World Wide Words -- 13 Oct 01

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 258          Saturday 13 October 2001
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Asymmetrical warfare.
3. Weird Words: Wittol.
4. Out There: Dictionary of Slang.
5. Q & A: Grapevine, Cobblers.
6. Subscription commands, pronunciation guide, copyright notice.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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RHINOTILLEXOMANIA  In my haste to be topical last week, I skimped
on my etymological research. It turns out the word was invented on
the model of the older 'trichotillomania', a compulsive desire to
pull out one's hair. This comes, in part, from Greek 'tillesthai',
to pull out. The new word should have been 'rhinotillomania', but
its authors, even less versed in classical Greek than I am, seem to
have added an unnecessary '-exo-' (from Greek 'exo', outside).

While we're on the subject of jaw-breaking medical terminology, an
e-mail message from Dr Rik De Decker at the University of Cape Town
is worth repeating: "When a word requires more effort to remember
and spell than the time it takes to write out its exact meaning, it
surely is redundant. 'Polyembolokoilamania' is such a word. It is
used in the description of children with Smith-Magenis syndrome,
who have the nasty habit of inserting foreign bodies into body
orifices (usually into the ears)". A quick search online turned up
'onychotillomania', another symptom associated with the same rare
genetic disease, in which sufferers pulls out their fingernails and
toenails.

OVERHEARD  I swear this is true. I was waiting in a long queue at a
checkout in the ailing retailer Marks & Spencer on Thursday. Behind
me a woman said to her friend: "You know, it's just as bad upstairs
- the two checkouts there have 25 people waiting in each line. No
wonder nobody shops here any more."


2. Turns of Phrase: Asymmetrical warfare
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Much of western military thinking and preparation has traditionally
assumed that conflicts will involve conventional warfare against an
opponent of roughly comparable might, using similar weapons on a
known battlefield. However, military experts have been pointing out
for years that resistance forces in places like Chechnya have been
conducting a very different kind of war, in which defenders fight
on their own terms, not those of the enemy - petrol bombs against
tanks, for example. This has been given the name of 'asymmetrical
warfare' by counter-terrorism experts, a term that appears to date
from the early 1990s. In it, a relatively small and lightly
equipped force attacks points of weakness in an otherwise stronger
opponent by unorthodox means. All guerrilla activity, especially
urban terrorism, falls within this definition. The attacks on the
US on 11 September are a textbook example and the term has had wide
coverage since. Some writers extend the idea to any military
situation in which a technically weaker opponent is able to gain an
advantage through relatively simple means. An obvious example is
the landmine - cheap and easy to distribute, but difficult to
counter. Another example sometimes given is anti-satellite attacks,
in which it is much easier and cheaper to knock out space-based
weapons than to put them in place to start with.

Welcome to the world of asymmetrical warfare, a place high on the
anxiety list of military planners. In the asymmetrical realm,
military experts say, a small band of commandos might devastate the
United States and leave no clue about who ordered the attack.
                                      [_New York Times_, Feb. 2001]

In this asymmetrical warfare, the weak terrorist attacker has the
advantages of selectivity and surprise; the powerful defender must
strive to prevent attacks on many fronts.
                                             [_Newsday_, Sep. 2001]


3. Weird Words: Wittol
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A contented cuckold.

Way back in medieval times there was the English 'cokewold', which
eventually became our modern 'cuckold'. The first bit is also the
source of our 'cuckoo', with '-old' attached as a suffix giving a
pejorative sense. Some bright wordsmith of the fifteenth century
took the old word and changed the first bit into 'wete', the
quality of awareness or knowledge. (This is our modern word 'wit'
in slight disguise, as in 'witting', the opposite of the more
common 'unwitting'). So the idea is of a knowing cuckold, but
especially somebody who is happy about the situation. This was not
a state of affairs that most spectators thought reasonable or
likely, so the word later took on a sense of a half-witted person,
a fool. It was not accidental that William Congreve entitled a
character in his play _The Old Bachelor_ Sir Joseph Wittol.
Shakespeare borrowed the adjective in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_:
"I know him not; yet I wrong him to call him poor; they say the
jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money; for the which his wife
seems to me well-favoured". The word has pretty much gone out of
use, and most old books in which you will find the word use it of a
fool, but a few writers retained the cuckold sense as late as the
nineteenth century. Here's an example from an American literary
magazine of 1840: "I knew full well that the wittol husband is a
subject of ridicule rather than sympathy, and therefore, carefully
concealed my suspicions".


4. Out There: Dictionary of Slang
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If some slang term in a book, film or television programme is not
familiar, try <http://www.dictionaryofslang.co.uk>. Ted Duckworth
has put together a huge slang glossary with a British focus under
the banner of 'slanguistics'. If you are puzzled by - to take two
examples at random - 'give it some welly', or 'smeghead', a visit
will help. The site also has a large collection of links to other
sites that interpret slang and unconventional English from around
the world. Many of Mr Duckworth's examples are not really native-
born, as British slang has been deeply influenced by American, but
there's much genuinely indigenous material too. A professionally
designed and maintained site.


5. Q&A
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[Send your questions to <qa at worldwidewords.org>. All messages will
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limited. If I can reply, a response will appear here and on the Web
site. If you wish to comment on a reply below, please do NOT use
that address, but e-mail <editor at worldwidewords.org> instead.]

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Q. What does 'heard it through the grapevine' really mean and
where does it come from? [Cathrin Plog, Germany; a related query
came from Corinne Leech]

A. Are you perhaps thinking of the Marvin Gaye song of 1968? (Or
possibly the version a year before by Gladys Knight and the Pips?)

To hear something through the grapevine is to learn of something
informally and unofficially by means of gossip and rumour. The
usual implication is that the information was passed person to
person by word of mouth, perhaps in a confidential manner among
friends or colleagues.

There are several expressions of this type, of which a well-known
couple are 'bush telegraph' and 'jungle telegraph'. These are
historically rather odd, because both were created well after the
era of the telegraph. But that's because both are imitations of the
first such expression, 'grapevine telegraph', which is where our
term comes from.

The phrase was invented in the USA sometime in the late 1840s or
early 1850s. It provided a wry comparison between the twisted stems
of the grapevine and the straight lines of the then new electric
telegraph marching across America. The telegraph was the marvel of
the 1840s (Samuel Morse's first line was opened between Washington
and Baltimore on 24 May 1844 and rapidly expanded in the following
decade), vastly improving the speed of communication between
communities. In comparison, the 'grapevine telegraph' was by
individual to individual, often garbling the facts or reporting
untruths (so reflecting the gnarled and contorted stems of the
grapevine), but likewise capable of transmitting vital messages
quickly over distances.

The first recorded usage, according to John Lighter in _The Random
House Historical Dictionary of American Slang_, was in a political
dictionary of 1852, which included the sentence "By the Grape Vine
Telegraph Line ... we have received the following". Various early
references suggest that it was associated with clandestine
communication among Southern blacks, especially slaves. For
example, a writer named Samuel Bowles wrote a book in 1865 called
_Across the Continent_ in which he remarked that Colorado ladies
seemed to have some secret method of learning about the latest
fashions from the East: "How it is done I do not understand - there
must be a subtle telegraph by crinoline wires; as the southern
negroes have what they call a grape-vine telegraph".

The term became widely known during the American Civil War period,
so much so that the phrase permanently entered the standard
language. Soldiers used it in the sense of gossip or unreliable
rumour, as was made very clear in a diary note of 1862 reproduced
in Major James Connolly's _Three Years in the Army of the
Cumberland_: "We get such 'news' in the army by what we call 'grape
vine,' that is, 'grape vine telegraph.' It is not at all reliable".
However, it was widely acknowledged that the blacks' communications
network was extremely useful to the Union cause, as John G. Nicolay
and John Hay reported in _Abraham Lincoln: A History_ in 1888,
calling it "one of the most important and reliable sources of
knowledge to the Union commanders in the various fields, which
later in the war came to be jocosely designated as the 'grape-vine
telegraph'".

The telegraph is long defunct, but the grapevine seems never to
have been more active ...

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Q. I am unable to work out the derivation of the rhyming slang
phrase 'load of old cobblers' meaning rubbish, nonsense, bullshit
etc. Any suggestions much appreciated. [John Beaton, Australia]

A. Just for once a phrase origin is easy to find and explain. It is
indeed rhyming slang, originally from the East End of London, but
taken to Australia by English emigrants. The source is the phrase
'cobbler's awl'.

An awl is an ancient pointed tool for making holes in things, the
most characteristic tool of any leatherworker; it was an essential
part of the shoemaker's kit, since he was forever piercing leather
to sew pieces together. So a cobbler's awl was as characteristic of
his trade as his last, or foot-shaped anvil.

The rhyming slang linked cobbler's awls with 'balls', that is,
testicles. As was usual with such rhyming slang phrases, the first
word later appeared on its own as a kind of half-disguised code, so
'cobblers!' came to be used in the same way as 'balls!', as an
exclamation of derision or disbelief, suggesting something was
rubbish or nonsense. The examples in the big _Oxford English
Dictionary_ suggest that this last sense is actually quite recent,
only being recorded in print from the 1950s onwards (though very
probably older in the spoken language).

'A load of old cobblers' is an intensification of that, once
commonly heard in London as well as in Australia and also in other
Commonwealth countries. Americans seem never to have got into the
habit of using 'cobblers!' (or indeed 'balls!'), though British cop
shows exported to North America have made both retorts familiar to
many there.


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