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>eyeball</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> something — without preceding adjectives — is simply to look at for oneself,
to not take another’s assessment as necessarily valid. I might be interested in buying
something, but will insist on eyeballing it to make sure it is what is advertised or that
it will meet my needs. There is no built-in negative to it, just the fact that one will look
at it with some discrimination.” Michael Bawtree concurred: “Here in Nova Scotia,
and I think generally in Canada, to eyeball something means to measure it by eye as
opposed to using a ruler. They say that in wooden-boat-building days an experienced
shipwright could eyeball a length of wood as much as 35 feet long, and be accurate to
within an inch of its actual length. Tape measures for these lengths were often not
used at all.”</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>Atlatl.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Readers were quick to point out that an atlatl isn’t a throwing dart or spear
but a wooden rod with a hollow at one end. It’s used to throw the spear with more
force than is possible by hand alone.</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>Gibberish</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">To describe some attempt at communication as gibberish today is most likely to
disparage it as mere meaningless verbiage. But at its strongest, in its earlier days,
gibberish was speech that belonged to no known language. It was worse even than
calling it double Dutch or asserting that it was all Greek.</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">Etymologists have been scratching their heads over its origin almost since it first
appeared in the language in the middle 1500s. There’s a set of words — </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gibber</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>jibber</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>jabber</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gobble</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gab</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (as in </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gift of the gab</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">) — that may be related attempts at
imitating incomprehensible utterances. But how they arrived and in what order is
unknown. An eighteenth-century writer linked </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gibberish</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> with the French word </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>geber</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
meaning to cheat, which is now not thought to be in the least likely. Other experts
prefer an origin in an unrecorded Germanic word. </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 best of the invented stories about its origin is the one that Dr Samuel Johnson
subscribed to in his </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 1755: “[I]t is probably derived from the chymical
cant, and originally implied the jargon of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Geber</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and his tribe.” </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Geber</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is a Latinised
form of the name of a prolific eighth-century Arabic writer, Abu Musa Jabir ibn
Hayyan. His name is attached to hundreds of books, covering such an encyclopaedic
range that some scholars have argued he was the pseudonym of a syndicate or was
awarded authorship by posterity.</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">One work attributed to him is </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Book of Stones According to the Opinion of
Balinas</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. This says: “And, as always, we deliberately abrogate in one book what we say
in another. The reason is to baffle and lead into error everyone except those whom
God loves and provides for.” He seems to have succeeded splendidly in this aim, for
the work — like most of the writings attributed to him — is hard to understand, full of
mystical musings and technical terms that can’t easily be translated. Hence, the story
goes, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gebberish</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>gibberish</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. There is, you will appreciate, no truth in this.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">One notable point about </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gibberish</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is that it has shifted pronunciation. Today, it’s
almost always said like </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>jibberish</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, with a soft </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>g</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> sound. But at one time, it had a hard </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>g</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">;
some current dictionaries give that as a variant pronunciation though it survives only
to a small extent — a British survey in 1998 found the hard </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>g</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> form was used by only
4% of respondents. That version may suggest a closer connection with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gobble</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gab</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
and a lesser one with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>jibber</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>jabber</i></span><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>You snowing me?</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 1989, the American linguist Geoffrey Pullum wrote a sarcastic piece with the title
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, in which he derided and deconstructed claims
that the Inuit (as we have since learned to call them) had 50, or 100, or 200 words for
snow. The numbers have enlarged in the telling, starting with an article in 1940 by
Benjamin Lee Whorf (one half of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) and grossly extended
subsequently through sloppy research, careless copying, half-understood references
and the desire for a good story.</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 week this hoary old folktale has reappeared in headlines asserting that the Scots
language has more words for snow than the Inuit languages do. The stories below the
headlines explain that academics compiling the pilot </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Historical Thesaurus of Scots</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">
(which by no sort of coincidence was launched online the same day) have unearthed
421 words for snow used in the language from the earliest times to today. </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">Examples include </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>feefle</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (to swirl, as of snow round a corner), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>flindrikin</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a slight snow
shower), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>spitters</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (small drops or flakes of wind-driven rain or snow), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snaw-pouther</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
(fine driving snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>feuchter</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (of snow, to fall lightly, to come down in odd flakes),
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snaw-ghast</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (an apparition seen in the snow), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>blin-drift</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (drifting snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>sneesl</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (begin
to rain or snow), and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>skelf </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">(a large snowflake). </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 to deride the linguistic inventiveness of the Scots (or the Inuits), but English can
also claim an excellent count of snow-related language, even if we exclude words
borrowed in relatively recent times from other languages, like the Latinate </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>niveous</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">
(relating to snow), French </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>névé</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (uncompressed granular snow on a glacier) or the
originally Russian </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sastrugi</i></span></font><font face="Georgia" color="#333333" size="1">
<span style=" font-size:8pt"> </span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (parallel ridges formed on snow by the wind). If we’re
being strict about this exclusion, we ought also to reject </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>avalanche </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">from French (we
have our native </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snowslide</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, though it lacks the cataclysmic implications of the French
word). We might also feel obliged to exclude the special vocabularies of skiers, such
as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crust</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>powder</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, and the colloquialisms of Antarctic scientists, which include
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sago snow</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (very fine round balls of snow), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>piecrust</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (soft snow with a covering of hard
but brittle snow) and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>degomble</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (to clear snow off clothes or sled dogs).</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">Words such as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>slush</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sleet</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>blizzard</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> are common. We may legitimately include our
several dozen other compounds of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snow</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, such as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snowflake</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snowdrift</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snow-bank</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snowstorm, snow cover</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>snowscape</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snow cloud,</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snow-glare</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snow shower</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> and
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snow-driven</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, because that word-forming process is close to that used by the Inuits,
who can generate a large number of compounds from a few roots. </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">But there are many more: </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>shelling</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a fall of snow on the back of a sheep), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>flother </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">(a
flake of snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>windcrust </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">(a crust formed on the surface of soft snow by the wind),
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>hap</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a heavy fall of snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>besnow</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (to cover or whiten with snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>reek</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a pile of
snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>penitent</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a spike or pinnacle of compact snow that has been sculpted by the
elements), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>whited</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (covered with snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>blind-drift</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a drift of heavy snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>mafting</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">
(drifting snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>balter</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (snow adhering to horses’ hooves), </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>blunk</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (to snow lightly),
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>snittering</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (the fall of snow), </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>plodgy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (of deep snow that’s not yet trodden down),
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>oversnow</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (whiten over with snow), and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>hogamadog</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> (a huge ball of snow made by
boys rolling a snowball over soft snow, which is, you may like to know, defunct
Northumberland dialect).</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">If you conclude from your ignorance of the great majority of these that I’m cheating
by featuring rare, obsolete or dialectal words, you would be right, though the same
may be said of the Scots thesaurus. However, it makes a good story for the papers on
publication day, though linguists might wish that it hadn’t given yet more exposure to
that daft story about the Inuits.</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>Werifesteria</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">Leonie Bell wrote to ask about this word, which is circulating in social media. It’s said
to be Old English, meaning “to wander longingly through the forest in search of
mystery”. Its popularity suggests that it meets an inchoate spiritual desire for a term
to sum up a concept that hasn’t previously been possible to articulate briefly. To be
mundane about it, however, the evidence suggests it was created in late 2014 by an
unknown person out of thin air. No record of it exists before then and there’s no root
in Old English for forests or longing or wandering that matches anything in the word.
It’s an intriguing neologism, a minor mystery of its own, and I would love to uncover
the process of thought that led the anonymous author to create it.</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>Chi-ike</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 Adam Sampson</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">: My grandmother, who’s from North Kent, surprised us by
using the verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>chi-ike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> recently, meaning “banter”. We’d never heard of this before. It’s
in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, but with no etymology; are you able to shed any
light on this?</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Arial Black" color="#008000">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b>A.</b></span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> This takes me back. Having been brought up in London and being — I guess —
roughly contemporary with your grandmother, I’m familiar with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>chi-ike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. That you
don’t recognise it confirms that it has now vanished from the living 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">Banter is a good way to explain it: friendly but rough or heavy-handed mocking
exchanges between men, say on building sites, the factory floor or across the street.
However, in less friendly situations it can also be heckling and taunts. The first part,
by the way, rhymes with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sky </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">and the second with </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>like.</i></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 can’t give you a firm answer about its etymology — the experts are baffled and it
remains a puzzling mystery. There are one or two hints, but I need first to tell you
more about its history.</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 arose among London costermongers in the early to middle nineteenth century. The
date is uncertain because we encounter it first in the UK in John Camden Hotten’s
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Dictionary of Slang</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 1859: “Chi-ike, a hurrah, a good word, or hearty praise”, by
which date it had probably been around for decades. The 1870 edition adds that
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>chi-ike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was “a term used by the costermongers, who assist the sale of each other’s
goods by a little friendly, although noisy, commendation.” It’s also often said to have
been a hearty greeting.</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">Early appearances suggest that the quality of friendliness in the exchanges was often
lacking. It could imply jeering, mocking or making fun of somebody. This is the sense
that was taken to Australia, where it appears in print before it does in the UK, though
in a wildly variant spelling due to oral transmission of an unfamiliar term in accents
unfamiliar to an English visitor:</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 “skyhacking”, to which the police were subject ... was brought on
principally by their own individual overbearing conduct ... bullying and
swearing at every one.</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>What I Heard, Saw and Did at the Australian Gold Fields</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by C Rudston Read,
1853. </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 ditty in the London humorous magazine </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Punch</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 1887 told of a lad who liked to
visit the seaside because he could go on the pier to observe seasick passengers arrive
back from boat trips: “And it is sech a lark to chi-ike them, the best bit o’ fun of the
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">By 1871 the term had entered popular culture as one of the names of the Chinese
policemen in the pantomime </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. One instance was at
the Theatre Royal, Liverpool, in which the part was played by Che Mah, the “original
imperial Chinese dwarf”, claimed to be thirty inches in height and so “the smallest
man in the world”.</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">In Australia it has been spelled </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>chiak</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>chyack</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">. It reached New Zealand by the
1880s, additionally as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>shiack</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>shyack</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. My understanding is that it’s now virtually
unknown in these countries, too. Oddly, the various Oxford dictionaries prefer to
spell it </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>chi-hike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which has never been common. Do Oxford’s lexicographers have
special information or did someone assume Cockneys were dropping their </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>h</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">s and put
one in?</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 is sometimes suggested that it’s from English dialect, though nobody has pointed to
a specific word and there’s nothing relevant in the various glossaries. A writer to
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Notes and Queries</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 1898 wondered if </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>chi-ike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> could be an attempt to reproduce the
Cockney pronunciation of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>cheek</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to address a person saucily or cheekily. We may
choose to believe otherwise. A few early usages hint at a connection with the Jews of
London’s East End, some of whom were costermongers. This is probably just a guess,
based on the second element </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which at one time was a derogatory name for a Jew
(a form of the personal name Isaac, also as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ikey</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, or as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ikeymo</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, Isaac and Moses; the
American variant form </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>kike</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> wasn’t then known).</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:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">The British Museum’s exhibition on the Celts — from accounts of
the previews a
stunning show — has introduced me to the term </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Cardiac Celt</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. This is mainly an
American colloquial term and refers to a person who has no Celtic heritage but
who feels themself to be Celtic “in the heart”. It was invented by Dr Marion
Bowman, now Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, in a
paper of 1995. </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:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">A different short of show recently, New York fashion week, is reported to
have
featured a newish bit of insider slang —the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Guardian</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> called this year’s “breakout
buzzword” — </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>nodel</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. A </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>nodel</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is “not a model”, a non-professional, perhaps a friend
of the designer. The word can be traced back to 2011.</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:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">An article about the final season of the ITV period soap opera </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Downton Abbey</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
which recently began airing here in the UK, has introduced me to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>set jetting</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
which isn’t a Spoonerism but a play on words to describe the plans of visitors to
Britain to explore sites where films or television programmes have been shot (for
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Downton Abbey</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, the Hampshire stately home Highclere Castle). I was surprised
to discover the term isn’t new: it appeared in an article by Gretchen Kelly in the
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>New York Post</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in February 2008.</span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Wikipedia</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> says that another term is </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>location
vacation</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which has a ring of its own, though </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>set jetting</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> is better.</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:Normal; font-style:Normal; font-decoration:Normal">My weird word for September is </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>nixtamalization</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. It’s a process of preparing maize
by cooking it with an alkali such as lime. It’s better known in Spanish, particularly
Mexican Spanish, than in English; its origin is Nahuatl </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>nixtamalli</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a blend of
terms for maize dough and ashes.</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>Disburse versus disperse</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">Getting on for a decade ago, I wrote about the confusion between </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>reticent</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>reluctant</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. I was reminded about this by an email from Martin Turner: “I just came
across a misuse of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>disperse</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>disburse</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. A cursory check suggests that this may now
be the dominant usage. Do you know if </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>disburse</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is really on the way to obscurity?”</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 can find no evidence in printed works (such as newspapers and books) of this shift,
but these are to various extents edited by people who would be likely to pick up the
usage as a misspelling. A search of social media such as Twitter, however, shows that
phrases such as “disperse money” are often used where “disburse” is clearly meant. It
may be, as Peter Morris has suggested, that the curse of predictive texting is at work.
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Disburse</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is a fairly rare word which may not come up on some mobile phones when
users type in the letters.</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">However, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the difference has become blurred: the
two words are sufficiently close in both sense and spelling for the less common
member of the pair to </span></font><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">slowly slip </span></font><font face="Georgia">
<span style=" font-size:12pt">out of use. But not yet, I think!</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">On 19 September, Addeane Caelleigh and Michael Smiszek tell us, the online version
of the Dan Ariely weekly column in the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Wall Street Journal</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> featured this from a
reader: “On a recent business trip to San Francisco, I showed up early for a meeting,
so I went to wait in a coffee shop. A cup of coffee was $8, and it was full of young
people.” </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 same day, Norman Berns spotted, the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>New York Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> had an article about the
Republican nomination fight, which included this: “‘You’ve got a set of unintended
consequences that weren’t planned for,’ said Richard F. Hohlt, a Republican donor
and Washington lobbyist.”</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">Child abuse is a serious matter but taking it seriously might not have been helped by a
headline Jim Hart saw in </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Age</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of Melbourne on 17 September: “School to pay $1m
to abuse survivor”. </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">And finally, two examples of a classic error. Linda Fullerton heard this on CBS News
on 27 November: “And next, the story of a tiny baby born on a cruise ship weighing
one pound.” Henry Peacock found the other on the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Lancashire Evening Post</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> site on
19 September: “He pleaded guilty to breaching a byelaw by committing an indecent
act during a short court hearing.”</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>Support World Wide Words:</b></span><span style=" font-size:11pt"> </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">If you have enjoyed this newsletter and would like to
help defray its costs and those of the linked Web site, please visit the </span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/st"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>support page</u></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><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: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,
though any residual errors are the fault of the author. The linked website is
</span></font><a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>http://www.worldwidewords.org</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><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>Email addresses:</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They
should be sent to me at </span></font><a href="mailto:michael.quinion@worldwidewords.org"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<u>michael.quinion@worldwidewords.org</u></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">. I try to respond, but
pressures of time often prevent me from doing so. Items intended for </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Sic!</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> should be
addressed to </span></font><a href="mailto:sic@worldwidewords.org"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<u>sic@worldwidewords.org</u></span></font></a><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Questions for the Q&A section should be sent
to </span></font><a href="mailto:questions@worldwidewords.org"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>questions@worldwidewords.org</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">, not to the correspondence address.</span></font></p>
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