World Wide Words -- 27 March 1999

Sat Mar 27 08:19:48 UTC 1999

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 137          Saturday 27 March 1999
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>From Michael Quinion                        Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Sent every Saturday to more than 4,500 subscribers in 87 countries
Web: <http://www.quinion.com/words/>   E-mail: <words at quinion.com>
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Contents
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1. Feedback.
2. Turns of Phrase: Community currency.
3. In Brief: Genetic-industrial complex.
4. Weird Words: Lollygag.
5. Q & A: Kilroy, Brassed off, Colonel, Mufti, Dopp kit.
6. List of the week: Currencies.
7. Administration.

1. Feedback
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THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. Last week's article produced a lot of mail.
Kara Noble of Merriam-Webster dictionaries wrote: "We've recently
received several messages from members of the medical community
insisting that 'the whole nine yards' refers to the length of the
human alimentary canal. I checked the biology books and found
that, like just about every other measure that has been somehow
loosely related to this expression, the distance from the mouth to
the anus can vary widely, but in large adult males it can reach
nine yards. Creativity certainly isn't lacking in the armchair
etymologists chasing this one!".

Rishi in Madras wrote: "In the early decades of this dying century
women in India wore a nine-yard sari as a matter of course. The
length of the sari might have been determined by the length of the
standard bolt of cloth. I have seen women in my own family wear a
nine-yard sari even as they went about their day-to-day chores.
However this practice has fallen into disuse as modern-day women
do not like to be weighed down by clothes. So the sari length came
down from nine yards to six".

Robert Lee wrote from Florida: "I am 74. I grew up in a hillbilly
town 90 miles NW of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The term was often
used during the 30s among our people and we understood 'the whole
nine yards' refers to a bolt of cloth, the standard size being
nine yards. Often Jewish pedlers carried such in their carts. 'The
whole nine yards' was seldom purchased".

We're hardly nearer a solution, though your responses have been
fascinating. But I think we had now best let this one lie!

2. Turns of Phrase: Community currency
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This is a relatively new umbrella term for schemes that are
designed to help people in a community help each other. Such
schemes are frequently created as a way to develop links between
isolated individuals or to bring people who are excluded from
employment into useful activity. Reviving the local economy is
often not the main objective. The best known examples are 'LETS',
Local Exchange and Trading Systems. These create local currencies
for trading among its members, a form of mutual credit. They began
in the eighties; there are now about 400 LETS schemes in Britain,
250 in Australia, 50 in New Zealand and 140 in North America. LETS
have a negotiable rate for services, which some writers feel are
different from systems like 'time dollars', developed by the
Washington lawyer Edgar Cahn in the mid eighties, in which it is
assumed that everybody's time is of equal value. How useful they
are is not easy to judge, as benefits are often intangible, what
one writer has called "the warm glow effect".

Key to the success of LETS systems, says Linton, is community
control through community currency -- or 'Localized personal
monies', as he calls them.
                                        ['Harrowsmith', June 1994]

The 'realities' which underpin a community currency system, as
understood by its members, is very much dependent upon the picture
portrayed to them as they join the system.
                     [_Int. J. Community Currency Research_, 1997]

3. In Brief: Genetic-industrial complex
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The debate in Europe over the safety of genetically-modified foods
brought forth this politically-loaded term in the January 1999
issue of the English-language edition of _Le Monde diplomatique_.
It corresponds pretty exactly to the Cold War term 'military-
industrial complex' and has the same implication of a group, in
this case the manufacturers of genetically-modified crops, which
has undue influence on government but is not under its control.

4. Weird Words: Lollygag
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To fool around; to spend time aimlessly; to dawdle or dally.

Though its main meaning today is of purposeless activity, it also
has the subsidiary meaning of "to indulge in kisses and caresses".
It first appeared in the US about the middle of the nineteenth
century. A fine citation from an Iowan newspaper, the _Northern
Vindicator_, in 1868 suggests that a lovemaking implication was
around even in its early days: "The lascivious lolly-gagging lumps
of licentiousness who disgrace the common decencies of life by
their love-sick fawnings at our public dances". Jonathan Green, in
his _Cassell Dictionary of Slang_, suggests it may come from a
dialect word 'lolly', meaning "tongue". If it is, then it's a
close relative of 'lollipop', which is also thought to come from
the same source (though in its original sense in the eighteenth
century this was a sugar or treacle sweetmeat, not an ice
confection on a stick). Another spelling is 'lallygag'.

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 so limited. If I can do
so, a response will appear both here and on the WWW Web site. Any
question sent to <words at quinion.com> will be moved over to Q&A!]
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Q. Would you please tell me where the phrase 'Kilroy was here'
originated? [Leif B Christensen, Denmark]

A. Nobody knows where the name of this archetypal American soldier
came from, though the phrase turned up on walls and equipment all
over the world during World War II. The most famous story links
the expression with Mr James J Kilroy, of Halifax, Massachusetts.
This is how the _New York Times_ explained matters on 24 December
1946: "During the war he was employed at the Bethlehem Steel
Company's Quincy shipyard, inspecting tanks, double bottoms and
other parts of warships under construction. To satisfy superiors
that he was performing his duties, Mr. Kilroy scribbled in yellow
crayon 'Kilroy was here' on inspected work. Soon the phrase began
to appear in various unrelated places, and Mr. Kilroy believes the
14,000 shipyard workers who entered the armed services were
responsible for its subsequent world-wide use". This has been
stated as fact in several books on phrase origins. The problem is
that there is evidence that the name, and the phrase, were being
used in this way even before the US entered the War in 1942.
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Q. Although it is no longer being exhibited in our region's
multiplexes, an audience for the British film _Brassed Off_ is
growing among the video rental folks. The dictionaries closest to
hand offer its definition as "disgruntled" but neither is helpful
with etymological information beyond stating simply "British
slang". What does the 'brass' part of the slang expression derive
from? Can you shed light on this obscure corner of our almost
common tongue? [Wilson Pinney, USA]

A. Your dictionaries are correct in saying that it's a slang
expression for "fed up; disgruntled". It's now virtually obsolete.
It seems to be services' slang from the first part of World War
Two, most probably from the Royal Navy. The phrase in itself is
vulgar but not obscene, though the rhyme of 'brass' with 'arse' no
doubt added to its appeal. It may have been formed after the model
of several other similar military expressions. An older one is
'arsed off', from 'arse off', a low slang term from the later part
of the nineteenth century that meant "to leave quickly". Another,
from the 1930s this time, is 'browned off', which may refer to the
accumulation of brown rust on worn-out metal, but is more likely
to be linked with other words in 'brown' that relate to sodomy.
Yet a third is 'cheesed off', perhaps a euphemism for 'pissed
off'. 'Brassed off' could come from somebody having had a telling
off from a superior officer, since senior officers were commonly
called "the brass", and very senior ones "the top brass", in
reference to the amount of gilt on their uniforms. My own theory -
I've not seen this anywhere else - is connected to that job, often
given as a punishment, of polishing the brasswork on board ships
(often done with a product called Brasso). So to be 'brassed off'
could just mean that you have been doing some piece of mindless
scut work and are thoroughly disgruntled as a result.
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Q. Why is the word 'colonel' pronounced 'kernel'? What is the
etymology of this word? [Gadi Rowelsky]

A. It's a messy story, the result of a confusion between two forms
of the word that came into English at different times. Its source
is the Italian 'colonna'. This, and our 'column' with the same
meaning, derive from the Latin 'columna', because a column of men
was reminiscent of the shape of a pillar. There was an phrase in
Italian, 'compagna colonnella', literally the "little-column
company", which referred to the small company of soldiers that
marched at the head of a regiment and which was commanded directly
by the officer in charge. So that officer became known as the
'colonnello', the leader of the little column. This shifted into
French as 'coronel' but later changed back nearer the Italian
original as 'colonel'. Much the same thing happened in English,
where 'coronel' was the more common form up to about 1630, but
'colonel' eventually won. At first the word was pronounced as
three syllables, but the middle became swallowed, and under the
continuing influence of the 'r' spelling the 'l' in the first
syllable vanished.
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Q. Can you tell me the origin of the word 'mufti'? [Chris
Clifford; Terry Yawn]

A. This term for the off-duty civilian clothes of the military
man, or these days anybody who usually wears some sort of uniform,
was originally a joke among officers in the British Indian Army,
and is first recorded early in the nineteenth century. It's
usually said to come from 'Mufti', the title of a Muslim legal
expert who is empowered to give rulings on religious law. The
story is told in Yule and Burnell's _Hobson-Jobson_ of 1886 that
the word was "perhaps originally applied to the attire of
dressing-gown, smoking-cap, and slippers, which was like the
Oriental dress of the Mufti". I assume that officers wore this
garb while relaxing in the mess.
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Q. What does the 'dopp' in 'dopp kit' (shaving bag) mean, and
where did the term originate? [Wiley]

A. I am indebted to the American Dialect Society Web archive (see
<http://www.americandialect.org/>), and in particular to Jim
Rader, for the answer to this question, which otherwise I couldn't
find in any of my reference books. The word 'Dopp' is a registered
trade mark of a man's toiletry kit. It was designed by Jerome
Harris for his uncle Charles Doppelt, a German immigrant to
Chicago in the early 1900s. So it's presumably an abbreviated form
of Mr Doppelt's family name. The word became known particularly
during the Second World War when GIs were issued Dopp kits.

6. List of the week: Currencies
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To mark the introduction of the currency called the Euro, here are
some of the world's other monetary units: Afghani, Baht, Balboa,
Bolivar, Cedi, Cordoba, Cruzeiro, Dalasi, Dinar, Dirham, Dobra,
Dong, Drachma, Escudo, Forint, Guarani, Guildar, Kina, Kip,
Koruna, Krone, Kroner, Kwacha, Kip, Lempira, Leu, Lilangeni, Loti,
Markka, Metical, Naira, Nuevo, Ouguiya, Pa'anga, Pataca, Peso,
Pula, Quetzal, Ringgit, Rival, Rufiyan, Rupee, Schilling, Sol,
Sucre, Taka, Tugrik, Won, Yuan, Zolty.

7. Administration
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