World Wide Words -- 16 Oct 99

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 162         Saturday 16 October 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: Coup.
3. Weird Words: Incarnadine.
4. Affixia: Xantho-.
5. Q & A: Arms akimbo, Missing opposites.
6. Beyond Words.
7. Administration: How to unsubscribe, Copyright.


1. Notes and feedback
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TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM  John Tracy McGrath writes about last week's
Turns of Phrase: "One citation for 'Dogme 95' itself contained an
interesting usage which may not be familiar to readers outside of
North America. In baseball, if the batter is hit by a ball thrown
by the pitcher, he is awarded advancement to first base, just as if
he had successfully hit the pitch with his bat. Batters almost
always try to get out of the way of such pitches (they hurt!), but
occasionally when a team desperately needs a player to get on base
- to advance other runners - he will seem to be dodging the ball,
but is in fact letting the pitched ball hit him. This practice has
invoked the sardonic phrase, 'To take one for the team'."

(If I may gloss Mr McGrath's response itself: "hit the pitch with
his bat" evokes a different image to a British English speaker who
knows cricket rather than baseball, as the pitch is the ground he
plays on, not the ball he hits. What was that again about "two
countries divided by a common language"?)


2. Topical Words: Coup
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[The limitations of some e-mail systems mean I've had to leave the
accents off French words in this piece. -- MQ]

"Coup crisis in Pakistan," the British newspaper the _Guardian_
announced in its front-page headline on Wednesday.

Strangely, for a word that's been naturalised for more than three
centuries, 'coup' has never quite lost its French accent, though
the vowel has lengthened in deference to the slack-jawed speech of
its adoptive country. It's also a conveniently short word for
newspaper headlines and late twentieth-century busy thinkers, which
is why we so rarely see the full expression 'coup d'etat' in other
than formal writing.

The original French word was spelt the same, and meant a blow. If
we trace it back, we pass though the medieval Latin 'culpus' and
classical Latin 'colaphus', to eventually arrive at the Greek
'kolaphos' for a blow or punch. But moving down the centuries
again, we find the links with English branching out from the source
in surprising ways.

For a start, 'coup' was been borrowed not once, but twice. It turns
up first about 1400 for a blow or stroke, then changes to mean an
upset or overturning, and later to refer to emptying something out
- such as a wheelbarrow - to finally arrive in modern Scots with
the sense of a rubbish tip. That version was soon converted to
standard English pronunciation, though the modern Scots word is
said as though it were spelt 'cowp'.

The verb arrived at about the same time. One sense - to come to
blows or to join battle - went along a different path and slowly
changed its pronunciation and spelling to 'cope'. By stages it came
to mean contending with danger or difficulties, then successfully
dealing with misfortunes, so arriving at our modern sense.

In French 'coup' is a close relative of 'couper', to cut. This has
influenced English, too, since it's the source of 'coppice', an
ancient way of managing woodlands by cutting the trunks close to
the ground and letting them regrow. 'Coupon' came from the same
source in the nineteenth century - a certificate which could be cut
out and redeemed. And the two-seater cars called 'coupes' derive
their name from it, since the original early nineteenth-century
French term for a small carriage was a 'carosse coupe', a cut-off
carriage, a version of an older vehicle called a berlin with the
back seats taken out. And it was French trappers in what is now
Canada who applied the word to the Native American technique of
touching an enemy to claim a kill.

And of course 'coup', in the French pronunciation, is still around
in a variety of expressions, such as 'coup de foudre', for
something that happens suddenly, like the lightning strike of the
French phrase, 'coup de grace' (grace blow) for the finishing
stroke, and 'coup de main' (a blow of the hand) for a sudden and
vigorous attack. The last two of these might have been used in
reports of the coup in Pakistan, had they been widely known still.


3. Weird Words: Incarnadine
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As adjective, relating to a blood-red or crimson colour; as verb,
to make something that colour.

This is a lovely word, with a fine flowing cadence, but it's all
too rare, surviving only in poetic or elevated writing. It is first
recorded in English in the sixteenth century in the sense of a pale
pink colour, having been borrowed from Italian 'incarnatino', which
came from the Latin 'incarnato', something incarnate, made flesh.

(Our name for the flower, the carnation, comes from a related idea,
as its flowers were originally the pink of European flesh; its name
comes from the related late Latin word 'carnatio'. Both it and
'incarnato' derive from the Latin 'caro' for flesh or meat, as do
other words in English, such as 'carnal' and 'carnivorous').

But if we know the word, it probably reminds us of Shakespeare's
_Macbeth_: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean
from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas
incarnadine, Making the green one red". As a result, the word moved
to mean not the pink of flesh but the red of blood.

We have other words in English for the colour, such as crimson and
carmine, so it's not surprising that 'incarnadine' - whether as
adjective or as Shakespeare's verb - has survived only in a limited
way, usually in contexts that suggest associations with blood.
Thomas Hardy used it in _Far from the Madding Crowd_: "Repose had
again incarnadined her cheeks" and this appeared in the
_Independent on Sunday_ in 1995: "Barbadian fishermen rushed into
the bay and began clubbing the dolphins to death ... Within
minutes, many of the trusting mammals were dead and the turquoise
of Miami Bay was incarnadined".


4. Affixia: Xantho-, xanth-
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As this combining form is based on the Greek 'xanthos', yellow, the
compounds featuring it have some link with that colour. All are
relatively rare terms in medicine, chemistry, and other sciences:
'xanthochroism' is what makes goldfish look the colour they are, as
it's a condition in which all the skin pigments except gold and
yellow disappear; 'xanthophyll' is a yellow substance, one of the
chlorophylls, the last to decay as winter approaches, so it gives
leaves those autumn colours; 'xanthenes' are a group of dyestuffs
based on the chemical compound 'xanthene', not all of them yellow
by any means; 'xanthous' is a rare adjective that describes human
beings with blond hair and light colouring; and 'xanthopsia' is the
medical term (also called 'yellow vision') for a condition in which
objects appear yellow to the observer, perhaps because of jaundice.


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. Since 'akimbo' means "In or into a position in which the hands
are on the hips and the elbows are bowed outward," why the
redundancy of 'arms akimbo'? And where did this unusual word come
from, anyway? [Sharlene Baker, USA]

A. It's certainly one of the odder-looking words in the language.
The first spelling recorded was 'in kenebowe', which turns up in a
work called _The Tale of Beryn_ that dates from 1400. This looks as
though it ought to come from an Old Norse source that meant
something bent into a curve, but it has never been found. (The last
element in the word is essentially the same as our 'bow' for a
curve.) The phrase went through several shifts, variously being
written as 'on kenbow' and 'a kembo', arriving at our modern form
in the eighteenth century.

Strictly speaking there's no redundancy, as the word could in
theory be applied to anything bent into a curved shape. But from
the very earliest recorded references, it seems to have been used
exclusively in reference to that characteristic position of the
arms, so the phrase 'arms akimbo' has for many years been a fossil
idiom.

Though at first it was a neutral phrase, the posture it describes
is one that implies defiance, aggressiveness or confidence, and
these emotions have become attached to the phrase. Charles Reade
used it in _The Cloister on the Hearth_: "Suddenly setting her arms
akimbo she told him with a raised voice and flashing eyes she
wondered at his cheek sitting down by that hearth of all hearths in
the world"; and Anne Bronte wrote in _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_
that "Mr Hattersley strode up to the fire, and interposing his
height and breadth between us and it, stood with arms akimbo,
expanding his chest, and gazing round him as if the house and all
its appurtenances and contents were his own undisputed
possessions".

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Q. I wonder if you could tell me the origin of 'ruthless' and
'gormless'?  Why are the opposites missing - why do we not describe
someone, for example, as full of gorm?  [Jonathan Downes]

A. What has happened is that the root words have vanished, leaving
the negatives behind. There are quite a number of these orphaned
negatives. Comic writers have often exploited this fact, as in P G
Wodehouse's "I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was
far from being gruntled" (from _The Code of the Woosters_).

'Gormless' is now mainly an informal British English word that
describes somebody foolish, lacking sense or initiative. This comes
from a defunct term, usually spelt 'gaum', a dialect word meaning
care or attention; in turn this derives from an Old Norse word
'gaumr'. Though rarely recorded, at one time 'gaum-like' was also
around, for someone with an intelligent look about them. Curiously,
the verb 'to gorm' also existed, which meant to stare vacantly,
implying almost the opposite; but this may be related to the Irish
'gom' for a stupid-looking person and so may be unconnected with
the other sense of 'gorm'.

'Ruthless' is easier, since 'ruth' was a well-attested Middle
English word for a feeling of pity or compassion. This was formed
about the twelfth century from the Anglo Saxon noun and verb 'rue',
with the same sense (we still have the verb, of course, with the
closely related idea of regret). The adjective 'ruthless' appeared
in the fourteenth century. The noun is now archaic, but the
adjective survived.

(See also <http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/unpaired.htm> for
more examples and discussion of orphaned negatives.)


6. Beyond Words
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ORPHANED NEGATIVES AGAIN  Subscriber Peter McCarthy from Australia
spotted this sign outside his local lawnmower shop: "Dismantling
$17.50. Extra charge for remantling".


7. Administration
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