World Wide Words -- 23 Feb 02
Michael Quinion
do_not_use at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Thu Feb 21 18:43:33 UTC 2002
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 277 Saturday 23 February 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
http://www.worldwidewords.org E-mail: editor at worldwidewords.org
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Mesh radio.
3. Weird Words: Blatherskite.
4. Out There: Shelta vocabulary.
5. Q&A: Heighth, Jacob's join.
6. Endnote.
7. Subscription commands.
8. Contact addresses.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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HOLIDAY BREAK I will be away during March. Newsletters will still
be sent on the usual weekly schedule from wherever I happen to be
at the time, but transmission may be erratic. If you would like to
respond to anything you see in newsletters or ask a question for
the Q&A section, please do so in the usual way, but you will have
to wait a while for an answer!
BLUE WORDS Several subscribers, including Barry Nordin and Andrew
Stiller, e-mailed me to point out that the American expression
"blue laws" exists for any puritanical law that prohibits certain
activities, especially on the Sabbath. In fact, it precedes the
first use of "blue" in the sense of a thing that offends against
morals by about 40 years. It seems to have been popularised by the
Reverend Samuel Peters, in a work published in London in 1781, The
General History of Connecticut. In it, he roundly criticises the
ultra-strict puritan laws in that state. He called them blue laws
because they were "bloody laws; for they were all sanctified with
whipping, cutting off the ears, burning the tongue, and death."
(Why this made the laws blue rather than red isn't clear.)
No direct link has been established between this usage and the
first example (from Scotland, remember) of the use of "blue" in the
sense of something smutty, but it is not wholly improbable. It is
said that the original blue laws of Connecticut were so called
because they were printed on blue paper or between blue covers, but
as no example of the term has been found that precedes Peters'
book, it is suspected that he invented the term.
Other subscribers commented that they had thought the term derives
from the blue pencil used by censors. The evidence from dating is
that "blue" almost certainly predates the editorial use of blue
pencils. The term "blue pencil" is late nineteenth century, and
probably derives from a joke on the sense of "blue" that was by
then well established, rather than the other way round.
MALLEMAROKING Richard Ellis pointed out that there is a closely
similar word, 'mollymawk', which is an old sailors' term for one of
several birds, originally the fulmar but later the albatross. This
also comes from Dutch, this time from two words that meant "foolish
gull", because the birds, so graceful in flight, are so ungainly on
land. Could 'mallemarok' have come about through a comparison of
the staggering of drunken Greenland whale fishers with fulmars?
2. Turns of Phrase: Mesh radio
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There has been a lot of interest recently in ways to get broadband
Internet connections into homes that avoid having to dig up miles
of road. Attempts to provide wireless broadband connections have
not been successful, at least in Britain, because of the cost and
difficulty of setting up yet another network of transmission masts.
A scheme invented by a Cambridge firm, Radiant, gives hope for a
cheaper and neater solution. Instead of connecting each subscriber
individually to a central provider, each is linked to several other
subscribers nearby by low-power radio transmitters; these in turn
are connected to others, forming a network, or "mesh", of radio
interconnections that at some point links back to the central
transmitter. As each subscriber's station is short-range and can be
directional, the amount of power needed for the connection is small
- less than one watt. A pilot scheme has been organised in Cardiff
for sometime early this year.
Mesh radio achieves nearly 100 per cent cover by turning each home
into a mini base station. A stubby unit on the roof hides four
directional antennas with motors that automatically align them with
other antennas on other houses.
[New Scientist, Nov. 2001]
Mesh radio is one of those technologies that is so obviously an
excellent idea that the market should be huge.
[IT Week, Nov. 2001]
3. Weird Words: Blatherskite
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A noisy talker of blatant rubbish; foolish talk or nonsense.
This is actually a Scots word, really a pair of words, known from
the seventeenth century on. These days, though, it's more American
than either British or Scots. That came about through one of those
curious accidents of linguistic history that make the study of
etymology such fun.
Both halves of the word seem to be from Old Norse. "Blether" is a
Scots word meaning loquacious claptrap, which comes from Old Norse
"blathra", to talk nonsense; it exists in various forms now, such
as "blather" or "blither" (if you say that someone is a "blithering
idiot", as people in Britain often did in my youth, you're using
the same word, though most of the meaning had by then been leached
out of it). "Skate" ("skite", as Australians and New Zealanders
will know it) is more problematic, but is the Scots word for a
person held in contempt because of his boasting, which may derive
from an Old Norse word meaning to shoot (and, if true, is probably
the origin of the American "skeet", as in "skeet shooting", so that
phrase actually means "shoot shooting").
"Blatherskite" is first recorded in an old Scots ballad called
Maggie Lauder, attributed to Francis Sempill (or Semple) and dated
about 1643, still well known today. There are various
transcriptions of the first verse, one being:
Wha wadnae be in love
wi' bonnie Maggie Lauder?
A piper met her gaun tae Fife
and speirt what was't they ca'd her.
Right dauntingly she answered him,
"Begone ye hallanshaker".
Jog on your gate ye blether skyte,
my name is Maggie Lauder".
A rough translation into modern English is:
Who wouldn't be in love
with beautiful Maggie Lauder?
A piper met her going to Fife
and asked what people called her.
Discouragingly she answered him,
"Go away, you vagabond!
Be on your way, you talkative boaster,
my name is Maggie Lauder".
The song was pleasantly risqué (the piper, for instance, explains
how all the girls swoon when he blows his chanter) and was very
popular with the American side in the War of Independence. This
introduced "bletherskyte", later "blatherskite", to the American
vocabulary, where it has remained ever since, albeit hardly on
everyone's lips daily.
4. Out There: Shelta vocabulary
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See <http://home.alphalink.com.au/~minky/macalisterras1931/sheltaco
pyright.html>. Shelta is a secret speech of Irish travellers (once
known as tinkers), which has also been called Gammon or Cant. It is
a type of back-slang, in which Gaelic words are inverted or their
initial consonants altered. Its influence on English has been very
small: one of the few words it has contributed may be "mizzle", to
disappear suddenly; to run off, decamp, or vanish. The site gives a
glossary of vocabulary from "The Secret Languages of Ireland" by R
A Stewart Macalister, published in 1937. Note the copyright warning
- it may be illegal to view it in some countries, including the US.
5. Q&A
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Q. When I moved to Canada from the UK 25 years ago I noticed that
some people, not many, used the word "heighth" rather than height.
I don't think I'd ever heard this in England and at first I thought
it was just a slip of the tongue, but I now hear it more often,
even by a television reporter on one occasion. The words "width"
and "length" are correct, what about the word "heighth"? Was it
ever used in the past? [Les Dixon]
A. It was. Until the end of the seventeenth century, "highth" or
"heighth" were its standard spellings. The word was formed in Old
English from "high", plus "-th", the exact analogue of "width",
"breadth", and "length". If word history were all that mattered, we
all ought still to be using "highth".
The reason why we don't comes down to dialect pronunciation in
parts of Northern England in Middle English times, in which the "-
th" ending was pronounced as /t/. In Southern England, it was said
instead like the initial "th" in "thumb". During the seventeenth
century, the Northern form triumphed over the Southern, and the
spelling followed suit. Why "width" and "length" didn't follow
seems to be an accident of history. However, "heighth" continued to
be used to some extent as late as the beginning of the twentieth
century in some places, especially in North America, which tended
to cling to older pronunciations. Charles Dickens used it often -
as here in Great Expectations: "Pip, I wish you ever well and ever
prospering to a greater and a greater heighth".
Because of its odd history, we can hardly argue that "heighth" is
truly an error, more an archaism. Though nearly everyone now spells
it "height", it's not that uncommon to hear it said as /haItT/
(/hite-th/) among educated people in North America, and some
authorities there consider it to be a permissible variant on the
usual way of saying it.
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Q. Any help on the origin of the phrase "Jacob's join" would be
appreciated. [Ian Sanderson]
A. Never mind whether anybody else finds World Wide Words valuable;
for its author it is highly educational. I'd never encountered this
term before, so had to investigate. Luckily, it is mentioned in two
reference books, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English,
by Eric Partridge, and in Oops, Pardon Mrs Arden!, by Nigel Rees
(reviewed here not long ago: see <http://www.worldwidewords.org/
reviews/oops.htm>).
Eric Partridge describes it as "the eating equivalent of a bottle
party", in which each participant brings along as much food as he
or she is likely to want to eat, but puts it into a common stock
for the communal meal. (This was once common practice in rural or
poor communities, and there were other names for it, such as the
American "potluck" as well as Eric Partridge's suggestion of "faith
supper" from church circles. In Australia and New Zealand such
gatherings were often advertised in terms like "Gents half-a-crown,
ladies a plate", with the intention, sometimes misunderstood by new
immigrants, that the plate should have food on it!)
The term "Jacob's join" is well known in and around Lancashire.
Eric Partridge and Nigel Rees both record that people from that
English county have told them about it. However, nobody seems to
know where it comes from. This is hardly surprising: there are many
such sayings, often with quite wide circulations, whose origins are
totally obscure. In this case, the connection is presumably with
the biblical Jacob, he of "Jacob's ladder". Could it refer to the
mess of pottage (a dish of stew, in modern language) for which, the
Bible tells us, Esau sold his birthright to his twin brother Jacob?
6. Endnote
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If the English language had been properly organized ... then there
would be a word which meant both "he" and "she," and I could write,
"If John or May comes, heesh will want to play tennis," which would
save a lot of trouble. [A A Milne, The Christopher Robin Birthday
Book (1930)]
7. Subscription commands
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