World Wide Words -- 22 Dec 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 268         Saturday 22 December 2001
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK      ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Article: A Precision of Lexicographers.
3. Weird Words: Tintinnabulation.
4. Out there.
5. Q&A: Trip the light fantastic.
6. Subscription commands.
7. Contact addresses.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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EURO  Following last week's piece on "euro-creep", Harry Lake wrote
to point out that the European Union has been doing some language
engineering in its euro-currency regulations. It has ruled that the
word 'euro' (and its subdivision 'cent') are to be the same in the
plural as the singular. So the new coins and notes are marked with
legends like "50 euro cent" or "200 euro". With so many languages
within the Eurozone, there is sense in this. Documents sent out by
British banks about the new currency follow the rule, so you get
odd-looking sentences like "change will be given in euro only", or
"you are likely to see prices displayed in both euro and national
currency". You will not be surprised to hear, however, that British
newspapers have largely ignored the rule. They know it makes cents.

FAME, FIFTEEN MINUTES OF, CONTINUED  World Wide Words has received
mentions in the past week in the Australian, the Guardian, and the
International Herald Tribune. A special extra welcome to everybody
who has joined as a result. If you notice a reference in any other
publication, please let me know at <editor at worldwidewords.org>.


2. Article: A Precision of Lexicographers
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On collective nouns.

People often write in about the conventional terms for groups of
animals and people, especially birds, such as "parliament of rooks"
or "murder of crows". Many of these, including "tiding of magpies",
"murmuration of starlings", "unkindness of ravens", and "exaltation
of larks", are poetic inventions that one can trace back to the
fifteenth century.

The first collection in English is "The Book of St Albans" of 1486,
an early printed work from a small press at St Albans that used
worn-out type that had been discarded by William Caxton. The book
is in three parts, on hawking, hunting and heraldry, and is almost
certainly a compilation of earlier works, probably written
originally in French. The part on hunting is inscribed with the
name of Dame Juliana Barnes, who is traditionally supposed to have
been prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell near St Albans, though
almost nothing is known about her (and her name might have been
Berners, or Bernes).

What is certain is that the book became hugely popular. It was
reprinted at Westminster the same year by the famous Wynkyn de
Worde. In this version an extra section appeared with the title
"Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle", that is, angling or rod
fishing. In the sixteenth century the book was reprinted so many
times that it is hard to keep track of the editions. It has been
said that its "circulation for a long time vied with and perhaps
exceeded that of every other contemporary production of the press
of lesser eminence than Holy Writ".

This popularity kept the lists of terms for beasts and birds in
people's minds. Their memory was perpetuated in later centuries by
antiquarians such as Joseph Strutt, whose "Sports and Pastimes of
England" was published in 1801. Though some of Dame Juliana's
terms, such as "business of ferrets", "fall of woodcocks", and
"shrewdness of apes" are wonderful to read and have a certain
resonance, nobody seems to have used them in real life (and some
are now mysterious, such as "cete of badgers" or "dopping of
sheldrake", because we no longer have the vocabulary to appreciate
them).

Many that refer to natural history have some basis in animal
behaviour. A "parliament of rooks" derives from the way the birds
noisily congregate in their nests in tall trees; an "exaltation of
larks" is a poetic comment on the climb of the skylark high into
the sky while uttering its twittering song; a "murmuration of
starlings" is a muted way to describe the chattering of a group of
those birds as they come into roost each evening; "unkindness of
ravens" refers to an old legend that ravens push their young out of
the nest to survive as best they can; a "spring of teal" is an apt
description of the way they bound from their nests when disturbed.

Some are witty comments on daily life, such as "drunkship of
cobblers" and "eloquence of lawyers". A few are apparently self-
mocking, like "superfluity of nuns" (though the saying probably
pre-dates any link with the semi-mythical Dame Juliana). This
gently humorous approach has continued down the years, and updated
examples frequently emerge from the fruitful imaginations of
jokesters even today, such as "intrigue of politicians", "tedium of
golfers", "addition of mathematicians", "expense of consultants",
or "clutch of car mechanics". Type "collective nouns" into any Web
search engine: you'll find dozens of sites featuring them, though
the level of wit is sadly variable.

We've got to make a distinction, of course, between these fanciful
or poetic collective names and the many examples we use every day,
like "pride of lions", "pack of dogs", "flight of stairs", "flock
of birds", "string of racehorses", and "gaggle of geese". These are
common and unremarkable, though in some cases hardly less exotic
and mysterious in origin than any in "The Book of St Albans" al
those years ago.

[For a modern work, see "An Exaltation of Larks" by James Lipton,
published by Penguin Books. I found it disappointing, as it couples
too many illustrations with too few words, but it is well-known and
popular.]


3. Weird Words: Tintinnabulation /,tIntInabjU'leIS(@)n/
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A ringing or tinkling sound.

The bells, the sound of the bells! A well-known poem by Edgar Allan
Poe - published the year he died, 1849, but written much earlier -
begins like this:

  Hear the sledges with the bells —
  Silver bells!
  What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
  How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
  In the icy air of night!

He goes on to refer to "the tintinnabulation that so musically
wells ... From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells". No more
apt term for the sound could be imagined.

Poe was borrowing from a number of related terms that had by then
been around for several decades, such as "tintinnabulary", an
obscure and rather pedantic word for bell-ringing or a bell-ringer,
first recorded in 1767 (it is linked to "tintinnabularius", a Latin
word which meant a bellman in the statutes of the University of
Oxford; all such words come from Latin "tinnire" to ring, as also
does "tinnitus", the medical term for a ringing or buzzing in the
ears).

It seems that "tintinnabulation" was known, however, before Poe's
poem was published. It appears in an unpublished American letter of
1845 and Charles Dickens employed it in "Dombey and Sons" in 1847:
"It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, which sounding
again with great fury, there was a general move towards the dining-
room".

In America, it was Poe's poem that stimulated other people to use
the word, which was moderately popular through the second half of
the nineteenth century. Sadly, it doesn't ring a bell for many
people today.


4. Out there
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OK, time for an end-of-year linguistic roundup. This one comes from
the BBC, who have collected together some of the more notable words
of 2001 under the tile 'e-cyclopedia'. As you might expect, there's
a clear British bias, but you can submit your own suggestions. See:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1717000/1717136.stm>.


5. Q&A
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Q. To "trip the light fantastic". I know what it means, but why the
"light fantastic" part? [Lois Culver]

A. You're probably that much ahead of some readers, so let me nod
in the direction of all those who do know, while telling everyone
else that to "trip the light fantastic" is an extravagant way of
referring to dancing, a phrase rather more common years ago than it
is now.

Just for once, it is possible to point the finger at the author of
a saying. The phrase is from the mind and pen of John Milton and
appeared in his lyric poem "L'Allegro", published in 1645. The
Italian title can be translated as "the cheerful man", and the poem
is directed to the goddess Mirth:

  Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
  Jest, and youthful Jollity,
  Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
  Nods and becks and wreathed smiles
  Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
  And love to live in dimple sleek;
  Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
  And Laughter holding both his sides.
  Come, and trip it, as you go,
  On the light fantastic toe;
  And in thy right hand lead with thee
  The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
  And, if I give thee honour due,
  Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
  To live with her, and live with thee,
  In unreproved pleasures free ...

We've lost the sense now, because "to trip" here doesn't mean to
catch one's foot and stumble or fall, but rather to move lightly
and nimbly, to dance. And "fantastic" (or "fantastick", as Milton
originally spelled it) has here a sense of something marked by
extravagant fancy, perhaps capricious or impulsive.

Milton's lines were borrowed as an elevated or humorous way to
refer to dancing, first as the phrase "trip the light fantastic
toe". William Makepeace Thackeray included it in one of his lesser-
known works, "Men's Wives" of 1843: "Mrs. Crump sat in a little
bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages,
from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe
in 1805, down to the Sylphides of our day". Later it was used in a
truncated form without the final word. Losing that - as well as the
ancient meaning of the first word and the original sense of
"fantastic" - makes the whole saying more than a little obscure to
us moderns.

That it has survived so long, at least in the United States, is
probably due to a song of 1894, words by Charles B Lawler, which
appeared in a musical comedy called "The Sidewalks of New York" (a
title that was presumably borrowed for that of the recent film
starring Ed Burns, as well as two previous ones). The relevant bit
goes:

  Boys and Girls together,
  Me and Mamie O'Rorke,
  Tripped the light fantastic,
  On the sidewalks of New York.

Just to reinforce how mysterious the phrase now is to some people,
one online site renders the relevant line as "We dance life's
fantastics".


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7. Contact addresses
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Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should be
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Questions intended for answering in the Q&A section should be sent
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