World Wide Words -- 27 Jan 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 221         Saturday 27 January 2001
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Review: The Antarctic Dictionary.
3. Weird Words: Gaberlunzie.
4. Q&A: Old Blighty, Frequency of initial letters, Vet.
5. Administration: How to join and leave the list, Copyright.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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COMPETITION  Thank you all for your entries. The judges are now
considering their verdict and the results will be announced in next
week's issue.

WEB LINKS  People have been badgering me gently for months to do
something about my links to other sites of language interest, which
are rather out of date and inadequate. Time is short at the moment,
so I can't search the Net for suitable sites to include. But the
matter niggles. Might I ask for your help in updating the page? If
you know of an English language Web site that you find especially
interesting and helpful, please send me the details. I'll post a
list of sites found generally valuable in a future issue. Send your
suggestions to <websites at worldwidewords.org>, NOT to the editorial
address (that is, don't just hit 'reply' on your mailer).


2. Review: The Antarctic Dictionary
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The sub-title of Bernadette Hince's book: 'A Complete Guide to
Antarctic English' both gives its scope and raises questions.
Antarctica is the one continent that is uninhabited, except by a
few scientific groups. So the job of creating a dictionary of its
English might seem to be a useless task.

But the fringes of the continent have been visited for centuries by
ships, such as the American and British whalers who fought their
way around Cape Horn to reach the South Seas sperm whale fisheries.
And the scientific communities in the Antarctic are mainly English-
speaking, and have been permanently staffed settlements long enough
to have developed a characteristic vocabulary and slang.

For example, the British presence is now through a body called the
British Antarctic Survey, but until 1962 this had the name of the
Falklands Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS). Workers with it were
called 'fids', and the acronym has survived the change of name,
with 'fidlet' created to describe a first-year, new fid. Someone
'slotted' has fallen into a crevasse; 'greenout' is sometimes used
for the emotion felt on seeing and smelling green things after a
period on the ice; 'big eye' is insomnia caused by changes in the
length of daylight; a 'beaker' is a scientist (presumably borrowed
from the character in the Muppets); if unwanted or unpopular, the
term changes to 'jafa', Just Another [expletive deleted] Academic;
Ms Hince appends a dry note to this entry: "I am puzzled by its
lack of wider application").

Unlike Eskimos, who really don't have 170 words for snow despite
stories to the contrary, scientists in Antarctica have a fair-sized
vocabulary for different sorts of ice; for example, 'frazil' is
needles or slushy plates of sea ice that form in rough water;
'congelation ice', from an old English word for congealing or
freezing, is another sort of sea ice that forms underneath frazil;
'grease ice' is a later stage of forming sea ice, when the plates
start to clump together; 'pancake ice' is small floes, the
beginning of winter 'pack ice'.

As everyone in Antarctica is a temporary immigrant, people bring
their own linguistic background and vocabularies with them, so that
many terms can be traced to somewhere else: 'frazil' to Canadian
English, for example. And as a result of geographical separation on
what is a very big and inaccessible area, the slang of American
scientific groups is rather different to British and Australian
ones: though everyone appreciates fresh fruit or vegetables flown
in when the weather permits, only Americans call them 'freshies'.

To concentrate on slang - however evocative - would be to distort
Ms Hince's purpose and the nature of the book. Her aim has been to
record all aspects of Antarctic English (under which she includes
all the sub-Antarctic islands lower than 40 degrees S, including
the Falklands and Tristan da Cunha).

Though one result has been to record and explain some gems of
language, the larger part of her book consists of terms that are
hardly unique to the area (such as 'blue whale', 'frostbitten',
'husky', 'leopard seal'), and she includes many phrases whose
meanings are obvious ('icy waste', 'polar summer', 'very heavy
ice'). However, her notes on origins are sometimes insightful or
surprising, for example suggesting an origin for 'gentoo penguin'
in the Spanish 'juanito', or pointing out early use of tea bags
(both object and name), on Antarctic expeditions long before they
became household items.

You may gather I found the book fun to browse, especially as there
are many supporting citations for each entry, so that the text as a
whole builds up a fascinating picture of Antarctic exploration. But
I'm not a typical reader. I'm puzzled to find an obvious set of
readers for the book, outside specialists or those with a strong
interest in the continent, who will find it absorbing.

[Hince, Bernadette _The Antarctic Dictionary: A Complete Guide to
Antarctic English_, published by CSIRO, Australia, December 2000;
pp404; ISBN 0-9577471-1-X; publisher's list price Aus$39.95. See
<http://www.publish.csiro.au/books/bookpage.cfm?PID=2536>.]


3. Weird Words: Gaberlunzie
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A beggar.

A good Scots word this, of the medieval period, though sadly nobody
has much idea where it comes from. The first part looks as though
it might have something to do with 'gaberdine', originally a
garment worn by a pilgrim. This may well be, because another name
for a 'gaberlunzie' in medieval times was 'bluegown'. Taken from
the colour of his dress, this was the name in medieval Scotland for
a person who was a king's licensed beggar or beadsman, a person who
was paid to pray for the souls of others by telling his beads.

You will find it many times in Scots literature, especially in the
old ballad _The Gaberlunzie Man_ and in James Ballantine's story
_The Gaberlunzie's Wallet_. But if it's Scots we're after, we had
best turn to Sir Walter Scott. He doesn't fail, and here it is in
_Redgauntlet_: "Better say naething about the laird, my man, and
tell me instead, what sort of a chap ye are that are sae ready to
cleik in with an auld gaberlunzie fiddler?" ('Cleik', a version of
'cleek', from a noun meaning a hook, so to link oneself with
somebody.) It's also in several other of Scott's books, so he
probably must be given the credit of having popularised it to
readers outside Scotland.


4. 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. Thank you for a fabulous site! I stumbled on it while looking
for the derivation of 'Old Dart', since I am a Brit living in
Australia and had no idea why the locals referred to England so.
However, since finding that, I've been asked by an Ocker where the
term 'Old Blighty' comes from, and was appalled to realise I had no
idea. Can you help please? [Sally Marden]

A. It's a relic of British India. It comes from a Hindi word
'bilayati', foreign, which is related to the Arabic 'wilayat', a
kingdom or province. Sir Henry Yule and Arthur C Burnell explained
in their Anglo-Indian dictionary, _Hobson-Jobson_, published in
1886, that the word was used in the names of several kinds of
exotic foreign things, especially those that the British had
brought into the country, such as the tomato ('bilayati baingan')
and especially to soda-water, which was commonly called 'bilayati
pani', or foreign water.

'Blighty' was the inevitable British soldier's corruption of it.
But it only came into common use as a term for Britain at the
beginning of the First World War in France about 1915. It turns up
in popular songs _There's a ship that's bound for Blighty_, _We
wish we were in Blighty_, and _Take me back to dear old Blighty,
put me on the train for London town_, and in Wilfred Owen's poems,
as well as many other places.

In modern Australian usage, 'Old' has been added, as in 'Old
Country' and 'Old Dart', as a sentimental reference to Britain.

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Q. I am a librarian, and one of my patrons asked which letter of
the alphabet has the most words that start with it. I have searched
everywhere. Thank you if you can help me out on this one! [Robin
Maly]

A. An intriguing question. Was your enquirer a contestant on Wheel
of Fortune? I know of several frequency tables, but not one that
gives the relative occurrences of initial letters of words. Off the
top of my head I would have said S, but checked by running a little
program in a database I have here of the headwords from the _New
Oxford Dictionary of English_. The answer was indeed S, which was
followed at some distance in decreasing order by P, C, D, M, and A.
It's notable that the frequency of initial letters bears no
relation to how often letters occur in English in general, in which
E is most common, followed by T and then A.

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Q. I edit copy and have noticed the increasing use of 'vet' as a
synonym for approve, as in "We can go final on this draft as soon
as it has been vetted by the CEO". Could you clarify the meaning of
this word and tell me more about where it came from? [Chris Koenig]

A. 'Vet' is a most curious word when you look into its history.
Like the noun of the same spelling, it's actually an abbreviation
of 'veterinary surgeon'. The noun came first, about the middle of
the nineteenth century, and the verb followed a few decades later.

The initial sense was the obvious one: to submit an animal to
examination or treatment by a veterinary surgeon. For example, you
might have a horse vetted before racing, to be sure it was fit to
run. By the early years of the twentieth century, it had begun to
be a figurative term for any careful or critical examination, which
remains its principal sense. In Britain, it's also used for the
process of investigating the suitability of a person for a post
that requires loyalty and trustworthiness.

In your example, it could be this is the meaning. If you're sure
that an explicit approval is implied, then this would be an obvious
enough extension, since the result of a critical examination may be
either approval or rejection. However, it's not one that has yet
reached the dictionaries, and must be regarded as informal or
colloquial.


5. Administration
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