World Wide Words -- 05 Feb 00

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 176          Saturday 5 February 2000
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent weekly to more than 7,000 subscribers in at least 97 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion    ISSN 1470-1448    Thornbury, Bristol, UK
Web: <http://www.quinion.com/words/>    E-mail: <words at quinion.com>
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents
--------
1. Notes and feedback.
2. Turns of Phrase: Sky-surfing.
3. Weird Words: Syzygy.
4. Q & A: Colon, Segue, My giddy aunt, Frick and Frack.
5. In Brief: Clickocracy, Very twentieth century, Vortal.
6. Administration: How to unsubscribe, Copyright.


1. Notes and feedback
-------------------------------------------------------------------
PANORAMA  Several American subscribers wrote describing a number of
these representations, which seem to have been rather more common
in the US than they ever were in Britain. They were often called
'cycloramas', a term which is first recorded from the 1840s. These
days, the meaning of that word is confined almost entirely to a
theatrical backdrop - either canvas or a plain back wall - that is
usually lit to represent the sky, and whose name is usually
abbreviated to 'cyc'.

TARGET  Following my piece on this a couple of weeks ago, several
people wrote to ask the very reasonable question that if the word
'target' in the sense of something to aim at only dates from 1757,
what did archers and their like call it in all the centuries
beforehand? It turns out that the older term was 'mark', which is
recorded from the beginning of the thirteenth century. This was
originally a boundary (a variant is 'march', as in the Welsh
Marches for the border between Wales and England), then it became
the word for a boundary marker such as a natural feature (as in
'landmark') or a stone or post. The idea of a mark as a thing to
aim at seems to have developed from this. It was something much
more substantial than our modern idea of a mark as some visible
indication or sign.

YOU FOUND US HOW?  New subscribers often write in to tell me where
they've seen World Wide Words mentioned. But I was bemused to learn
that one found us in _The Phone Book 2000_ for the Monroe County
area, New York, under the Internet site listing of 'proofreading'.
As my invaluable volunteer proof reader will confirm, I generate
proofing errors, not cure them ...


2. Turns of Phrase: Sky-surfing
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This belongs with other generators of excessive adrenaline (I speak
as a sedentary older person fond of a quiet life and intact body)
such as zorbing, bungee-jumping, street-luging, and base-jumping.
It's a cross between skateboarding and sky-diving in which you jump
out of an aircraft with a board strapped to your feet. You use the
board during free fall to execute acrobatics by working against the
slipstream, so you really are surfing, but on air rather than
water. Some of these acrobatics look spectacular, but they can be
extremely dangerous if they're not done just right, because you can
get into a spin that's impossible to recover from. This is regarded
as just about the most dangerous - but also the most exhilarating -
of all the extreme sports, and requires a lot of training. At one
time known as 'skyboarding', the sport has been around for about a
decade, but it has only become more widely known in the past five
years. Those taking part are often called 'sky-surfers'.

In my sky surfing, I have centrifugal force, so it gives me much
more a sense of speed. That's pretty cool.
                                [_Dallas Morning News_, Mar. 1998]

Skysurfers compete in pairs with one member of the duo filming the
other as he executes a series of incredible aerial manoeuvres.
                              [_Independent on Sunday_, Dec. 1998]


3. Weird Words: Syzygy  /'sIzIdZI/
------------------------------------------------------------------
A conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun.

If you look up at the sky and see the full moon, you're witnessing
an example of 'syzygy'. From our point of view the sun is then on
the opposite side of the sky to the moon, and so is said to be in
opposition to it. The three are also in syzygy at new moon, this
time with the moon and the sun next to each other in the sky - a
state called conjunction.

The word appeared in English in the seventeenth century, and at
first could apply only to conjunctions. It comes via late Latin
from the Greek 'suzugia', which derives from 'suzugos', yoked or
paired. It was not until a century later that its meaning was
extended to cover opposition, in defiance of its etymology. The
word also has a couple of rarer meanings in mathematics and poetry.
Lovers of wordplay may know it as the shortest word in the language
containing three 'y's.


4. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[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 WWWords Web site.]

                        -----------

Q. Are the words 'colon', meaning a part of the bowel, and 'colon',
meaning a punctuation mark, related to each other, and if so, how?
[Mark Raymond, Australia]

A. They're not closely connected. They come from two Greek words
that are very similar in sound and spelling, both of which I have
to transliterate as 'kolon' because I can't reproduce the accents
here.

One of the pair literally meant a limb, an arm or leg. It was also
used figuratively for a section of a sentence - a clause or a
number of clauses - that were written as one line and treated as a
unit of rhythm. As a result, it would have a complete number of
metrical feet in it (feet, limbs, it's all the same). We borrowed
it via Latin and began to apply it to the mark that broke prose
into sections for chanting in church. Later, it referred to a
punctuation mark that similarly divided up the blocks of a sentence
into independent or free-standing clauses.

The other 'colon' was borrowed into medical English via Latin from
the similar Greek word that principally meant food or meat, but
which could also refer to the large intestine.

                        -----------

Q. I would like to know about the word 'segway'. I have tried to
find it myself through the internet and various dictionaries, to no
avail. Perhaps I am not spelling it correctly?  I use it to
describe the bridge between one topic in a conversation and the
next and have also heard it used on national radio in the same
context. [Louise Adams, Australia]

A. It's pronounced as you write it, but it's spelt differently:
'segue'. It takes me back to my BBC training in the mid-sixties
when, as an apprentice spinner of disks, I was taught this very
term for the action of jumping straight from one record to the next
without any announcement in between, or, as the _Oxford English
Dictionary_ more soberly puts it, to make an "uninterrupted
transition from one song or melody to another". It's Italian, the
present tense of 'sequire', to follow, which was only borrowed into
English as musicians' slang in the 1930s. More recently, as you
suggest, it has been extended to cover any smooth transition, as in
a conversation.

                        -----------

Q. I have been asked for information on the expression 'My giddy
aunt!' None of my reference books lists it - nor any in my local
library. Do you have any ideas, please? [Andrew Morley]

A. There seems to have been a fashion at the end of the nineteenth
century for using the word 'giddy' as an intensifier. So, from
Kipling's _Stalky & Co_ of 1899: "King'll have to prove his charges
up to the giddy hilt".

The first example of the expression that I've been able to find for
sure is from the _Journal of a Disappointed Man_ of 1919, by W N P
Barbellion (a pseudonym for Bruce Cummings). However, it's also
been suggested that it was used in that archetypal saga of giddy
auntdom, Brandon Thomas's play _Charley's Aunt_, first performed in
1892, but I haven't been able to check.

This use of 'giddy' harks back to the idea of something or someone
lightheartedly or exuberantly silly, a sense of the word that dates
from the sixteenth century. ('Giddy' has been around for more than
a thousand years, but at first it referred to somebody who was
insane or stupid, and only later shifted to its modern main sense
of experiencing vertigo or dizziness.)

                        -----------

Q. Do you know where the phrase 'Frick and Frack' originated?  I'm
sure it wasn't because of the Back Street Boys. [Kevin Mcgrath]

A. The phrase has become a fairly common one in North America for
any two people who are closely connected in some way. The 'Random
House Historical Dictionary of American Slang' cites it as being
Black English, but it certainly has a wider circulation.

For example, this appeared in _Newsday_ in September 1999: "Msgr
James Lisante is quite correct in referring to Rudolph Giuliani and
Hillary Rodham Clinton as 'Frick and Frack' on the abortion issue".
Or this one from the _Toronto Star_ in June the same year: "He and
Samaranch were like Frick and Frack". So it's reasonable enough
that Brian and Nick of the Back Street Boys should use the
nicknames Frick and Frack for each other.

The origin is ultimately in a famous duo of Swiss comedy ice
skaters, whose stage names these were. They came to public fame in
the later years of a series of skating spectaculars called Ice
Follies, promoted by Eddie Shipstad and his brother Roy, which
began in 1936 and ran for almost 50 years. However, some care may
be needed in using the phrase, as it is said also to be a Black
American English slang term for the testicles.


5. In Brief
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CLICKOCRACY  Politically active Americans are beginning to mobilise
support and debate via the World Wide Web, a move that has spawned
this term for the wired supporters of political parties, who are
now being influenced by the e-campaigning of presidential hopefuls.

VERY TWENTIETH CENTURY  No sooner had January 2000 dawned than all
sorts of people suddenly discovered this useful phrase with which
to describe a person, thing or event they consider so old-fashioned
as to be beneath contempt. (It's no use telling its perpetrators
that the twenty-first century only starts on 1 January 2001.)

VORTAL  Another of those specialist words thrown off by people who
are developing online trading. A 'vortal' is a 'portal' - the posh
word for a gateway to the Internet  - which specialises in one
industry. In the jargon of the business schools, a site like this
is 'vertically integrated', hence 'vertical portal', or 'vortal'.


6. Administration
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* To leave the list, send the e-mail message SIGNOFF WORLDWIDEWORDS
  to the list server address <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org>.
  The subject line of your message will be ignored.

* For a key to the IPA pronunciations used in these mailings, see
  <http://www.quinion.com/words/pronguide.htm>, or send a blank
  e-mail message to our autoresponder at <pronguide at quinion.com>.

* WORLD WIDE WORDS is copyright (c) Michael B Quinion 2000. You
  may reproduce this mailing in whole or in part in other free
  media provided that you acknowledge the source and quote the
  Web address of <http://www.quinion.com/words/>.
===================================================================