World Wide Words -- 15 Sep 01
Michael Quinion
editor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Sep 15 07:46:26 UTC 2001
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 254 Saturday 15 September 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
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This newsletter is best viewed in a monospaced font.
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Acoustic shock.
3. In passing? Quarterlife crisis.
4. Weird Words: Hebetude.
5. Out There: Plain English Campaign.
6. Q & A: By Jove, Swain.
7. Over to You: Wing-wong for a goose's bridle.
8. Subscription commands, pronunciation guide, copyright notice.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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NEW SECTION The new 'In Passing?' section making its debut this
week is really a revamp of the old 'In Brief' one, now defunct. The
new name, especially the question mark, reflects the high failure
rate of fashionable new terms. Because of that, words featured in
this section will not be archived on the Web site.
GOMER Last week's Weird Word produced a substantial postbag from
subscribers who remember its early history. Many referred to a book
on medical life called _House of God_ written pseudonymously under
the name Samuel Shem and published in 1978. This popularised the
medical sense as an acronym for "Get Out of My Emergency Room" and
may indeed have invented it, though some people remember it from
before the book came out. If Mr Shem did invent it, he did so
knowing the older sense of the word that I mentioned. Some people
claim to remember it from before the TV show, which would suggest,
if their memories are accurate, that the show borrowed an existing
slang term.
WEB SITE We've had the decorators in - the new style appears from
today. The 'In Brief' and 'Usage Note' sections have been deleted
permanently (the latter has never featured in these newsletters and
has not been added to in some years), though the more substantial
pieces have been moved into the 'Articles' section.
2. Turns of Phrase: Acoustic shock
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This is a mainly British term for a novel type of industrial injury
that is said to be suffered particularly by staff in call centres.
Such staff spend their days with headphones clamped to their ears,
answering incoming calls or cold-calling prospective customers. It
is claimed that workers are often subjected to piercing noises, for
example from fax machines accidentally called (or other sources not
clearly identified in reports), which are damaging their hearing.
Many call centres are virtual sweatshops, with long hours, poor
conditions, low pay, pressure on operators to improve productivity,
and petty limitations on freedom of movement; it may be that some
claims of hearing damage are as much a reflection of the stressful
working conditions as of true injury. 'Acoustic shock' is the
subject of a current legal case in Britain in which 83 workers are
demanding compensation.
Call centres, one of the fastest growing industries in Britain, are
triggering a new industrial injury - acoustic shock.
[_Guardian_, Feb. 2001]
The TUC set up a helpline to take calls from call centre workers.
Common complaints included being over-supervised, having toilet
breaks timed, having pay docked for arriving a few minutes late,
and fear of 'acoustic shock' from the telephone system.
[_Personal Computer World_, July 2001]
3. In Passing? Quarterlife Crisis
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The chattering classes have had their fill with this idea in recent
months as a result of a best-selling book by Alexandra Robbins and
Abby Wilner called _Quarterlife Crisis: the unique challenges of
life in your twenties_. It seems the big problem for today's
twentysomethings is making the transition to adulthood, principally
that they're spoiled for choice and are consequently paralysed by
uncertainty and confusion. Try <http://www.quarterlifecrisis.com/>
if you want to know more.
4. Weird Words: Hebetude /hEbI'tju:d/
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Dullness, lethargy.
This splendid word deserves to be better known, since it describes
one of those eternal human states for which another good descriptor
always comes in handy. It has been around since the seventeenth
century in a rather poetical or literary way.
It derives from Latin 'hebet-', the stem of 'hebes', blunt or dull
(so it is unconnected with the Greek goddess Hebe, whose name comes
from the Greek word for puberty or adolescence). The Romans used
their word for the state of knife blades and the like, but also for
somebody who was dull or stupid. In English it has always had this
figurative meaning. The noun's heyday began in the nineteenth
century and it is still going strong among those writers who like
to extend their readers' word power. It is also a term in
psychology for apathy and emotional dullness.
It was a favourite word of Joseph Conrad, as in _Nostromo_: "From
that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out
brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude". It made
an appearance last month in the columns of _The Washington Post_:
"Too many Americans slouch toward a terminal funk of hebetude and
sloth". There are several related words, now rare, including the
adjective 'hebetudinous', the abstract noun 'hebetudinosity',
dullness or obtuseness, and the verb 'hebetate', to make dull or
blunt.
5. Out There
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Several campaigns worldwide aim to persuade publishers of public
information that they should write in simple English that is easy
to read and understand. The Plain English Campaign in the UK, which
was founded in 1979 by Chrissie Maher, has a running Crystal Mark
campaign for clear writing, and Golden Bull awards for choice bits
of gobbledegook. Try <http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/>. You will see
some infamous examples of accidentally obfuscated English (complete
with translations), back issues of their newsletter, and several
style guides, such as "How to write medical information in plain
English", and "The A to Z of alternative words".
6. Q&A
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[Send your questions to <qa at worldwidewords.org>. All messages will
be acknowledged, but I can't guarantee to reply, as time is very
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. Somebody here at work just remarked 'By Joe'. I said "Don't you
mean 'By Jove'"? "I don't know," he replied, "everybody I know says
'By Joe'. What does 'By Jove' mean anyway?" "I haven't a clue,"
says I, "but I know a man who might." [Glenn Morton, London]
A. Your belief in my abilities is both gratifying and slightly
alarming. In this case, though, your trust is not misplaced. 'Jove'
is the older name the Romans had for the god Jupiter (which derives
from an alteration of 'Jovis pater', father Jove). Jupiter was the
Roman god of the sky, the sovereign deity who had powers over both
gods and men (he was later identified with the Greek Zeus). If you
got on his wrong side, he started chucking thunderbolts at you.
There was a temple to him on the Capitol in Rome.
>From medieval times, 'Jove' has been used in English as a poetical
way of referring to Jupiter. It has also been linked to 'Jehovah',
a form of the Hebrew name of God used in some translations of the
Bible. 'By Jove' was a mild oath, an exclamation that indicated
surprise or gave emphasis to some comment, which dates from the
sixteenth century. It was originally a neat way of calling on a
higher power without using the blasphemous 'by God'. Shakespeare
used it in _Love's Labours Lost_ in 1588: "By Jove, I always took
three threes for nine".
It's a very British expression (as indeed is your 'haven't a clue'
and your reference to 'I know a man who can', a current advertising
slogan from the Automobile Association). It's usually associated
with bluff and hearty males from the nineteenth and early twentieth
century, which seems to have been its heyday. As in J M Barrie's
_The Admirable Crichton_: "By Jove! I say, John, what an observant
beggar he is". I really thought it had vanished from the world of
words, though a quick look around shows quite a number of examples.
However, these mostly seem to be used jokingly, or in reference to
earlier times.
'By Joe' is a wonderful variation, only possible in a period in
which knowledge of classical matters is all but extinct. But then,
as Ogden Nash said, anyone can make a mistake:
Even Jupiter, ruler of gods and men;
All the time he was going around with Io,
he pronounced it 'Ten'.
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Q. 'Swain' nowadays seems to occur only as an invariably jocular
synonym for 'suitor' (itself almost always jocular), and in the two
nautical compounds 'boatswain' and 'coxswain'. Am I right in
thinking it was once a more general term for a male person, and
when did it fall out of use as such? [Mike Daplyn]
A. It has never been a general term for a male person. It came into
English from Old Norse 'sveinn', a lad, but began its life in
medieval England in reference specifically to a young man attending
a knight, hence a fairly lowly servant. Later, still in medieval
times, it broadened to take in any male servant or attendant.
By the end of the sixteenth century it seems to have shifted into
the countryside, because it came to mean a farm labourer, a
shepherd, or other country person. Because of these associations
with rustic simplicity, poets borrowed it for a country gallant or
lover, a sweetheart or wooer of a fair maid. These days, as you
say, it only appears in poetic contexts or humorously.
The two nautical terms are specific applications of the idea of a
male servant charged with some duty or responsibility. The first is
obviously from 'boat'; the second derives from 'cock' or
'cockboat', a ship's boat, a word which came into English from Old
French 'coque', itself based on a Latin word meaning a block of
wood.
7. Over to You
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Questions sometimes come in for which explanations look as though
they ought to exist, but on which I can find nothing useful to say.
Time for subscribers to tell me and the questioner what they know.
Send your comments and stories to <editor at worldwidewords.org>.
Lenore Lindsay wrote: "I remember hearing a radio discussion on the
ABC local station (Queensland, Australia) some years ago on local
expressions, and among those mentioned was one similar to one I
recognised from my childhood, 'a wing-wong for a goose's bridle'.
Do you have any comments on this?"
I don't. Over to you ... Anyone?
LAST WEEK'S QUERY Many people responded to the question about an
Irishwoman in New York who regretted that she had to "pay the black
penny" for something, that is, full price. Unfortunately, nobody
was able to provide firm information. Many attempted to see a link
with the British penny post of the 1840s and the stamp called the
Penny Black. This seems extremely unlikely.
Others suggested another obvious link, with a coin that goes black
with age or usage, especially a copper coin kept in a purse for a
long period, or even perhaps silver or copper coins that had been
hoarded against a rainy day. So 'paying the black penny' might be a
way of regretting that something was so expensive the buyer had to
(figuratively) use up his or her last reserves to do so.
As I say, no firm evidence has turned up, but it sounds plausible.
8. Subscription commands
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