World Wide Words -- 16 Mar 02

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 280           Saturday 16 March 2002
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK      ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Pettifogging.
3. Out There: Guide to Grammar and Writing.
4. Q&A: Upsy-daisy, Out of whack, -ward versus -wards.
5. Endnote.
6. Subscription commands.
7. Contact addresses.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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HOLIDAY ARRANGEMENTS  I am away till 4 April. Newsletters are being
sent from where I happen to be every Saturday, so transmission may
be somewhat erratic. If you would like to respond to anything in
this newsletter 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!


2. Weird Words: Pettifogging
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Something petty or trivial.

In the later middle ages, there was a class of lawyers who earned
their livings making a great deal of fuss over minor legal cases.
About 1560 they came to be called "pettifoggers". They often had
limited concern for scruples or conscience and the term was deeply
contemptuous.

"Petty", then as now, meant something minor or trivial (from the
French "petit", small), so that part is obvious enough, but where
does "fogger" come from?

Theories abound. One of the better known, and quoted as fact in a
few dictionaries, is that it originated in a German family named
Fugger, successful merchants and financiers of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, who were based in Augsburg. German, together
with Dutch and other Germanic languages, also had variations on
"fugger" as a word for people who were wealthy or grasping about
money, or whose business methods were disreputable. Hence in
English "fogger", dating from the later sixteenth century but long
obsolete, was a word for an underhand dealer; this might just be
the source.

Another form used at the time was "pettifactor", which might have
come from an old sense of "factor" for a person who acts as an
agent, so somebody who looks after small matters for others.
However, most experts think that "pettitfactor" actually came along
later as a corrupted form of "pettifogger". People were trying to
make sense of this odd word "fogger" that didn't then exist in the
language and converted it to one they knew.

The lawyers called "pettifoggers" spent their time arguing about
matters of small importance. The term became popular, and spawned
derivatives like "pettifogging". These survived the original term,
which is now considered archaic, but we retain in the latter word
the idea of somebody who places too much emphasis on trifles or who
quibbles about minor matters.


3. Out There
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At <http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm> you will find
Professor Charles Darling's pages which present a guide to grammar
and writing. The home page is rather oddly designed, so the quick
way in is to click on the Index button at bottom right. This will
take you to a large list of topics for browsing. The pages were
designed primarily for his students at Capital Community College,
Hartford, Connecticut, so have a strong pedagogical flavour.


4. Q&A
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Q. I could not find the word "upsadesi" on your list. Does it
really have a meaning? Or is it just an expression? [Dr John
Thomas, UK]

A. There are lots of forms of this expression: "upsidaisy", "upsa-
daisy", "upsy-daisy", and "oops-a-daisy", variously hyphenated on
the rare occasions they turn up in print. It's just a nonsense
word. It's said to a child as encouragement to get up again after
falling over, or when somebody is picking it up. Though the one
thing most versions have in common is a reference to a daisy, a
flower is not involved.

The common origin of all of these is "up-a-daisy", dating from the
early eighteenth-century. An even earlier version is the English
dialect "up-a-day". This is just as nonsensical a phrase, but it
does show that the final part of the modern expression is actually
a corruption of "day".

Its history is closely bound up with "lackasaisical" (see <http://
www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-lac1.htm>), which started out
as the cry "alack-a-day!", "shame or reproach to the day!" (that it
should have brought this upon me), but which by the eighteenth
century had turned into "lackadaisy".

"Alack-a-day!" was originally a passionate and heartfelt cry, but
it degenerated over time into a flabby exclamation of unease over
some minor upset. It seems to have provided the model for "up-a-
day", originally a dialect term that eventually made it back into
mainstream English, albeit in modulated and variable form.

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Q. In one of those perennial round-robins that friends send by e-
mail, I found the following: "Why do we say something is out of
whack? What's a whack?" It seems a valid question. Can you supply
an answer? [John Williams]

A. Not with a totally convincing show of certainty, no. But some
pointers are possible.

"Whack" started life in the eighteenth century. It was probably an
imitative noise, or perhaps derived from the older "thwack", also
imitative. The adjective "wacky", for somebody or something that is
odd, crazy or peculiar (nowadays in a mildly funny way), may come
from "whack", in that somebody who was crazy behaved as though he
had been hit about the head.

The noun developed a number of subsidiary senses. At one time, it
could mean a share in a distribution, a portion; this sense was
originally thieves' cant - Francis Grose, in his Dictionary of the
Vulgar Tongue of 1785, has "Whack, a share of a booty obtained by
fraud" (could physical violence have been involved in some cases?).
British English has a couple of phrases that retain that sense. One
is "pay one's whack", to pay one's agreed contribution to shared
expenses. Another is "top whack", or "full whack", for the maximum
price or rate for something ("if you go to that shop, you'll pay
top whack").

There are some other old figurative senses, including a bargain or
agreement (which evolved out of the idea of a share), and an
attempt at doing something ("I'll take a whack at that job"). These
are mostly American, and it was in the US that the sense you refer
to first appeared, in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
There seems to have been a phrase "in fine whack" during that
century, meaning that something was in good condition or excellent
fettle. (It appears in a letter by John Hay, President Lincoln's
amanuensis, dated August 1863, which describes the President: "The
Tycoon is in fine whack. I have rarely seen him more serene and
busy. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, and
planning a reconstruction of the Union, all at once".) It doesn't
often turn up in writing, though, so there's some doubt how
widespread it was.

To be "out of whack" would then have meant the opposite - that
something wasn't on top form or working well. It was first applied
to people with ailments ("My back is out of whack"). In the early
years of the twentieth century it started to refer to mechanisms.
It might be that the sense was influenced by the idea that faulty
mechanisms responded to a quick thwack.

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Q. My question relates to words taking the suffix "-ward" to
indicate direction. My assumption has been that adding an "s" is
incorrect ("upwards" as opposed to "upward", "towards" rather than
"toward"), yet I see it being done often, even in reputable
publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker. My
hope is that you will clear this up and that I'll finally be able
to put aside this distraction and move forward (or even forwards)!
[Marlayna Slaughterbeck]

A. First off, the sense is exactly the same whether there's an "s"
on the end or not. And both forms are equally valid, though - as
you have found - usage varies quite a bit.

In American English, the forms without the final "s" are much more
common, at least in edited writing, and this is perhaps why you
have gained the impression that those with the "s" on the end are
incorrect.

British English is different. Over here, we tend to use the forms
without the "s" as adjectives ("she was a backward child"), and
those with the "s" as adverbs ("his car shot forwards"), though
we're not always consistent in this.

My guess is that, for a change, American English is being
influenced by British writers.


5. Endnote
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The excellent tribe of grammarians, the precisians and all others
who strive to be correct and correctors, have as much power to
prohibit a single word or phrase as a gray squirrel has to put out
Orion with a flicker of its tail. [From an editorial in the "New
York Sun" (September 1922), quoted in H L Mencken, "The American
Language", Fourth Edition (1936).]


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