World Wide Words -- 18 Mar 00

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 182          Saturday 18 March 2000
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Sent weekly to more than 8,000 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>
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Contents
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1. Weird Words: Flabbergasted.
2. Turns of Phrase: Hydrogen economy.
3. News: OED goes online.
4. Q & A: Stationary/stationery, Apple of one's eye, Rod.
5. Administration: LISTSERV commands, Copyright.


1. Weird Words: Flabbergasted
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To be surprised or astonished.

The British comedian Frankie Howerd used to say in mock surprise:
"I'm flabbergasted - never has my flabber been so gasted!". That's
about as good an explanation for the origin of this word as you're
likely to get. It turns up first in print in 1772, in an article on
new words in the _Annual Register_. The writer couples two
fashionable terms: "Now we are 'flabbergasted' and 'bored' from
morning to night". ('Bored' - being wearied by something tedious -
had appeared only a few years earlier.) Presumably some unsung
genius had put together 'flabber' and 'aghast' to make one word.

The source of the first part is obscure. It might be linked to
'flabby', suggesting that somebody is so astonished that they shake
like a jelly. It can't be connected with 'flapper', in the sense of
a person who fusses or panics, as some have suggested, as that
sense only emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. But
'flabbergasted' could have been an existing dialect word, as one
early nineteenth-century writer claimed to have found it in Suffolk
dialect and another - in the form 'flabrigast' -  in Perthshire.
Further than this, nobody can go with any certainty.


2. Turns of Phrase: Hydrogen economy
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The principle is simple enough: use the energy of the sun to split
water into its component oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen becomes
a storable fuel that can be used when needed to run fuel cells;
these will provide electricity and power vehicles. The only waste
product of the fuel cells is pure water. It sounds a perfect
solution to the problems of pollution and global warming caused by
the burning of oil and coal, not to mention the exhaustion of the
oil reserves that must come one day. But making it work has been
far from easy, success requiring - among others things - cheap
capture of solar energy and efficient fuel cells. The concept has
been in being for many years, though the name 'hydrogen economy'
for a society based on it is less than a decade old. The concept
has only started to look practicable in recent years, based in part
on research that has been boosted by measures like California's
zero-emission policies and related initiatives from the European
Union. Iceland has recently decided to become the world's first
'hydrogen economy' and this initiative has brought the phrase to
wider notice.

The Icelandic government is working with the two companies to
change its fishing fleet over to hydrogen and has launched a plan
to convert the country entirely to a 'hydrogen economy' over the
next two decades.
                               [_Independent on Sunday_, Jan. 2000]

Mike Brown ... voices deep frustration over Canada's failure to see
the fuel cell and the hydrogen economy as a way for Canada to make
a mark in the world.
                                        [_Toronto Star_, Jan. 2000]


3. News: OED goes online
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The complete Oxford English Dictionary went online on 14 March 2000
as a subscription service. Because I work for the OED part-time as
a reader, and am also currently engaged on another project with the
Oxford University Press, I'm scarcely an objective observer, but I
can't let this milestone pass without comment.

The OED was among the first large reference works to be available
on CD-ROM, eight years ago. Now it has embraced the World Wide Web
and in the process fundamentally revised the way it updates itself.
The site contains the full text of the Second Edition of 1989, plus
the 10,000 new entries that have been added since (mostly published
in three Additions Volumes, a series that is now discontinued) plus
the first group of formal updates to the dictionary, a thousand
entries in the range M-MAH.

Further such sets will be added four times a year, until the whole
dictionary has been revised, at which point - about 2010 - the
Third Edition will be published in various media. So the Web site
is not only a valuable reference tool, but also a snapshot of work
in progress. John Simpson, its Chief Editor, says that "OED Online
will *be* the Dictionary in future. I am sure it will be the version
that most people will consult". He also says that "the OED in
traditional book form is by no means out of the question", but it
is clear the OED considers its future to be electronic.

The site is not really intended for individuals, as the personal
annual subscription rate of GBP350 (about US$550) attests. So,
unless you're well-heeled or desperate for the updated entries, as
an individual you would be much better off getting the OED on CD-
ROM (currently priced at GBP250). The institutional subscriptions
start at GBP400 and go up to GBP1000 (US$1600) if unlimited access
is required, suggesting that many universities and colleges can
afford to make the site available to students and faculty.

[OED Online, <http://www.oed.com>. As a visitor you can see the
word of the day (and the standard page style) by clicking on the
top right button in the opening screen, or by pointing your browser
at <http://www.oed.com/wordofday.htm>.]


4. 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. I remember learning the difference between 'stationary' (not
moving) and 'stationery' (letterhead, envelopes, etc.) and even
figured out a mnemonic device - the 'e' is for 'envelope'. But is
there actually any significance to the similarity of the two words
- is there something stationary about stationery? [Julane Marx,
USA]

A. There is indeed. The words come from the same source, the Latin
'stationarius', for a person who was based at a military station.
In medieval times a 'stationarius' was a trader who had a fixed
station - a shop - rather than travelling from fair to fair, like a
pedlar. These were usually booksellers (whose stock was too bulky
to be carried about) and were mostly linked to the medieval
universities, which is why such an elevated Latin word came to be
attached to them. It became 'stationer' in English, a form that's
recorded from the fourteenth century.

Such traders dealt in everything to do with books, not merely
selling them but copying and binding them and selling related
materials such as paper, pens and ink. This was well before the
days of printing from moveable type, remember: every book had to be
copied by hand. So the materials for doing so were as important to
the trade as the finished article. Inevitably, the introduction of
printing caused the stationer's business to change radically. By
the seventeenth century the term 'bookseller' had come in for the
trader in finished books, leaving 'stationer' for the seller of
writing materials.

The obsolete meaning is preserved in the name of the Stationers'
Company (these days the Stationers' and Newspaper Makers' Company),
one of the ancient City of London livery companies, which has
always been a trade guild of booksellers and publishers. From 1557
to 1694 it controlled the production of printed books, and even
down to 1911 it supervised copyrights, which is why old British
books are marked as being "registered at Stationers' Hall".

'Stationery', as a general term for the things sold, appeared in
the eighteenth century. There was much confusion about spelling in
the early days, since 'stationary' as an adjective for things that
don't move about had been in the language for about a hundred
years. But by the middle of the century a clear distinction had
appeared, based on the logic that what a 'stationer' sold had to be
stuff called 'stationery'.

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Q. I really like your site and hope you can, at some future time,
post the origin of the phrase 'apple of one's eye'. [Alec MacLeod]

A. This evocative phrase turns up both in the Bible: "He kept him
as the apple of his eye" (Deuteronomy), and in Shakespeare: "Flower
of this purple dye, / Hit with Cupid's archery, / Sink in apple of
his eye", (_A Midsummer Night's Dream_). But it's older than either
of these, almost as old as the language itself, since the first
recorded examples can be found in the works of King Alfred at the
end of the ninth century.

At this time, the pupil of the eye was thought to be a solid object
and was actually called the apple, presumably because an apple was
the most common globular object around. So 'the apple of one's eye'
was at first a literal phrase describing the pupil. Because sight
was so precious, someone who was called this as an endearment was
similarly precious, and the phrase took on the figurative sense we
retain. King Alfred actually uses it in this way, and presumably it
wasn't new then.

Our modern word 'pupil', by the way, is from Latin and didn't
appear in English until the sixteenth century. It's figurative in
origin, too, though in a much more self-obsessed way. The Latin
original was 'pupilla', a little doll, which is a diminutive form
of 'pupus', boy, or 'pupa', girl (the source also for our other
sense of pupil to mean a schoolchild.) It was applied to the dark
central portion of the eye within the iris because of the tiny
image of oneself, like a puppet or marionette, that one can see
when looking into another person's eye.

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Q. When reading American Western History written by people of that
period you will run into the word 'rod', used in reference to
distance. For example: "After drinking a bottle of Indian whiskey
he was unable to walk even a rod". What is the measurement of a
rod? Where did the term come from? [Nichole]

A. A rod is indeed a unit of measurement, 16.5 feet or 5.5 yards.
It is also known as a pole or - especially in the USA - a perch, so
leading to that euphonious set of measurements that were printed on
the back of every child's exercise book when I was young: "rod,
pole or perch", which we used to delight in quoting, though none of
us had come across any of them in the real world.

The 'rod' was one of an important set of measures that were
subdivisions of the standard mile. Four rods equal one chain (22
yards - still the length of a British cricket pitch between the
stumps), 40 rods make one furlong and 320 rods equal one mile.

The name comes from the use of a rod as a measuring stick (quite a
big one, you may agree ...). It's first recorded in the fifteenth
century; 'pole' dates from about the same period. 'Perch' to many
people is the name of a fish, but in medieval English it also meant
much the same as 'pole', being derived via French from the Latin
'pertica' for a long staff or measuring rod (it's the same word as
the wooden rod your cage bird stands on).


5. Administration
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