World Wide Words -- 04 Sep 99

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 156        Saturday 4 September 1999
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Sent every Saturday to more than 5,900 subscribers in 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. Book review: Two books about English idioms.
3. In Brief: Chemtrail, Culture fatigue, Riskfactorphobic.
4. Weird Words: Surrebutter.
5. Q & A: Davy Jones' locker, Keep mum, Lope.
6. Affixia: Hepa, hepat, hepato.
7. Administration: How to unsubscribe, Copyright.


1. Notes and feedback
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TREBUCHET  I got the etymology for this Weird Word slightly wrong
last week. The Web page <http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/
ww-tre1.htm> contains the corrected version.


2. Book review: Two books about English idioms
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Linguists have two meanings for 'idiom'. From the Greek sense of
something one's own, something personal or private, one sense is
the speech typical of a people or a place, a dialect or a local
language. But these books are using it in the other - for an
expression that's unique to a language, especially one that's
allusive, figurative or metaphorical and which as a result isn't
always possible to understand from its component parts.

Though they pose difficulties for learners, our language would be
poorer if we were restricted to speaking without such allusions as
'sling one's hook', 'man of straw', 'kick the bucket', 'jump
through hoops', 'rack and ruin', or 'have a screw loose'.

Two recent books tackle the task of listing and explaining the
more common such expressions, these among them. _The Cassell
Dictionary of English Idioms_ is edited by Rosalind Fergusson; the
_Oxford Dictionary of Idioms_ is compiled by Jennifer Speake (this
should not be confused with the larger _Oxford Dictionary of
English Idioms_ of 1993).

They are almost exactly the same size, and cover similar ground,
but in significantly different ways. The Cassell one is a plain
dictionary, listing idioms under their more significant words. The
entries are brief, with definitions and perhaps an illustrative
sentence: "bigger fish to fry: other more important matters to
attend to ('I have other fish to fry')". Some of the entries have
notes about their origins, but these are brief and uncommon.

The Oxford one has a very similar selection of idioms, arranged in
an idiosyncratic way in which the most significant word is put in
capital letters, with the entries arranged by these words; the
format has a shouting quality about it that some readers may find
off-putting. The example sentences are real ones, though, taken
from the OED's database of citations, and many of the idioms have
etymologies and usage notes attached.

For example the Oxford entry on 'by hook or by crook' has about
150 words of text about what it means, where it came from, and how
it is used. The Cassell entry is four words of definition: "by any
means whatsoever". Most of the Oxford entries are much shorter
than this, but it has a generally meatier feel about it than the
Cassell one. The latter is the more convenient for the essential
job of quickly getting the sense of an expression; the Oxford one
repays dipping and browsing.

[Fergusson, Rosalind (ed.) _The Cassell Dictionary of English
Idioms_, Cassell, published 31 Aug. 1999, pp394, ISBN 0-304-35009-
5, UK price GBP18.99; Speake, Jennifer (ed.) _Oxford Dictionary of
Idioms_, Oxford University Press, published 24 Jun. 1999, ISBN 0-
19-860170-0, pp395, UK price GBP14.99.]


3. In Brief
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CHEMTRAIL  Conspiracy theorists, especially in the USA, are
claiming that high-flying military aircraft are dumping substances
into the atmosphere in 'chemtrails' (from 'chemical' plus
'contrail') as part of a government plot to expose people to
biowarfare agents.

CULTURE FATIGUE  Yet another addition to the list of buzz phrases
that include 'fatigue', this expresses the impossibility of
maintaining a objective critical perspective on the many forms of
cultural expression that compete for our attention, such as the
current waves of genres of art, music, and fashion.

RISKFACTORPHOBIC  A genuinely shudderworthy invention, apparently
from the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, which used it in
a report. As you might guess, riskfactorphobics are frightened of
risks, who - for example - overreact to health scares.


4. Weird Words: Surrebutter
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A formal response by a plaintiff in a court case.

This is one of a number of old British law terms that have
formally been made redundant through the reforms to the system of
civil justice that came into force on 26 April 1999. A part of the
attempt to make British civil law more relevant has been to sweep
away its obscure language, such as 'plaintiff', 'writ' and
'affidavit'. But 'surrebutter' was already defunct for practical
purposes in British legal use, so its loss will not be regretted,
or even I suspect much noticed. In the old process of common law
pleadings, there was a set sequence of claims and responses by the
lawyers on each side. The person who brought the action (the
plaintiff) made a declaration of his case; the defendant then made
a plea in response. Depending on the complexity of the case, there
could be a further round, in which the plaintiff uttered a
'replication' and the defendant a 'rejoinder'. The next pair was
called a 'surrejoinder' and a 'rebutter'. If a further step were
needed (you're still with me, I trust?) we then had a plaintiff's
'surrebutter'. A writer in the old British newspaper, the _Daily
News_, remarked in 1888 that "Controversy is seldom profitable
after it gets down to the stage of surrebutter and surrejoinder".
The prefix 'sur-' here is a form of 'super-', which you will find
in 'surcharge' and 'surpass' as well.


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 am looking for the origin of 'Davy Jones' locker'.  I know
there is a nautical connotation, reference made to pirates and
swashbucklers and the like, but have been unable to get a good
clear origin of the term. [Ed Cole]

A. It's hard to have to write this yet again, but we don't know.

But we do know that the phrase goes back at least two centuries,
since the first clear reference comes from Tobias Smollett, who
wrote in _The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle_ in 1751 that: "This
same Davy Jones, according to the mythology of sailors, is the
fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is
often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the
eve of hurricanes, ship-wrecks, and other disasters to which sea-
faring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and
woe". So his locker is the bottom of the sea, the ocean's depths.

So much for facts. There are various stories about the origin of
the term, usually attempting to identify a real David Jones. One
of this name was said to run a pub in London, with a neat sideline
- a sort of privatised press gang - of drugging unwary patrons and
storing them in his ale lockers at the back of the pub until they
could be taken on board some ship. Another story tries to identify
him with Jonah of the Old Testament, who - you will recall - spent
three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish; but
Jonah survived. Yet a third theory says, as you suggest, that Davy
Jones was a fearsome pirate, who loved to make his captives walk
the plank, so they ended up at the bottom of the sea; but nobody,
so far as I know, has identified this alarming outlaw.

We can be fairly certain that all these stories are folklore. The
real Davy Jones - if there ever was one - remains obscure.
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Q. Can you shed any light on the origin of the phrase 'to keep
mum'? I found, much to my delight, the following headline on the
Website for Melbourne's _The Age_ newspaper: 'Presidential
candidate Bush keeps mum on cocaine'. [Tim Marsh, Australia]

A. I hope the dear lady appreciates his efforts.

The word 'mum' is one of the few that we can say for certain are
onomatopoeic, which imitate or echo some sound. The sound in this
case is the inarticulate murmur 'mmmmm', the only noise one can
make when one's mouth is kept firmly shut. The word has been
recorded in English from the fourteenth century in various
spellings but settled to its modern form in the sixteenth century.

It has produced several compounds, including 'mummer' (a mime
actor, one who performs silently, though the word is also linked
to the French 'momeur'), the verb 'to mumble' and, less obviously,
the name of that nasty disease 'mumps'. This may derive from
'mump', an obsolete word for a grimace, which could possibly refer
to the altered shape of the face due to the swollen glands in the
neck, or perhaps to a resulting difficulty in speaking. It's the
same word as the old verb 'to mump' meaning to sulk. (Neither is
connected with 'mumping' in the sense of begging, which comes from
a different word, Dutch in origin, or of 'mum' for a type of beer,
whose origin is uncertain.) And there are the various phrases,
like 'mum's the word' and your 'to keep mum' which also include
the idea of keeping silent.

The sense of 'mum' that produced the delightful double meaning in
the headline you spotted is very much more modern. As a shorted
form of 'mummy' it appears only at the start of the nineteenth
century. Until then, there would have been no joke, nor would that
poster slogan of the Second World War have been possible, the one
that enjoined people not to talk carelessly to strangers: "Be like
Dad: keep Mum".
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Q. The word 'lope' packs a lot into four letters: I always think
of it as running in a loose, relaxed way, with an infinite
reserve. Did it emerge from the American West, as a short form of
antelope, or is it from the French 'loup' meaning wolf, or
something entirely different? [Rich Rothenberg]

A. It looks as though it might have a connection, but the
similarities are accidental and it has nothing to do with either
wolves or antelopes. In sense and etymology, 'lope' is related to
'leap'. It's ancient, traceable to prehistoric Germanic. The Old
English version of the word was 'hleapan', meaning to run, jump or
throw oneself violently at something. This eventually changed into
our modern 'leap', which kept the latter senses, but gave up the
former to 'run', another ancient German word. In the fifteenth
century, a Scots or northern English dialect relative of the Old
English word moved into the standard language to form our modern
'lope', for the sense of running with a long bounding stride that
has something of leaping about it. It's also the source of
'elope', to run away to get married, and also possibly of
'interloper'. This last word is said to have been coined in the
sixteenth century on the model of the older and now obsolete
'landloper' for a vagabond, somebody who "runs through the land".


6. Affixia: Hepa, hepat, hepato
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This combining form or affix in its various incarnations turns up
mostly in medicine, since it comes from the Greek 'hepar' for the
liver. So 'hepatitis' is liver inflammation, whilst 'hepatectomy'
is removal of part of it; the drug 'heparin' is an anticoagulant,
so called because it occurs in the liver; the adjective 'hepatic'
refers to the liver in general, and 'hepatotoxic' to some agent
damaging to liver cells; something 'intrahepatic' is inside the
liver, and 'gastrohepatic' is the adjective for the stomach and
liver together, or the membrane that connects them.


7. Administration
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