World Wide Words -- 29 July 00

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 198           Saturday 29 July 2000
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Sent weekly to more than 8,700 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 comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Doula.
3. Topical Words: Migrate.
4. Weird Words: Handfasting.
5. In Brief: B2E, Imaginarium, Telewebber.
6. Q & A: Jumping Jehoshaphat, Goat and Compasses,
        Predominately versus predominantly.
7. Administration: How to leave the list, Copyright.


1. Notes and comments
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CRUMPET  Several subscribers wrote in critical vein following this
piece last week, several of them missing the point, I'm afraid. No
adverse comment on American English was implied, nor did I fail to
realise the difficulty young readers can have with works that
contain unfamiliar language. My argument was that 'translating' the
language of a work of fiction so that it becomes inconsistent with
the setting it is describing does no service to the author, the
work, or the reader.

Several others implied gently that as a culinary writer I make a
good lumberjack. English muffins are baked on a griddle in the same
way as crumpets; the difference can lie in the mixture used, though
there are differences of opinion even here.


2. Turns of Phrase: Doula
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This word isn't especially new - it's recorded back into the 1980s
and the association _Doulas of North America_ has been in existence
since 1992 - but it is only slowly becoming known outside the US
and as yet rarely appears in dictionaries. A 'doula' is a
supportive companion, herself a mother, who is trained to help a
new mother during childbirth and afterwards. The 'doula' is
employed to give advice, practical assistance and emotional
support, but doesn't get involved with the medical aspects of the
birth. After the birth, she may continue to advise and perhaps do
some light chores around the house to help mum cope with the new
baby, though the birth and post-birth types of assistance are often
separated. The term comes from the Greek name for a female slave, a
household servant, by implication one who would have helped the
woman of the house during childbirth.

The professional doula doesn't just walk into a house and take over
- she does whatever is necessary so that the new mother will start
to feel that she is taking control of things again.
                                     [_Daily Telegraph_, Jan. 2000]

The best possibility would probably be a doula, who is trained
to help new mothers in any way she can. This miracle worker will
mind the twins for you, fix meals, do the laundry - whatever you
want.
                                     [_Washington Post_, June 2000]


3. Topical Words: Migrate
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The director of the electronics retailer Dixons was very firm with
the _Guardian_ last weekend, saying that difficulties in contacting
its customer services had been because "we are currently migrating
this department to the new centre in Sheffield". By one of those
coincidences, a few days earlier the man in charge of our Web
system had told me that if we needed a particular application, he
would 'migrate' our files to another server that ran it.

The verb is common in the computer business in this sense: "to
change or cause to change from using one system to another" or "to
transfer programs or hardware from one system to another" and it
seems to have originated there. It sounds odd to most of us is
because we are unused to hearing the verb 'migrate' associated with
a direct object - things may migrate to another place, but
traditionally we don't migrate things.

'Migrate' can probably be traced back to an Indo-European root that
meant change or exchange. Through Latin this has also given us
'mutate' (created in the nineteenth century from the noun
'mutation'), 'mutual', 'municipal', 'mad' and 'mean' (in the sense
of being unworthy or ignoble). The direct Latin source for
'migrate' was the verb 'migrare', which had the general sense of
moving from one place to another.

It was borrowed into English as the noun 'migration' with the same
meaning; by the middle of the eighteenth century the verb had
appeared and had taken on the specific idea of animals that moved
to follow the seasons; slightly later, it began to refer to a
movement of peoples from one place to settle in another.

These senses have become the most common ones, so that its recent
adoption as an elevated synonym for 'move' strikes many older
people as odd or pretentious. But it's really no more than a return
to its roots.


4. Weird Words: Handfasting
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Betrothal by joining of hands.

At one time, betrothal - the solemn exchange of vows of intention
to marry - was as important a step as marriage itself. Some of the
ceremony once common in betrothal - such as exchanging rings or a
formal kiss - later became part of the marriage service as that
progressively became more important. We don't know a lot about the
rules in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest, but the
betrothal ceremony seems to have been marked by the happy couple
joining hands. This was the 'handfast' - the holding fast of hands.
It seems that in Northern England and Scotland, handfasting marked
a first stage of marriage, a temporary contract that lasted a year
and a day. If at the end of that time no child had been born and
the couple didn't want to continue, the betrothal lapsed. The
ceremony's name has become known again in recent decades because it
has been adopted by modern Pagans such as Wiccans. The culmination
of the modern ceremony often takes the form of a couple jumping
together over a broom, another borrowing from ancient custom. For
today's Pagans, however, the ceremony is marriage, not betrothal.
Some have a complementary divorce rite called 'handparting'.


5. In Brief
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B2E  Businesses have tried using the Internet to link to customers
(B2C) and other businesses (B2B); now they're trying to extend the
idea to their employees with B2E ('business to employee') Web sites
as extensions to their internal systems (intranets).

IMAGINARIUM  These are research and development centres that are to
be set up in North America, Singapore and London by the British
mobile phone company Orange. The name seems to have been invented
by its chief executive, Hans Snook. (He appears not to have heard
of the North American chain of toy stores by that name.)

TELEWEBBER  A person who watches television and surfs the Web at
the same time, accessing synchronised interactive material which is
transmitted during a television programme. By 2001 the number of
'telewebbers' is predicted to reach 52 million, so making it an
important audience, though it is less certain the term will
survive.


6. 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. Is there an origin to the phrase: 'Jumping Jehoshaphat'? Is it
possible that it has nothing to do with the biblical Jehoshaphat?
The pastor at a local church challenged the congregation to find
the origin of the phrase. I remembered your website. [Tom Harris]

A. Support your local pastor. On consulting the _Oxford English
Dictionary_ and the _Random House Historical Dictionary of American
Slang_, it seems clear that the name of the king of Judah (which
also occurs in several other spellings, most commonly 'Jehosaphat')
was used in the United States around the middle of the nineteenth
century as a mild oath, a euphemism for 'Jehovah' or 'Jesus'. The
phrase 'Jumping Jehoshaphat' is first recorded from Mayne Reid's
_Headless Horseman_ of 1866, but is probably older. It seems to
have been in the tradition of exotic imprecations that Americans of
that period were so fond of, with the repeated initial sound
greatly helping its acceptance.

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Q. I've read that the British pub sign 'The Goat and Compasses' is
actually a corruption of the phrase 'And God Encompasses Us All'.
Is there actual evidence for the supposed older name? I'm not sure
just where, unfortunately, but somewhere not too long ago I'm
pretty sure that I ran across an article claiming that this popular
story is in fact not true and that 'Goat and Compasses' is not a
corruption. [Dana Fossum, Norway]

A. The story that the pub sign is a corruption isn't new - I've
encountered it stated as fact that it comes from "God encompass us"
in what felt like volume 93 of Thomas Carlyle's monumental work,
_The History of Friedrich II of Prussia_, published in 1865. Modern
authorities are extremely sceptical about this origin, to say the
least, as there seems to be no evidence of public houses ever
having had the uncorrupted form of the name (it does seem unlikely
as a name for a pub, as you may agree). There are several famous
examples of pub names being corrupted forms - 'Bacchanal', for
example, turned into 'Bag o' Nails' and 'George Canning' became the
'George and Cannon' - but this seems not to be one of them.

Nobody can say what its origin is. The compasses were a common
symbol of the exact sciences, frequently found in the emblems of
trade guilds and also in the symbology of the Masons. So it may
indeed be a combination a goat and compasses, perhaps having a
guild association that is now lost. It has been suggested that it
is derived from the arms of the Wine Coopers' Company of Cologne,
or from the arms of the Carpenters' Company, which was three goats
and a chevron, with the chevron later being corrupted to compasses.
But all this is little more than guesswork; we just don't know.

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Q. The following appeared in a newspaper article: "Many white
parents said they did not want to send their children to poor-
performing, predominately black, inner-city schools". Is
'predominately' used correctly or should it be 'predominantly'? And
why? [Vince Marino]

A. There's been a lot of scholarly argument about the relative
merits of these two words down the years, most of it directed at
the linked adjectives, 'predominate' and 'predominant'. Some usage
writers have condemned the former as illiterate, arguing that it
can only be a verb, never an adjective. History is against all such
critics, because 'predominate' as an adjective first appeared as
far back as 1591, and is actually older than the verb. And the
spelling of the adverb as 'predominately' is actually about a
hundred years older than the 'predominantly' form. 'Predominantly'
and its related adjective are now much the more common forms,
though that doesn't make the other pair wrong, just less often
preferred alternatives.


7. Administration
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