World Wide Words -- 26 Feb 00
Michael Quinion
words at QUINION.COM
Sat Feb 26 08:34:49 UTC 2000
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 179 Saturday 26 February 2000
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Sent weekly to more than 7,750 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>
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Contents
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1. Notes and feedback.
2. Turns of Phrase: Chronotherapy.
3. Topical Words: Cahoot.
4. Weird Words: Phenology.
5. Q & A: Point-blank.
6. Article: Meeting Room Jargon.
7. Administration: LISTSERV commands, Copyright.
1. Notes and feedback
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LITTLE ALPHABET BOOK Several American subscribers contacted me
after my review, saying they couldn't find it listed on Amazon.com
or the Oxford University Press's own Web site. My contact at the
OUP tells me that there was a problem, which is now being sorted
out, and confirms that the book is indeed available in the USA.
WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO DROP Nigel Rees wrote to point out
that this phrase is cited both in Partridge's _Dictionary of Catch
Phrases_ and in the _Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins_.
In both of these, it is in the form 'drop the other shoe!', which
I'd never heard before and wasn't looking for... See <http://www.
quinion.com/words/qa/qa-wai1.htm> for an updated version of the
answer. Nigel Rees says that he will feature the phrase in the new
series of _Quote...Unquote_ starting on BBC Radio 4 on 28 February.
THIS IS TRUE You may have spotted that the counter at the head of
this issue is showing 700 more subscribers than it did last week.
This is largely thanks to Randy Cassingham, who said nice things
about World Wide Words in his _This Is True_ newsletter last
weekend. Welcome again to all new subscribers. And if you don't
know _This Is True_, check out <http://www.thisistrue.com> -
150,000+ subscribers can't be wrong!
2. Turns of Phrase: Chronotherapy
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Our bodies have a built-in 24-hour cycle, which doctors call the
'circadian rhythm'. Researchers have started to realise that these
rhythms also apply to medical conditions and have implications for
treatment. In the 1980s it was discovered that some cancer patients
had significantly reduced side effects if chemotherapy was given at
the right time of day. Asthma is at its worst at 4am, when cortisol
levels in the body are at their lowest, but trials suggest drugs
taken at 3pm ensures they're at optimum level during this crucial
period of the night. Heart attacks often happen shortly after
waking up because blood pressure surges at that time; two drugs
have been developed that can be taken last thing at night, but
whose action is delayed several hours until they are most needed.
The medical profession is starting to use the term 'chronotherapy'
for such treatments that work in harmony with the body's natural
time rhythms. 'Chronotherapeutics' is the study of the process.
As with so much in the infant field of chronotherapy, theory lags
practice.
[_Economist_, Dec. 1999]
Last year a trial using chronotherapy to treat cancer patients in
France, Italy, Belgium and Canada found that patients given drugs
at the optimum time in their day cycle of cell growth had far fewer
side effects.
[_Independent on Sunday_, Feb. 2000]
3. Topical Words: Cahoot
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Every British Internet financial start-up trumps the last in the
silly-names game. Maybe it's an attempt at off-beat individuality,
or perhaps all the sensible names have been taken. We've had one e-
bank called Egg (halfway sensible, suggesting nest-egg), another
entitled Smile and a third delighting in the name of Marbles. And
now the British bank Abbey National has announced an online service
called 'Cahoot'.
Hang on a minute, you chaps. There's only one common expression in
English which uses the word, and that's 'in cahoots with', meaning
that a person is in some partnership or association with another.
Presumably that's the idea the namers of the new enterprise have in
mind - you and your bank looking after your money together.
But there's a problem. Two, really. The lesser one is that the word
and the phrase, originally American, are still slightly foreign to
British ears and eyes. The other is that, as Jessie Sheidlower put
it in one of his _Jesse's Word of the Day_ columns once, it almost
always has "a suggestion of some questionable or nefarious
purpose", or as Jonathon Green says in his magisterial _Cassell
Dictionary of Slang_, it usually implies "a slightly disreputable
or surreptitious alliance".
Questionable, nefarious, disreputable, surreptitious - even when
qualified, these are hardly the words we want associated with an
enterprise, especially one concerned with safeguarding your money
and mine. The reason for this cock-up on the PR front - see also
Meeting Room Jargon, below - is that many British professionals,
especially those in advertising and financial services, are
increasingly using American terms, both standard American English
and jargon, but often without fully understanding their cultural
implications.
But then 'cahoot' has always been a bit odd. It turns up first in
the southern states of the USA in the 1820s, then as the single
word 'cohoot'. Dictionary-makers cannot be sure where it came from.
The most popular explanation is that it derives from the Louisiana
French 'cahute' for cabin (a word that has been found in Scots,
also from French), suggesting the kind of close relationship for
common purposes that's implied by shared accommodation in a hut. An
alternative explanation, favoured by John Bartlett, of _Bartlett's
Quotations_, connects it with 'cohort'. Either way, by the 1860s
'in cahoots' was the usual form, and that's the way it's been ever
since.
If I had a direct line to Abbey National, I'd suggest a change of
name, quick.
4. Weird Words: Phenology
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The study of the times of recurring natural phenomena.
Recording the dates each year when plants flowered or birds nested
was a popular hobby in Victorian times. It continued the tradition
of close observation of natural phenomena that had been pioneered
by eighteenth century British naturalists such as Gilbert White at
Selborne in Hampshire.
But he never knew about the word 'phenology' that describes his
methodical recording, as it was not invented until almost a century
after his death; it's based on 'phenomenon' plus '-logy', the
suffix denoting the study of some subject. Someone who makes such
observations is a 'phenologist'. Although the vogue for recording
died out among amateurs at the end of the nineteenth century,
scientists continued to use the word for the recording of such
seasonal happenings, especially in areas like crop research.
Both the word and the concept have recently gained new popularity
and significance because global warming is causing plants to come
into flower and crops to ripen earlier than before. The United
Kingdom Phenological Survey was organised for the first time in
1999 by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in Cambridge. The
survey showed that the start of the growing season is now 18 or 19
days earlier than it was in Victorian times.
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 WWWords Web site.]
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Q. Let me ask you 'point-blank': What is the origin of this phrase?
[Steven Shumak]
A. The 'blank' here is the French word 'blanc', for the colour
white. Archery and artillery targets conventionally had a white
spot at the centre at which arrows and shot were aimed. So to
'point blank' was to aim directly at the white. The phrase is known
from the end of the sixteenth century, and the figurative senses
had developed by the 1650s.
It came to refer particularly to missiles fired close enough to the
target that they travelled straight to it, horizontally, with no
time for the shot to seem to drop under gravity. You had to be
close to the target for this to be true, so it came to mean firing
at close range where it was difficult to miss.
Some have suggested that the whole phrase comes from the French
'point blanc', meaning a white mark, but the OED says firmly that
the expression originated in English, and that 'blank' as an
English version of the French was in use some time before 'point-
blank' appeared. So it seems likely that 'point' here is actually
the verb, not the noun.
6. Article: Meeting Room Jargon
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If you can't understand half of what your colleagues are saying in
meetings, take heart - you are not alone.
A survey of a thousand office workers in Britain was published last
week by the firm of recruitment consultants Office Angels. It
reported that two-thirds of office staff used unnecessary jargon
terms, for the usual reasons of wanting to confuse opponents and
seem superior. But 40% of those surveyed found it irritating and
distracting, and 10% thought it made the most frequent users sound
pretentious and untrustworthy.
Nothing very new or startling so far. But the list of buzz phrases
that were reported as being at the same time most common and least
understood was intriguing:
Low-hanging fruit, e-tailing, talk off-line, blue-sky
idea, win-win situation, think outside the box, holistic
approach, level playing field, sanity check, put to bed,
whole nine yards, helicopter view, gap analysis, touch
base, rain check, sing from the same hymn sheet, finger
in the air, get in bed with, big picture, benchmark, ball
park, ticks in all the right boxes, strategic fit, bread
and butter.
It's clear that jargonisers in British offices are picking up terms
from American English, some from the standard language, but mostly
from business jargon. The survey suggests they are doing so because
more business people have access to the American-dominated
Internet.
You can see that phrases like 'rain check', 'ball park' and 'touch
base' could confuse hearers in Britain, because we literally don't
play the game. (But one supermarket in Britain uses 'rain checks'
as its name for the vouchers it gives out when special offers are
in short supply, so some of us have been exposed to it.)
Some terms are odd and would stop almost anybody for a moment -
'low-hanging fruit', for a target that's easy to reach, 'helicopter
view', for an overview, and 'gap analysis', for assessing untapped
opportunities. But several - such as 'level playing field',
'benchmark', and 'blue-sky' - have been in British English for many
years. And are 'strategic fit' or 'bread and butter' really so hard
to figure out, in context? It would seem so, from the survey.
Jargon is all right in its place. But what the survey shows is that
people are easily confused by the unfamiliar, good enough reason
for sticking to plain English the rest of the time. Giving bored
attenders at meetings the chance to play buzzword bingo is hardly a
substitute.
7. Administration
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