World Wide Words -- 03 Feb 01
Michael Quinion
editor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Feb 3 08:47:39 UTC 2001
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 222 Saturday 3 February 2001
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Sent each Saturday to more than 10,000 subscribers in 100 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. Competition Results.
3. Turns of Phrase: Molecular Archaeology.
4. Weird Words: Retronym.
5. In Brief: Duvet day, Balkans War syndrome, Astropreneur.
6. Q & A: To gyp.
7. Administration: How to join and leave the list, Copyright.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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VET A lot of people wrote following my Q&A piece last week on this
word. My comments may not have been expressed well. A subtlety of
sense exists here. The verb 'to vet' puts the focus on process (of
which the end result may well be approval or its reverse) but 'vet'
has not in the past been a synonym for 'approve'.
WORD SITE LINKS Many thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions
for links.
MENTIONS The _Independent on Sunday_ had a long article on Web
literature sites in which it mentioned that "the best of many sites
devoted to words and their origins is World Wide Words". I'll go
along with that. There was further favourable mention of World Wide
Words on the South African radio program _Word of Mouth_ the same
day; many thanks to Clyde Broster.
2. Competition Results
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More than 200 entries were submitted for our new words competition.
Finding just five worthy winners was hard work. Jeremy Butterfield
and I agreed after much debate that the winning five are:
*Cohabicide*. According to David Pimentel, of Syracuse, NY, this is
"a word for that feeling most college students have felt at one
time or another". He gives two meanings. "1. the killing of one
roommate by another: 'Harold's constant misplacement of the can
opener - and the rising costs of similar apartments - slowly
provoked Nina to consider cohabicide'. 2. a roommate murderer:
'The witness watched as the cohabicide, with the bloody knife still
in his hand, dragged Bruce's body onto the linoleum - softly
muttering about never having to stare at Bruce's dirty dishes ever
again'.
*Triviate* was submitted by Bill Nyden, a former "Jeopardy!"
champion, who lives somewhere near Sacramento in California if I've
decoded his latitude and longitude correctly. His definition is:
"to participate in an organized trivia competition, such as weekly
trivia quizzes held in many pubs, or television programs ("Who
Wants to be a Millionaire?" and "Jeopardy!"), as an organizer, quiz
master, writer or competitor".
*Pregret*, according to Bruce McKenzie from New York City, is
formed from 'pre-' plus 'regret' and means "to anticipate future
remorse, especially when being too clever by half". Example: 'As he
rose to speak, the best man at the wedding pregretted quoting Zsa
Zsa Gabor'.
*Pradatute* was sent in by Heidi Young, also of New York. She
defined it as "a woman who expects designer clothing in reward for
sexual intercourse", and wrote: "I coined this phrase after seeing
a bunch of well-to-do women showing off their lovers' gifts, which
made me wonder if their relationships were contingent upon those
gifts. I would have called them prostitutes, but it was clear they
all had other jobs, so I spliced the word with the insignia on
their bags".
*Rhaphanidise* came from Dermod Quirke in Halifax (the British
one). He wrote: "As every fule kno, the Greeks had a word for it.
Namely, 'rhaphanidoun', which meant "to thrust a radish up the
fundament". This was, according to Liddell & Scott's Greek-English
Lexicon, a punishment of adulterers in Athens. One can only assume
that the Athenians did not regard adultery as a very serious matter
- unless, of course, Greek radishes were considerably larger than
ours. The Romans, as I recall, used a red mullet for the same
purpose: I gather that this is a very spiny fish, so perhaps it was
a more effective deterrent. I think that 'to rhaphanidise' would be
a valuable addition to our language".
Congratulations to all the winners, who will each receive a copy of
the newly published fifth edition of the Collins English Dictionary.
3. Turns of Phrase: Molecular Archaeology
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The first reference to this term I know of was in _Scientific
American_ in May 1992, though that was probably not the first time
it was used in print; it is slowly becoming more widely known
outside its specialist field. It is one of many cross-disciplinary
techniques being applied to the study of ancient artefacts, and it
is sometimes called 'archaeological chemistry'. As that name
implies, researchers apply a range of highly sensitive analytical
tools to objects in order to identify substances once associated
with them. Our knowledge of the early history of wine has been
transformed by it; analysis of residues on fragments of amphorae
found in Egypt has identified commodities being traded in the area;
work on pots in the tomb of the fabled King Midas have proved,
among other things, that the Phrygians were drinking a punch of
wine, beer and mead at his funeral.
The key to linking the differing strands of evidence may be in a
new field of study called molecular archaeology.
[_USA Today_, Jan. 1998]
Patrick McGovern, a senior scientist at the University of
Pennsylvania, calls his new science molecular archaeology. He used
techniques from analytic chemistry and molecular biology to
identify the desiccated leftovers of Midas's funeral feast.
[_Guardian_, Jan. 2001]
4. Weird Words: Retronym
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A term coined as a modification of a referent originally used
alone, to distinguish it from a later contrastive development.
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It's a hard concept to define succinctly, but examples will make
the idea plain. At one time we just had guitars, then somebody
invented the electric guitar; this made the word 'guitar'
ambiguous, so 'acoustic guitar' was invented to describe the older
form. This is a retronym. The word was coined from Latin 'retro',
backwards, plus Greek 'onuma', name, on the pattern of words like
'acronym' or 'homonym'.
Another example of a retronym is 'analogue watch', to describe the
sort that has hands, to distinguish it from the digital variety;
yet another is 'snail mail', which came in as a jokey reference to
the old-fashioned stuff written on paper, but which looks as though
it is becoming a true retronym to distinguish it from e-mail. Other
examples are 'birth mother', 'natural turf', 'regular coffee',
'classic Coke' and 'real cream'.
Sometimes the original and true nature of the retronymic object is
expressed by doubling up on the name: 'book-book' to mean a printed
book, not an 'e-book'; 'volunteer-volunteer' has been heard in the
White House to distinguish true volunteers from those who actually
get some payment; 'wood-wood' in golf for a club actually made of
wood; 'cheese-cheese', for the real stuff, and so on. These mostly
turn up in speech, with heavy stress on the first member of the
pair.
Invention of the term has been attributed to Frank Mankiewicz, a
well-known US broadcaster and journalist who was at one time Robert
Kennedy's press secretary. It seems to have first appeared at about
the beginning of the nineties and is now well established in the
vocabulary of those who keep a watch on our changing language. A
new retronym is often a sad sign that something is on the way out -
who now uses a 'quill pen', for instance? And the dustbin of
technological evolution is filling up with 'manual typewriters',
'reel-to-reel tape recorders', and 'black-and-white televisions'.
5. In Brief
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BALKAN WAR SYNDROME This term has appeared as an update of 'Gulf
War syndrome', to describe similar symptoms suffered by troops in
the former Yugoslavia, which some experts think are caused by the
use of munitions containing depleted uranium.
DUVET DAY An alternative to sick leave, this is supposedly the
practice of giving employees a few days off each year in which to
lounge around in bed - providing they bother to phone in first.
It's said to be from the US, but I've only ever seen it in British
publications. A group of car workers recently took a mass 'duvet
day' in place of a strike.
ASTROPRENEUR A string of rival plans for space hotels are in
development by commercial promoters, dubbed 'astropreneurs' in a
piece in _Wired_ magazine in January 2000, a term which has since
been borrowed by others. Are these serious business projects, or a
return to the dreams of youth?
6. 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. Your reference to the Roma reminded me of the derogatory word
'gyp', to cheat. I had always assumed that this was a racial
epithet from 'gypsy' and was a reference to their supposed means of
supporting themselves through petty theft and deceit. However,
someone recently informed me that there is in fact no connection at
all and that the term has a separate origin (which he did not
recall). Where lies the truth? [Stephen Wilder, New York]
A. It's often said that 'to gyp' derives from 'gypsy', and it seems
highly probable. However, direct evidence is lacking, and the term
arose in the US, where gypsies have been less common than in
Europe. The verb only began to appear in print near the end of the
nineteenth century and took some time to become well known (it's not
in the 1913 edition of the _Webster Unabridged Dictionary_, for
example).
The confusion you mention may lie with another sense of the noun,
for a college servant at the University of Cambridge (the English
one). Though 'gyp' in this sense is also sometimes said to come
from 'gypsy', it may equally well come from the obsolete 'gippo', a
menial kitchen servant; this once meant a man's short tunic, from
the obsolete French 'jupeau'. ('Gyppo', as a modern derogatory
term, does seem to come from 'gypsy', or at least, from the same
source as 'to gyp'.)
Even if the verb does come from 'gypsy', most people who use it
probably don't link the two ideas. It's a connection that has
become stronger as we have become more sensitive to possible racial
slurs, as a result of which the possibility of offence is treated
more seriously than evidence of actual offence warrants. (Much the
same process has happened with 'squaw').
Incidentally, the word 'gypsy' or 'gipsy' itself was given to
itinerants in Britain when they arrived from continental Europe in
the sixteenth century; the word is a contracted form of 'Egyptian'
by a process called aphesis. It was thought that the people came
from Egypt but they really have their origin in north-western
India. Their language can be traced back to Hindi, Punjabi and
Sanskrit roots, though with a lot of input from other languages
that shows they spent extended periods in Persia and Armenia, among
other places. They probably entered Europe via Constantinople in
the fifteenth century.
7. Administration
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