World Wide Words -- 03 Jul 99

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 147           Saturday 3 July 1999
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>From Michael Quinion                        Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Sent every Saturday to more than 5,200 subscribers in 93 countries
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: Evidence-based education.
3. Topical Words: Shag.
4. In Brief: Medipot.
5. Weird Words: In silico.
6. Q & A: Gobsmack, Heebie-jeebies, Mad as hops.
7. Beyond Words.
8. Administration.


1. Notes and feedback
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SINGULAR THEIR. A small flood of electronic chastisement followed
my use of 'their' as a singular pronoun in two places last week.
It appeared most obviously in the definition of bruxer: "Someone
who habitually and involuntarily grinds their teeth", but also in
Q&A: "somebody who suffers their afflictions with calmness and
composure". I must confess the first was deliberate, in order to
be gently provocative, but the second was just the way I normally
write anyway. The debate on this usage is very extensive. Many
writers on the language have pointed out that 'their' appears as a
gender-neutral singular term in the works of respected writers
down the centuries. It is now common in British speech and in
colloquial or informal writing, and is well enough established to
be verging on standard English, though perhaps best avoided in
formal writing. It is an excellent example of a shift of usage in
progress as a result of cultural pressures, and one which neatly
solves a troublesome stylistic problem that has long bedevilled
the language. I once wrote a Usage Note about it, which you will
find at <http://www.quinion.com/words/usagenotes/un-genpr.htm>.

SPITTING IMAGE. Writing World Wide Words is very educational, at
least for the writer. A number of correspondents have given extra
information which suggest a slightly different view of the origin
of this phrase. Larry Horn, Professor of Linguistics at Yale,
argues that the original form was "spitten image", using the old
dialectal past participle form of 'spit'. He suggests that the
phrase was reinterpreted when that form went out of use, first as
"spit 'n' image" and then as "spit and image" or "spitting image".
He is sure that the supposed derivation from 'spirit' is wrong.
Others suggest that the image is actually of seminal ejaculation,
which may account for the phrase being used originally only of the
son of a father.

TAKING THE MICKEY. Lots of people have suggested a source of this
expression in 'micturate', meaning to urinate. Though the link is
obvious, the word 'micturate' has always been medical jargon, so
hardly a word that features in most people's vocabulary. I would
be surprised to discover that it was the source of the expression.
Others have pointed out that if it was indeed a shortened form of
"to take the Mickey Bliss", we ought to be able to trace a person
of that name, perhaps a music-hall performer or politician, since
rhyming slang terms of that kind tended to refer to real people.
It would be nice to find one.


2. Turns of Phrase: Evidence-based education
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This is a jargon term of British educationalists and still rather
rare. It is obviously based on the older and better established
term 'evidence-based medicine'. It may have been used first by
David Hargreaves, Professor of Education at the University of
Cambridge, in 1996. The idea behind all 'evidence-based'
approaches is that the methods that practitioners use should be
evaluated to prove whether they work, and that the results should
be fed back to influence practice. It's an attempt to move from an
empirical approach to one in which traditional ideas are tested
and where necessary changed; it tries to tie together research and
day-to-day methods more closely than in the past. In Britain the
term 'evidence-based' very much reflects the views of the Labour
government, which is trying to adopt standard approaches based on
what is known to work, both in the National Health Service and in
education. However, critics of 'evidence-based education' point to
the complexities and subtleties of teaching (and learning), in
which teachers' own experiences, beliefs and values are often more
influential than research findings.


3. Topical Words: Shag
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Ross James, speaking for the British ABC and Odeon cinema chains,
was said to be incredulous at the reports. Why would they want to
ban display of the word 'shagged' in the title of Mike Myer's
newly-released Austin Powers sequel, _The Spy Who Shagged Me_,
rude though the word is in Britain? It had been passed by the
British Board of Film Classification, so why should they censor
the censors?

Though it's categorised in Britain as low slang, it isn't in the
same class of offensiveness as the F-word and is often used as a
less provocative alternative. It turns up a lot, for example, in
the more raunchy or late-night British television programmes, such
as _Men Behaving Badly_, is virtually a trademark of some stand-up
comedians and can quite frequently even be found in the columns of
the more po-faced conservative newspapers such as the _Daily
Telegraph_. Its status has shifted a lot in the nineties, with
younger people now using it freely while us older ones still
consider it off limits, at least in polite company. Not a word to
use to your elderly maiden aunt (assuming you know a member of
that endangered species), but equally not one to provoke banner-
waving demonstrations calling for its removal. Usage in the
Antipodes is similar to that in Britain, though with the addition
of some splendidly coarse insults like the Australian 'sheep-
shagger'.

Across the Atlantic the word is much less well known, though Jesse
Sheidlower of Random House tells me there are American examples of
its use from Victorian times (alas, the wonderful _Random House
Historical Dictionary of American Slang_ hasn't yet reached the
letter S). He suggests that cultural mixing in two World Wars
introduced some Americans soldiers to the word, it being common
among British troops they fought alongside. These days in America,
I gather the few who know what it means employ it as a humorous
Anglophilic affectation (typical of the film, it would seem).

Its origins are obscure. It's first recorded by Francis Grose in
his _Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_ of 1785. It's
thought by some to derive from an older sense of the verb that
meant to shake about. We don't know where that came from, either,
though it's probably connected to 'shake'. This meaning fits the
later one very well and it's similar to the way that 'frig'
evolved (incidentally, a word whose constituency is pretty much
the inverse of 'shag', being much better known in America than in
Britain): at first this meant to move back and forth and then
later evolved senses like to copulate and to masturbate. In the
nineteenth century, 'shag' was considered very vulgar in Britain
and examples in print are rare (perhaps the best known is from
that invaluable Victorian word fount, lexicographically speaking,
the porno newsletter _Pearl_). The noun, for an act of copulation,
dates only from the 1930s.

There are several other meanings of the word, including one which
has the same origin as 'shaggy', which is used for a type of
tobacco, for a sort of cloth or carpet (as in 'shag-pile'), and as
one name for various species of cormorant, which have a shaggy
crest. Americans know it as a dance, the origin of whose name is
disputed; they may also use it to mean to move quickly, to chase
or pursue, or to retrieve something, as in baseball.

It turns out that the cinema chain was being disingenuous. Because
it knows the word will be offensive to some patrons, it has now
decided that all publicity and signs will call the film _Austin
Powers II_, but posters and other materials which come from the
distributors, as well as the film titles themselves, of course,
will retain the American name. Sounds like a typically British
compromise, you might say.

[My thanks go also to Jonathon Green and David Barnhart for their
assistance in clearing up points of usage.]


4. In Brief: Medipot
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This is a convenient shorthand for the phrase 'the medical uses of
pot'. It's sometimes employed within those groups in the US which
are campaigning for the drug laws on the use of cannabis to be
relaxed so that individuals suffering chronic pain can gain relief
by using it.


5. Weird Words: In silico
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In or by means of a computer simulation.

This must originally have been a computer scientist's joke, but it
now appears in print often enough that it has to be added to our
list of modern Latinisms.

'In silico' is most closely based on two older Latin phrases that
are key terms in the jargon of every biologist and biochemist: 'in
vivo' and 'in vitro', both of which came into use at the end of
the nineteenth century. The first translates as "in that which is
alive", and refers to some experiment carried out within a living
organism, such as a drug test on an animal. The second means "in
glass" and is used for experiments that take place in an
artificial environment outside the body, such as a test tube or
culture dish.

When it became possible to run computer-based simulations or
mathematical models relating to animal biochemistry, behaviour and
environment, some clever person coined 'in silico', in silicon,
for a trial carried out, as it were, on a computer chip. Here's an
example from Kevin Kelly's _Out of Control: the New Biology of
Machines_: "To complement their studies 'in vitro', Pimm also set
up experiments 'in silico' - simplified ecological models in a
computer".

It's now pretty common in the specialist vocabulary, for example
turning up in job advertisements in the scientific press.


6. 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. I was looking at a UK magazine and ran across 'gobsmack'. What
can you tell me about this term? [W S McCollom]

A. It's a fairly recent British slang term: the first recorded use
is only in the eighties, though verbal use must surely go back
further. The usual form is 'gobsmacked', though 'gobstruck' is
also found. It's a combination of 'gob', mouth, and 'smacked'. It
means "utterly astonished, astounded". It's much stronger than
just being surprised; it's used for something that leaves you
speechless, or otherwise stops you dead in your tracks. It
suggests that something is as surprising as being suddenly hit in
the face. It comes from northern dialect, most probably
popularised through television programmes set in Liverpool, where
it was common. It's an obvious derivation of an existing term,
since 'gob', originally from Scotland and the north of England,
has been a dialect and slang term for the mouth for four hundred
years (often in insulting phrases like "shut your gob!" to tell
somebody to be quiet). It possibly goes back to the Scottish
Gaelic word meaning a beak or a mouth, which has also bequeathed
us the verb 'to gob', meaning to spit. Another form of the word is
'gab', from which we get 'gift of the gab'.
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Q. Would you know the origin of 'heebie-jeebies', for a state of
nervous depression or anxiety? [A Jaye Costine]

A. It seems pretty certain that it was invented about 1923 by the
American cartoonist Billy De Beck. Its first appearance was in one
of his _Barney Google_ cartoons in the _New York American_ on 26
October 1923, though there it was spelled 'heeby-jeeby'. Where it
came from, apart from his fevered imagination, is open to
question. There was a dance at about the same time, and a song in
1926, both said to have originated from Native American witch-
doctor chants before human sacrifices. But the dance and the song
both seem to be later than the first appearance of the phrase. Mr
De Beck, by the way, is also known for other bits of now
obsolescent or obsolete slang, such as 'hotsy-totsy' and
'horsefeathers'. But 'heebie-jeebies' has survived to become part
of the standard language.


7. Beyond Words
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Was it a whimsical choice of words, or just an unfortunate mental
association of ideas? The Football Association decided to allow
Manchester United to withdraw from next year's FA Cup competition
so that it can play in a world club championship in Brazil. Axa,
the insurance company that sponsors the FA Cup, felt the decision
weakened the competition. A spokesman said the ruling "moves the
goalposts a little bit".


8. Administration
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