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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 9 January 2016.</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/pjps"><font face="Calibri" color="#0000ff">
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><b><u>http://wwwords.org/pjps</u></b></span></font></a><font face="Calibri" color="#008000"><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<b> <br />
and is also attached to this message 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">
<i>Check the recipient address if you reply to this message. For security reasons, it will
be rejected if it is sent to </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">worldwidewords@listserv.linguistlist.org</span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
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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>Thank your mother for the rabbits.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Bruce Warne provided a personal memory
of the expression: “When I was a little boy in Middlesbrough, in the very early 1950s,
my older sisters often visited an elderly neighbour. When they returned home, or
when he noticed them over the common garden fence, he always said ‘Thank your
mother for the rabbit’. I was only about four or five years old at the time, but the
expression is fixed in my memory as my sisters were perplexed by it, and constantly
referred to it.”</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">Edna Heard, formerly of Liverpool, commented that the expression “reminded me of
my father’s greeting when he met someone: ‘How’s your belly where the pig bit you?’
I often wondered if it was from an old music hall song. He was born in 1902.” That
sounds like a variation on the equally weird and mysterious one that my father used
to say: “How’s your belly off for spots?”</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>Thank your mother for the rabbits</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> put many readers in mind of a phrase in Douglas
Adams’s </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> books. Book four of the “trilogy” has it as
its title: </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. This was said by the dolphins as they
left Earth just before it was destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, so it was
intended literally, not as a nonsense phrase, though fans have adopted it as humorous
way to say goodbye. I would have included it in the original piece had I thought of a
neat way to work it 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">
<b>Goon.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Many American readers told me about Woody Guthrie’s </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Union Maid</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a labour
song written in 1940, which includes the line “goons and ginks and company finks”.
Someday I must write about </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>gink</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>fink</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">Australians introduced me to the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>goon bag</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>goon sack</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, a bulk dispenser of cheap
wine of variable quality. I know the device as a wine box, but Australian producers
seem to prefer </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>wine cask</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, which is a truly pretentious term for a plastic bag in a
cardboard container. Its construction led to the contents sometimes being identified
as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>château de cardboard</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Goon</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was used in Australia from the 1970s for cheap wine
in large glass bottles called flagons and was later transferred to wine in boxes. How
the wine got known as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>goon</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> is uncertain. Some argue that it’s from an Aboriginal
word for a pillow but the general feeling is that it’s a short form of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>flagon</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, perhaps
with a nod to the other senses of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>goon</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>Next issue.</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> I delayed publication of this issue a week beyond my self-imposed
schedule of publishing on the first Saturday of the month because of the holiday
break. The next issue is planned for 6 February.</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>Peradventure</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">The online </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Oxford English Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has added a note to each entry showing how
often it appears in current use. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Peradventure</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> appears in band 2, which the dictionary
says contains “terms which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown
to most people.” </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> mocked Labour MP Harriet Harman in April 2015 for
using it on a BBC television discussion programme (“if I make it absolutely clear,
beyond peradventure ...”). The </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> writer admitted he had to look it up.</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>Peradventure </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">means “uncertainty” or “chance”. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Beyond peradventure </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">(sometimes as
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>beyond a peradventure</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">) is a fixed phrase that can pop up from the subconscious of a
well-read but stressed person without allowing its owner time to think about whether
it would be understood. It may be rendered in everyday English as “beyond question”
or “without doubt”.</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 may be adventurous to use it but where’s the adventure in it? </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">Historically, there is none. It comes to us from Old French </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>per aventure</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, by chance.
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Aventure</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has had a mildly exotic history. We can trace it back to Latin </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>adventūra</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a
future form of the verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>advenīre</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to happen — so something that may occur. By the
time it reached Old French it could variously mean destiny or fate, a chance event, an
accident, fortune or luck. The sense of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>aventure </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">that was first taken into English was
that of a chance event or accident.</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 French word also came to be used in English as </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>adventure</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, also at first for some
chance event, but then for a risk of danger or loss. (Marine insurers still sometimes
use </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>adventure</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> to mean the time during which insured goods are at risk.) Its sense
shifted to a hazardous undertaking or audacious exploit — especially the sort carried
out by medieval knights — but much more recently softened to sometimes mean
merely a novel or exciting experience.</span></font></p>
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<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">An article about Chinese railways introduced me to </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ferroequinology</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, literally the
study of the iron horse. This mock Latinism turns out to have been around for
</span></font><a href="http://wwwords.org/yonk"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>yonks</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">. An early example is from the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Walla Walla Union Bulletin</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 19 August
1951. It noted that it was “among those easily drummed up latinizations designed
to lend a certain amount of prestige to any profession from medical specialist to
garbage collector” and described ferroequinologists as “avid fans, who really get a
kick out of the romance of the railroads, who thrill to the shotgun cough of the
engine on a long drag up a heavy grade or the raucous kaleidoscope of color that is
a hundred-mile-an-hour streamliner on the high iron.” Those were the days.</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">On 30 December, four new chemical elements were added to the periodic table,
bringing the total to 118 and instantly making all science textbooks out of date.
Like other elements created in accelerators and not present in nature, they have
existed only for small fractions of a second. The research institutes that made
them have yet to name them and they’re currently known by placeholder names
derived from Latin numerals: </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ununtrium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>ununpentium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ununseptium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, and
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ununoctium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118. The first of these was created in
the Nishina Center in Japan by a team from the Riken Institute, so the names
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>japonium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>rikenium</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>nishinarium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> are being considered. </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">Watching dramatisations of historical events on television often makes me
wince
internally at anachronistic word usage. An example appeared in the current BBC
adaptation by Andrew Davies of Tolstoy’s </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>War and Peace</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Prince Vassily Kuragin
tells Pierre Bezukhov that one doesn’t own possessions but </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>curates</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> them for one’s
heirs and generations to come. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Curate</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> has been fashionable in the past decade in
the broad sense of editing, selecting or presenting anything at all, from blogs to
playlists to trendy menus to corporate mission statements. (</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on 29
December defined </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>curated</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> sarcastically as “Assembled, cobbled together with no
care or talent or purpose”.) The verb was previously limited to the function of
museum curators — preserving and studying objects. Though Kuragin’s meaning
is close to this, the verb isn’t recorded before 1935, so definitely not right for 1805.</span></font></li>
</ul>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Sconce</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"> </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>From Bill Waggoner</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">: We are doing some home renovations and were looking at
lighting options. Sconces were one of the items we considered. I was curious what the
origin of the word is but when I looked it up the meanings were a weird collection: a
wall bracket, a skull, or a punishment. Strange dictionary-fellows indeed. Can you
help clear it up?</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"> It’s even more weird than those suggest, because the word originates in the Latin
verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>abscondere</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to hide, from which we also get the verb </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>abscond</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, originally and
specifically to flee into hiding.</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 Latin the term </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>absconsa laterna</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> literally meant “hidden lantern”. We used to call
this in English a dark lantern, a portable device with a door that could be closed to
obscure the light when needed. The Latin name was shortened to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>absconsa</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and after
many centuries became the Old French </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>esconse</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. When it turns up in English at the
end of the fourteenth century, as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, it referred to a portable lantern with a
handle. Not long after, the name was transferred to a wall bracket for holding a
candle, often with a mirror behind it to reflect the light. The light source is nowadays
often electricity but the name stuck.</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 sixteenth century, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> became a slang term for a head:</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">A curled Sconce he hath, with angrie frowning browe.</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>Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">, by George Turberville, 1567.</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">Most dictionaries avoid explaining how this came about. However, there was another
meaning of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, one you don’t mention, for an earthwork or fortification. This has
a different and unconnected origin, the old Dutch </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>schans</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, brushwood. It could be a
bundle of sticks, a screen of brushwood for soldiers or a protective earthwork made
from gabions, cylindrical baskets filled with earth. (It’s also the source of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ensconce</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, to
settle somebody in a safe or comfortable place.) In this context, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> seems to have
shifted to refer slangily to a type of helmet as protection for the head and was then
transferred to the head itself. This association was made specific in the 1823 edition
of the slang dictionary </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Lexicon Balatronicum</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">: “</span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The head, probably, as being
the fort and citadel of a man: from sconce, an old name for a fort.” Despite some
dictionaries, it doesn’t seem often to have been used for a skull, if ever. The other
linked figurative meaning was of a function of the head, one’s intelligence, brain or
native wit. A </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>pig-sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was once a foolish or pigheaded person.</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">So far, so good. Now to the punishment sense, which is associated specifically with
the University of Oxford. This is the way it was described by John Camden Hotten in
the 1874 edition of his </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Slang Dictionary</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">
<b>Sconce</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to fine. Used by Dons as well as undergrads. The Dons fined or
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt">sconced</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> for small offences; e.g., five shillings for wearing a coloured coat
in hall at dinner-time. Among undergrads a pun, or an oath, or an
indecent remark, was </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">sconced</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> by the head of the table.</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">Sconcing still exists in some colleges in Oxford in a minor way; a piece in the student
newspaper </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Cherwell</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 2007 noted it was most common among rowers (that is,
sporting persons in boats, not those of a quarrelsome disposition) and one in </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The
Telegraph</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in 2013 associated it especially with </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>crewdates</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, social events for Oxford
sports teams.</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 sense puzzles etymologists. A clue may be in a work by a contemporary of
Shakespeare named John Minsheu; in 1617 he published a monumental dictionary in
eleven languages, which was, incidentally, the first book ever sold by subscription. He
defined </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> to mean “to set up so much in the buttery book upon his head to pay
for his punishment”. The buttery book was the ledger that itemised purchases of food
and drink by undergraduates from the college buttery (which has nothing to do with
butter but was historically the place where the butts, large barrels, of ale were kept).
The book would seem from this to have also recorded fines. “Upon his head” we may
presume refers to the entry in the book which was headed with his name. So this
usage may be linked to the head sense of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</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 same sense appears in another long-obsolete phrase, </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>build up a sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to run up
a big bill at an inn or tavern, especially with the intention of never paying it, and in
the related verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sconce</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, to defraud somebody.</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>Orchidelirium</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">This word turned up in a review I read over the holiday break of Richard Mabey’s new
book, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The Cabaret of Plants</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. Checking my files, I found that I’d seen it in two earlier
articles in British newspapers in the past decade. Both say, as Mabey does, that it was
a word invented in the nineteenth century as a derogatory reference to the obsessive
collection of rare orchids.</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 search found other examples in British and American books and newspapers, most
of which likewise suggested that it was well over a century old. The earliest was in the
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Daily Herald</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of Chicago in April 1999: “the Victorians coined a word, ‘orchidelirium,’
for their peculiar obsession.” However, searches in databases of nineteenth-century
books and newspapers in Britain, North America, Australia and New Zealand failed to
find a single example. Nor was there any usage on record of the full phrase </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>orchid
delirium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, though </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>orchid mania</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was used. </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">What struck me also was how uncommon a coinage of the period it would have been.
Though blended words — what Lewis Carroll called portmanteau terms — were
invented and used to some extent, they weren’t usually devised by joining the final
letter of one word to the first letter of the second.</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">So if it wasn’t Victorian, where did 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="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">The clue came in the journal </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Biology Digest</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> of 1986. A reference there led me to an
article in the July-August 1986 issue of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Garden</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> magazine, published for the New
York Botanical Garden. It was about the avid orchid collectors of the nineteenth
century and was written by Peter Bernhardt, now Professor of Biology at St Louis
University, Missouri. </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:0mm; margin-right:0mm; text-indent:0mm; margin-top:2.11mm; margin-bottom:0.00mm;"><font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt">His article was entitled </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Orchidelirium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. However, he tells me he didn’t invent the
word: it was most probably coined by the editor of the magazine, the late Ann
Botshon.</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 yet another example of people copying from one another. Somebody must have
mistakenly thought Prof Bernhardt had encountered the word during his research.
Others reproduced the assumption. As time passed, the link with the original article
was lost and the factoid about when </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>orchidelirium</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> was invented took on the status of
received truth.</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">[</span>
<span style=" font-size:11pt"><i>My thanks to Professor Bernhardt and to Esther Jackson of the New York Botanical
Garden’s library for their assistance with this article. The image is reproduced by kind
permission of The LuEsther T Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.</i></span><span style=" font-size:11pt">]</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>Words of the Year 2015</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">After Oxford's choice of a non-word — an </span></font>
<a href="http://wwwords.org/emoji"><font face="Georgia" color="#0000ff"><span style=" font-size:12pt"><u>emoji</u></span></font></a>
<font face="Georgia"><span style=" font-size:12pt"> — for their word of the year, the
editors of the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Merriam-Webster Dictionary</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> followed suit. They noted that internet
users have been searching its site in their masses this year for words such as </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fascism</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">,
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>racism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>terrorism</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>feminism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>socialism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. So they chose the suffix </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>-ism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as their
Word of the Year 2015. </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 ending has an wide range of associations, such as a distinctive practice, belief,
system, or philosophy, often a political ideology or artistic movement. </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Socialism</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"> was
the form most often searched for, mainly because of the assertion by the Democrat
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that he’s an adherent of democratic socialism. </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">Merriam-Webster’s editors commented that there are 2733 English words ending in
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>‑ism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> in their unabridged dictionary, surely enough for everybody to find something to
suit them. Incidentally, the word </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ism</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as a mildly disparaging term is recorded from as
long ago as 1680.</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 of the Year 2015 from the Australian National Dictionary Centre strictly
speaking also isn’t a word: it’s the phrase </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sharing economy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The Centre defined it as
“an economic system based on sharing of access to goods, resources, and services,
typically by means of the Internet” and commented that “it had a special prominence
in Australia in 2015 partly due to the impact of debates around the introduction of
ridesharing service Uber into Australia, which has been seen as threatening the taxi
industry.”</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 American Dialect Society gently mocked Oxford’s choice by adding the category
of Most Notable Emoji to its nominations for Words of the Year. These were voted on
by participants at its annual meeting in Washington DC on 8 January.</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 of the Year 2015 went by a landslide to </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>they</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, the gender-neutral singular
pronoun, often used when the speaker doesn’t know the gender of the person being
referred to, but also more recently as a conscious choice by a person who rejects the
traditional gender binary of </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>he</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>she</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. After years of controversy the usage is at last
becoming widely accepted— late last year Oxford Dictionaries had it as one of their
runner-up words of the year and Bill Walsh, the style editor of the </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Washington Post</i></span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt">,
officially adopted it for his newspaper. </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 other voting, the Most Creative word went to </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ammosexual</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a firearms enthusiast;
Most Unnecessary was </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>manbun</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a man’s hairstyle in a bun; the Most Outrageous
award went to </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fuckboy</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a derogatory term for a man who behaves objectionably or
promiscuously; the Most Euphemistic award went to the phrase </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>netflix and chill</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a
sexual come-on masked as a suggestion to watch Netflix and relax; the word Most
Likely to Succeed was the verb </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>ghost</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,</span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i> </i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">to abruptly end a relationship by cutting off
communication, especially electronically; the Least Likely to Succeed category was
won by </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>sitbit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, a device that rewards a sedentary lifestyle, a play on </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>fitbit</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The winner
of the new category Most Notable Emoji was the image of an </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>eggplant</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> or </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>aubergine</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">,
mainly because in social media it’s often sexual innuendo for the penis. The other new
category this year was Most Notable Hashtag, building on the success last year of
</span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>#blacklivesmatter</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> as Word of the Year. The winner was </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>#SayHerName</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, the Twitter
call to bring attention to police violence against black women.</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">At the same meeting, the American Name Society chose its Names of the Year. The
brand name of the year was </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Charlie Hebdo</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, the French satirical magazine that lost
many staff members in a shooting a year ago; the place name or toponym award went
to the new name of the tallest mountain in the US: </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Denali</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, formerly Mt McKinley; the
personal name (or anthroponym if you’re feeling highfalutin) was that of the
transgender person </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Caitlyn Jenner</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">; and the fictional name category was won by three
individuals from the new </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Star Wars</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> film, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
<i>Rey</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">, </span><span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Finn</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> and </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Poe</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">. The Grand Name of the
Year award went to Caitlyn Jenner.</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>
<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">Crows are renowned for being clever, but this headline in the </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>Los Angeles Times</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt">
on 24 December startled Dean Riley: “Wild crows use tiny cameras to film
themselves using tools.”</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">According to the menu of the Sun restaurant in Dedham, England, as seen by
Alan
M Stanier: “Our coffee comes direct from two growers in El Salvador who are paid
50% more than Fairtrade and roasted by Tate Gallery’s Phil Gevaux and Hamish
Anderson.”</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">The law moves at a gentle pace in Gloucester, where on 28 December John Gray
spotted a headline in the local newspaper: “Speeding drivers caught in Seymour
Road as police launch 20mph crackdown.”</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">Irene Johnson submitted an email from the UK firm Cotton Traders she received
on 9 December: “We have some unclaimed £5 off vouchers down here. We
thought it would be great to offer these to our wonderful customers before they
expire as part of the 12 deals of Christmas campaign.”</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">In South Africa, Gerhard Burger found this on a Port Elizabeth-based community
website just before Christmas: “Nearly 10 000 vehicles were screened for alcohol
use while 194 were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.”</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">The wonders of spellchecking: David Overton found this on the front page of </span>
<span style=" font-size:12pt"><i>The
Telegraph</i></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> on 7 December: “Britain’s response to terror attacks was called into
question last night after uninformed officers were left to deal with a suspected
Islamist fanatic.”</span></font></li>
</ul>
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<span style=" font-size:14pt"><b>Useful information</b></span></font></div>
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<b>About this newsletter:</b></span><span style=" font-size: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,
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<b>Email addresses:</b></span><span style=" font-size:12pt"> Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They
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