World Wide Words -- 24 Nov 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 264         Saturday 24 November 2001
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Sent each Saturday to 13,000+ subscribers in at least 113 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK      ISSN 1470-1448
<http://www.worldwidewords.org>   Mail: <editor at worldwidewords.org>
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Review: Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide.
3. Cornucopia: Mushrooms and toadstools.
4. Weird Words: Sophrosyne.
5. Q & A: Soft sawder.
6. Over To You.
7. Formatted version of mailings
8. Subscription commands.
9. Mailing addresses.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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"A PEDANT WRITES"  That was the subject line of a message from
Jonathon Green, who gently pointed out that I'd left the final
letter off John Morrish's name in Book Notices last week, and had
also given Professor Jonathan Lighter's first name incorrectly (not
for the first time, either). Professor Lighter has enough troubles
without me adding more, what with Random House closing down its
reference division and thereby consigning to oblivion the final
unpublished parts of his life's work "The Random House Historical
Dictionary of American Slang". Lots of people spotted that in
writing "early part of this century", the twentieth century was
meant, not the current one - I'm just a little behind the times,
that's all. In the Topical Words piece, the Greek word for a
trough, basin, bowl, or boat should have been "skaphe" - when
accusing eminent medieval scholars of transcription errors, one
should first put one's own house in order!

MISPLACED MODIFIERS  With the subject "The topic that refuses to
die", Fr Stephen Q Supica wrote: "Imagine my surprise when,
searching Google for the info on the Church of St. Mark at Thermi,
Thessaloniki, Greece, I got a reference to 'Lesbian Wildlife
Hospital Thermis'. This, it turns out, has to do with an animal
rescue project at Thermi on the island of Lesvos. In their defense,
I don't believe the authors of the web page are native speakers of
English".


2. Review: Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide.
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It's a mouthful, that title. It advertises itself on the cover (and
in the press release) as "three books in one". That's a bit of
marketing-speak you should not take too seriously, as the book is
mainly a combination dictionary and thesaurus, totalling 1502
pages, plus 38 pages of appendixes.

The text of the dictionary and the thesaurus seem to be based on
that of the "Concise Oxford Dictionary" and the "Concise Oxford
Thesaurus". The former has been augmented by phonetic
pronunciations, while the latter lacks its tables, lists, and other
encyclopaedic information.

An oddity is that the two main works remain separate, with roughly
the top half of each page taken up with the dictionary and the
remainder with the thesaurus. No doubt there is some reason why it
was impossible to combine and collate the two works, but the result
is messy.

If you feel comfortable with using a Windows program, it would be
rather better value to buy the "Oxford Pop-Up English Language
Reference Shelf" instead (see <http://www.worldwidewords.org/
reviews/popup.htm>) at GBP29.99, which also gives you the "Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations" and the "Oxford World Encyclopedia", and
has the advantage of being electronically searchable. As an
alternative, you might consider buying "The Concise Oxford
Dictionary" plus the "Concise Oxford Thesaurus" at a combined list
price of GBP35.98. This gives you about the same amount of
dictionary text and much better value in thesaurus, plus the
advantage of works that are more easily carried and handled than
this great slab of a book (which weighs about 3kg or 7lb).

Either way, the usefulness of buying the information in this form
seems uncertain.

["Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide", published by
the Oxford University Press on 25 October 2001; pp1542; ISBN 0-19-
860373-8; hardback, list price GBP25.00.]


3. Cornucopia: Mushrooms and toadstools
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Sorry to be hemispherist about this, but we in Britain are well
into the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and wild fungi, a
season which has been the longest and warmest on record. By no
means all fungi are good to eat, but the names of British species,
whether common, local, or dialectal, are all fit to be savoured:
Fly Agaric, Lion's mane, Amethyst Deceiver, Wood blewit, Red-
Cracked Boletus, Blusher, Chanterelle, Velvet Shank, Earth-star,
Tawny Grisette, Chicken of the Woods, Dog Stinkhorn, Slippery Jack,
Dryads Saddle, Plums and Custard, Shaggy Inkcap, Old Man of the
Woods, Panther Cap, Deadmans Fingers, and Destroying Angel.


4. Weird Words: Sophrosyne  /saQ'frQzIni:/
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Soundness of mind, moderation, prudence, self-control.

The Greeks had a word for it, at least classical Greeks like Plato
did. Translating the idea into English, however, has always posed a
difficulty, since we don't have one word that summarises his ideal
of excellence of character and soundness of mind combined in one
well-balanced individual. He defined it as "the agreement of the
passions that Reason should rule". It's usually translated as
temperance, moderation, prudence, self-control, or self-restraint.
The idea of this harmonious balance is the basis of two famous
Greek sayings: "nothing in excess" and "know thyself" - it's the
exact opposite of arrogant self-assertion or hubris. The word has
only appeared in English within the past sixty years (W H Auden
used it in 1944) but it has resonated with some moderns because the
idea is quite close to that of wholeness. Note the word has four
syllables, not three. It derives from Greek "sophron", of sound
mind, prudent.


5. Q&A
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Q. I recently read an Agatha Christie short story "How Does Your
Garden Grow?" from 1937, and in it is the phrase "soft sawder"
which I have never heard before. Please could you explain it? [Gill
Sher]

A. It's has very much the same meaning as blarney, "soft soap", or
"buttering up" - flattery that has the aim of persuading or
cajoling you to do something for someone else. We've all been on
one end or the other of the process at some time, but we probably
didn't call it "soft sawder", because that way of describing it has
gone out of use since Agatha Christie's day.

Tracking it down was an interesting process, and led me yet again
to Thomas Chandler Haliburton (Judge Haliburton) of Nova Scotia. He
was well-known in the nineteenth century for his comic writings,
which first appeared in book form in "The Clockmaker; or the
Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville" of 1836. Judge
Haliburton, a real judge by the way, is sometimes described as the
founding North American humorist. In his stories, Sam Slick was a
maker and seller of clocks who accompanied a visiting English
gentleman on a tour of early 19th-century Nova Scotia. Judge
Haliburton is said to have got the character from a real clock
salesman who appeared before him, who used gross flattery to sell
his clocks to local people.

Thomas Haliburton has appeared here before in connection with the
phrase "mad as a hatter" (see <http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-
mad2.htm>). He's also credited with creating "soft sawder" and it
was because his writings about Sam Slick were so hugely (and
internationally) popular that the term came into the language. The
term first appeared in the story "The Trotting Horse" in that first
collection, in which Sam Slick says of a sour innkeeper's wife: "If
she goes to act ugly, I'll give her a dose of 'soft sawder,' that
will take the frown out of her frontispiece, and make her dial-
plate as smooth as a lick of copal varnish".

But where does it come from? "Sawder" is just a variant way of
writing the usual North American pronunciation of "solder" (it
looks odd to modern British English speakers, who pronounce the "l"
- we didn't at one time, but the "speak as you spell" movement has
triumphed). Soft solder (it's called that because it melts at a
lower temperature) is, as its name suggests, easier to apply than
the hard variety, though it sets as solid, binding parts together
as tightly as a salesman would wish to bind his customer to him.
Solder is a substance that would have come quickly enough to the
mind of a clockmaker at that period, as the reference in its first
appearance in print shows.

It seems from the evidence that "soft sawder" very quickly caught
on in North America, and soon enough across the Atlantic in
Britain, too. It was common right down to Agatha Christie's time,
turning up in works by Galsworthy and E M Forster among others.
However, "soft soap" and other phrases have displaced it
permanently. Few people now know what soft solder is, nor what
connection it might have with flattery.


6. Over to You
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Queries sometimes come in for which I can find nothing useful to
say, but which look as though an explanation ought to exist. Time
for subscribers to tell me and the questioner what they know. Send
your comments and stories to <editor at worldwidewords.org>.

S M Tucker wrote: "When I was a child my mother used to describe
knives or scissors in need of sharpening as "so dull you could ride
to China on them". In the more than half a century since then I've
only heard two other people use that expression and both of them
were from my hometown of Baltimore.  I'd love to know if this
phrase is regional as well as getting a hook on the origin of it".

I've no idea. Can anyone help?


7. Formatted version of mailings
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My suggestion last week that a formatted version of the newsletter
could be made available provoked a (not entirely unexpected)
outbreak of the Format Wars between supporters of rival camps.

I had thought it was plain that a choice was being proposed and
that the default would be plain text. This was not what some
subscribers understood, to judge from the passionate messages from
subscribers who had somehow got the idea that I was suggesting
imposing a formatted version on everybody.

There were a number of equally positive responses from subscribers
who wanted formatted versions very much. No specific level of
positive response had been set to trigger sending them, though I
had in my mind that a significant proportion of subscribers should
say they wanted them.

In the event, the number saying they were in favour was only about
1% of total subscriber numbers, which hardly seems enough to be
worth the extra effort involved in splitting the mailing list. So
the proposal fails, and mailings will continue to be plain text.


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9. Mailing addresses
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Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should be
sent to <editor at worldwidewords.org>.

Questions for the Q&A section should go to <qa at worldwidewords.org>.

For a key to the pronunciation symbols used in mailings, please see
the Web page <http://www.worldwidewords.org/pronguide.htm> or send
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