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<p
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Wide Words</p>
<p style="color:green;margin:0 0 6pt
0;font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:bold;line-height:14.0pt;">Saturday
2 July 2016.</p>
<p style="color:green;margin:6pt 0 18pt
0;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-weight:bold;">This
newsletter is also available online at <a
href="http://wwwords.org/tfzu"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wwwords.org/tfzu">http://wwwords.org/tfzu</a></a><br>
and is also attached to this message as a PDF file containing
illustrations.</p>
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<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:green;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:14pt;font-weight:bold;margin:18pt
0 0 0;">Feedback, Notes and Comments</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;"><b
style="margin-right:12px;">Change in format.</b> Following my
move from Pegasus Mail to the Thunderbird email client earlier
this year, a few readers have reported problems viewing the HTML
version of this newsletter. I have traced these to errors
introduced when pasting the text from Microsoft Word into
Thunderbird. This issue has been sent using a different method,
which I hope resolves the problems.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;"><b
style="margin-right:12px;">By hook or by crook.</b> Following
the piece last time on this idiom, several readers updated me on
the geography of the tale about the invasion of Ireland through
Waterford. They pointed out that a village called Crook does
exist, on the west bank of the estuary of the River Barrow, while
Hook is on the east side.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">Hilary
Maidstone, among others, suggested that <em>hook</em> and <em>crook</em>
aren’t so closely connected in meaning as I had implied. “One
thing I thought of as is that a <em>hook</em> in East Anglia —
and possibly elsewhere for all I know — is a sharp tool, either
for grass (a curved blade similar to a sickle on a short handle)
or for hedging (a billhook or <em>billock</em> in Norfolk
dialect), a hooked blade on a short handle.” A tool very similar
in shape to the modern billhook appears several times in medieval
illustrations of pruning grapevines and fruit trees.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:green;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:14pt;font-weight:bold;margin:18pt
0 0 0;">Yarely</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">Pronounced
/ˈjɛːli/</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">Alfred
Tennyson, poet laureate during much of Queen Victoria’s reign,
preferred words of native English origin over those from French
and Latin. He’s credited with bringing many old words back into
the language. However, his son Hallam wrote a memoir in which he
recalled his father regretting that he had never employed <em>yarely</em>.
</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">If
he had, his readers would have been as baffled by it as they were
with some of his other reintroductions, because by the nineteenth
century <em>yarely</em> had fallen out of the standard language,
though surviving in some dialects. A rare notable earlier usage
that century was in a work by another resurrector of antique
words:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">“Yarely!
yarely! pull away, my hearts,” said the latter, and the boat
bearing the unlucky young man soon carried him on board the
frigate.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Waverley</em>, by Sir Walter
Scott, 1814.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">From
this, we may guess, correctly, that it means briskly, promptly or
quickly. Its source is the Old English <em>gearolíce</em>,
related to <em>gearu</em>, ready or prepared. </p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist and songwriter
Charles Mackay (best known for his three-volume work of 1841, <em>Memoirs
of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, and the Madness of Crowds</em>)
included <em>yarely</em> in his <em>Lost Beauties of the English
Language</em>, quoting examples from three Shakespeare plays,
including this one:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">Speak
to the mariners: fall to’t, yarely, or we run <br>
ourselves aground: bestir, bestir.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The Tempest</em>, by William
Shakespeare, 1611.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">Despite
the nautical nature of these two examples, it wasn’t specifically
a sailors’ word. However, the Old English <em>gearu</em> became <em>yare</em>,
which is still in the seafaring language of North America, meaning
a ship that is quick to the helm and is easily handled or
manoeuvred.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:green;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:14pt;font-weight:bold;margin:18pt
0 0 0;">Upset the apple cart</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:6px;"><span
style="background-color:#008000;color:#ffffff;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1.1em;margin-right:6px;padding-left:4px;padding-top:1px;padding-right:4px;padding-bottom:1px;">Q</span>
<em>From John Hathaway</em>: I know that somebody who says the
apple cart has been upset means that somebody’s plans have been
ruined, but why an apple cart rather than anything else?</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:6px;"><span
style="background-color:#008000;color:#ffffff;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1.1em;margin-right:6px;padding-left:4px;padding-top:1px;padding-right:4px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>
A figurative sense of <em>apple cart</em> has been around since
the eighteenth century. For an unknown but probably trivial reason
it’s actually slightly older than the literal use of the phrase.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">In
the earlier part of its life, the most common sense of <em>apple
cart</em> in Britain was the human body. Francis Grose recorded
<em>down with his apple-cart</em> in his <em>Dictionary of the
Vulgar Tongue</em> as meaning to knock a man down; that was in
1788, although the same idea is on record from about 1750. It
later became known in Australia:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">He
slapped her face, she seized a broomstick, and he capsized her
“apple cart,” and broke two pannels [<em>sic</em>] of the door.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The Sydney Gazette and New South
Wales Advertiser</em>, 16 Apr. 1833.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
etymologist Walter Skeat wrote in 1879, “I think the expression is
purely jocular, as in the case of ‘bread-basket,’ similarly used
to express the body.”</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
form you’re referring to also appears early on. There’s an
isolated example on record from Massachusetts in 1788 but it only
starts to appear on both sides of the Atlantic in any significant
way in the late 1830s:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">They
won’t encourage trade, or commerce, or manufacturing — because
they know that trade, and commerce, and manufacturing would create
a power right off that would upset their apple-cart.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Logansport Canal Telegraph</em>
(Indiana), 23 Sep. 1837.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">The
Whigs, Gentlemen, cannot object to the soundness of our old
authorities in law, because, you know, they themselves are very
fond of referring to the same source, when it suits their
purposes; and to deny those authorities, therefore, would be at
once to upset their own apple cart.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The Champion and Weekly Herald</em>
(London), 16 Apr. 1837.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">We
may assume it was around in the spoken language in Britain,
lurking out of sight, for longer than the written record shows. It
continued in parallel with the human-body sense for most of the
1800s but took until the early twentieth century to become widely
popular and to shift from slang to colloquial usage. An early
stimulus may have been the widely reported comment by Cecil
Rhodes, then prime minister of the Cape colony, that the Jameson
Raid of 1895 had “upset the apple cart”. The evidence suggests a
peak in the 1930s, possibly helped along by George Bernard Shaw’s
play <em>The Apple Cart</em>, first produced in 1929.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
shift in sense from a slang term for the body to ruining a
person’s plans seems to have been via an intermediate sense of
suffering a personal accident, either involving some external
object or simply falling over:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">The
bed groaned for a moment under the load, and the next moment the
strings snapt like tow, and down came the bed, bedding, Dutchman
and all, plump into the middle of the cabin floor. ... “You've
upset your apple-cart now,” says I as soon as I’de [<em>sic</em>]
done laughing.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Huron Reflector</em> (Ohio), 3
Apr. 1832.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">If
a child falls down you first inquire if he is much hurt. If he is
merely a little frightened you say, “Well, never mind, then;
you’ve only upset your apple-cart and spilt all the gooseberries.”
The child perhaps laughs at the very venerable joke, and all is
well again.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Notes and Queries</em>, 13 Dec.
1879.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">We’re
quite unable to say why some unknown person 250 years ago selected
an apple cart as a metaphor for the body because there’s no
written evidence on which we can base any reasoned explanation.
But we can understand why the idea remains popular in the sense of
ruining some undertaking: the visual image of a cart laden with
apples overturning — with all its implications for mess,
inconvenience and financial loss — is too striking to lose.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">It
might be worth ending by mentioning an arcane suggestion for the
origin of one sense. About 200 BCE, the comic playwright Plautus
wrote a line in his play <em>Epidicus</em> that implied Romans
had a proverb, <em>perii, plaustrum perculi</em>, which may be
loosely translated as “I’m done for! I’ve upset my wagon!” Could
this have been the stimulus for the English idiom, with some
jesting Latin scholar turning the Roman wagon into a very English
apple cart? It’s a nice story, but I suspect that native English
wit was capable of creating the image without resorting to
second-hand humour.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:green;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:14pt;font-weight:bold;margin:18pt
0 0 0;">Snooter</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:6px;"><span
style="background-color:#008000;color:#ffffff;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1.1em;margin-right:6px;padding-left:4px;padding-top:1px;padding-right:4px;padding-bottom:1px;">Q</span>
<em>From Ali Nobari</em>: Wodehouse uses the word <em>snooter</em>,
presumably schoolboy slang, but what does it mean?</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:6px;"><span
style="background-color:#008000;color:#ffffff;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1.1em;margin-right:6px;padding-left:4px;padding-top:1px;padding-right:4px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>
It’s possible to get an impression of the meaning of this very
unusual word from the contexts in which P G Wodehouse uses it. A
couple of examples:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">Those
who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that in his journey
through life he is impeded and generally snootered by about as
scaly a platoon of aunts as was ever assembled. <br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Very Good, Jeeves!</em>, by P G
Wodehouse, 1930.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">Snootered
to bursting point by Pop Bassetts and Madeline Bassetts and Stiffy
Byngs and what not, and hounded like the dickens by a remorseless
Fate, I found solace in the thought that I could still slip it
across Roderick Spode.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The Code of the Woosters</em>, by
P G Wodehouse, 1938.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">To
be snootered is to be harassed, vexed or tormented.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">We
might indeed reasonably assume that the word is slang from
Wodehouse’s schooldays at Dulwich College in south London. But we
would be wrong. We would be equally wrong to connect it with the
similar <em>snooker</em>, whether the game or the derived verb
meaning to put somebody in an impossible position or to trap or
entice them. Wodehouse actually borrowed <em>snooter</em> from US
slang during his early years in that country.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;"><em>Snoot</em>
as a noun has been recorded there since the 1860s. It’s a local
pronunciation variation of standard English <em>snout</em>, a
word of Germanic origin that has been in the language since about
1200. The American version was looked down on:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;"><em>Snoot</em>,
of the human face or nose, apparently the same word as <em>snout</em>.
A vulgar word in New England. ‘I’ll bu’st your snoot’; ‘hit him on
the snoot’. As a verb in ‘to snoot round’, i.e. to nose around, it
is reported from Poughkeepsie, N.Y.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Dialect Notes</em>, 1890.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
verb evolved to mean treating a person scornfully or with disdain,
leading to the adjective <em>snooty</em> — snobbish, supercilious
or stuck-up, figuratively with one’s nose in the air in a superior
way. </p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">Wodehouse
created <em>snooter</em> from <em>snoot</em>, presumably
developing it from the sense of snubbing someone; he used it often
enough — in at least eight of his books as well as in
correspondence — that he became identified with it, so much so
that the <em>Oxford English Dictionary</em>’s entry for the word
has examples only from him. A couple of writers have since
employed it, but it’s very rare.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:green;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:14pt;font-weight:bold;margin:18pt
0 0 0;">Fard</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">I
was consulting an old book when the Empress Poppaea’s name came
up. You surely remember her: second wife of the Emperor Nero in
ancient Rome, notorious for her intrigues, and commemorated in the
clerihew:
</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">The
Empress Poppaea<br>
Was really rather a dear;<br>
Only no one could stop her<br>
From being improper.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
context was her skincare routine, which was like nothing seen in
Rome before. It wasn’t just the daily baths in asses’ milk, but
also the then newfangled overnight face packs of damp barley meal,
followed by the daytime application of chalk and white lead. </p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
book introduced me to <em>fard</em>, to paint the face, and to
the noun <em>fard</em>, a cosmetic. </p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">Another
example:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">I
think, that your sex make use of fard and vermillion for very
different purposes; namely, to help a bad or faded complexion, to
heighten the graces, or conceal the defects of nature, as well as
the ravages of time.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Travels Through France and Italy</em>,
by Tobias Smollett, 1766.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">English
borrowed <em>fard</em> from French in the sixteenth century but
abandoned it again in the nineteenth. Though <em>fard</em> would
be a usefully brief alternative to “put on one’s makeup”, the
chances of hearing comments like “I farded in the train on the way
to work” are rather small.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">If
you know French, you may have guessed what this word means, since
it’s still in that language in the sense of cosmetics or makeup
(and it does have a verb meaning to put on makeup: <em>farder</em>).
Nobody knows for sure where the French word came from: one
suggestion is the Old High German <em>farwjan</em>, to colour,
ancestor of the modern German verb <em>färben</em>. In its early
years in French <em>fard</em> could figuratively suggest a
misleading appearance or language, which survives in the idioms <em>parler
sans fard</em>, to speak candidly or openly, and <em>vérité
sans fard</em>, the plain or unvarnished truth.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;"><em>Fard</em>
in English often specifically meant a white face paint (hence
Smollett’s “fard and vermillion”, contrasting white and red). It
was either the ancient unguent of lard mixed with white lead or a
similar concoction based on a brilliant white compound of bismuth,
sometimes called <em>blanc de fard</em>. Both were poisonous and
long-term use damaged the skin.</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">The
word occasionally appears as a deliberate archaism:</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin-left:24px;margin-top:6px;margin-right:80px;margin-bottom:6px;font-size:11pt;line-height:14pt;">A
trio of women holding hands, gaunt and thin as the inmates of a
spitalhouse and attired the three alike in the same cheap finery,
their faces daubed in fard and pale as death.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Cities of The Plain</em>, by
Cormac McCarthy, 1998. A <em>spitalhouse</em>, where <em>spital</em>
is a shortening of <em>hospital</em>, is a place set aside for
the diseased or destitute, usually of a lower class than a
hospital.</span></p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:green;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;line-height:14pt;font-weight:bold;margin:18pt
0 0 0;">Sic!</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">•
A mysterious headline from the <em>Western Mail</em> of 4 June
the following headline left Kate Lloyd Jones’s son puzzled about
the size of the capsules mentioned: “Parents in laundry capsules
‘mistaken for sweets’ alert.”</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">•
A widely reproduced item from the news agency AP, which Brian
McMahon saw on 4 June, implied remarkable medical self-help at a
car rally accident: “One spectator at the event ... broke an arm,
while a woman received multiple injuries and a third person was
forced to amputate a leg.”</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">•
A geologically improbable opening to a report of 8 June in the <em>Hamilton
Spectator</em> of Ontario, Canada, understandably intrigued Ari
Blenkhorn: “It had been a long drive. ... By 2:50 a.m. Monday
morning, though they couldn’t see them in the darkness, the
rolling hills of Alabama gently rocked the car.” </p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">•
Ian Harrison received a spam email from a South African
cheap-deals site on 15 June, promoting a manual meat grinder which
it claimed, “Can Be Used To Grind An Assortment Of Meats And
Ingredients Made Of Cast Iron.”</p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">•
A headline on 9 June in the <em>Dominion-Post</em> of Wellington,
New Zealand, attracted Michel Norrish’s attention: “Grapes grown
in graveyard produce a full-bodied wine”. </p>
<p
style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;">•
On 14 June, Alec Cawley found that the BBC news website had this
about a banned Malaysian Airline: “It has two Boeing 737-400
planes in its fleet, each able to carry about 180 passengers,
eight pilots and 50 crew.” Overstaffed, perhaps?</p>
<p style="font-weight:bold;margin:18pt 0 0
0;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;color:green;">Useful
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<p
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0 0 0;"><b>About this newsletter:</b> World Wide Words is
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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
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