WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 269 Saturday 29 December 2001
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent each Saturday to 13,000+ subscribers in at least 113 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
<http://www.worldwidewords.org> Mail: <editor at worldwidewords.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is best viewed in a monospaced font.
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Turns of Phrase: Ecofact.
2. Weird Words: Cruciverbalist.
3. Q&A: Shufti, Hush puppies, Golf, Potboiler.
4. Subscription commands.
5. Contact addresses.
1. Turns of Phrase: Ecofact
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A biological find at an archaeological site, not modified by human
activity but indicating the presence of humans.
This is one of those specialist technical terms that lurk in the
interstices of the language for a while, but then suddenly pop out,
catching word researchers by surprise. Though it's well known in
archaeology and has been around at least since the early 1970s, it
hasn't yet graced the pages of any dictionary that I know of.
An "ecofact" is a bit of plant or animal that turns up during an
archaeological dig, like wheat seeds or sheep bones. Ecofacts give
archaeologists information about the natural environment and what
people were eating at the time. It's really a catch-all term for
items that are clearly organic in origin, but which haven't been
modified by humans.
Something that has been created by people is an "artefact" (an
"artifact" if you're American); "ecofact" was formed from it by
blending it with "ecology". This is hardly a logical way to make
the new word, since the "fact" part of "artefact" comes from Latin
"factum", something made, so "ecofact" ought to mean something
created from a living organism, exactly the opposite of the way
archaeologists use it.
A similar criticism may be made of another term, "geofact", which
is used to describe naturally fractured rock that looks as though
it might have been manufactured by human action, but hasn't.
2. Weird Words: Cruciverbalist
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A compiler or solver of crossword puzzles.
If you encounter the clue "crossword puzzle fan (14 letters)", this
is the answer. The word is a modern mock-Latin invention, being a
translation back into Latin of the English "crossword" (using Latin
"crucis", cross, as in words like "cruciform", plus "verbum", word,
as in "verbose" or "verbatim"). It seems to have been invented
about 1980, perhaps itself as a bit of wordplay, but has spread
into the wider language to the extent that it now appears in some
larger recent US dictionaries. There is also "cruciverbalism", for
the art of crossword compilation or crossword fandom generally, but
that is much rarer.
3. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. What's the origin of "shufty", meaning look, as in "take a
shufty"? [Nick Carrington, UK]
A. "Shufti" (another way of writing it, the one usually given in
dictionaries) is Arabic. In that language it means "have you
seen?". It's a bit of military slang, picked up by British
servicemen formerly based in the Middle East. The first recorded
examples in print are from the Second World War, suggesting that it
may have originated among soldiers in the desert campaign. However,
Eric Partridge says that it actually started life with Royal Air
Force stations in that area about 1925, but that it had spread to
the Army by 1930. This seems probable, to judge from the extent of
its use in World War Two, and the number of compounds it spawned,
none of which seem to have survived the end of the War. Among them,
Partridge mentions "shuftiscope", which had a number of senses, one
of which he defines with ponderous delicacy as "an instrument used
by doctors for research in cases of dysentery".
-----------
Q. Do you know the origin of the American term "hush puppy"? Hush
puppies are little balls of seasoned, deep-fried dough (usually
made with corn meal), often served as a side dish or appetizer in
the South. I've heard two tales about the origin of the name but I
don't know if either one is true. The first is that Confederate
soldiers during the Civil War kept their dogs quiet while they were
cooking by feeding them fried dough balls. Thus, "hush, puppy."
Considering the hunger and privation prevalent in much of the
Confederate army, this strikes me as probably untrue. The second is
that Cajuns in southern Louisiana used to eat a type of salamander
they called a "mud puppy". They weren't too tasty plain, so folks
would dip 'em in corn meal and fry 'em. Supposedly the term just
grew from there. I doubt that story, too, since my dad's family is
from southern Louisiana, and while they fry a whole lot of things
to eat, salamanders ain't one of them. Can you shed any light on
the subject? [Jim Austin]
Q. I'm glad you told this ignorant Brit what "hush puppies" are:
for a moment I had a vision of Southerners eating fried shoes.
The salamander story is retold in William and Mary Morris's "The
Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" with some extra
information, including other names for the salamanders of "water
dog" or "water puppy". The article claims that they were hardship
food, not something you'd want everybody to know you were reduced
to eating, therefore "hush", keep quiet about it. It does sound
rather unlikely as an explanation, I do agree.
The Civil War story is probably an example of folk etymology trying
to fix a definite date on something whose origin is obscure. The
phrase isn't actually recorded until 1918. That doesn't rule out a
Confederate association, because the term had probably been around
in the spoken language for decades by then, but I would doubt it
goes so far back as that conflict (The Morrises instead point to
the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, but they don't
give evidence for saying that, though they're presumably thinking
of the great poverty in the South after the War).
The story that seems to be most accepted is a variation of your
second one. People cooking outdoors would fry up these little cakey
bits along with their other food as a side delicacy and would feed
a few to the dogs to keep them quiet while the humans were eating
(Hence "Hush, puppies!" as another way of saying "Quiet, dogs!").
Whether this happened at a barbecue or a hunters' camp depends on
who is telling the story.
We don't know either way, but I suspect a lot of people from the
South are going to be telling me their theories!
-----------
Q. I received this email today and I can't find anything to
disprove it yet: "In Scotland, a new game was invented. It was
entitled Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden, and thus the word 'golf'
entered into the English language". What do you say? [Damian D.
Reese]
A. That's an excellent example of a kind of inventiveness that is
very common. It seems to turn up especially often in a series of e-
mail pieces that circulate eternally online.
Claims that word origins are acronyms are almost always spurious
(other well-known examples said to be derived from the initial
letters of a phrase include "Constable On Patrol", "For Unlawful
Carnal Knowledge", and "Port Out, Starboard Home"). In fact,
there's no known example of a word being generated as a acronym
before the beginning of the twentieth century (and they were rare
until the inter-war years).
It's easy to refute such suggestions by a look at a dictionary,
though in this case the process may not enlighten you much, since
the true origin of "golf" is unknown. However, it may be related to
a Dutch word "kolf" for a club or bat.
-----------
Q. I've been trying to find the etymology of "potboiler" ("a
usually inferior work, as of art or literature, produced chiefly
for profit", according to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary) for so long
that I've forgotten what brought it to mind in the first place. I
suspect it's strictly an Americanism, but can't find the answer to
that, either. Can you help? [Tom Hart, Boston, Mass.]
A. Those among us with an interest in archaeology will know of
"potboiler" in a more literal sense. It was a stone heated in a
fire and dropped into a pot of liquid in order to warm it. This was
a useful technique in the days when primitive pottery was too
fragile to be exposed directly to a fire. However, the figurative
sense you mention was recorded about the middle of the nineteenth
century, so it's rather older than the archaeological one.
An artistic "potboiler" served the not wholly unrelated function of
bringing in some quick money to keep the home fires burning and the
cooking pots boiling. So it was a work produced for strictly
commercial reasons rather than from any artistic impulse. In the
more elevated arenas of artistry such a motive - then, as now - was
considered deeply demeaning (though a century earlier Dr Johnson
rebuked such ivory-tower attitudes with his magisterial comment
that "no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money"). It
often referred specifically to a work that had been rapidly
executed to make a quick buck, therefore one likely to be poorly
done.
There seems also to have been a strong feeling that to keep one's
reputation alive before the public one had to originate new works
regularly (the modern academic's mantra of "publish or perish"
contains much the same idea). In other words, one had to keep the
pot boiling in order to stay in the game.
The first examples in the "Oxford English Dictionary" are all
British, so it's tempting to say it's not an American term.
However, I've since found an earlier example than the OED knows
about, from "Putnam's Monthly Magazine" of New York, dated 1854:
"He has not carelessly dashed off his picture, with the remark that
'it will do for a pot-boiler'". That suggests that it is either
American in origin (and clearly already well-known, since the
writer did not feel the need to explain himself) or was at first
British but by then had crossed the Atlantic.
4. Subscription commands
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address, or subscribe,
please visit <http://www.worldwidewords.org/wordlist.htm>.
Alternatively, you can contact the list server by sending an e-mail
message to <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> from the address at
which you are subscribed:
To leave the list, send:
SIGNOFF WORLDWIDEWORDS
To subscribe, send:
SUBSCRIBE WORLDWIDEWORDS First-name Last-name
To obtain a list of commands, send:
INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS
5. Contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should be
sent to <editor at worldwidewords.org>.
Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should go to
<qa at worldwidewords.org>.
For a key to the pronunciation symbols used in mailings, please see
<http://www.worldwidewords.org/pronguide.htm>, or send a blank e-
mail to our autoresponder at <pronguide at worldwidewords.org>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion, 2001. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at <http://www.worldwidewords.org>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or in part in other free
media online provided that you include the copyright notice above.
-------------------------------------------------------------------