World Wide Words -- 13 Nov 99

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 166         Saturday 13 November 1999
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Sent weekly to more than 6,000 subscribers in at least 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. Topical Words: Enthusiast.
3. Weird Words: Vexillology.
4. In Brief: Entreprenerd, Fasherati, Nanofax.
5. Q & A: Rule of thumb.
6. Administration: How to unsubscribe, Copyright.


1. Notes and feedback
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LEUCIPOTTOMY. Anthony D Clover wrote to argue that there ought not
only to be one less 't' but one more 'p' (as in 'hippopotamous' or
'hippocampus'). He said "in fact 'leukippos' is classical Greek (in
Sophocles and Pindar) and means 'riding or driving white horses'".
Terry Walsh pointed out that the suffix '-tomy' comes from a root
meaning to cut, so it "ought perhaps to be 'leucippoglyphy' (in
that the horses are carved, rather than cut)". Dermod Quirke wrote
with similar comments, but supercharged them: "Nah, there's no such
word. And if there was, it wouldn't be spelt that way - it would be
'leucohippotomy'. But that would mean cutting off or excising white
horses, which isn't the same thing. A white-horse carving might be
a 'leucohippoglyph', and I suppose the operation of carving one
might be 'leucohippoglyphy', or you might prefer '-graph(y)'. For
my whack, the English term for carving white horses is 'carving
white horses'. We don't need pseudo-classical words for it. But if
we must play pretentious word-building games, we'd better get them
right". It would seem the late Morris Marples, who coined the term,
was almost as bad a student of Greek as I am; it certainly confirms
that it's truly a Weird Word!

PHENOMENON  Several Greek scholars have also corrected my etymology
for this word last week. It is from the Greek 'phainomenon', that
which appears or is seen, from 'phainein', to show.

ROOK  Several subscribers have written to say that the name for the
chess piece probably does derive from the Persian word 'rukk'.
Ernest Klein, in his _Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the
English Language_, agrees and says it's the same as our 'roc'.
That's the usual English spelling for the name of the fabulous huge
white bird of enormous strength whose egg Sinbad the Sailor tries
to steal in the _Arabian Nights_.

PICOSATELLITE  I confused many readers with this one. All felt that
the progression ought to be from pico- to femto-, the latter being
the next smaller prefix in the series. But the picosatellites are
experimental; the next stage is to put larger ones in orbit, moving
up from small masses to bigger ones so that the progression from
pica- to nano- is right. Apologies.

LISTSERVER  You may know that the World Wide Words list is held on
a list server at the University of Pennsylvania operated by the
LINGUIST list, to whom I am eternally grateful for their kindness.
Next Wednesday, they are upgrading the server to a new machine and
a new version of the software. This shouldn't affect subscribers,
but if you experience odd happenings, or you don't get next week's
issue, e-mail me and I'll sort it out.


2. Topical Words: Enthusiasm
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Following Australia's success in the Rugby World Cup, the
_Independent on Sunday_ remarked that "No praise is too high for
the support and the 'enthusiasm' that the Welsh people have
displayed throughout".

Coincidentally, the day before I had been reading the proceedings
of the Euralex '98 conference on lexicography (as one does) in
which Patrick Hanks of Oxford Dictionaries mentioned a memorial he
had come across in Exeter Cathedral. This praised George Lavington,
its bishop between 1746 and 1764, as a "Determined Enemy to
Idolatry and Persecution / And successful Exposer of Pretence and
Enthusiasm".

Today 'enthusiasm' is something to be applauded, not exposed. But
it's one of those words that has radically altered its meaning down
the centuries. To Bishop Lavington, 'enthusiasm' was a dangerous
state, one not to be encouraged by an Anglican divine.

That's because the first sense of the word came from the Greek
'enthousiasmos', derived from 'enthousia', a noun that described
the state of being inspired by or possessed by a god. In turn, this
came from the adjective 'entheos' ('en-', in, plus 'theos', as in
'theology'). The word first appeared in English in 1608, with the
same sense of being possessed by a god, or being gripped by a
prophetic or poetic frenzy. Later the same century it could refer
to a state in which people suffered "ill-regulated or misdirected
religious emotion", as the _Oxford English Dictionary_ puts it.

Such outbreaks of fervour in the seventeenth century were linked
with sects practising worship that included shaking, quaking and
speaking in tongues. Even though John Wesley condemned such sects,
some of the obloquy rubbed off on the Methodists. Bishop Lavington
was a confirmed opponent; in 1749 he wrote (anonymously) his famous
work _The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared_, in which
he paraded the excesses supposedly committed by the followers of
Wesley. John Locke also fulminated against enthusiasts in his
_Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.

Our modern sense only became the dominant one in the nineteenth
century, following a slow weakening of meaning. But some notion
that the condition leads to excess of passion and loss of judgement
long clung to the word. Arthur Balfour, later to be British prime
minister, wrote sourly in 1891: "It is unfortunate, considering
that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be
trusted to speak the truth". Even now something of that suspicion
remains. A colleague, angered by the visionary but impractical
ideas of volunteers working at a museum, once burst out "God save
me from all enthusiasts!". Bishop Lavington would have understood.


3. Weird Words: Vexillology
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The study of flags.

It may seem surprising that such an odd-looking word for an obscure
field of study should have gained acceptance, but it's relatively
common and is recorded in most recent dictionaries (they have to be
fairly new, since the word was coined only in the 1950s). The word
comes from the Latin 'vexillum' for a flag, which derives from the
verb 'vehere', to carry (from which we get 'vehicle' as well). A
related Latin term was 'vexillum', for a body of men grouped under
one flag. This suggests that the original Latin referred to a flag
that was carried rather than flown from a mast. Someone who studies
flags is a 'vexillologist', and the adjective is the mildly tongue-
twisting 'vexillological'. These two terms may be modern, but the
Latin root turns up in a number of obscure terms, such as
'vexillator' for a banner-bearer in a mystery or miracle play.
'Vexillum' is also used in modern botany for the large external
petal of a legume flower.


4. In Brief
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ENTREPRENERD  A sarcastic term, a blend of 'entrepreneur' and
'nerd', applied to the commercially minded innovators who are
shaping electronic commerce over the Internet.

FASHERATI  A relative newcomer to the collection of words based on
'literati' (which have created a new plural suffix '-ati' in the
language), this refers to all those who insist on being the first
to have the latest and most exclusive fashions, above all - though
not solely - the writers on fashion themselves.

NANOFAX  William Gibson uses this word in his new book _All
Tomorrow's Parties_ for a method of transmitting physical objects
over large distances. (It sounds like the transporter in _Star
Trek_, but apparently - as the name implies - uses a system based
on nanotechnology.)


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. I'd like to know what the term 'rule of thumb' meant.  I
remember reading it had something to do with being permitted to
beat your wife with a rod no thicker than your thumb. Is this
correct? [Eric J Michelsen in the USA, Frank Conway in Winnipeg,
Canada, and several others]

A. This sounds like the invention of somebody desperately trying to
make sense of a traditional phrase - what linguists call folk
etymology. And it's quite certainly untrue. But there's a lot more
to it than just fevered imagination.

The expression 'rule of thumb' has been recorded since 1692 and
probably wasn't new then. It meant then what it means now - some
method or procedure that comes from practice or experience, without
any formal basis. Some have tried to link it with brewing; in the
days before thermometers, brewers were said to have gauged the
temperature of the fermenting liquor with the thumb (just as
mothers for generations have tested the temperature of the baby's
bath water with their elbows). This seems unlikely, as the thumb is
not that sensitive and the range of temperatures for fermentation
between too cool and too warm is quite small.

It is much more likely that it comes from the ancient use of bits
of the body to make measurements. There were once many of these:
the unit of the foot comes from pacing out dimensions; the distance
from the tip of the nose to the outstretched fingers is about one
yard; horse heights are still measured in hands (the width of the
palm and closed thumb, now fixed at four inches); and so on. There
was an old tailors' axiom that "twice around the thumb is once
around the wrist", which turns up in _Gulliver's Travels_. It's
most likely that the saying comes from the length of the first
joint of the thumb, which is about an inch (I remember once seeing
a carpenter actually make a rough measurement this way). So the
phrase 'rule of thumb' uses the word 'rule' in the sense of ruler,
not regulation, and directly refers to this method of measurement.

So where does beating your wife come in? Sharon Fenick wrote an
article about its origins in the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban in
1996. She found that for more than two centuries there have been
references in legal works to the idea that a man may legally beat
his wife, provided that he used a stick no thicker than his thumb;
but the references were always to what some people believed, not to
established legal principle. The British common law had long held
that it was legal for a man to chastise his wife in moderation, as
one might a servant or child, but Sir William Blackstone wrote in
his _Commentaries on the Laws of England_ in 1765 that this
principle was by then in decline. So far as I can discover nothing
was ever laid down about how such discipline should be applied.

Ms Fenick traced the idea back to a pronouncement that was supposed
to have been made in 1782 by a British judge, Sir Francis Buller;
this led to a fiercely satirical cartoon by James Gillray that was
published on 27 November that year, in which Buller was caricatured
as Judge Thumb. (Buller was a brilliant lawyer, the youngest man
ever to be appointed a judge in Britain, at 32, but he was widely
considered hasty and prejudiced in his opinions.)

However, it was only in 1976, so far as I can discover, that the
traditional phrase 'rule of thumb' became directly associated with
this spurious legal maxim, through a bit of wordplay in a report
that was misunderstood by readers.

It is extraordinary that we can so accurately pinpoint the moment
at which this folk belief came into being. And how astonishing,
too, that it should have survived more than two centuries to become
part of the folklore of modern times.


6. Administration
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