World Wide Words -- 07 Oct 00

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 208          Saturday 7 October 2000
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent weekly to more than 9,200 subscribers in at least 99 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion    ISSN 1470-1448    Thornbury, Bristol, UK
<http://www.worldwidewords.org>   Mail: <editor at worldwidewords.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents
--------
1. Notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Tergiversate.
3. In Brief: Slugflation.
4. Review: The Language War.
5. Q & A: Needs must when the devil drives, Why 'column' is
       so spelled, Gig.
6. Administration: How to join and leave the list, Copyright.


1. Notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
MAIL PROBLEMS  The amount of mail coming in has greatly reduced in
the past few days. I've had reports that mail to worldwidewords.org
has bounced. If you have experienced this, please e-mail me at the
old address of words at quinion.com, if possible with a copy of the
error message you received.


2. Weird Words: Tergiversate  /'t@:dZIv@,seIt/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Make conflicting or evasive statements; equivocate.

If you've ever observed somebody wriggling and evasive, trying hard
to avoid giving a straight answer to a straight question, then you
have observed 'tergiversation' in action. The Romans observed this
phenomenon as often as we do, and already had the word for it,
'tergiversari', to turn one's back, shuffle, practise evasion, from
'tergum', back, and 'vertere', to turn. One of its English senses,
in older dictionaries often given as the main one, is of a deserter
from a party, a renegade or apostate. An example appeared in
_Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1831: "'I am liberal in my politics',
says some twenty-times tergiversated turncoat". Dickens seems to be
using it in the more modern sense in _A Tale of Two Cities_: "He
knew ... that flight was impossible; that he was tied fast under
the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of his utmost
tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning terror,
a word might bring it down upon him". As those who 'tergiversate'
in either sense usually show similar symptoms of ducking and
weaving, as John Barsad was doing in Dickens' book, the link
between the two senses is clear enough, and in fact it's sometimes
difficult to decide which sense was meant. The turncoat sense is
still sometimes encountered, but the main one is now of someone
trying to weasel out of an untenable position.


3. In Brief
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SLUGFLATION  This is a combination of sluggish growth and rising
inflation in the economy. The Centre for Economic and Business
Research, a British think-tank, believes this is what the UK is
heading for.


4. Review: The Language War
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The title sounds like PR puffery, but Robin Tolmach Lakoff means
it. She says in her introduction: "We are currently engaged in a
great and not very civil war, testing whether the people who always
got to make meaning for us all still have that unilateral right and
that capacity". She argues that control of language and its meaning
is a basis for power and therefore worth fighting for.

Her discussion ranges beyond language in itself into techniques of
persuasion: how the communication methods of the media affect and
interpret the events being reported, and the way that political
uses of language have implications for attitudes and beliefs. She
also discusses the problems that different language groups have in
understanding each other, a topic that will be familiar to anyone
who has read, for example, Deborah Tannen.

The book, understandably, is totally US-centric. More than that, if
you have not followed with close attention the controversies she
discusses - the O J Simpson trial, the Clinton impeachment and sex
scandal, the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas confrontation, the Ebonics
debate - many of the references will be opaque or at best oblique.

Much of her thesis discusses subtleties of language, not the logic-
chopping lawyeresque debate about what the meaning of 'is' is, nor
what really constitutes a 'sexual relationship', but the use of
inclusive and exclusive language to define a community and who
belongs in it.

Words, she points out, are rarely entirely neutral. Many have some
penumbra of associations that shade the way we use them and what we
mean by them. In the US political arena, 'radical' joins 'liberal'
as a heavily loaded word, as does 'socialist', which everyone shies
away from, including the British Labour Party. 'Addiction' is
another example of an ambiguous word with cultural undertones (is a
'chocoholic' really an addict, in any sense that makes sense?). If
somebody describes another as a 'card-carrying' member of a group,
we all know he doesn't mean that neutrally.

The word that has the most profoundly negative associations in the
US is 'nigger', one that has enmeshed dictionary editors in the
political debate about how it should be defined, or whether it
should even be included. The extreme reaction to the well-meaning
but misguided attempt by the Oakland School Board to define
African-American English Vernacular as a distinct language called
Ebonics further indicates the sensitivity of language issues in the
US, especially when they cross or affect racial boundaries.

Such sensitivities lead to the creation of stories that help people
define what they are - for example the firm belief among some
African-Americans that 'picnic' derived from 'picaninny' as a term
among slave owners for a lynching party. That story is false, but
to those who believe it, the word is loaded, a racial insult every
time it is used; to those who don't, it's neutral and the emotional
response to it incomprehensible. Think also of the passions aroused
by a Washington politician's casual use a year or so ago of the
word 'niggardly', another case where a word might look racist, but
actually isn't.

Anyone interested in the way language is used in the modern world
will find this work worth the effort it will take to read, even if
you don't agree with some of Ms Lakoff's conclusions. The book has
aroused passions in the US among some critics, to judge by a couple
of vehemently negative reviews that have appeared. That such an
intellectual work should have had this impact suggests she has
touched a sensitive place.

[Lakoff, Robin Tolmach, _The Language War_, University of
California Press, hardback, ISBN 0-520-21666-0. Publisher's list
price $24.95.]


5. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[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.]

                        -----------

Q. Does the following expression/idiom exist: 'needs must when the
devil drives'? If so, is it British or American and when did it
originate? [Jonathan Harpaz, Israel]

A. The expression does exist, and as it happens is one of the older
proverbs in the language, somewhat predating the USA. Shakespeare
uses it in _All's Well that Ends Well_: "My poor body, madam,
requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that
the devil drives". However, it is actually older - the earliest I
can find is in John Lydgate's _Assembly of Gods_, written about
1420: "He must nedys go that the deuell dryves".

The form you quote is the usual modern one, but it isn't so easy to
understand, as it is abbreviated and includes 'needs must', which
is an semi-archaic fixed phrase meaning "necessity compels". The
Shakespearean wording makes the meaning clearer: if the devil
drives you, you have no choice but to go, or in other words,
sometimes events compel you to do something you would much rather
not.

                        -----------

Q. Why is there a letter 'n' at the end of the word 'column'?
[Turner Hooch]

A. Or, putting it another way, why it is there but not pronounced?

The source of our word is the Latin 'columna', which had a syllable
break between the 'm' and 'n', so both letters were pronounced. It
appeared in English like that in the fifteenth century, but it was
a rather unEnglish looking (and sounding) word, and it went through
a lot of changes and different spellings in the following 250
years.

The most characteristic change was to drop the ending altogether,
so leaving a word with roughly the same pronunciation as we use
now, but spelled 'colum'. However, the spelling varied a lot at
this period: others added a 'b' to make it 'colomb'; some kept the
last syllable of the Latin word, but respelled it as 'columne'.

The spelling seems to have settled down to our modern form from the
latter part of the seventeenth century onwards; an early example is
in John Milton's _Samson Agonistes_ of 1671: "As in a fiery column
charioting His godlike presence". One of the last examples of the
old forms appears in the diary of the antiquarian Thomas Hearne for
1712: "The Colum erected in Memory of the Dreadfull Fire of
London".

The 'n' seems to have been added back by classically educated
scholars wanting to match the spelling of its Latin original. The
pronunciation was unaffected, so the 'n' has always been silent (in
fact, it would be impossible to sound it following the 'm' without
making an extra syllable of it, as the Romans did). However, it is
sounded in compounds like 'columnar'.

                        -----------

Q. The slang word 'gig' is used by professional performers, usually
musicians, but not limited to them, to mean a paying engagement
they have agreed to do: "I'm playing a gig at the Metropole next
Monday". The term is so ubiquitous, I've heard it has spread to
England and the Continent. But, to my knowledge, no one knows its
origin. Can you be of assistance? [Dick Bellach]

A. The term is usually taken to be of American origin, but the
interesting thing is that the first two citations in the _Oxford
English Dictionary_ are from a London publication, _Melody Maker_,
in 1926 and 1927. So the word in this sense has long been known in
Britain.

'Gig' is yet another of those words for which researchers can give
no firm origin, and what follows is largely supposition, following
the leads given by John Lighter in the _Random House Historical
Dictionary of American Slang_.

The oldest sense of 'gig' was of something that whirled or turned
(as in 'whirligig'); much later it was applied to a fast two-
wheeled carriage, presumably because its big wheels went around
quickly, and later to a fast ship's boat. There are many other
senses.

>From the 1840s in the US, Mr Lighter shows it also applied to a
form of betting, involving a set of three or five numbers selected
by the bettor. From his examples, it seems the winning numbers were
drawn from a rotating device, called a 'wheel', presumably like a
lottery or tombola drum, which must be the link to the name. By the
beginning of the twentieth century, Mr Lighter suggests the word
had begun to be applied more generally to a business, state of
affairs, or an undertaking or event. This may have been influenced
by a similar sense of 'gag' that had come into being by the 1890s.

However, the great majority of Mr Lighter's examples in this sense
date from 1957 or later, with only one from 1907 to suggest that it
pre-dated the application of 'gig' to an engagement to perform live
music. This is why dictionaries are cautious about accepting this
sequence of development of the word, even though it seems to be
plausible.

These days, 'gig' can have a wide range of senses, including a
fairly new one that refers to any short-term paying commission or
job; it need not be associated with music or performance, but it
does preclude permanent full-time employment.


6. Administration
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* To join the list, send the message SUBSCRIBE WORLDWIDEWORDS to
  the list server address <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org>.
  The subject line of your message will be ignored. To leave the
  list, instead send the message SIGNOFF WORLDWIDEWORDS. For a
  complete list of commands, send INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS.

* 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.worldwidewords.org>.
===================================================================