World Wide Words -- 31 Mar 01
Michael Quinion
editor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Mar 31 08:04:22 UTC 2001
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 230 Saturday 31 March 2001
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Sent each Saturday to 12,000+ subscribers in at least 105 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. Turns of Phrase: Denglisch.
3. Weird Words: Interrobang.
4. Topical Words: Prevent.
5. Q & A: Hopped the twig, Tall tale.
6. Subscription commands, IPA, and copyright.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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BLACK(ISH) MARK It would seem one function of subscribers is to
improve my education. Last week's Weird Word piece, 'atrabilious',
unwisely asserted that it was the only word in English that derives
from a particular Latin word for black. This brought many messages
that mentioned 'atrocious' (some reinforcing the message with puns
that were atrocious in two senses). Most dictionaries say that
'atrocious' comes from Latin 'atrox', cruel. It takes rather more
burrowing to discover that that word originally came from one of
the Latin words for black. Similarly, if you delve far enough back
into Roman history, 'atrium' refers to the smoke-blackened halls of
houses in the days when they had a central fire and no chimney.
2. Turns of Phrase: Denglisch
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It's open to debate whether this is really an English word, though
it has been seen in a number of English-language publications in
recent months, because it was actually coined in German. Its first
letter comes from 'Deutsch', the German for 'German'. It refers to
the hybrid German-English fashionable speech of younger Germans,
heavily influenced in particular by American English.
It's perhaps only to be expected that computerese such as 'e-mail'
and 'homepage' are standard (even 'computer', which has pushed out
the native 'Rechner', and 'webmaster', which is used instead of
'Webmeister'). Outside computing, you may encounter 'contemporary',
'task force', 'party', 'shopping', 'goalgetter', and 'sales' among
many others. On German railways, you will find 'service points',
'ticket counters' and 'lounges'.
Many Germans have been angered by what they see as the linguistic
imperialism of such imports. Some, such as Eckart Werthebach, the
Christian Democrat interior minister, have called for a language
purification law to ban them; others have suggested an Academy for
the Cultivation and Protection of the German Language, similar to
the Académie Française. What annoys them especially is the way that
English words infiltrate otherwise normal German sentences. A
notable example was a notice seen at a German airport: "Mit dem
'stand-by-upgrade-Voucher' kann das 'Ticket' beim 'Check-in'
aufgewertet werden".
This movement wants to impose hefty fines on any German caught
using the bastardised tongue known as 'Denglisch'.
[_Observer_, Mar. 2001]
Werthebach's plan has sparked a national debate over whether the
language of the printing pioneer Johann Gutenberg and poet Johann
Wolfgang Goethe is in danger of being diluted into the German-
English mixture now known as Denglisch.
[_Reuters_, Mar. 2001]
3. Weird Words: Interrobang
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A combined exclamation mark and question mark.
This punctuation mark is not yet, and probably never will be, part
of the standard character set, though it appears in one symbol font
I know of, and for a brief period in the 1960s was added to a few
typewriter keyboards. It looks like an question mark superimposed
on an exclamation mark. It was invented in 1962 by Martin Speckter,
head of a New York advertising agency. He felt that advertising
people needed a mark that combined a question with a shout, that
mixture any parent produces at stressful moments: "You did WHAT?!".
His idea was to provide a marker for the rhetorical questions so
much favoured by advertising copywriters. He asked readers of his
magazine _Type Talks_ to suggest a name, and chose 'interrobang'
from among the resulting entries. It combined 'interrogation', for
the question mark, with 'bang', an old printer's term for the
exclamation mark, a usage since taken over into computing with
'pling' and 'shriek' from other sources). Although 'interrobang'
received some attention at first, it has never caught on, though
its name does appear in a couple of American dictionaries.
4. Topical Words: Prevent
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The action of the new P D James detective novel _Death in Holy
Orders_ takes place in a theological college. Coming across the
well-known collect or short prayer from the 1664 _Book of Common
Prayer_ was not therefore so surprising: "Prevent us, O Lord, in
all our doings", since it was a deliberate authorial marker for the
old-fashioned ways of the college.
The prayer is actually older than the 1664 prayer book - it appears
in the same wording in the 1549 version. (It is still used at the
beginning of each daily session of the British House of Commons and
House of Lords.) In Isaak Walton's book _The Compleat Angler_ of
1653 there appears: "First let's pay our reckoning, for I will have
nothing to hinder me in the morning; for my purpose is to prevent
the sun-rising". He seems to have succeeded: he got up while it was
still dark.
The word is a good example of the many that have significantly
shifted their meanings down the centuries. Isaak Walton and the
writers of the 1549 prayer book were both using it in a sense that
was then standard, of acting in anticipation of something, or of
coming before it. The specifically religious sense, which appears
also in Tyndale's translation of the New Testament of 1531, and in
the later Articles of Religion, as well as the Authorised Version
of 1611, refers to God's grace anticipating human actions or needs,
or of worshippers going forth with spiritual guidance and help.
Its source is the Latin 'praevenire', to come before, precede or
anticipate, made up of 'prae', before, plus 'venire', to come.
'Precede' itself derives from Latin 'cedere', to go, hence to go
before somebody or something - though it is closely related in
origin and sense to 'prevent', it has retained its links to the
Latin sense, while those of 'prevent' have been greatly modified.
The shift is not hard to understand. Though it began its life in
English with the idea of acting in anticipation of some event,
within a century it had also taken on the idea of forestalling
something or somebody, to respond to some situation in order to
frustrate or thwart an opponent. From there to the modern sense is
no distance at all.
5. 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 Web site. If you
wish to comment on one of the replies below, please do NOT use that
address, but e-mail <editor at worldwidewords.org> instead.]
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Q. In a recent article in _Slate_ about the advanced age of US
Senator Strom Thurmond (he's 98), the following statement was made
"In the 1970s, only eight senators hopped the twig". Has the author
invented a new term for the universal fate of all humanity? And
what about "He's joined the choir invisible" which was also in the
article? [Bob Sypek]
A. It certainly belongs with all the other phrases the writer used
in his piece, like "kick the bucket", "push up the daisies", "go
the way of all flesh", and "buy the farm", several of which seem to
be direct references to that infamous Monty Python sketch about the
dead parrot. That's relevant, because the very phrase "It's hopped
the twig" appears in the middle of John Cleese's rant, just before
"He's joined the choir invisible", in fact.
So, no, it's not new. But Monty Python didn't invent it. The first
recorded example actually dates from 1797: "He kept his bed three
days, and hopped the twig on the fourth", in a book by Mrs Mary
Robinson, _Walsingham; or the Pupil of Nature_. At first it meant
to go away suddenly, for example to avoid creditors, and it's from
this that the figurative sense arise. It's connected also with "hop
it!", a request to somebody to depart without delay, and with the
British slang phrase "hop the wag" for playing truant, which is
still to be heard in places. In the early part of the twentieth
century, the phrase was modified into "drop off the twig", "hop the
perch", and various other forms.
By the way, "join the choir invisible" comes from a poem by George
Eliot in which she is evoking the heavenly host:
Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence.
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Q. What is the origin of the phrase 'tall tale' (meaning a
humorous lie)? What is 'tall' about it? [Douglas Maurer,
Washington, DC]
A. 'Tall' is one of those curious words, like 'nice', that has had
more meanings down the centuries than you can shake a stick at.
Back in Anglo-Saxon times it meant swift or prompt, and later on it
variously had senses of fine, handsome, bold, strong, brave,
skilful and a good fighter. It was only in the sixteenth century
that it started to mean somebody or something physically higher
than normal. (Even now, we can speak of somebody being 'five feet
tall', in which 'tall' means having a specified height, not being
of more than average height.)
Sometime in the seventeenth century, 'tall' started to mean
something grandiloquent or high-flown, an obvious enough extension
from the - by then - usual meaning. A little later, certainly by
the 1840s, Americans had started to use it for something that was
exaggerated or highly coloured, as in phrases like 'tall stories'
or 'tall writing'. It's closely connected with 'tall order',
something that is thought to be hard to achieve, and there were
other phrases as well, such as 'tall time', meaning a long time,
which Charles Dickens used.
"Tall tale" obviously belongs in among these. I haven't been able
to track down its earliest recorded use (for some reason, the
_Oxford English Dictionary_ has nothing earlier than 1933) but I
did find this, from a lesser-known work by Jerome K Jerome of 1893
called _Novel Notes_: "I've come across monkeys as could give
points to one or two lubbers I've sailed under; and elephants is
pretty spry, if you can believe all that's told of 'em. I've heard
some tall tales about elephants". I've also found this slightly
earlier American one from the wonderfully titled "Gentle Hortense;
or, the Maiden's Leap" by Emma E Specht: "Edward came in soon
after, telling tall tales of the gentilhomme, who had been so kind
to him".
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