World Wide Words -- 06 Oct 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 257          Saturday 6 October 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. Weird Words: Rhinotillexomania.
3. Out There: Apostrophe Protection Society.
4. Q & A: The whole Megillah, Cheap at half the price, Argy-bargy.
5. Cornucopia: Birds of Ecuador.
6. Subscription commands, pronunciation guide, copyright notice.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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WHIM-WHAM FOR A GOOSE'S BRIDLE  Following the Over To You report in
last week's issue, many people have written with other dismissive
sayings in the same style. Loren Myer mentioned that her parents,
"both born in the early 20th century in central Illinois", fended
off unwelcome enquiries by saying they were "making layovers to
catch meddlers". Bob Lee wrote: "I recall that at my father's knee
I was told by him that he was making 'a silver new nothing to put
on your shoe'". Virginia Scofield contributed that "When my Welsh
grandfather would get perturbed at my incessant questions, he would
say he was making 'airlos to catch medlos'". Leonard G. Lee said:
"When I was growing up, my father used the expression 'A whipple
for a dooses poke" in the same way", though he isn't sure how that
is spelled. James Sloan from Texas had a memory of his mother: "I
would ask what something was for and she would say 'a cat for to
make a pair of kitty britches'". Katrina Beard remembers that her
grandmother used an extended version of the saying: "A wigwam for a
goose's bridle, and a crutch for a lame duck". Norm Brust noted:
"As a boy, when I asked my father what he was so busy with that he
couldn't give me his time, his stock reply was 'I'm pressing my
shoe laces'". From Devon, Lesley Pinkett mentioned that "My husband
and father in law both used to talk about a 'whim-whom for grinding
smoke' to describe anything that they were doing and didn't want to
expand on further".

DRUNK AS A FIDDLER'S BITCH  This one stumped most of you, but Anne
Layton-Bennett wrote from Tasmania to say she knew it well, having
been brought up in the North of England. She found this entry for
the term in _The Dictionary of Modern Phrase_ by Graeme Donald: "At
wakes and village parties, the fiddler was usually unpaid, but
could eat and drink his fill - a rather short-sighted economy which
often had disastrous results. His female companion was afforded the
same privilege and did not even have to waste good drinking time
playing the fiddle!".

CORNUCOPIA  Subscribers with long memories will remember there was
once a regular feature called List of the Week. I've resurrected it
and given it a new name, in part because it will not appear in each
issue. The aim is to present a set of words - usually names - that
are exotic, evocative, or extravagant. There's no purpose other
than to let them roll around your tongue and celebrate that they
exist. The first is at the end of this newsletter.


2. Weird Words: Rhinotillexomania
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Habitual or obsessive nose-picking.

This word featured in the IgNobel awards at Harvard University on
Thursday last. These annual ceremonies recognise research that, in
the words of the organisers, "cannot or should not be reproduced".
The award for Public Heath went to the article, _A Preliminary
Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample_, which was
published in the _Journal of Clinical Psychiatry_ back in April.
The judges described this as a "probing medical discovery that
nose-picking is a common activity among adolescents".

'Rhinotillexomania' looks like an example of word invention for its
own sake, but it has appeared a few times in scientific journals. I
haven't been able to trace it back very far; an early example that
is commonly referred to is a postal survey that was carried out by
two Wisconsin researchers in 1994; this was written up in 1995,
also in the _Journal of Clinical Psychiatry_, which seems to have a
near corner on the term.

Its source is the classical Greek 'rhis'/'rhin-', meaning nose,
plus 'tillexis', to pick at, plus '-mania'.


3. Out There: Apostrophe Protection Society
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While we're on the subject of the IgNobel Awards, we must mention
the retired British journalist John Richards, who earlier this year
founded the Apostrophe Protection Society. His aim is "preserving
the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in
all forms of text written in the English language". You may feel,
as I do, that he has given himself a hard task. However, he will be
heartened by the award of the IgNobel Literature prize on Thursday
for his efforts to "protect, promote and defend the differences
between plural and possessive". You can learn more on his Web site
at <http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/>, where you may see pictures
of some egregious British examples of the greengrocer's apostrophe.


4. Q&A
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Q. I wonder what the origin of the phrase 'the whole magilla' might
be. It's used in the same sense as 'the whole nine yards'. There
used to be a cartoon character on American TV called Magilla
Gorilla, I think. [Joe Hannabach]

A. Shush! Don't throw suggestions around carelessly like that.
You'll start an urban legend and then we'll never get the word's
history straight ever again. The name of Magilla Gorilla is not the
origin of the expression; the situation is probably the other way
about, in that the expression may have been an inspiration for Mr
Gorilla's first name.

It's really spelled 'megillah', and it's the Hebrew word for a
scroll. In particular, it refers to one of five books of the Old
Testament, namely Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes,
and Esther, which are read on certain Jewish feast days. The most
common reference, though, is to the Book of Esther, which is read
in its entirety at the feast of Purim.

Though the feast day is a joyous one, the story wanders at great
length through vast amounts of detail and it can be a bit of a
trial to sit through it all. So it isn't surprising that 'the whole
Megillah' (in the Yiddish from which American English borrowed it,
'gantse Megillah') came to be a wry term for an overly extended
explanation or story, or for something tediously complicated, or an
involved situation or state of affairs.

The English translation of the Yiddish phrase started to be heard
and written about the middle of the 1950s, principally by American
television performers, night-club and chat show hosts and others in
the entertainment business. It was only in the early 1970s that the
meaning you mention started to appear: "the whole thing, all that
might be expected". The first recorded use in this sense is in
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in 1971.

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Q. The phrase 'cheap at half the price' has always left me
wondering as to its meaning and derivation. Can you help please?
[Martin Taylor and Stephen Flannery, both from the UK]

A. On the face of it, the saying is self-evidently true, since if
you buy something at half the price it's going to be cheaper than
paying full whack. But it's one of those sayings that cause people
to think it over and then shake their heads in bemusement. It seems
from digging around that a lot of people are puzzled by it.

I was sure there was a single obvious meaning for it until I looked
into Eric Partridge's _A Dictionary of Catch Phrases_, as revised
by Paul Beale. If something is cheap at half the price, it is
argued there, then the price being asked must be reasonable, fair
value. A glossary of Australian slang online gives much the same
explanation, saying that it is "an expression of satisfaction over
the cost of something". Other sites online that use the phrase also
seem to think it refers to a good thing.

I don't. I was sure before I started investigating (still am, come
to that) that it's a deliberate and humorous inversion of an old
street trader's cry. "Cheap at twice the price", he might shout, so
informing prospective customers that something he was selling was
incredibly cheap and extremely good value. If it were cheap at half
the price, on the other hand, it suggests that the price actually
being charged is excessive. That was certainly the way my late
father used it - to him, it was a sarcastic and dismissive comment
on an item that was definitely over-priced. "Wouldn't touch it with
a bargepole," he might well have added. I find to my relief that my
view equates exactly with that of the late Kingsley Amis, who wrote
about it in the _Observer_ in 1977, saying firmly that it meant
something was "bloody expensive". The online 'Notes and Queries'
column of the _Guardian_ newspaper has two replies by British
readers to just this question and they also agree with me (or I
with them, or all of us with Sir Kingsley).

The entry in _A Dictionary of Catch Phrases_ remarks rather sadly,
having gone into the matter, that this is a question that must be
settled by leaving it unsettled. I disagree. However, as it stands
it's most certainly thoroughly confusing to anyone who might
stumble across it. My guess is that, once the phrase moved away
from its London street-trader roots, it became less easy to
understand, and people who have tried to analyse it have come up
with exactly the wrong idea. As a result, it's best avoided unless
you spell out exactly what you mean by it, but of course if you do
that it loses most of its force.

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Q. On a list server to which I am subscribed, the question arose
recently, what is the origin of the expression 'argy-bargy' (also
written 'argey-bargey'), meaning a relatively amicable, if somewhat
heated, argument. Any ideas?  [Peter J Lusby, San Diego,
California]

A. I'm not so sure that the term refers to an amicable argument; in
my experience 'argy-bargies' are often not only heated discussions
but also rather bad-tempered ones, amounting to a spat or minor
quarrel. But then, the term is mainly a British one, not that well
known in the US, and easily misunderstood out of context.

This rather odd term was a late nineteenth-century modification of
a Scots expression, which appeared early in that century as 'argle-
bargle'. The first part of this older version was a modification of
'argue'. The second part of both forms of the expression never had
independent existences - they are no more than nonsense rhyming
repetitions of the first elements.

An early example of the older form appears in _The Ayrshire
Legatees_ by John Galt, published in 1821: "Doctor and me may sleep
sound on their account, if the nation doesna break, as the argle-
barglers in the House of Parliament have been threatening". A later
appearance in the same spelling is likely to be more familiar, as
it comes from Robert Louis Stevenson's _Kidnapped_ of 1886: "Last
night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife" (an 'apple-
wife' was a seller of apples from a stall, the female equivalent of
a costermonger, and by repute just as argumentative and foul-
tongued as her male counterpart). An early example of the modern
form, also as a verb, turns up in J M Barrie's _Margaret Ogilvy_:
"Ten minutes at the least did she stand at the door argy-bargying
with that man".


5. Cornucopia: Birds of Ecuador
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Ecuador may be small, but a recently published field guide makes
clear that for its size it has more bird species than any other.
Their names are as exotic as one could wish: long-wattled umbrella-
bird, harpy eagle, wire-crested thorntail, ochre-striped antpitta,
fiery topaz, henna-hooded foliage-gleaner, ocellated antbird,
plate-billed mountain-toucan, lazuline sabrewing, toucan barbet,
red-capped manakin, black-necked red cotinga, pavonine quetzal,
opal-rumped tanager, saffron siskin, blackish-headed spinetail,
rufous-crowned antpitta, swordbill hummingbird, giant conebill,
reddish-winged bare-eye, violet-tailed sylph, bicolored antvireo,
plum-throated cotinga, zigzag heron, cocha antshrike, scarlet-
breasted dacnis, and superciliared hemispingus.


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