World Wide Words -- 25 Nov 00
Michael Quinion
editor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Nov 25 08:53:42 UTC 2000
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 214 Saturday 25 November 2000
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Sent weekly to more than 9,750 subscribers in at least 99 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion ISSN 1470-1448 Thornbury, Bristol, UK
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: I-mode.
3. Weird Words: Nepenthes.
4. Q & A: Nauseous versus nauseated, Squaw.
5. Endnote.
6. Administration: How to join and leave the list, Copyright.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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CHAD Following last week's piece, several subscribers wrote with
recollections of the word from the 1930s in connection with Telex
and teleprinter machines, in which punched paper tape was used to
record messages. Others have told me that the bits cut out of punch
cards in IBM shops were not called 'chad' but 'chip'. Others said
the punched strips torn off continuous stationery were often called
'perfery', a lovely term, or sometimes 'chit'.
It seems highly probable from these comments, and others elsewhere,
that 'chad' predates computers, though its first recorded use is in
the _RCA Review_ of September 1947 (which refers to paper tape, not
punch cards, and also uses 'chadless', with lower-case initial). If
anyone can find a printed and dated reference to 'chad' from before
1940 they will receive the eternal gratitude of lexicographers!
There has been much discussion in various places about an origin
for 'chad' in a Scots word meaning gravel. This was given in the
Third Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, but the Fourth
Edition just says "origin unknown". However, the English Dialect
Dictionary gives 'chat' with various meanings that suggest small
things that occur in piles, which is also used in some places in
the US for gravel used to resurface roads. To move from 'chat' to
'chad' is but a step. The 'chit' form would seem to be another
variation. However, the connection is far from established.
MR CHAD There were several queries about the origin of the name
for the cartoon character I mentioned. Not wishing to lengthen the
piece any more than necessary, I left this out. It is said that it
was the invention of George Chatterton, a British cartoonist, about
1938. Mr Chatterton's nickname was 'Chat' and - again - the shift
to 'Chad' is easy to imagine. The Guardian newspaper last weekend
neatly put Mr Chad and chad together by printing a Chad cartoon
with "Wot, No President?" underneath.
SITOOTERIE John Stewart said about last week's Weird Word: "Anent,
as we Scots say, 'sitooterie'. When I was a student in Glasgow
about 50 years ago, a sitooterie was not a gazebo or anything so
fantoosh. It was a secluded corner (corridor, room, lab etc.) where
you could take a girl during a college dance. ['Fantoosh': a Scots
word meaning pretentious or showy - Ed.] Others have written in
similar vein. It would seem the word has either shifted sense, or
the exhibition organisers extended its meaning.
BOILERPLATE With reference to a Q&A piece last week, a number of
people have said that the material was circulated not in the form
of ready-cast type, but as mats (short for matrices), the squeezed
paper moulds created by stereotyping from which type could be cast
locally. Richard Weiner wrote to mention an entry in his _Webster's
New World Dictionary of Media Communications_, which makes this
point and also says: "Many newspaper syndicates started in Chicago,
including the American Press Association, which was founded in 1892
in the same building as a sheet-iron factory. Chicago printers
dubbed the noisy American Press offices a boilerplate factory".
Thus we have another plausible source for the word.
2. Turns of Phrase: I-mode
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This is a Japanese invention, an Internet-connected mobile phone
system that has taken that country by storm since it was introduced
in February 1999 by DoCoMo, a firm controlled by Nippon Telegraph
and Telephone. It allows people access online to send e-mails, to
obtain information such as news, weather forecasts, train times,
and sports results, and to carry out online banking and stock
trading. It is not that different in principle to WAP, the heavily
promoted European system. However, WAP has had sluggish take-up
because it is slow and difficult to use and there are few sites to
link to; I-mode has the advantage that its Internet access is
always on. DoCoMo has recently invested in the Dutch telecoms
operator KPN and will soon launch a European version of its system
on the GPRS (General Packet Radio System) services that are only
now being launched; it is very likely also to move into the USA
following a deal with AOL. Industry watchers are suggesting it may
overtake and force out WAP altogether.
Worse, Wap's struggle to find a market in Europe and the US is
being contrasted with the exploding popularity of NTT DoCoMo's more
advanced i-mode system in Japan. A VHS v Betamax-style formats war
may be brewing.
[_Guardian_, Aug. 2000]
As well as using KPN's existing WAP capabilities, the joint venture
will introduce NTT's highly successful i-mode mobile Internet
service to Europe.
[_Time_, Oct. 2000]
3. Weird Words: Nepenthes
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A drug or potion bringing welcome forgetfulness.
This comes from Homer's _Odyssey_, in which it was the name of the
drug that Paris gave to Helen after he had abducted her to make her
forget her old home. It derives from the classical Greek 'ne-',
not, plus 'penthos', grief.
Expert plantspeople probably know it best as the botanical name for
a genus of tropical carnivorous pitcher plants. As the pitcher
plants contain liquid in which the captured insects drown, the
botanical name would seem appropriate, though in this case the
forgetting is terminal.
Some writers have suggested Homer's potion was opium. Nicholas
Culpeper, the herbalist, had this recipe for making a nepenthes
draught: "Take of tincture of Opium made first with distilled
Vinegar, then with spirit of Wine, Saffron extracted in spirit of
Wine, of each an ounce, salt of Pearl and Coral, of each half an
ounce, tincture of species Diambrae seven drams, Ambergris one
dram: bring them into the form of Pills by the gentle heat of a
bath". That should be enough to make anybody forget anything.
The word - commonly to be found as 'nepenthe', lacking its final
letter - is otherwise solely poetic or literary. One of its better-
known appearances is in Edgar Allan Poe's poem _The Raven_: "Quaff,
oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore! / Quoth
the raven, 'Nevermore.'" And here's a slightly more recent example,
from _The Yellow Claw_ by Sax Romer: "I do not employ opium as an
aid to my social activities; I regard it as nepenthe from them and
as a key to a brighter realm".
4. Q&A
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[Send your queries to <qa at worldwidewords.org>. All messages will be
acknowledged, but I can't guarantee to reply, as time is limited.
If I can, a response will appear here and on the Words Web site. If
you wish to comment, please e-mail editor at worldwidewords.org]
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Q. For many years I have been irritated by the misuse of the word
'nauseous' which is all too often used when the user means
'nauseated'. I was taught that when one is sick one feels
'nauseated' but is often 'nauseous' to others. I first heard this
used by well-off but poorly educated New Yorkers but it has spread
everywhere. Can you explain please and tell me whether 'nauseous'
in its newly offensive use is acceptable?
[John David Hamilton]
A. There has been a lot of discussion about this in recent decades,
and many American dictionaries flag the disputed senses in usage
notes. As you say, the distinction that has been taught is that
'nauseous' means "causing nausea" but 'nauseated' means "feeling or
suffering from nausea". So if a person says "I am nauseous", a
purist might reply "Yes, you are; misusing words like that makes
your listeners feel sick". (This comment is best relayed from a
distance, via intermediaries if possible.)
What seems to have happened in the US is that a new usage grew up
some time after World War II - one writer suggests that it may have
arisen first in the Bronx or Brooklyn, so your geographical sense
is spot on - in which 'nauseous' meant the same as 'nauseated':
sick to the stomach. It was only as a result of this local usage
that grammarians and usage guide writers seem to have begun to make
the distinction between the two terms, one that some commentators
carefully point out is not altogether supported by word history.
The _Oxford English Dictionary_ has seventeenth-century examples of
'nauseous' in the sense "inclined to nausea", though in its entry -
written in the late nineteenth century - it marks the sense as both
rare and obsolete.
That entry will definitely be revised when the new edition comes
out, since 'nauseous' has now regained this meaning, a change that
has been widely noted and commented on. _Merriam-Webster's
Dictionary of English Usage_ says firmly: "Any handbook that tells
you that 'nauseous' cannot mean 'nauseated' is out of touch with
the contemporary language. In current usage it seldom means
anything else". The new edition of the _American Heritage
Dictionary_ concurs: "Since there is a lot of evidence to show that
'nauseous' is widely used to mean 'feeling sick,' it appears that
people use 'nauseous' mainly in the sense in which it is considered
incorrect".
But, as MDEU points out, there is subtlety in the way it is used.
When 'nauseous' means "feeling physically sick", it usually appears
after a verb such as 'feel', 'become', 'get' or 'grow': "Doctor,
I'm feeling nauseous". When it means "causing nausea", it is much
more likely to be used before a noun: "To conceal the nauseous
flavour of the raw spirit they added aromatic herbs and spices".
Much of the older sense of 'nauseous', both literal and figurative,
is in the process of being transferred to 'nauseating': "To this,
with nauseating smarminess, he immediately attested", "The children
looked a little green from the nauseating fairground rides".
'Nauseated', to judge from the citation evidence, now seems to be
less common than either.
It's an interesting example of the way in which the language can
change within a generation or so. It can only be annoying (even
nauseating) for somebody who has painfully learned a distinction
between words to find that usage has changed and their knowledge is
out of date. Think of it as language evolution in action.
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Q. I once heard that the Early French explorers used a term that
sounded like 'squaw' in a derogatory fashion to refer to the native
American females as if they were harlots. The term somehow reminded
the explorers of a French word. My research has not turned up
anything along these lines. Have you ever encountered such a word?
[Wil Neill]
A. It was actually settlers in New England who first came across
the word in various Algonquian Indian dialects, for example in the
form 'squa', a woman, in Massachusetts dialect, or its equivalent
'squaws' in Narragansett. It is recorded in English as early as
1634, in a book by William Wood called _New England's Prospect_.
Although it started out in English with the same neutral sense as
it had had in its Native Indian dialects, it quickly took on
negative undertones, often appearing in humorous or disparaging
contexts. That is the situation that prevailed until 1973, when
Thomas Sanders and Walter Peek published an anthology called
_Literature of the American Indian_, in which they said that it
"probably" came from a French corruption of the Iroquois word
'otsiskwa', female sexual parts, and suggested that it was
therefore more insulting than anyone had previously thought. This
is presumably your French connection. Their statement has been
widely believed - despite that "probably" - though the early
English settlers had no contact with the Iroquois, who lived a long
way away, and it is extremely unlikely that their word could have
been clipped to make the English 'squaw', even via French, a route
that is highly improbable in any case. The false derivation was
given wide public airing on the Oprah Winfrey television show in
1992.
As a result, the word is now widely regarded as deeply offensive,
especially among those who are not native Americans, and there have
been proposals, for example, to remove it from place names such as
Squaw Mountain and Squaw Lake. I hold no torch for the word - as
commonly used it is indeed derogatory - but suggest that attitudes
to it ought to be based on evidence rather than misinformation.
[I'm indebted to Prof Laurence Horn for his help with researching
this answer.]
5. Endnote
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Voting has been taking place at <http://www.thebookseller.com> for
the _Bookseller_ magazine's annual contest to find the oddest book
title of the year. Currently leading is _High-Performance Stiffened
Structures_, followed by _Whose Bottom?: A Lift-the-Flap Book_. Now
trailing are: _Psoriasis at Your Fingertips_, _The Sexual Male:
Problems and Solutions_, _Did Lewis Carroll Visit Llandudno?_, and
_Woodcarving with a Chainsaw_, which has been on the list in
previous years. If you want to add your vote, there's just time!
6. Administration
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