World Wide Words -- 21 Aug 99

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 154         Saturday 21 August 1999
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Sent every Saturday to more than 5,500 subscribers in 93 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion                     Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Web: <http://www.quinion.com/words/>   E-mail: <words at quinion.com>
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Contents
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1. Notes and feedback.
2. Turns of Phrase: Nocebo.
3. In Brief: Space diving, Strain drain, Torino scale.
4. Weird Words: Synaesthete.
5. Q&A: Case in point, Cloud nine, It ain't over till the
      fat lady sings; Navvy.
6. Administration: How to unsubscribe, Copyright.


1. Notes and feedback
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NEW WEB INDEX. The World Wide Words site is getting so large that
visitors have trouble finding what they're looking for. The search
facility is rather cranky and slow, so I've added a general index
of the main words and phrases dealt with in the various sections.
You'll find this at <http://www.quinion.com/words/genindex.htm>.


2. Turns of Phrase: Nocebo
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A 'nocebo' is something that induces a feeling of ill-health for
no very good medical reason, the opposite of a 'placebo'. This is
the medical term for a medication or other treatment which is
given to a patient for the psychological benefit it will bring
rather than for any likely therapeutic effect. The word is also
used to describe dummy drugs given to some patients in clinical
trials, because medical researchers have to take into account the
positive effect on patients of giving them a medication of any
kind, even if it isn't effective. In Latin 'placebo' means
literally "I shall be acceptable or pleasing", from the verb
'placere', to please. It came into medical terminology from
liturgical Latin near the end of the eighteenth century. 'Nocebo',
on the other hand, is a very modern word; it's recorded only from
the 1990s and until recently you wouldn't have come across it
outside specialist research publications. It's obviously modelled
on 'placebo', but it comes instead from 'nocere', to harm, and so
has a literal meaning of "I shall cause harm or be harmful". The
word has come into being because researchers have become aware
they also have to take into account factors that might have a
negative effect on treatments. These aren't usually medications
but influences such as beliefs, attitudes and cultural factors.

Research has also shown that the nocebo effect can reverse the
body's response to true medical treatment from positive to
negative.
                           [Robert S and Michele R Root-Bernstein,
           _Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels_ (1997)]

He stresses that while most everyone is familiar with the placebo
effect, few are aware of the nocebo effect - the ability of
negative beliefs and expectations to actually cause harm.
               [_Skeptical Inquirer_ (Committee for the Scientific
           Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), Sept. 1997]


3. In Brief
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SPACE DIVING  It sounds horrific, but some devotees of extreme
sports are seriously suggesting that one day people might choose
to jump out of an orbiting spacecraft in order to return to Earth
the hard way. It's been called the ultimate adventure sport, and
other enthusiasts for space have dubbed it 'orbital surfing'.

STRAIN DRAIN  Imitative though it is of the much older 'brain
drain' for British workers who leave to find better-paid work in
the USA, this jokey sounding term refers to a serious problem in
which workers are quitting their jobs because of stress. A recent
survey found that nearly 40% of workers said they were planning to
look for new work within a year for this reason.

TORINO SCALE  There's been so much talk recently about the danger
of an asteroid impact on our planet that you will not be surprised
to hear that a scale has been invented to measure the risk that
one will hit us. The 'Torino scale' is named for the city of Turin
in Italy where it was adopted in June this year. It goes from 0
(no risk) to 10 (inevitable catastrophe). No asteroid yet sighted
gets a higher rating than 0.


4. Weird Words: Synaesthete
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A person for whom sense impressions occur through stimulation of a
different sense to that expected.

This word is moderately common in the psychological and artistic
fields. It refers to a person who has some kind of cross-wiring in
the brain, so that things which ought to be perceived by one sense
are instead felt in another.

The most common form is for language, sounds and tastes to be
sensed as colours. For a synaesthete, the words on this page might
have colour associations; many musicians say that different keys
evoke characteristic colours; or those affected may experience the
sense of taste as hues. For any one individual, the transfer
between senses is always the same, but there seems to be no accord
between affected individuals about what sensation evokes what
effect.

The British science writer Alison Motluk, a synaesthete, has
remarked that "The astonishing realisation is not that these
characters are imbued with colours but rather a world could exist
in which they were colour-free, neutral, characterless. It would
be like finding out one day that, while you have been savouring
the smells of freshly baked bread, of brandy, of chocolate, all
your life, your friends have only been able to taste them".

The term 'synaesthesia' was coined at the end of the nineteenth
century by Sir Francis Galton for what had been and sometimes is
still called 'coloured hearing'. He derived it on the model of
'anaesthesia' from the Greek prefix 'syn-', for things that are
like one another, plus 'aisthesis', meaning sensation.


5. Q&A
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[Send queries to <qa at quinion.com>. Messages will be acknowledged,
but I can't guarantee to reply, as time is limited. If I can do
so, a response will appear both here and on the WWW Web site.]
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Q. Do you know the origin of the term 'case in point' or 'case and
point'? [Chris Thalgott]

A. It's 'case in point', whose modern meaning is of some instance
or example that illustrates what is being discussed. The phrase is
now a fossil, because it was once possible to say 'in point' by
itself, meaning something appropriate, relevant or pertinent, but
it survives only in phrases like this one. It derives from the
French 'a point', meaning the same as 'a propos', something
relevant or to the point. The first example of the English form
seems to be this from 1658: "Some play or other is in point". It
was beginning to look old fashioned by the time this next was
published in 1888: "I recall another humble incident somewhat in
point". There's also the related 'in point of', with reference to.
You might once have said, as a writer did in 1681: "Sweden remains
in point of Constitution and Property exactly as it did
anciently". Another example comes from Charles Dickens' _The Old
Curiosity Shop_ of 1840: "His friend appeared to be rather
'cranky' in point of temper". We can still use 'in point of fact',
another fossil form based on this same phrase. Here's an example
cited in the _Oxford English Dictionary_ from 1769 that shows how
the modern set phrase 'case in point' may have come about: "Some
case or cases, strictly in point, must be produced".
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Q. What is the origin of the expression 'cloud nine' for a very
happy person? [Ernie Epp]

A. The phrase 'to be on cloud nine', meaning that one was
blissfully happy, started life in the United States and has been
widely known there since the 1950s; it's since spread worldwide.
It's said to have been popularised by the 'Johnny Dollar' radio
show of that period, in which every time the hero was knocked
unconscious he was transported to Cloud Nine. But that wasn't the
origin of the phrase. It's been around since the 1930s, though
early examples show a lot of numerical variability, with the cloud
sometimes being as low as number seven or eight or as high as
thirty-nine, though seven and nine were most common.

These discrepancies make me suspect the usual explanation of its
origin, which is that it comes from the US Weather Bureau. The
story is that this organisation describes (or once described)
clouds by an arithmetic sequence. Level Nine was the very highest
cumulonimbus, which can reach 30,000 or 40,000 feet and appear as
glorious white mountains in the sky. So if you were on cloud nine
you were at the very peak of existence.

The term has always had close associations with the euphoria that
is induced by certain chemicals - alcohol in its earlier days but
more recently crack cocaine - so perhaps we shouldn't ask for too
great a level of exactness in counting. And the cloud here is an
obvious reference to some drug-induced dreamy floating sensation.
But I suspect, without having anything so restricting as evidence,
that seven was chosen because it's a traditional lucky number and
that today's more usual nine appears for similar reasons - for
example it also turns up in 'dressed to the nines' and 'the whole
nine yards'.
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Q. Do you know the origin of the expression 'It's not over until
the fat lady sings'?  I believe that it's a reference to opera.
My friend Paul credits this saying to Yogi Berra in reference to a
baseball game. Who is right? [Caroline Francis Carney]

A. It's usually taken to be a reference to opera, so many
performances of which seem to end with a set-piece aria by a well-
built soprano, but its associations are mainly with sport.
Commentators say it to remind people that it's the final result
that matters, often in a spirit of reassurance to the supporters
of the losing team. The phrase turns up in several forms, with "It
ain't over till the fat lady sings" probably the most common. But
where it comes from, we're not sure. It's an American expression,
which seems to date from the 1970s and which may have come from
sports reporting. (It has been suggested that it was the
brainchild of the San Antonio TV sports editor Dan Cook.) But it's
probably not one of Yogi Berra's phrases, though it has the same
meaning and much of the style of his "It ain't over till it's
over", which he is said to have coined in 1973. On the other hand,
some commentators have argued that it may be a variant form of a
traditional Southern proverbial saying: "Church ain't out till the
fat lady sings".
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Q. I have wondered about the origin of the word 'navvy'. My
Shorter OED tells me it is an abbreviation of 'navigator' but
somehow that doesn't seem likely. Are there other thoughts on
this? [Larry Preuss]

A. It's true enough, though we've lost the associations that made
it seem an obvious enough coinage to people at the time. From
about 1660 onwards in Britain, many artificial waterways were
built to make rivers navigable by ships and boats. These became
known as 'navigations', a term first recorded early in the
eighteenth century. The word was later applied to the cross-
country canals linking river to river that were one of the
engineering triumphs of the second half of that century and the
early part of the next. The labourers who built these navigations
- entirely by hand using pick, shovel and barrow - came to be
called 'navigators', an obvious enough association of ideas. The
term was transferred to their successors, the often unruly gangs
of itinerant workmen who built the railways across Britain from
the 1830s onwards. It's only then that the abbreviated form began
to appear in print, and it's attached in particular to these men
and to the era of railway building in Britain. Later in the
century it become the usual term for any labourer working on
construction projects. It was so firmly attached to the idea of
excavation that when the first mechanical digger came into service
in the 1870s it was called a 'steam navvy'.


6. Administration
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