World Wide Words -- 25 May 02
Michael Quinion
do_not_use at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri May 24 19:25:22 UTC 2002
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 290 Saturday 25 May 2002
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Electroclash.
3. Weird Words: Cataglottism.
4. Out There: xrefer.
5. Q&A: Milquetoast; Katy bar the door; Understand.
6. Endnote.
7. Subscription commands.
8. Contact addresses.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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GOOD EGG Many people queried my rather naughty references to two
long outmoded terms in this piece last week, especially as they are
so long obsolete they aren't in most dictionaries. Both terms come
from medieval feudal law: Outfangthief was the lord's right to
pursue a thief outside his jurisdiction, bring him back to his own
court for trial, and keep his forfeited possessions on conviction;
Turbary was the right to cut turf or peat for fuel on a common or
on another person's land.
Several readers also asked about "pipped at the post". As I had
mentioned P G Wodehouse, this seemed an appropriate phrase to use
(Wodehouse is credited with being the first writer to use it in
print, in his book "Ukridge" of 1924). It is mainly British slang:
to be defeated by a slim margin at the last moment. The verb "pip"
is known from the 1870s, originally to blackball somebody (probably
from a figurative reference to a small ball). Later it meant to
fail a candidate in an examination. The Wodehouse version ties the
allusion to horse racing.
MORE COUNTRIES SERVED As a result of the FAQ mailing, the count of
countries now reaches 119, with the addition of St Vincent and the
Grenadines, Belize and Bosnia.
2. Turns of Phrase: Electroclash
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Yet another pop-musical genre. Its beginning, at least in terms of
journalistic attention and appearances of the name in newsprint,
was at the Electroclash festival held in New York in October 2001.
The genre has since become big in Montreal and has also spread to
Europe. It's a retro style, a romantic reaction against impersonal
house music in clubs, with emphasis on synthesisers, theatrical
performance, personalities, and song and dance, plus some rock and
punk influences, all mixed in with an interest in fashion and art.
The best-known bands are probably Fischerspooner and ARE Weapons.
Some people think it's the future; others consider it to be no more
than a tarted-up rehash of old ideas. They could all be right. Or
it might have vanished again within months.
Listening to electroclash, at times, is like burrowing into a
wormhole that exits somewhere near 1985. The music is replete with
the gorgeous, tuneful synths that characterized acts like Flock of
Seagulls. Indeed, while listening to the Soviet tune "Candy Girl"
on the Electroclash compilation CD, you'd swear you'd happened upon
some undiscovered old '80s track.
["The Toronto Star", Feb. 2002]
The scene label 'Electroclash' is vulgar and ridiculous (mere
'Electro' isn't enough for alternative types, they need to validate
it with a suffix which imbues it with a violence and rebel chic it
doesn't merit), but its reluctant leaders, New York's
Fischerspooner, have turned vulgarity and ridiculousness into art
forms.
["Independent on Sunday", Apr. 2002]
3. Weird Words: Cataglottism /,kat@'glQtIsm/
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Kissing using the tongue, French kissing.
This term, albeit potentially useful, is so rare that I cannot find
a modern example outside lists of weird words. Its Greek prefix -
meaning "down", but often with an implication of disparagement or
abuse or of something inferior or unpleasant - turns up also in
"cataclysm", "catastrophe", and "catarrh" - a dispiriting set of
bed-fellows for this mildly erotic term. Its second part is from
Greek "glottis", a variant of "glossa", tongue. As that word could
also
mean "throat" (and has been borrowed to provide the English medical
term
for the vocal cords and the space between them), you might translate
the
stem of "cataglottism" as "deep throat". But let's not go there ...
4. Out There: xrefer
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Much valuable content online is, very understandably, accessible
only on a subscription basis (for example, the new Oxford Reference
Online site, at <http://www.oxfordreference.com>; follow the links
for a free tour). One useful site that is at the moment free is
xrefer (<http://www.xrefer.com/>) which provides searchable access,
cross-referenced, to a variety of reference books that cover art,
literature, health, music, language and usage, and science and
technology. There is a subscription service that offers a wider
range of sources.
5. Q&A
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Q. I used the word "milktoast" the other day to describe a person
who is unmotivated, ambivalent, and apathetic in their general
demeanor. I was questioned on the true meaning and origin of the
word. Am I using it correctly? What is its actual meaning, and
where does the term come from? [Jonathan Bennett]
A. You're not quite there. The usual spelling is "milquetoast", but
said the same way as your spelling. And the usual sense is that of
a person who is timid or meek, unassertive. Such people may appear
apathetic or unmotivated, but that's not the reason for their being
quiet.
It's an eponym, named after a fictional cartoon character named
Caspar Milquetoast, invented by the American illustrator Harold T
Webster in 1924. The strip was called "The Timid Soul" and appeared
every Sunday in the New York Herald Tribune up to his death in
1953. Mr Webster said that his character was "the man who speaks
softly and gets hit with a big stick".
The name is just a Frenchified respelling of the old American
English term "milk toast", an uninspiring, bland dish which was
created from slices of buttered toast laid in a dish of milk,
usually considered to be food fit only for invalids. There's an
even older foodstuff, "milksop", which was untoasted bread soaked
in milk, likewise something suitable only for infants or the sick.
>From the thirteenth century on, milksop was a dismissive term for
"an effeminate spiritless man or youth; one wanting in courage or
manliness", as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it. Milquetoast
is in the same tradition.
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Q. I have been looking for the origin of "Katy bar the door". Any
ideas? [Bob Welborn]
A. Several; while they don't add up to a conclusive answer, one
possibility seems likely. However, the more one investigates, the
further away a simple answer seems to get.
The phrase "Katy bar the door!" (also as "Katy bar the gate!";
sometimes written as "Katie") is a very American exclamation, more
common in the South than elsewhere, meaning that disaster impends -
"watch out", "get ready for trouble" or "a desperate situation is
at hand".
Where it comes from is uncertain. Jonathan Lighter, in the "Random
House Historical Dictionary of American Slang", finds a first
example from 1902. I've done slightly better than that, having
found the phrase in a poem called "When Lide Married Him" by James
Whitcomb Riley, which was published in a collection called
"Armazindy" in 1894. A young lady marries a known drunkard against
family advice and forcibly reforms him. One stanza ends with the
line: "When Lide married him, it wuz 'Katy, bar the door!'",
suggesting trouble ensued.
It seems clear, though, that this isn't where the phrase came from.
The one useful comment I can find is in William and Mary Morris's
"The Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins", quoting a comment from
Nancy Britt of Arkansas. She suggested it came from a traditional
ballad. The one she is presumably referring to is medieval Scots,
usually entitled "Get Up and Bar the Door"; the source I'm using is
the "The Oxford Book of Ballads" of 1910, edited by Arthur Quiller-
Couch, but the song is still widely known, sung, and reproduced.
Though no version I've found mentions Katy anywhere, it looks
plausible as the source.
The wife wants her husband to bar the door because the wind blows
in and disturbs her at her cooking. The husband doesn't want to be
bothered to get up and do it. They agree after an argument that the
first person who speaks will be the loser and will have to bar the
door. Neither speaks, and neither bars the door. At night, robbers
enter through the open door and eat the food the wife has prepared.
Neither husband nor wife says anything because of their agreement
and their stubborn refusal to be the first to give way. However,
when the robbers propose to cut off the husband's beard and kiss
the wife (I assume these are euphemisms), the husband rises up in a
rage and shouts at the thieves, at which the wife rejoices:
Then up and started our goodwife,
Gied three skips on the floor:
'Goodman, you've spoken the foremost word,
Get up and bar the door.'
Though the ballad is actually a wry look at marital obstinacy and
its consequences, the most direct lesson is that not barring the
door has led them to trouble. Barring the door with the intruders
inside wasn't such a smart move, either. So it is possible that the
injunction, "bar the door!", was adapted from it to suggest there
is unpleasantness ahead.
The name of Katy would seem to have been a later addition. If we
knew how that came about, we might be more confident in asserting
the link between the ballad and the saying.
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Q. Please explain the etymology of the word "understand". How did a
compound of "under" and "stand" come to mean "comprehend"? [Sue
Mauer; Charles Colenaty]
A. It does look puzzling.
The most common sense of the prefix "under-" in Old English was
just the same as our modern word "under" - of being below or
beneath something (as in "underground"). Very early in its history,
though, it already had several subsidiary figurative senses. One
was very much like the Latin prefix "sub-", such as something lower
or subordinate in type (as in "understudy" or "undersecretary"), or
something of lesser degree (as in "underdeveloped" or
"underweight").
There were several other figurative senses of "under-", too, whose
meanings are hard to sort out. These appeared in a number of Old
English verbs that have now vanished from the language. An example
is "undersecan", to investigate, from "secan", to seek. Another
came along rather later, in the Middle English period, and has
survived: "undertake".
"Understand" has had our modern sense right from the time it was
first recorded, in the ninth century. It seems to have originated
in one of these subsidiary senses which is now lost to us. After
rather more than 1100 years, it's very hard to be sure exactly what
was in people's minds.
6. Endnote
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In every language, the lecturer said, you could use two negatives
to make a positive - but in English, two positives don't make a
negative. Cue voice from the back of the hall: "Yeah, right".
[Quoted by David Rowan in "A Glossary for the Nineties" (1998)]
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