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<title>World Wide Words Newsletter 930</title>
<p style="font-family:Calibri,Times New
Roman,serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:30pt;color:#008000;text-align:left;margin-bottom:0;">World
Wide Words</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-style:italic;font-size:17pt;color:#008000;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:12px;">Issue
930: Saturday 3 December 2016</p>
<p style="font-family:Calibri,Times New
Roman,serif;font-size:14pt;color:#008000;text-align:left;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:36px;">This
issue is also available <a href="http://www.wwwords.org/momn"
style="text-decoration:none;">online</a>
</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:12pt;color:#008000;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:12px;">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;">Several
medical experts commented that the definitions I quoted from
dictionaries for the word <em>chalazion</em> last time were
incorrect. I’ve modified the piece, which you will find <a
href="http://wwwords.org/chlzn">on the website</a>.</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
piece on <em>Boxing Day</em> below is a revision of one I wrote
in December 2002.</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;">Because
of the Christmas break and other matters I cannot say when the
next issue will appear.</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:12pt;color:#008000;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:12px;">Not
my pigeon</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 Helen Mosback</em>: I have just read a serialised
version of John Rowland’s <em>Calamity in Kent</em>. It
includes this: “In fact, it’s your pigeon, as they say in the
civil service.” I was wondering if you could shed any light on
the expression <em>it’s your pigeon</em>? I have to admit to
being quite taken by the Polish expression <em>not my circus,
not my monkeys</em> to indicate that something is not one’s
problem, and would be very happy should I have found an equally
enchanting English expression!</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>
Readers may not be familiar with John Rowland, a little-known
and neglected British detective-story writer who published <em>Calamity
in Kent</em> in 1950. The British Library has republished it
this year in its Crime Classics series. </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
date of his book is significant, since at that time the
expression was more familiar to people in the countries of what
is now the Commonwealth than it is now. It had come into the
language around the end of the nineteenth century.</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
idiom suggests something is the speaker’s interest, concern,
area of expertise or responsibility. This is a recent British
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;">If
posh people aren’t your pigeon, the correspondence on display in
this book will be a massive bore and irritation.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The Times</em>, 8 Oct. 2016.</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;">It
also turns up in the negative in phrases such as “that’s not my
pigeon”, denying involvement or responsibility in some matter.</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
your analogy with the Polish expression, the pigeon here isn’t
the animal. It’s a variant form of <em>pidgin</em>. The name is
said to derive from a Chinese attempt to say the word <em>business</em>;
the original pidgin, Pidgin English, was a trade jargon that
arose from the seventeenth century onwards between British and
Chinese merchants in ports such as Canton. The word <em>pidgin</em>
is recorded from the 1840s and has become the usual linguistic
term for any simplified contact language that allows groups that
don’t have a language in common to communicate.</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;">This
is an early example of <em>pidgin</em> being used in the
figurative sense:
</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;">We
agreed that if anything went wrong with the pony after, it was
not to be my “pidgin.”<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The North-China Herald</em>
(Shanghai), 1 Aug. 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;">Most
early examples in English writing were spelled that way, though
by the 1920s the <em>pigeon</em> form was being used by people
who didn’t make the connection with the trade language.</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:12pt;color:#008000;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:12px;">Subnivean</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;">Classical
scholars will spot the wintry associations of this word; it
derives from Latin <em>nix</em> for snow, which becomes <em>niv-</em>
in compounds such as <em>nivālis</em>, snowy or snow-covered.
Etymologists point out that the English <em>snow</em> and the
Latin <em>nix</em> both ultimately derive from the same ancient
Indo-European root. But then humans in Europe have long had
plenty of experience of the white stuff.</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;">About
four centuries ago, English scholars borrowed <em>nivālis</em>
to make the adjective <em>nival</em> to add to our <em>snowy</em>
(though French got there first, at least a century earlier). We
also have the more recent technical term <em>nivation</em>, not
— as you might guess — meaning snowfall but the erosion of
ground around and beneath a snow bank that is seasonally
melting.</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>Subnivean</em>
is another member of the group, nearly two centuries old. This
refers to something that happens underneath snow such as the
activities of animals that survive winter beneath it.</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;">Very
recently that word has been joined by the linked noun <em>subnivium</em>
for the area between soil surface and snowpack. It was coined by
a group led by Jonathan Pauli of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. They wrote in a paper in <em>Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment</em> in June 2013: “For many
terrestrial organisms in the Northern Hemisphere, winter is a
period of resource scarcity and energy deficits, survivable only
because a seasonal refugium — the ‘subnivium’ — exists beneath
the snow.”</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:12pt;color:#008000;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:12px;">Black
as Newgate knocker</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 Jim Mitchell</em>: As a child in South London, when I
came in from playing and was a bit grubby my mother would say I
looked <em>as black as nookers nocker</em>. My mother was born
in 1917. I wonder if she might have heard this expression from
her mother?</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 very probable. But not perhaps in that form. Your mother’s
version is a mishearing of a Londoners’ expression that dates
back in written records to 1881: <em>black as Newgate knocker</em>.
It has also turned up in the forms <em>black as Newker’s
knocker</em>, <em>black as Nook’s knocker</em> and <em>black
as Nugent’s knocker</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;">Curiously,
though it has been in existence for more than a century and is
currently not widely known, in writing it is now more often
found than it has ever been, perhaps because it’s such an
evocative item of historical Cockney slang. These days it almost
always has an added apostrophe-s:</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;">Her
eyes really are black as Newgate’s knocker.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Sunday Times</em>, 19 Jun.
1994.</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;">Newgate
here refers to the notorious prison, originally created in
medieval times in one of the turrets of Newgate, a main entrance
through the walls into the City of London. Down the centuries
the prison was rebuilt five times; it closed in 1902 and was
demolished in 1904. The Central Criminal Court, better known as
the Old Bailey, now stands on the site. </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;">Newgate
was a place of fear and loathing to many Londoners, not only
criminals but also debtors, who were imprisoned there until they
found a way to repay what they owed. After 1783, it was also the
place where executions took place, initially on a public
platform in front of the building, later inside. For most of its
existence it was a noisome, dank, dark and unhealthy place to be
incarcerated.</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’s
not surprising that it should have been commemorated in
expressions. But why not just <em>black as Newgate</em>? Why
should its door knocker be selected as the source of the simile?</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
phrase <em>Newgate knocker</em> itself is older. It was applied
to a hairstyle fashionable among lower-class male Londoners such
as costermongers. Though it became widely known from the 1840s,
I’ve found a reference to it in the <em>Kentish Gazette</em> in
1781. It referred to a lock of hair twisted from the temple on
each side of the head back towards the ear in the shape of a
figure 6. </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
1851, Henry Mayhew wrote in his <em>London Labour and the
London Poor</em> that a lad of about fourteen had told him
that to be “flash” (stylish) hair “ought to be long in front,
and done in ‘figure-six’ curls, or twisted back to the ear
‘Newgate knocker style’.” Eight years later, John Camden Hotten
explained in his <em>Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and
Vulgar Words</em> that “The shape is supposed to resemble the
knocker on the prisoners’ door at Newgate — a resemblance that
carries a rather unpleasant suggestion to the wearer.” Another
description came a couple of years later from another
investigative social journalist, James Greenwood:</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;">All,
or nearly all, [were] bull-necked, heavy-jawed, and with the
hair dressed after a fashion known among its patrons as the
“Newgate knocker” style — that is, parted in masses on each side
of the head and turned under unnaturally.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Illustrated Times</em>
(London), 16 Feb. 1861.</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;">There’s
no obvious connection with the colour black. We may guess,
however, that Londoners would have imagined the prison’s knocker
to be large and made of black iron as well as figuratively black
because of its evil associations. We may also guess from the
dates at which the two expressions were first current that
Londoners took over the hairstyle phrase as a new way to
describe the colour, as people have done for centuries with
similes such as <em>black as your hat</em>, <em>black as death</em>,
<em>black as the ace of spades</em>, <em>black as thunder</em>,
and <em>black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat</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;">As
a postscript, I also found this, in a story from 60-odd years
ago about the search by a journalist named Bernard O’Donnell for
the original Newgate knocker:</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;">His
spasmodic search came to an end recently when he was in the
office of the Keeper of the Old Bailey, Mr A W Burt. “Where is
Newgate’s knocker?” he asked Mr Burt. Promptly it was shown to
him. It was on the keeper’s desk. After years spent as a symbol
which came to inspire dread among the poor of London, it had
found a more useful rôle. It now makes an ideal paper weight.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>The Scotsman</em>, 24 April
1950.</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;">Make
of that what you will. I wonder if it still exists?</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:12pt;color:#008000;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:12px;">In
the news</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;">Oxford
Dictionaries announced its Word of the Year 2016 on 16 November:
<em>post-truth</em>. Its editors defined this as “relating to or
denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less
influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion
and personal belief.” One example came in a report in <em>The
Times</em> on 31 October of comments by the president of the
European Council on the signing of a trade deal with Canada: “Mr
Tusk also denounced the ‘post-truth politics ... on both sides
of the Atlantic’ which nearly scuppered the deal because ‘facts
and figures won’t stand up for themselves’ against an emotional
opposition campaign.” Though it has been very much a word of
this year, connected both with the Brexit referendum in the UK
and the US presidential election, Oxford Dictionaries noted that
“<em>post-truth</em> seems to have been first used in this
meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright
Steve Tesich in <em>The Nation</em> magazine.”</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;">Last
time I mentioned the Danish word <em>hygge</em>, a quality of
cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling
of contentment or well-being. This has become widely popular in
Britain this year, and was one of Oxford Dictionaries’
runners-up as Word of the Year. For the background and the story
of its rise in British English, I can’t do better than point you
to an article by Charlotte Higgins in <em><a
href="http://wwwords.org/hygge">The Guardian</a></em> on 22
November.</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
newest British buzzword is <em>jam</em>. Not as in the “jam
tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today” meaning of the
Red Queen in <em>Through the Looking-Glass</em> — though the
quip has been made several times by pundits — but as an acronym
for “Just About Managing”. This refers to the estimated six
million working-age British households on low to middle incomes
who are struggling to stave off poverty from day to day. The
term derives from a speech given by the new prime minister,
Theresa May, just after she was chosen by MPs in July. She said
of the members of this group, “You have a job but you don’t
always have job security. You have your own home, but you worry
about paying a mortgage. You can just about manage but you worry
about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good
school.” Her words became a catchphrase among commentators which
has now been shortened.</p>
<p
style="font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,san-serif;font-weight:bold;font-size:12pt;color:#008000;margin-bottom:0px;padding-top:12px;">Boxing
Day</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 Burt Rubin; a related question came from Keith Denham</em>:
As an American, I’ve always wondered about the origin of the
term <em>Boxing Day</em>.</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>
Boxing Day is a public holiday in Britain and most Commonwealth
countries. There’s some minor confusion these days, in Britain
at least, over which day it actually is. The reference books a
century ago were adamant that it was the first working day after
Christmas Day. However, the name is now frequently attached
specifically to 26 December, even if it falls at the weekend,
which makes it equivalent to the Christian saint’s day of St
Stephen.</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
have to go back to the early seventeenth century to find the
basis for the name. The term <em>Christmas box</em> appeared
about then for an earthenware box, something like a piggy bank,
which apprentices and other workers took around immediately
after Christmas to collect money. When the round was complete,
the box was broken and the money distributed among the company.
The first known 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;"><em>Tirelire</em>,
a Christmas box; a box having a cleft on the lid, or in the
side, for money to enter it; used in France by begging Fryers,
and here by Butlers, and Prentices, etc.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>A Dictionarie of the French and
English Tongues</em>, by Randle Cotgrave, 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;">By
the eighteenth century, <em>Christmas box</em> had become a
figurative term for any seasonal gratuity. By the nineteenth
century their collection seems to have become a scourge in our
big cities. When James Murray compiled an entry for <em>Christmas
box</em> in the first edition of the <em>Oxford English
Dictionary</em> in 1889, his splendidly acerbic description
suggests that the practice had become a personal bugbear:</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
present or gratuity given at Christmas: in Great Britain,
usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed
to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to
him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and
paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined
theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for
which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement
is becoming at Christmas.</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;">Though
the term <em>Boxing Day</em> for the day on which such
Christmas boxes were requested didn’t become widespread until
early in the nineteenth century, a few examples are recorded
from the previous century. The earliest I know of is this:</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;">Tuesday
in Christmas Week, about Eight in the Evening, I was coming over
this broad Place, and saw a Man come up to this lame Man, and
knock him down — It was the Day after Boxing Day.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Transcript of a trial at the
Old Bailey</em> (London), 14 Jan. 1743.</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;">By
the middle of the nineteenth century, the term seems to have
become as closely associated with importuning individuals as
Christmas Box itself:</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;">“Boxing
Day,” — the day consecrated to baksheesh, when nobody, it would
almost seem, is too proud to beg, and when everybody who does
not beg is expected to play the almoner. “Tie up the knocker —
say you’re sick, you are dead,” is the best advice perhaps that
could be given in such cases to any man who has a street-door
and a knocker upon it.<br>
<span style="color:#008000;"><em>Curiosities of London Life</em>,
by Charles Manby Smith, 1853.</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
custom has died out, seasonal visitors to Britain may be
assured, though small gifts are still sometimes given to
tradesmen and suppliers of services. The favourite occupation of
the day is attending football matches or rushing to the
post-Christmas sales.</p>
<p
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information</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;"><b
style="margin-right:12px;color:#008000;">About this
newsletter.</b> <em>World Wide Words</em> is written, edited
and published in the UK by Michael Quinion. ISSN 1470-1448.
Copyediting and advice are provided by Julane Marx, Robert
Waterhouse, John Bagnall and Peter Morris. The linked website is
<a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org">http://www.worldwidewords.org</a>.</p>
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style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:Georgia,Times,serif;font-size:12pt;line-height:15pt;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:6px;"><b
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