World Wide Words -- 27 Apr 02
Michael Quinion
do_not_use at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 26 16:58:29 UTC 2002
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 286 Saturday 27 April 2002
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Sent each Saturday to 14,000+ subscribers in at least 116 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Irritable male syndrome.
3. Review: Oxford World English Dictionary Shelf.
4. Beyond Words.
5. Weird Words: Ingrained.
6. Out There.
7. Q&A: Hackneyed.
8. Endnote.
9. Subscription commands.
10. Contact addresses.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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SUNDAY THROAT There is so little written evidence for this phrase
that it was reassuring to hear from several older US subscribers
that they remember it from their youth. Other forms were "Sunday
pipe" and "Sunday lane". Ted Friethoff wrote from the Netherlands
to say that similar expressions are known in Dutch, suggesting
perhaps that they were exported to the USA by Dutch immigrants.
JOLLY HOCKEY STICKS Enough raspberries have arrived for me to make
a fruit salad. All of them were provoked by this sentence I wrote
in the piece: "Unkind people said that, as a ventriloquist, radio
was Peter Brough's ideal medium". Penelope J. Greene wrote: "It is
so unkind to criticize a radio trying its very best, I'm sure, to
be a ventriloquist". Indeed, criticism is inappropriate - have you
ever seen the lips move on a radio? Whoops ...
2. Turns of Phrase: Irritable male syndrome
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This term was coined by Gerald Lincoln, a researcher at the Medical
Research Council in Edinburgh, and came to public notice in Britain
in early March. Presumably he, or the MRC's press officer, coined
it on the analogy of "irritable bowel syndrome". Dr Lincoln claims
that men of any age who suffer stress can experience sudden drops
in testosterone level, making them bad-tempered, nervous, or easily
reduced to tears. One suggestion is that testosterone replacement
therapy may restore men to their usual state (whatever that is).
The idea has received what one may describe as a mixed reception,
with comment from the female of the species being particularly
acerbic.
If irritable male syndrome does affect men, diagnosing it won't be
easy. It's far from clear what normal testosterone levels are,
while extra doses of the hormone may increase the risk of heart
disease.
["New Scientist", Mar. 2002]
Q: What do you call a man who is always tired, miserable and
irritable? A: Normal. Q: How can you tell if a man has irritable
male syndrome? A: You ask him to pass the salt and he yells: "Take,
take, take - that's all you ever do!"
["Daily Mirror", Mar. 2002]
3. Review: Oxford World English Dictionary Shelf
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This is an electronic aid for the serious logophile who wants to be
able to check the vocabulary of several English-speaking countries
quickly and easily.
The CD-ROM contains the electronic versions of four works: "The New
Oxford Dictionary of English" (essentially covering British
English), "The New Oxford American Dictionary", "The Canadian
Oxford Dictionary" and "The Australian Oxford Dictionary".
The search and presentation engine is from iFinger, which Oxford
has used for several other single works and compilations (including
a number of bilingual dictionaries and "The Oxford Pop-up English
Language Reference Shelf" (previously reviewed, see <http://www.
worldwidewords.org/reviews/popup.htm>). The iFinger engine is
especially useful here, since it allows searches to take place
across all four works at once, with the results presented in a
single window. You can use a hot key to call up the search engine,
which automatically takes its search term from the currently
highlighted text. If you have other iFinger products, searches take
place on all of them, and the results appear in the same window,
though the system becomes progressively slower when more than half
a dozen data files are present.
This product isn't cheap, but it is less expensive than the paper
volumes whose text it contains, and it will prove more convenient
for the user whose writing life is mostly spent in front of a
computer anyway.
["Oxford World English Dictionary Shelf", published by Oxford
University Press in the UK in February 2002 (publication dates
elsewhere may be later); ISBN 0-19-860445-9; publisher's UK price
(including VAT in Europe) is GBP75.00. The program requires MS
Windows 95+ and 100MB hard disk space.]
4. Beyond Words
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John Nurick wrote - while I was away so his message has only now
surfaced - to follow up his report of having seen a job advert in
the Guardian for a "black arts officer". He writes: "The Guardian
has produced a job title I like even more. In the special 'Public
Voices' supplement for 21 March 02, one of the people interviewed
is a 'domestic violence organiser' in Tower Hamlets, London."
5. Weird Words: Ingrained
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Of something firmly fixed or established; difficult to change.
The word belongs in this section not because it is in itself odd,
but because of the way the modern sense came about. One of the most
ancient dyestuffs is a deep red colour that today we call crimson.
The Greeks got it from a scale insect that lives on a type of oak
tree found around parts of the Mediterranean. Some Roman writers,
such as Pliny, referred to the insects as "granum", grain. There is
some excuse for this, since the way the insects cluster together
makes them look like a clump of grain. Following this Latin usage,
in Medieval English people spoke of "engraining" something or
"dying in grain" for dyeing cloth with it. But over time people
began to think the word really referred to the grain of the cloth,
like the grain of wood, and that the word meant, not dying with a
particular colour, but dying it to its very roots, colouring it
throughout its whole substance. The adjective "engrained",
originally describing something dyed crimson, slowly altered its
sense to refer figuratively to a person whose characteristics were
so firmly fixed as to be unalterable. Over time, the word changed
its spelling to "ingrained".
6. Out There: Dictionary of Newfoundland English
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If, after seeing the recent film, you want to read Annie Proulx's
book "The Shipping News", set in Newfoundland, you will need this
site to make sense of some of the vocabulary. It is the electronic
online version of the printed dictionary that was first published
in 1982. Visit <http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/> to get an
insight into one of the lesser-known dialects of English.
7. Q&A
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Q. What is the origin and meaning of the word "hackneyed"? [G
Clark]
A. Let us take a large step back in time to medieval England, say
to the year 1300. Hackney is now just a place-name embedded within
London, north-east of the City, but then it was a small village. It
lay on the west side of the River Lea but separated from it by a
large area of marshland (to be commemorated about 550 years later
by a music-hall song whose refrain went: "With a ladder and some
glasses / You could see the Hackney Marshes, / If it wasn't for the
houses in between").
The countryside around Hackney was pleasant, open, good-quality
grassland, which became famous for the horses bred and pastured
there. These were riding horses, "ambling horses", as opposed to
war horses or draught horses. Hence "hackney" became the standard
term for a horse of this type.
Because such horses were often made available for hire, the word
also came to refer, about the end of the fourteenth century, to any
horse that was intended to be hired out. Later still, the emphasis
shifted from "horse" to "hire", and it was used for any passenger
vehicle similarly available, especially the "hackney coach" or
"hackney carriage". This last term became the usual one for a
vehicle that could be hired - today's London black taxis, with not
a horse in sight, are still formally referred to by that name.
Horses of the "hackney" type were often worked heavily, in the
nature of things that were hired out to all and sundry. So the word
evolved in parallel with the previous sense to refer figuratively
to something that was overused to the point of drudgery. By the
middle of the sixteenth century, "hackney" was being applied to
people in just this sense, and was abbreviated about the start of
the eighteenth century to "hack", as in "hack work"; it was
specifically applied to literary drudges who dashed off poor-
quality writing to order - hence its modern pejorative application
to journalists.
Hackney horses were also widely available and commonly seen, to the
extent that they became commonplace and unremarkable. So yet
another sense evolved - for something used so frequently and
indiscriminately as to have lost its freshness and interest, hence
something stale, unoriginal or trite. The adjective "hackneyed"
communicated this idea from about the middle of the eighteenth
century on.
By the way, it was thought at one time that this whole set of words
derived from the French "haquenée", an ambling horse. The first
edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary" considered this to be
so, but modern writers are sure that the French term was actually
borrowed from the English place name, so great was the reputation
of Hackney's horses even in medieval times.
8. Endnote
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"Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having
children. Life is the other way round." [David Lodge, "The British
Museum is Falling Down" (1965)]
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