World Wide Words -- 03 Aug 02
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 2 15:26:40 UTC 2002
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 301 Saturday 3 August 2002
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Sent each Saturday to 15,000+ subscribers in at least 119 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: Thinspiration.
3. Weird Words: Usufructuary.
4. Q&A: Three sheets to the wind; Mogadored; Skunk works.
5. Endnote.
6. Subscription commands.
7. Contact addresses.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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COCKLES OF ONE'S HEART You may recall that I was a bit suspicious
of the story I told in last week's issue. James Woodfield pointed
out that there is another possible explanation. In medieval Latin,
the ventricles of the heart were at times called "cochleae cordis",
where the second word is derived from "cor", heart. Those unversed
in Latin could have misinterpreted "cochleae" as "cockles". Oddly,
"cochlea" in Latin means "snail" (from the shape of the ventricles
- it's also the name of the spiral cavity of the inner ear), so if
this story is right we should really be speaking of warming the
snails of one's heart.
SERRANCIFIED Many of you supplied your own memories of this odd
expression that I tried to make sense of last week. Taken together,
they show that the expression is best known in Canada and that it
was originally something like "My sufficiency has been suffonsified
and anything additional would be superfluous". That form of the
word is the one that is most common in online searches, where the
Canadian focus is also obvious. Cheryl Caesar noted that it appears
in a passage in Margaret Atwood's novel, "Cat's Eye": she has two
teenage girls living in Toronto in the 1940s who say, "Are you
sufficiently sophonisified?". A Vancouver restaurant reviewer has
the pen name "Sufficiently Suffonsified". Oddly, there's also a
1999 record by the Austrian band Cunning Dorx entitled "Paradigms
Suffonsified". G H Gordon Paterson suggested that the word might be
a punning blend of "sufficient" and "fancified". There are some
tantalising suggestions that it may actually be Scots, and not New
World at all.
ABSQUATULATE I have been gently remonstrated with for describing
"sockdologer" as one of the products of early American linguistic
inventiveness that hasn't survived to the present day. Many people
gave me examples of current or recent use. I stand corrected.
2. Turns of Phrase: Thinspiration
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This is one of the key words associated with a deeply disquieting
online trend. In the past couple of years or so a number of Web
sites and chatrooms have appeared which actively promote anorexia
nervosa (known on the sites as "ana") and other eating disorders as
lifestyle choices. Since 90% of anorexics are young women, these
"pro-ana" sites are usually run by and attract that group (one term
sometimes used for them is "weborexics"). Sites offer suggestions
on how to become and remain thin, often through tips on avoiding
eating, and how to disguise the condition from family and friends.
Other themes sometimes featured on such sites are self-mutilation
("cutting") and bulimia ("mia"). Thin women, such as supermodels
and Calista Flockhart, are presented as "thinspirations", examples
to emulate. Sites have had names such as Starving for Perfection,
Wasting Away on the Web and Dying To Be Thin. Medical professionals
in the US and UK are deeply concerned about them, because they
accentuate the low self-regard of young women, who are particularly
prone to eating disorders, put their lives at risk, and discourage
them from facing their illness and seeking treatment for it.
The Internet is home to a number of pro-eating disorder Web sites -
- places where sufferers can discuss tips, trade low-calorie
recipes and exchange poems and art that may be used as "triggers"
or so-called "thinspiration."
["Calgary Sun", Feb. 2002]
A new trend among young adults has been sweeping the nation: pro-
anorexia Web sites. Also known as pro-ana, these sites glorify
anorexia nervosa and offer "thinspiration" on maintaining a
starvation lifestyle.
["University Wire", Apr. 2002]
3. Weird Words: Usufructuary /ju:zjU'frVktju:@rI/
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A person who has the use or enjoyment of something, especially
property.
We are short of words that contain four u's. Among the few that are
even relatively common (leaving aside the Hawaiian "muu-muu") are
"tumultuously" and "unscrupulous", although some rare words like
"pustulocrustaceous" and "pseudotuberculous" are also recorded.
The term comes from Roman law. "Usufruct" is the right of temporary
possession or enjoyment of something that belongs to somebody else,
so far as that can be done without causing damage or changing its
substance. For example, a slave in classical Rome could not own
anything. Things he acquired as the result of his labour he merely
held "usus (et) fructus", under "use (and) enjoyment" - it was his
master who actually owned them.
The term remains in use in modern US legal practice and elsewhere.
These days a "usufructuary" can be a trustee who enjoys the income
from property he holds in trust for somebody else. Many Native
American groups hold land on a "usufruct" basis, with rights to
enjoy the renewable natural resources of the land for hunting and
fishing.
4. Q&A
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Q. How does the term "three sheets to the wind" denote drunkenness?
[Benjamin Weatherston]
A. It's a sailor's expression.
We ignorant landlubbers might think that a sheet is a sail, but in
traditional sailing-ship days, a "sheet" was actually a rope,
particularly one attached to the bottom corner of a sail (it comes
from an Old English term for the corner of a sail). The sheets were
vital, since they trimmed the sail to the wind. If they ran loose,
the sail would flutter about in the wind and the ship would wallow
off its course out of control.
Extend this idea to sailors on shore leave, staggering back to the
ship after a good night on the town, well tanked up. The irregular
and uncertain locomotion of the jolly seafarers must have reminded
onlookers of the way a ship moved in which the sheets were loose.
Perhaps one loose sheet might not have been enough to get the image
across, so the saying became "three sheets to the wind".
Our first written example comes from that recorder of low life,
Pierce Egan, in his "Real life in London" of 1821. But it must
surely be much older.
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Q. My East End mother-in-law used to say she was "well and truly
mogadored" when she was puzzled by something. Any idea of
derivation and meaning? [Bryan]
A. Now that's a bit of British slang I haven't heard in years,
though it is still around (Nanny Ogg uses it in one of Terry
Pratchett's Discworld fantasy stories, I am told). As you say, it
means that somebody is puzzled, confused, or "all at sea". It's
also sometimes spelled "moggadored", though it doesn't turn up in
print much in either spelling. (No relation to the British word
"moggy" for a cat, by the way, which seems to be a pet form of
"Margaret".)
The writers of slang dictionaries are decidedly mogadored about its
origin. It looks very much like rhyming slang for "floored", which
is likewise slang, meaning dumbfounded or confused. But the dispute
arises over what the root is. Some say it is Irish, from "magagh",
to mock, jeer or laugh at, via an unrecorded intermediate form
"mogadói".
Others suggest that, like some other East End slang terms, it
derives from the Gypsy language Romany (Cockney slang is like
London itself, a melting pot, in which words from many sources are
amalgamated, including Yiddish and old-time forces slang derived
from languages around the world). In this case the source may be
"mokardi" or "mokodo", something tainted (these Romany words also
provide the root for yet another slang phrase, "to put the mockers
on something", to jinx it).
Sorry not to be able to be more definite!
-----------
Q. I was having an interesting discussion with an American
professor of business studies who also consults to industry. She
was recalling an unbudgeted initiative within a major software
corporate, which the UK managing director described as a "skunk
project". I have seen this epithet before, usually in the phrase
"skunk works", meaning a semi-official project team that is tacitly
licensed to bend the rules and think outside the box. I wonder what
the derivation is? I don't think it can refer to the smelly wild
animal, but neither I think can it refer to the street term for a
strong variant of marijuana. Can you shed any light? [Martin
Hayman]
A. We must start in Dogpatch, the fictional place in the backwoods
of upper New York State made famous between 1934 and 1977 as the
home of professional mattress tester Li'l Abner, in the comic strip
written and drawn by Al Capp. The original was actually "Skonk
Works", the place where Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe brewed
their highly illicit bootleg Kickapoo Joy Juice from ingredients
such as old shoes and dead skunks. ("Skonk" is a dialect variant of
"skunk".)
We must now move to the very real Burbank, California. In 1943, a
small group of aeronautical engineers working for the then Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation (headed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson) were
given the rush job of creating an entirely new plane from scratch,
the P-80 "Shooting Star" jet fighter. This they did in 143 days, 37
days ahead of schedule. Their secret project was housed in a
temporary structure roofed over with an old circus tent, which had
been thrown up next to a smelly plastics factory. The story goes
that one of the engineers answered the phone on a hot summer day
with the phrase "Skonk Works here" and the name stuck. It is also
said that Al Capp objected to their use of his term and it was
changed to Skunk Works.
One division of the company, formally the Lockheed Martin Advanced
Development Program, is still known as the Skunk Works. The term
has been trademarked by Lockheed Martin, who have been aggressive
in protecting it.
As a generic term, it dates from the 1960s. One definition is very
much that of the original and the one you describe: a small group
of experts who drop out of the mainstream of a company's operations
in order to develop some experimental technology or new application
in secrecy or at speed, unhampered by bureaucracy or the strict
application of regulations (Kelly Johnson formulated 14 visionary
rules for running such an operation, which are still regarded as
valid even now). It is also sometimes used for a similar group that
operates semi-illicitly, without top-level official knowledge or
support, though usually with the tacit approval of immediate
management.
5. Endnote
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The principal design of a grammar of any language is to teach us to
express ourselves with propriety in that language; and to enable us
to judge of every phrase and form of construction, whether it be
right or not. [Robert Lowth, "A Short Introduction to English
Grammar" (1762)]
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