World Wide Words -- 13 Feb 99

[Michael B Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 131        Saturday 13 February 1999
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A weekly mailing from Michael Quinion       Thornbury, Bristol, UK

Contents
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1. Corrections and clarifications.
2. Turns of Phrase: Europanto.
3. Topical words: Brand.
4. In Brief: Hoddle.
5. Weird Words: Cataract.
6. Q & A: State of the art, loo.
7. Housekeeping.


1. Corrections and clarifications
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LIST OF THE WEEK. The word 'outmost' turned up inadvertently in
the introduction. I meant to write 'outermost', but by a curious
involuntary syncopation slipped a syllable. But as Michael Vnuk
pointed out, it's a synonym of 'outermost' anyway. To add to my
confusion the International Astronomical Union this week removed
the rationale for the list by announcing they had no intention of
downgrading Pluto from its status as a major planet.

COPACETIC. Several subscribers queried my references to 'hakol
b'seder' and 'kol b'tzedek' as being Yiddish. They're Hebrew, of
course. It's suggested that they got to America through Yiddish-
speaking Jewish immigrants. Sorry for the unclear phrasing.


2. Turns of Phrase: Europanto  /'jU at r@Upant at U/
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Europanto is a sort of language, the tongue-in-cheek creation of
Diego Marani, a translator working for the European Council of
Ministers in Brussels. He writes regular columns in it in Swiss
and Belgian newspapers, and has also produced a book and a board
game. The name is a blend of 'European' with 'Esperanto', the
international language invented by Dr Ludovik Zamenhof in the
1880s. But Diego Marani feels Esperanto's chance of acceptance has
gone, a product of a linguistic environment that no longer exists;
today, he argues, English is dominant, a lingua franca used by
many groups with little or no link to the Anglo-Saxon world. In
his manifesto, a fine example of straight-faced humour, he says
that Europanto, based on English with many words injected from
other European languages known to the speakers, "is intended to
give voice to the frustrations of the vast majority of people who
are forced to use English even though their command of the
language is not very good" and that "instead of trying to compete
with English, the aim is to cause the language to implode, to
destroy it from within". So far, it's no more than an intellectual
game, but you never know.

Si no comprende este compte de Noel, no panic: este perfectly
normal. Er ist e'crit in der erste overeuropese tongue: the
Europanto. Europanto ist 42% English, 38% French, 15% le rest van
de UE tonguen und 5% mixed fantasia mots out from Latin, unlikely-
old-Greek et mucho rude Italian jurones.
                                  [_Le Soir illustre'_, Dec. 1996]

Signor Marani launched Europanto as a joke, a way of whiling away
the time during interminable Council meetings, but it has proved
enormously popular and le ciel ist now der termino, as the Panto-
ists might say.
                                           [_Guardian_, Feb. 1999]


3. Topical words: Brand  /brand/
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A report has just come out from the Institute for Public Policy
Research, a London think-tank, advocating new approaches to
countering racism and negative views on immigration. The report
says at one point that Britain should be "re-branded as an
inclusive concept".

Originally 'brand' just referred to a piece of burning wood, a
word that goes back to Old English. By the sixteenth century, it
had begun to be applied to something that happens as a result of
intense heat. One such was 'brand-new', in which the sense is of a
thing pulled new and fresh from the furnace: think of a horseshoe
taken hot and red from the smith's fire. A closely-related idea is
that of a mark created by touching something with a hot iron, as
of a 'brand' of ownership on an animal, a practice that almost
certainly goes back further than recorded history.

It was also used for the branding of convicted criminals, another
course of action that was once common. So 'brand' could have a
negative sense of a mark of disgrace or a stigma (a Latinate word
that just means a brand). It's part of our linguistic conservatism
that we can speak of somebody being "branded a common criminal"
centuries after the literal branding of criminals ended.

Though merchants had similarly been using hot irons to mark casks
and wooden cases for many years, it was only in the early part of
the nineteenth century that 'brand' took on the sense of a mark
that identified a particular sort of goods. And it was not until
near the end of that century that the idea of 'brands' as
identifiers with a reputation and a tradable value really began to
take off. Indeed, it was only with the increase in consumer
marketing in the past fifty years that terms such as 'own brand',
'brand leader', and 'brand manager' started to appear (though
'Brand X', as a derogatory term for an anonymous competing product
that's considered inferior, dates from as long ago as 1934).

Now by an obvious extension the word has moved to a sense of
applying a single identity to a whole country. It's a mark of our
ability to compartmentalise our use of language that we can employ
'brand' negatively to refer to criminals, and also neutrally or
positively for products.


4. In Brief: Hoddle
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This verb is created from the name of the former England football
coach Glenn Hoddle, sacked last week, ostensibly for publicising
his views about reincarnation, which offended disabled people. So
'to hoddle' is to terminally place foot in mouth, a usage that is
likely to be more temporary than, say, 'to bobbitt'.


5. Weird Words: Cataract  /'kat at rakt/
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A large waterfall; a medical condition of the eye.

What is weird about this word is not its two senses, as they're
both well known, but why one word should have ended up with two
such dissimilar meanings. The origin in both cases is the Greek
'kataraktes', meaning something that is rushing or swooping down.
It's a derivative of 'katarassein', from 'kata-' "down" plus
'arassein' "strike, smash". We have several words in English whose
first element is from 'kata-', including 'cataclysm', 'catapult',
'catalepsy', 'catalogue' and 'catastrophe'.

The Greek word became applied to a number of things that rush
down, including a swooping bird and a waterfall. It was later
transferred into Latin in the form 'cataracta' and in that
language could refer to a waterfall, a flood-gate or a portcullis
(the vertical grated gate to a castle that ran in grooves in the
wall and which could be dropped very rapidly to bar entrance). The
earliest use in English was to "the cataracts of heaven", a now
obsolete reference to the flood-gates that were supposed to keep
back the rain. It was soon after applied to a large waterfall,
strictly one in which the water plummets over a precipice; this
came from a Latin use of the word to describe the Cataracts of the
Nile. English also used it, but rarely, to refer to a portcullis,
and sometimes to a window grating.

>From about the middle of the sixteenth century, 'cataract' also
began to be applied to the medical condition in which the lens of
the eye goes progressively opaque. It seems that doctors were
using the word as a simile for something that at least partially
stopped light entering the eye. An older expression for the same
condition was 'web in the eye', so the name was most likely
derived from the barred structure of the portcullis or window
grating, rather than as a physical barrier. It sounds improbable,
but nobody seems to have come up with a better explanation.


==================================================================
According to the Scottish _Daily Record_ of 20 January, an Indian
restaurant in Edinburgh has printed its menus in Scots as-it-is-
spoke, so you can get 'tandoori troot' and 'speeshal fryitt rice'.
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6. Q & A
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[The section in which I (attempt to) answer your questions. Send
your queries to <qa at quinion.com>. I can't guarantee to answer
them, but if I can, I will reply privately first; a response will
later appear here and on the Words web site.]
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Q. What is the origin of 'state of the art'? [Debbi Galloway]

A. The suggestion in the _Oxford English Dictionary_ is that the
phrase started out in the late nineteenth century as 'status of
the art', in other words, the current condition or level which
some technical art had reached. By the beginning of the twentieth
century, the phrase had changed to its modern form with the same
meaning of "the current stage of development of a practical or
technological subject". It may have changed its form by a simple
mistake, or by the process that grammarians call folk etymology or
popular etymology, by which words change to fit speakers'
misconceptions of their real meanings. By the 1960s the word had
shifted sense slightly to the way we use it now, which implies the
newest or best techniques in some product or activity.
-----------
Q. What is the origin of the British word 'loo'? [Barbara
Blakeport]

A. There are many theories about this word, but few firm facts,
and its origin is one of the more celebrated puzzles in word
history. The one thing everybody agrees on is that it's French in
origin, or at least a corruption of a French phrase. But which
phase, etymologists are still arguing about. But we're fairly sure
it's modern, with its origin having been traced back no further
than James Joyce's _Ulysses_ in 1922.

So that seems to dismiss entirely the theory that it comes from
the habit of the more caring British housewives, in the days
before plumbing, of warning passers-by on the street below with
the cry "Gardy loo!" before throwing the contents of their chamber
pots out of upstairs windows. (It's said to be a corrupted form of
the French 'gardez l'eau!' or "watch out for the water!".) And
equally the late date refutes the idea that it comes from the
French 'bordalou', a portable commode carried by eighteenth
century ladies in their muffs (you will never again look at a
picture of a lady wearing a muff without thinking what she's
carrying). It is also said that it's a British mispronunciation
of the French 'le lieu', "the place", a euphemism.

Another theory, a rather more plausible one, has it that it comes
from the French 'lieu d'aisance', literally "place of ease", once
also an English euphemism, which could have been picked up by
British servicemen in World War One. But James Joyce may equally
well have derived the expression as a punning reference to the
battle of Waterloo, from the sequence: water closet - waterloo -
loo. Or it may be that several linguistic forces converged to
create the new word.


7. Housekeeping
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