World Wide Words -- 16 Feb 02

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 276         Saturday 16 February 2002
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent each Saturday to 14,000+ subscribers in at least 116 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK      ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org     E-mail: editor at worldwidewords.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------
  IF YOU REPLY TO THIS MAILING, REMEMBER TO CHANGE THE OUTGOING
   ADDRESS TO ONE OF THOSE IN THE 'CONTACT ADDRESSES' SECTION.


Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 1. Turns of Phrase: Emo.
 2. Weird Words: Mallemaroking.
 3. Out There: Electric Eclectic.
 4. Q&A: Dick's hatband, Blue, Waffling.
 5. Endnote.
 6. Subscription commands.
 7. Contact addresses.


 1. Turns of Phrase: Emo
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Musical genres come and go, often too quickly to tie them down, but
this one has been gestating out of mainstream sight for many years.
It is short for "emotional", and it turns up in terms like "emo-
rock", "emo-punk" and "emocore" (in which the second element is
from "hardcore", as in "hardcore punk", out of which the form first
grew around 1984). Long lurking in the musical underground, an
expansion in popularity means it has become one of the more popular
American underground rock modes in the late 1990s and is now edging
tentatively towards the mainstream, with bands like Jimmy Eat World
and Weezer. This shift is something that many enthusiasts feel is
against its strong anti-commercial spirit. It has now crossed the
Atlantic as well. In style, it's variable, but it's less macho than
hardcore, often full of complicated and layered guitar passages,
with passionate and confessional lyrics. The emphasis is certainly
on emotion, so the name is appropriate. Despite a report that the
term had been invented in the late 1980s in Washington, DC, the
first definite sighting of "emo" I've come across in print is from
1999.

While emo may be a controversial term that gets thrown around all
too often, Victory at Sea should be proud of the label. It plays in
the tradition of some of the best emo bands, such as Sunny Day Real
Estate and Modest Mouse, by combining complex guitar work with
deeply wrought lyrics.
                                      [Washington Times, Oct. 2001]

In their mid 20s, Jimmy Eat World are hardly newcomers, and carry
with them an "emo" following - the subculture that's sprung up
around emotional U.S. indie-punk bands - and sizable street-cred.
                                           [Calgary Sun, Dec. 2001]


 2. Weird Words: Mallemaroking
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The carousing of seamen on board Greenland whaling ships.

You must agree that no true student of the English language can
afford to be without this choice specimen of exact usage. Not, you
will note, just any seamen aboard any ships, but whalers in the
Greenland waters, who were - it seems - always ready for a bit of
merry-making in between hunting the Greenland right whale. (This
whale name was another term from the same fishery, too mundanely
derived to deserve much attention from word historians, since it
was merely the whale found around Greenland that was the right one
to hunt.)

The word owes its survival almost entirely to its curious form and
peculiarly precise nature. There is little chance that it will ever
be found unselfconsciously used as the right word in the right
place. It is the preserve almost solely of those wordsmiths who
write about Weird Words, a sad degeneration of status in whose
reduction my own small part is all too obvious.

The word is said to derive from Dutch "mallemerok", a foolish woman
or tomboy. This derives from "mal", foolish, plus a word that comes
from French "marotte", an object of foolish affection. How this
skittish Dutch lady found her way to Greenland, and gave her name
to the carousing of whalers, must be left to the imaginations of
readers.


 3. Out There: Electric Eclectic
-------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not quite "Enquire Within Upon Everything", but Jim Eccleston
has put together a hugely comprehensive list of references to all
sorts of material in his Electric Eclectic site, which you will
find at <http://bloxword.ca/jimsbmks.htm>. You can select from an
alphabetical listing (see W for World Wide Words, of course), or
from a thematic list. Click on the picture on his home page for a
disclaimer, which is worth the visit by itself.


 4. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: My grandmother, from Lincolnshire, regularly compared something
to "Dick's hatband", a puzzling allusion that I've never since
quite sorted out. Can you help?  [Martin Toseland, London]

A. In truth, nobody has quite got to the bottom of this one. It was
once commonly encountered in phrases like "as tight as Dick's
hatband" or "as queer as Dick's hatband". It means that something
is absurd, perverse, or peculiar.

Its earliest appearance in print is in the 1796 edition of Francis
Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. From references in various
dialect and local glossaries, it seems to have been widely known in
the early nineteenth century. This, for example, turns up in The
History and Antiquities of Boston (the original Boston, in your
grandmother's home country of Lincolnshire) by the wonderfully
named Pishey Thompson, published in 1856:

  "As queer as Dick's hatband." Mr. Wilbraham, in his
  "Cheshire Glossary," has, "as fine as Dick's hatband,"
  and says, that the phrase is very local; but an allusion
  to Dick's hatband seems to have reached across the island.

It had by then long since been taken across the Atlantic, since it
is referred to in 1848 in A Dictionary of Americanisms, by John
Russell Bartlett:

  DICK'S HATBAND. This very singular expression I have often
  heard in Rhode Island. Mr. Hartshorne calls it "one of those
  phrases which set philologists and antiquarians at defiance."
  It is in general use throughout Shropshire, where it is applied
  as a comparison for what is obstinate and perverse. Ex. "As
  curst as Dick's hatband, which will come nineteen times round
  and wont tie at last;" "As contrary as Dick's hatband;" "As
  false as Dick's hatband;" "As cruikit as Dick's hatband;" "As
  twisted as Dick's hatband;" "All across, like Dick's hatband;"
  "As queer as Dick's hatband."

I've also found "as plain as Dick's hatband" and "older than Dick's
hatband" in later American works. Clearly an all-purpose expression
- it adds emphasis to any occasion.

All well and good, you may agree, but none of this suggests where
it comes from. There is a story that it refers to Richard Cromwell,
the son of Oliver Cromwell, who briefly took over as Lord Protector
of England in 1658 after his father's death. Alas, he was not the
man his father was. He was too amiable, thrust into a position of
responsibility at a time of national crisis, and he was unable to
reconcile the various factions in the military and Parliament. He
was deposed after eight months. The hatband was supposed to be a
reference to the crown of England, something he found too tight to
wear with comfort.

Nice story, but if true, we would expect to find an example of its
use popping up well before Francis Grose mentioned it in 1796.
Also, to be strictly correct about it (read "pedantic" if it makes
you happier), Richard Cromwell never had the title of king, which
was anathema to the Puritans of the time, and he certainly never
wore a crown.

To judge from the evidence, it's actually of lateish eighteenth-
century origin. But where it comes from, and who Dick was, if he
was ever a real person, we have no clear idea. An intriguing
suggestion I've seen is that "Dick" here was originally "Nick", a
reference to the devil.

                        -----------

Q. I wonder whether you could tell me the origin of "blue" in the
sense of pornographic. [Miriam Shlesinger, Israel]

A. I wish I could.

What we do know is that the word began to be applied to matters
obscene in the 1820s. (There's an entry for it in The Scottish
Gallovidian Encyclopedia by John MacTaggart of 1824: "Thread o'
Blue, any little smutty touch in song-singing, chatting, or piece
of writing"). So it long pre-dates, for example, any reference to
the musical genre called the blues.

There are two main theories about where it came from. It is said
that prostitutes who were imprisoned in a house of correction were
forced to wear blue gowns, and as a result "bluegown" was used for
a prostitute, with "blue" being derived from it by abbreviation
(this has nothing to do with another sense of "bluegown", which you
will find in the piece about "gaberlunzie" at <http://www.
worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-gab1.htm>). Another theory is that
it derives from a series of French books entitled Bibliotèque blue,
"of questionable character" as Farmer and Henley put it in their
Slang and Its Analogues of 1890.

                        -----------

Q. I unthinkingly apologized for "waffling" when I couldn't answer
a friend's question clearly in an e-mail. She asked what I meant.
My intended definition showed up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
But is there anything more interesting in the word's background
than that dictionary's suggestion that it is imitative? [Anne
Holzman]

A. Presumably you mean by "waffle" that you were equivocating,
writing evasively or using ambiguous language that avoided coming
to any definite conclusion? That's the usual way that Americans use
it. We Brits have a slightly different sense: we apply it to speech
or writing that goes on at great length but without saying anything
that's important or useful - a subtle distinction.

At about the beginning of the nineteenth century both senses were
in use in Britain, though the one that is now usual in the US has
since died out over here. The verb seems to have derived from an
older form "waff" with the ending "-le", creating what grammarians
call a frequentative verb, one that implies a continuing or
repeated action.

It's "waff" that your dictionary would have suggested was
imitative, since that was once a dialect word meaning to yelp,
especially of a puppy (so it's in the same group as "yap" and
"woof"). The suggestion is that somebody is making a continual
yapping noise but, like an annoying small dog, not communicating
anything very useful.


 5. Endnote
-------------------------------------------------------------------
There's no greater bliss in life than when the plumber eventually
comes to unblock your drains. No writer can give that sort of
pleasure. [Victoria Glendenning, in the Observer (1993), quoted in
Nigel Rees, "Dictionary of Humorous Quotations" (1998)]


 6. Subscription commands
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Please follow these instructions carefully. In particular, DO NOT
reply to this mailing.

To leave the list, change your subscription address, or subscribe,
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/wordlist.htm.

Alternatively, you can contact the list server by sending an e-mail
message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org from the address at
which you are subscribed:

To leave the list, send:
     SIGNOFF WORLDWIDEWORDS

To subscribe, send:
     SUBSCRIBE WORLDWIDEWORDS First-name Last-name

To obtain a list of commands, send:
     INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS


 7. Contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If you hit 'reply' on your mailing software, remember to change the
outgoing 'To:' address to one of those below. The default address
will not work.

* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
  be sent to editor at worldwidewords.org

* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
  addressed to qa at worldwidewords.org

* Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list
  server should go to maillist at worldwidewords.org

Please do not send messages that contain attachments.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2002.  All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at <http://www.worldwidewords.org>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or in part in other free
media online provided that you include the copyright notice above.
-------------------------------------------------------------------