World Wide Words -- 02 Jun 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 239           Saturday 2 June 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. Turns of Phrase: Sonic cruiser.
3. Weird Words: Engastrimyth.
4. Q & A: All wool and a yard wide, Stonking.
5. Subscription commands, IPA, and copyright.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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BOG-STANDARD  For some reason, probably mental fatigue allied to
incipient word blindness, in last week's piece on this expression I
didn't include mention of a common story that "bog" here is really
an acronym from "British or German", on the grounds that standards
in manufacturing were set in Victorian times by British and German
engineering. Hardly likely, but an interesting additional example
of the acronyming tendency among amateur word sleuths!

Adam Wilkins wrote: "I believe that the term originated within the
aircraft industry and quite possibly the RAF. Certainly it was a
term in common use at Rolls-Royce when I was there in the early 70s
and was used to describe an item of equipment or a procedure that
was totally normal and did not need any non-standard testing,
fitting or tooling etc". And Patrick Williams remembered: "I first
heard this expression in 1968 in relation to cars by workers at the
Ford experimental plant in Dunton in Essex. It related to cars off
the production line without any modifications, i.e. 'he was driving
a bog standard Ford Escort'". So the word is rather older than the
written evidence suggests - not an uncommon situation.

FUNNY BONE OF CONTENTION  One subscriber wrote with a request for
more humour in mailings. Sorry, I've run out, but here's an old
joke to be going on with. A bottle of red ink sat for months on a
shelf alongside a bottle of blue ink. One morning they awoke to
find a tiny bottle of purple ink had appeared. The bottle of red
ink turned to the bottle of blue ink and whispered coyly, "I had an
inkling this would happen".

NEW SUBSCRIBERS  A special welcome this week to everyone who has
joined as a result of seeing World Wide Words mentioned in _Time_
magazine, in a section headed "40 sites you've (probably) never
heard of". At least they wrote "probably" ...


2. Turns of Phrase: Sonic cruiser
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If there was ever a phrase that burst upon the world in a moment,
this is it. I can find no reference to it before the end of March
2001, but by the middle of May there were hundreds of news reports
on file that included it. It's the name that Boeing have given to
their new small subsonic passenger plane, of a radically different
design to previous models, which is expected to fly at just under
the speed of sound and at higher altitudes than current airliners.
The firm outlined its plans for the new plane after admitting it
had given up attempts to create a wide-bodied version of its 747,
with 520 seats, in competition with the Airbus A380. The name will
probably only be temporary, perhaps replaced by something really
exciting, like 'Boeing 797', even if it ever gets built, which many
industry watchers are sceptical about.

By flying much faster, just below the sound barrier, and at higher
altitudes than today's planes do, Mulally said the Sonic Cruiser
would save an hour and a half on a North Atlantic route and two and
a half hours across the Pacific.
                                      [_Forbes Magazine_, May 2001]

Virgin Atlantic today became the first airline to sign up publicly
for Boeing's Sonic Cruiser despite the proposed new aircraft being
still firmly on the drawing board.
                 [_The Atlanta Journal and Constitution_, May 2001]


3. Weird Words: Engastrimyth
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A ventriloquist.

This is from Greek 'en', in, plus 'gaster', belly, plus 'muthos'.
speech, so it is the exact equivalent of Latin 'ventriloquist',
which is from 'venter', belly, plus 'loqui', speak. 'Engastrimyth'
is now hardly common (indeed it's not in most current dictionaries)
and on the rare occasions it appears is never applied to the much
debased "gottle of gear" entertainer's chat with a dummy. Instead,
it refers to the classical soothsaying phenomenon of speaking
without appearing to speak, associated especially with prophetesses
such as the famous Delphic Oracle, or with seers who acted as
conduits for the voice of someone beyond the grave, such as the
Biblical story of the Witch of Endor. 'Belly' seems to have been
something of a euphemism, in fact, since some writers thought that
the voice came from the genitals. From ancient times up to the
eighteenth century, the phenomenon was usually linked to religious
frenzy or demonic possession, though it was frequently denounced as
fakery. It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that
ventriloquism became a form of entertainment and it seems to have
been rare that 'engastrimyth' was applied to it - then usually only
in rather formal literary contexts.


4. Q&A
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Q. I am an English into French translator and not so long ago, I
stumbled upon the (American?) idiom: "to be all wool and a yard
wide". No English-speaker around me seems to have ever heard such
an expression - let alone used it - and dictionaries disagree about
its meaning: "to be genuinely warm-hearted and friendly" according
to  the NTC's American Idioms Dictionary; "authentic, first-class"
according to the Robert & Collins English-French Dictionary. Which
is right? Where does the phrase come from and is it still in use
today, in either the UK or the US? Thank you for your help
[Isabelle D. Taudiere, Paris, France]

A. It is in origin an American idiom, though one that I would guess
is now rather old-fashioned and not so often heard (though American
subscribers will put me right on that, I'm sure). It's even less
well known outside North America, so many British English speakers
may be as puzzled by it as you are. It usually refers to a person
who is genuine, sincere and honourable, so putting together bits of
the two definitions you've found.

Where it comes from is more problematical. As a fixed phrase, it
dates from the 1880s; Jonathon Green, in the _Cassell Dictionary of
Slang_, suggests it might have been used in advertising copy for
clothing trade promotions, though he doesn't go into details.
However, 'all wool', in the sense of something first-class, dates
from the American Civil War period (there's an example in the
_Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang_ from a book
entitled _Rebel Yell_ of 1864: "We gave them an 'all wool' yell and
tore after them").

I've seen it suggested that this part of the saying is indeed of
Civil War provenance, and refers to uniforms that were made of good
quality material. It is said that many were made from shoddy, an
inferior semi-felted material derived from shredded fibres of waste
woollen cloth. Uniform coats made from it tended to come apart on
one's back (our word 'shoddy' for something inferior comes from
this clothing trade term). So 'all wool' meant something of good
quality, or excellent of its type. This is just guesswork, I
suspect, but it sounds plausible, and it's supported by a variant
form of the saying, known from the late nineteenth century: 'all
wool and no shoddy'.

It's obvious enough that that the second half of the expression
referred to the width of the material from which clothing was made.
Woollen cloth was indeed woven in pieces a multiple of a yard wide
('broadcloth' was two yards wide, which was why it got that name,
to distinguish it from 'strait' cloth, which was just one yard wide
- only later did the term 'broadcloth' come to refer to quality
rather than width).

Putting all these threads of evidence together does suggest that
'all wool and a yard wide' might have had its origin in the
clothing trade, or at least in trade terms.

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Q. From time to time _The Economist_ likes to indulge in a little
verbal slumming, and does so this week (May 12-18). On p59 it
refers to the prime minister who "may have a 'stonking' lead in the
polls". The only meaning I ever knew for being 'stonked' was being
stoned, sloshed or otherwise drunk - does _The Economist_ mean his
lead is enough to get drunk on, or make him drunk with success?
Either way it seems a new twist to an older word. [Peter Weinrich]

A. _The Economist_ isn't actually slumming, but using an informal
word in moderately common use in Britain. 'Stonk' and its relatives
are an interesting bunch: with all those strong consonants they're
thudding, active, strongly masculine words. And there may be two
separate origins involved.

According to the _Macquarie Dictionary_, 'stonkered' in Australia
can mean drunk, which is presumably the sense you know, though it
also has associated ideas of being defeated, exhausted, done in, or
lethargic, as after a large meal. This comes from the verb
'stonker', which at one time could mean to kill, but is now the
action of outwitting or defeating somebody. It is generally said
that this in turn comes from an old Scots term 'stonk', originally
and oddly the stake in a game of marbles. According to the _Oxford
English Dictionary_, the first recorded use of it was in John
Jamieson's _Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language_ in
1841, in which he said that 'stunk' was "the stake put in by boys
in a game, especially in that of marbles". According to the
_Concise Scots Dictionary_, this is now only local Scots dialect,
and it suggests the Scots got it from local English dialect (do try
to keep up), which might have originated in 'stock', a store,
presumably the bag or other container the marbles or money were
kept in. The Australian use seems to have come out of soldiering -
at least, the first examples in the _Australian National
Dictionary_ (hang on a minute while I move some of these books out
of the way) are from military publications at the end of the First
World War, in 1918.

That, you will probably feel, comprehensively deals with one sense
of the word, but as yet it doesn't help with the way that it turns
up in _The Economist_ piece. That meaning is well known in Britain,
as I said earlier, where a 'stonker' is something which is large or
impressive of its kind. Hence 'stonking', a word of vague positive
emphasis: "That's a stonking good idea".

Now it could well be that this sense of 'stonking' came from the
other - after all, there was plenty of opportunity for British and
Australian soldiers to exchange slang during two world wars. But
there's a suggestion that the British sense comes from elements of
a bit of World War Two military jargon: 'Standard Regimental
Concentration', for an artillery bombardment. The OED has examples
dating from 1944. Eric Partridge, in _A Dictionary of Forces
Slang_, says the full term was indeed the name given to a type of
concentrated artillery bombardment, but he doesn't mention any
abbreviated form.

It's possible that this World War Two term was just a reinvented
echoic term, or - as I say - possibly a variation on the existing
Australian term. If the latter, then it's a much-travelled word.


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