World Wide Words -- 06 Mar 99

[Michael B Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 134           Saturday 6 March 1999
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A weekly mailing from Michael Quinion       Thornbury, Bristol, UK

Contents
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1. Feedback.
2. Turns of Phrase: Clinical governance.
3. Topical Words: Seaborgium.
4. In Brief: Braining up.
5. Weird Words: Pilgarlic.
6. Q & A: Cop, Old Bill.
7. Housekeeping.


1. Feedback
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OPEN SOURCE. Christian Pearson pointed out that 'open source' has
long had another, different meaning in the intelligence community,
at least in the US. He tells me it means those sources of data and
information which are not protected, such as newspapers, research
reports and speeches.

CALTROP. The Web site copy of last week's Weird Word has been
updated to include the formal names of the plants referred to, and
to correct the etymology, which was rather less than clear (the
second half of the medieval Latin original comes from a Germanic
word that's a precursor of our 'trap', making it a word of mixed
origins).

NOT WAVING, BUT DROWNING. Popularity is all very nice, but when
you collect your e-mail and find over a hundred questions on words
waiting for you, that's a bit daunting. Apologies to everyone who
is still awaiting an answers to a message. I'll get around to you,
don't worry. Meanwhile, Q&A is shut for the foreseeable future!


2. Turns of Phrase: Clinical governance /'klInIk(@)l gVv(@)n at ns/
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This phrase has been the hot topic among members of the medical
professions in England and Wales over the past year or so; it is
now beginning to be seen in newspapers and other non-technical
writing, though it will probably continue to be viewed as jargon.
It encapsulates a systematic attempt by the Labour government in
Britain to improve standards of care in the National Health
Service (NHS). These have come under threat through financial
constraints, especially a competitive system introduced by the
last Conservative government that was based on an 'internal
market'. There have also been several recent much-publicised cases
of medical incompetence. From April 1999, all British hospital
administrators will have a statutory responsibility for standards
and the quality of patient care, which will require them to keep a
firm eye on how well surgeons, doctors, nurses and support staff
do their jobs. They will have to ensure that doctors who are
identified as performing poorly either retrain, change their
caseloads or leave their jobs. Many doctors are unsure how well
monitoring can work, but within at least some hospital departments
it already seems to be leading to a more alert and questioning
view of methods. The term echoes the older term 'corporate
governance' for proposals to improve standards in British business
life following the Cadbury Report.

While the proposal to improve "clinical governance" in the NHS
should be universally welcomed ... the mechanisms for monitoring
and managing clinical performance will almost certainly prove more
controversial.
                     [_British Medical Journal_, Jan. 1998]

There is no doubt in many people's minds that clinical governance
could become a bureaucratic extravaganza ... without much effect
on the quality of patient care.
 [Report, _Clinical Governance in North Thames_, Jun. 1998]


3. Topical Words: Seaborgium  /si:'bO:gi at m/
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With the death in February of Professor Glenn Seaborg, we have
lost not only one of the pioneers of nuclear physics, but the only
person in the history of science who has had a chemical element
named after him in his lifetime.

Glenn Seaborg was involved with synthesising or identifying nine
of the transuranic elements, starting with plutonium in 1940 and
ending with nobellium in 1957. None of the elements with numbers
above number 92 (uranium) exist in nature, so these new ones were
created by smashing atoms and subatomic particles into each other
in nuclear reactors, cyclotrons and the like. Later, teams in
America, Germany and the Soviet Union went on to create others, of
which the most recent is element 114, reported earlier this year.

The naming of new chemical elements is a small part of the work of
an organisation most of us have never heard of, nor are likely to
encounter: the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry
(commonly abbreviated IUPAC). For more than a decade IUPAC was the
centre of a controversy over the names of the transuranic elements
from 101 up to 109, so much so that they had to invent temporary
names for them, such as 'unnilhexium' for 106. This revolved
around arguments over who created them first (laboratories at
Berkeley, Dubna in the former Soviet Union, and Darmstadt in
Germany were all involved), tinged with cold war antagonisms and
institutional rivalries.

The American Chemical Society proposed one list of names and the
Russians another. IUPAC had a rule that no chemical element was to
be named after a living individual, but the American list
contained the name 'seaborgium' for element 106, which had been
first made in 1974. This and other problems delayed ratification
of the list until August 1997, when an IUPAC meeting agreed on a
compromise, but largely American, list that included 'seaborgium'.
All those dictionary makers who by then had created entries for
the new element under that name breathed easier.

By the nature of nature, new elements to name are scarce (though
those from number 110 onwards are still up for grabs), so the
honour bestowed on Glenn Seaborg may forever remain unique.


4. In Brief: Braining up
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After all the talk of 'dumbing down', it was inevitable that
somebody would soon invent a word for the opposite phenomenon of
moving towards a more intellectual or rigorous approach to a
subject. It seems to have been the British broadcaster and
novelist Melvyn Bragg who coined the term, during a BBC radio
programme in January about Ted Hughes' _Birthday Letters_. The
derived form 'brainer-up' has already appeared, always a good sign
of a word on the march.


5. Weird Words: Pilgarlic /pIl'gA(r)lIk/
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A bald-headed man; a person looked on with humorous contempt or
mock pity.

It's been a while since anyone used this word in anger, though
you'll find it in many older works. Here's a typical reference,
from an eighteenth-century English translation of _Gargantua and
Pantagruel_, by Rabelais: "After this, we e'en jogged to bed for
that night; but the devil a bit poor pilgarlic could sleep one
wink - the everlasting jingle-jangle of the bells kept me awake
whether I would or no". To speak of 'poor pilgarlic' in terms of
mock pity is typical of the word, whether you're speaking about
yourself, as here, or about somebody else. Its origin is
straightforward: it's a compound of 'pil', a word that later
changed its spelling to the modern 'peel', plus 'garlic'. So it
compares a man with a bald head to a peeled head of garlic. But it
wasn't just a simple case of a ludicrous comparison; there was a
strong hint about the reason why the man had gone bald - through
an attack of the pox. So the contemptuous meaning arose, and was
well established by the early seventeenth century. Later the link
with venereal disease declined, but the adverse meaning survived.


6. Q & A
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[The section in which I (have been attempting to) answer your
questions. Don't send me any more for the moment. I'm up to my
eyebrows in them already.]
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Q. Could you possibly tell me the origin of the slang term for
policemen, 'cops'? [Billyboy Mackey]

A. Half a dozen explanations at least have been put forward for
this one, including an acronym from "constable on patrol", which
is reminiscent of the story behind 'posh' and quite certainly just
as spurious. It is also said to come from the copper badges
carried by New York City's first police sergeants (patrolmen were
alleged to have had brass ones and senior officers silver); it is
almost as often said to refer to the supposedly copper buttons of
the first London police force of the 1820s. Both these stories
seem about equally unlikely.

The most probable explanation is that it comes from the slang verb
'cop', meaning "to seize", originally a dialect term of northern
England which by the beginning of the nineteenth century was known
throughout the country. This can be followed back through the
French 'caper' to the Latin 'capere', "to seize, take", from which
we also get our 'capture'.

The situation is complicated because there are - or have been - a
number of other slang meanings for 'cop', including "to give
somebody a blow", and the phrase 'cop out', as an escape or
retreat. Both of these may come from the Latin 'capere'. But it's
suggested that another sense of 'cop', "to steal", could come from
the Dutch 'kapen', "to take or steal". There's also "to beware,
take care", an Anglo-Indian term from the Portuguese 'coprador',
and phrases like "you'll cop it!" ("you'll be punished, you'll get
into trouble"), which could come from the idea of seizing or
catching, but may be a variant of 'catch'.

But the "seize; capture" origin for the police sense seems most
plausible. So policemen are just those who catch or apprehend
criminals, a worthy occupation. And a 'copper' is someone who
seizes, a usage first recorded in Britain in 1846.
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Q. We were wondering if you could explain how the term 'The Bill'
(as in the TV show) came to be associated with the British police
force. As we enjoy a bit of grim reality every so often we watch
the show, but its title has always been a source of mystery to us.
[Brendon Flynn and Janine Toms, Australia]

A. It goes back to the term 'Old Bill', which has been around
since the First World War. He was a cartoon character created in
the early part of the war, about 1915, by the late Bruce
Bairnsfather. Old Bill was a Cockney veteran soldier with a walrus
moustache, the epitome of the grumbling foot-soldier. He was the
one who told an unhappy raw recruit who was sheltering with him in
a shell hole, "If you knows a better 'ole, go to it". This became
a famous catchphrase that was known and used well after the end of
the war (I can remember it in London in the late 1940s, but this
must have been right at the end of its life).

The series of cartoons was immensely popular and the name 'Old
Bill' remained in the language after the First World War as a term
for a man with a large moustache. At some point it moved over to
refer to the police - we're not sure exactly when or how, but the
first citations we have are dated only in the 1950s. Eric
Partridge has said that it happened because many London policemen
wore walrus moustaches in the inter-war years, but the evidence we
have doesn't confirm that.

The name was linked in particular to the Metropolitan Police, no
doubt because the original Old Bill was a Londoner. Later, when
the links with the cartoon character had vanished through passage
of time, the name was shortened to 'Bill' and later still was used
as the title of the television series. Bruce Bairnsfather, by the
way, went on to become the official cartoonist to the US Army in
Europe between 1942-44.


7. Housekeeping
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WORLD WIDE WORDS is a weekly newsletter on language, copyright (c)
Michael B Quinion 1999. All rights reserved. Reproduction in other
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