World Wide Words -- 09 Sep 00

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 204         Saturday 9 September 2000
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Sent weekly to more than 9,000 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. Notes and comments.
2. Book review: The New Penguin English Dictionary.
3. Weird Words: Wobbegong.
4. Q & A: Green room, Peruse.
5. Administration: How to leave the list, Copyright.


1. Notes and comments
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TIMING  Last week's issue went out a day early because I was trying
out a time delay mechanism on the list server. It didn't work. I am
trying again this week. If it works, next week's issue will go out
on time; if not, it will be a day late.

NEW NAVIGATION SYSTEM  Thanks again to everyone who responded with
comments about the experimental system in the In Brief section. All
those who replied found it worked fine for them, so I shall be
progressively rolling it out over the rest of the site in weeks to
come; this weekend, the Weird Words, Usage Notes and Topical Words
sections are being updated. Several of you also said a good search
system would be a great help; I agree, and am actively working on
it. An application is in beta test and I'll let you know when it is
ready to use.


2. Book review: The New Penguin English Dictionary
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It's time for the battle of the press releases again, that point in
the year at which rival groups of lexicographers descend uneasily
into the market place to duel with words in order to promote their
dictionaries. This subversive image came to me last week when the
_New Penguin English Dictionary_ thudded on to my desk, with its
five pages of handout, shortly after a single sheet arrived from
Oxford publicising the new edition of the _Compact Oxford English
Dictionary_.

I say duel, but poker seems more appropriate. Both press releases,
naturally, were as keen as mustard to explain how their work had
all the latest words in it; you could almost hear Oxford's group
hissing "I'll see your 'white-van man' and raise you 'cargo
trousers', to which Penguin retorts "See you, and raise you 'life
coach', 'affluenza' and 'page-jacking'".

You can understand why they do it: trying to find something new and
interesting to say about a dictionary is very hard work. Essential
workhorses of the wordsmith's business though they are, they're not
the most glamorous of publications and, like most workhorses, never
likely to hit the big time, publicity-wise. However, promotion that
concentrates so single-mindedly on fashionable terms brings twofold
issues. One fear is that to include superficial new terms just to
feed a publicity machine will degrade the authority of the rest of
the work (and take valuable time, into the bargain). The other is
that all the hoo-ha obscures the hard slog of actually creating a
dictionary.

For example, the _New Penguin English Dictionary_, the most recent
entrant into an overcrowded field, has 1642 pages of small type
covering the language from A to ZZZ in 70,000 main entries.
Although based on the skeleton of the older Longman Dictionary, it
is an almost completely new work, which has required full-time
effort by about 25 people over more than two years, plus part-time
help from another 50. This is hardly a trivial undertaking.

The publishing director, Nigel Wilcockson, wanted to produce what
he calls an "authored" dictionary, one which gets away from what he
feels is the anodyne nature of many recent works. "They miss out,"
he says, "on the expansive and playful nature that was once common
in dictionaries". He wanted "to revel in words and communicate the
way that people like to play with the language". That's why he's
included entries on 'arm candy' and 'pester power', 'mouse potato'
and 'senior moment'.

But don't these and other examples distract attention and effort
from the core vocabulary that is the real job of any dictionary to
explain? Not really, he suggests. The dictionary is rooted in the
moment, a snapshot of language as we use it in 2000. "Who knows how
many of these words will still be around in ten years' time," he
agrees, "but that isn't important". There are dangers, though, with
creating an image of the moment: one entry is for 'quantoid', "a
person who is enthusiastic about statistics and quantitative
methods of analysis". That would be fine, except that in ten years
of active research, I've never seen an example, and online I found
just seven instances. Surely, this hardly makes it a widely used
term suitable for inclusion in a concise dictionary? Mr Wilcockson
disagrees, arguing that it's a playful and quirky use of language
that deserves inclusion.

Leaving all this aside, the dictionary not only includes all that
we would expect from it, but also short pieces called Editorial
Notes on key words by well-known specialists like Richard Dawkins
and Malcolm Bradbury. Jonathon Green writes a magisterial little
piece about the F-word. Of the experts, I feel most for Professor
Catherine Belsey, who had to explain 'deconstruction' in 75 words.
Mr Wilcockson has also taken what he calls a rather more
traditionalist line in the usage notes, believing that what people
want here is firm advice, not merely to hear how other people are
using (or misusing) words.

But I'm far from sure that what he calls playfulness will not be
seen by others as a potentially confusing bias towards the new.

[Allen, Robert (ed.), _The New Penguin English Dictionary_,
published by Penguin Books on 7 September 2000; ISBN 0-14-029310-8;
publisher's price of GBP15.99.]


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4. Weird Words: Wobbegong
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An Australian shark.

This shark is brown with buff markings and a flattened body, one of
an order called the orectolobes, which includes the nurse sharks
and the whale shark; another name for them is carpet sharks. Its
name probably comes from a New South Wales Aboriginal language,
though nobody seems sure which one. The 'wobbegong' disguises
itself so well on the sea floor that unwary divers often step on
it. Actually, one writer on the species says it looks as though it
has already been stepped on, but that's just rampant speciesism.
It's notable, though, that few of those who describe it have much
that's positive to say about it. One list of Australian species
calls it "mostly harmless", uncannily like the updated description
of Earth in the _Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. A textbook on
biology describes it as "small, sluggish and cryptic", this last
epithet meaning not that it speaks in riddles but that it is well
camouflaged. Though a normally inoffensive member of the shark
clan, even a 'wobbegong' may take umbrage at such descriptions, or
to being stepped on, and bite the unwary.


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. I have always wondered why the reception room for performers -
opera singers, actors and the like - is called the 'green room'?
[Bob Lallamant]

A. Originally, the term referred to an off-stage room in a theatre
where actors could rest while they were waiting for their cues. A
lot of theatres now don't have green rooms, often through lack of
space. These days, the term applies as much - if not more often -
to the reception room in a television studio where guests wait
before appearing.

Why it should be called a 'green room' is a minor mystery. The
first recorded use is in a book called _Love Makes Man_, written by
the actor and dramatist Colley Cibber and published in 1701: "I do
know London pretty well, and the Side-box, Sir, and behind the
Scenes; ay, and the Green-Room, and all the Girls and Women
Actresses there".

It has been suggested that the room was painted green to rest the
actors' eyes after exposure to bright stage lighting, but in the
early 1700s, when lighting was by candles, that could hardly have
been much of a problem.

Colley Cibber was closely associated at this period with the Drury
Lane Theatre in London. There's some suggestion the room was first
called the 'green room' in that theatre. It's probable, humdrum
though it will appear, that the room was actually painted green, so
that the term commemorates a minor decorative whim of some unknown
person on that theatre's staff sometime in the late seventeenth
century.

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Q. What is the common definition of 'peruse'?  I know it to mean "a
careful and in-depth study". However, some of my friends use it to
mean, "a quick or summary review". To add to the issue, some say
that English is a changing and evolving language and common misuse
of the word is actually changing the definition of 'peruse'.
Please advise and thanks. [Mitchell Sandler]

A. These days, 'peruse' isn't in most people's working vocabulary -
it's more a literary or formal word, often a high-flown alternative
to 'read'. People don't encounter it often enough to acquire a good
feeling for it, so it's easy to get the wrong idea. The idea of
glancing over some document at speed or reading it through quickly
is a recent development which is still usually regarded as wrong.
There's a close parallel with the way 'scan' has changed its usage
in the past 80 years, but the shift with that word has gone much
further towards acceptance.

The sense you suggest is the right one is actually itself a matter
of slight dispute. A few dictionaries do say that 'peruse' can
refer to undertaking a task with great care, or to surveying or
examining a matter in detail, without mentioning that this has to
involve reading. This is a survival of one of the older senses of
the word in English, which had to do with working through a series
of items one by one so as to deal with them in order. (At one time
it also had a meaning of travelling through an area observantly.)

However, most people in the past couple of hundred years would
associate 'peruse' specifically with reading, but not always with
the idea of reading something especially carefully - to Dr Johnson,
who used it a lot, it meant no more than 'read' (he defined it thus
in his Dictionary), and it's possible to find many other examples
from older writings where that word would have done as well. Dr
Murray, in the first edition of the _Oxford English Dictionary_
more than a century ago, wrapped three slightly different meanings
in one: "To read through or over; to read thoroughly or carefully;
hence (loosely) to read". Only the second corresponds to the main
sense given in most modern dictionaries. You might argue that
'read' itself already has something of this idea about it, since we
commonly start at the beginning of a text and work our way through
to the end. But some authorities would argue that it is only
certain grammarians and dictionary makers of the early twentieth
century who have foisted on us the idea of thoroughness or care
being the essence of the word.

Users today who take it to mean something close to 'scan' seem to
be in the process of either inventing a new sense or to some extent
reclaiming one of the older ones. Neither can be called misuse,
though care in using it seems like a good idea.


6. Administration
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