World Wide Words -- 12 May 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 236           Saturday 12 May 2001
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Electrosmog.
3. Weird Words: Pogonotrophy.
4. Q & A: Pogey, Hullabaloo, Contracted forms in writing.
5. Subscription commands, IPA, and copyright.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION  David Cooke wrote to point out that
there's another version of it: floccipaucinihilipilification, with
'pauci' (as in words like 'paucity') in place of 'nauci'. I'd not
come across this, but a Web search on Google turned up a surprising
number of examples, plus one actually within the OED entry itself.
The version I gave, however, was the original one.

Terry Walsh e-mailed me in mild distress at my poor Latin. I said
that 'flocci' was the plural of 'floccus', but he points out that
it's actually a possessive, used "after 'facere' to suggest general
worth, or (as in this case) the lack of it".

BARBECUE  Quite a number of subscribers contacted me to express
surprise at the origin I gave last week. They had heard that it
derives from the French 'barbe à queue', that is, from beard to
tail, signifying the whole of the pig being roasted. I'd not come
across this previously. It sounds very much like our old friend
folk etymology, especially as the source in the Taino language
seems well authenticated.


2. Turns of Phrase: Electrosmog
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The term is currently in the news because of a dispute between the
Italian government and the Vatican over the intensity of the signal
from Vatican Radio. Rome's expansion means that the area around the
transmitters, almost unpopulated 50 years ago, now has some 100,000
inhabitants. The Vatican, a sovereign state, allows itself higher
field strengths from transmitters than does Italy. Though this
dispute has publicised the term, it has actually been around for
some time, in a relatively specialist way, to refer to the sea of
electromagnetic radiation from broadcast and mobile telephone
transmitters in which we involuntarily bathe. Back in 1996, a firm
in Durham, North Carolina, responding to concerns about the health
implications of such radiation, manufactured a 'cybercap' out of
metallic fabric that was supposed to shield the wearer from the
electrosmog, so described, that was given off by wireless networks.

Angered by constant references in the Italian media to
'electrosmog' coming from his radio station, Father Federico
Lombardi, Vatican Radio's director of programmes, said in a
statement: 'We consider it immoral to foment unjust accusations and
cause alarm in the population'.
                                       [_New Scientist_, Apr. 2001]

Environment Minister Willer Bordon has told the Vatican to either
reduce electromagnetic transmissions by two-thirds or face a
blackout. He says 'electrosmog' from the radio's powerful
transmission towers is causing high levels of cancer and other
problems among residents who live near them.
                                           [_USA Today_, Apr. 2001]


3. Weird Words: Pogonotrophy
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Cultivation of a beard; beard-growing.

Do not - as a British journalist did some years ago - confuse this
useful word with 'pogonotomy'. Both originate in the Greek word
'pogon', a beard, but the latter ends in '-tomia', cutting, and so
is the word for trimming one's beard, or shaving, the exact
opposite of the writer's intention. 'Pogonotrophy', on the other
hand, ends with Greek 'trophe', nourishment, so its literal sense
is "beard feeding". Neither word is what you might call common;
they usually appear only when somebody is writing in a mock-
pompous, tongue-in-cheek way. Other words in 'pogon' include
'pogonic', pertaining to a beard, and 'Pogonophora', the systematic
name for a group of deep-sea worms; their name actually means
"beard bearer", which is odd, since they don't have mouths to
cultivate them around.


4. Q&A
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[Send your queries to <qa at worldwidewords.org>. All messages will be
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Q. Can you tell us the derivation of the word 'pogey' which was
used in parts of Canada during the Great Depression to mean
government relief - similar to 'the dole' and also disparaging. I
grew up in western Canada and never heard 'pogey' used but it is
often referred to in Ontario. [John David Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada]

A. It seems to have been derived from a general North American term
for a workhouse, homeless hostel or poorhouse, which is recorded
from near the end of the nineteenth century. However, that is
merely to move the problem back half a century, since the origin of
'pogey' in that sense is also unknown.

As 'pogey' was also used for a prison or prison cell, we might
guess that it's a variant of the American slang term 'pokey', but
'pogey' is recorded rather earlier and it's actually been suggested
as the source for 'pokey'.

There is a much older word, 'pogue', for a bag or other container,
which is closely related to 'poke' in the same sense, and of course
also to 'poky', for a confined space, which would fit the
accommodation in prison or the workhouse fairly well. As 'g' and
'k' interchange pretty freely, it is very possible that 'pogey'
actually comes from 'poky', which suggests that 'pokey' did
ultimately come from that source, but via the intermediate of
'pogey'.

Language is a messy thing ...

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Q. I am an English teacher and we had a poser today - where does
the word 'hullaballoo' come from? No-one in our staffroom could
give the answer - can you solve the mystery? [Carolyn Devine,
Peterborough, UK]

A. You can tell the origin of this word is puzzling because several
different explanations have been put forward for where it comes
from. The sound is so evocative of the uproar, noisy confusion,
commotion or fuss to which it refers that some dictionaries just
say that it is echoic (or onomatopoeic, remembering the Weird Word
of two weeks ago).

The standard explanation is that it was at first a rhyming cry
'halloo-baloo!', perhaps from the hunting field. However, the
_Oxford English Dictionary_ points to the old Scots term 'balow' or
'baloo', which appeared in some early nursery rhymes and which has
been used in Scots for a lullaby. How a noise intended to lull
babies to sleep turned into part of a word for uproar and confusion
is best left to the reader's imagination.

A more inventive suggestion is that it derives from French. In
itself that's not much of a stretch because of the close links
between Scotland and France at this period. However, the French
origin suggested, 'bas le loup!', bring down the wolf, is just too
much of a stretch to swallow. On the other hand, 'hurluberlu' does
exist in French, meaning scatter-brained. It isn't clear whether
the Scots borrowed it from the French or the other way around.

By the way, the usual spelling now is 'hullabaloo', but it has been
spelled in so many ways down the years that that has to be
considered arbitrary. In its first appearance, in Smollett's
_Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves_ of 1762, it is spelled very
differently: "I would there was a blister on this plaguy tongue of
mine for making such a hollo-ballo".

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Q. In recent years many magazines have begun to use 'it's' for "it
is" or "it has". I am annoyed by this usage because 1) I do not
speak that way and 2) it slows my reading because I have to stop
(albeit very) briefly to determine what meaning was used. I have
noticed that you too use the contraction. Is it only to save space
(doubtful) or to make the reading more colloquial (again,
doubtful)? [William Alexander, Pennsylvania]

A. Do you really not use 'it's' in conversation? You're very
unusual if you don't, as it is one of the most common abbreviated
forms in spoken English.

In modern formal prose, it's still normal practice to write words
in full: to do anything else would be considered inappropriate. In
less formal circumstances, there's nothing new about it. There are
examples in the _Oxford English Dictionary_ from newspapers going
back into the nineteenth century. This has accelerated in the
twentieth century, very much so in recent decades, as a result (in
part) of the influence of radio, television and film, which has
encouraged people to write in a style closer to the way they speak.

My own tendency to use forms like 'it's', 'haven't', 'isn't' and
'shan't' comes from my experience as a writer of what the BBC, when
I worked for it decades ago, would rather grandly call the spoken
word. I've been permanently influenced by this experience, so that
writing any other way is now a little unnatural. Luckily for me,
this colloquial style suits the informality of the online world and
the mood of the times.

None of this is new, of course. People have been writing like this
for many centuries. All that has altered is the abbreviations that
writers use. Think of Shakespeare's _Macbeth_: "If it were done
when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly". Or _The
Tempest_: "What fowle play had we, that we came from thence? Or
blessed was't we did?". There was once a large set of these
abbreviated forms: 'tis, 'twas, 'twere, 'twill, do't, 'twould,
see't, on't and others.

Shakespeare's words were written to be spoken, of course, but such
abbreviated terms were commonly used in prose in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and only slowly died out with the increased
formality of later years. Some survive in local dialects today,
though mainly in the spoken language. In directly reported speech,
inside quotation marks, these and their modern replacements have
never ceased to be used.


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