World Wide Words -- 02 Nov 02
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 1 15:28:39 UTC 2002
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 314 Saturday 2 November 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. Turns of Phrase: E-voting.
3. Book Review: The Dimwit's Dictionary.
4. Sic!
5. Weird Words: Gremlin.
6. Q&A: Opposite of "Hang a Louie".
7. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.
C. Help support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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CHURCH KEY Thanks to everybody who responded to last week's item.
Anecdotal evidence you supplied suggests that the term was known in
the US from the late 1930s on. (As so often, the first appearance
in print in 1951 is rather late.) And many people also mentioned a
combo tool with a bottle opener at one end and a can puncturing
device at the other - these were common in the 1950s but went out
of fashion when the "pop top" cans were introduced in the 1960s.
2. Turns of Phrase: E-voting
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This term, an abbreviated form of "electronic voting", seems to
have begun appearing in newspapers about 1999. It has become more
common recently as various governments have begun to use computers
(plus text messaging and the Internet) for entering and counting
votes, largely to encourage people to participate in elections. The
recent Irish referendum on ratifying the Nice proposals to extend
the European Union was partly conducted by computer; the British
government is piloting the idea in local council elections in some
places next year, following trials of Internet and text-message
voting last May. The term "e-voting" is limited to systems that use
methods to record and count votes that are entirely electronic, so
it excludes the voting machines commonly used in the USA that were
responsible for the hanging chad scandal of the 2000 presidential
election. However, technology experts are sceptical about the whole
idea, arguing that the opportunities for fraud or error are too
great, since it is so hard to be certain that people voting online
or via mobile phones are who they claim to be, it's too easy for
corrupt governments to falsify the results when no checkable audit
trail exists, and they fear voters can be too easily intimidated
when voting at home.
Many observers believe the fundamental problem with e-voting is
that the government appears to be using it to provide a technical
fix to what is essentially a political and social problem.
["Computer Weekly", Oct. 2002]
Georgia is implementing statewide e-voting at a time when voter
confidence is still recovering from the 2000 presidential election
disaster. Those wounds were reopened this month when Florida
counties debuting their electronic voting machines struggled
through another election fiasco, thanks largely to poorly trained
poll workers.
["Atlanta Journal and Constitution", Sep. 2002]
3. Book Review: The Dimwit's Dictionary by Robert Hartwell Fiske
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According to Ned Sherrin, in his "Oxford Dictionary of Humorous
Quotations" (a new edition of which has just been published), Sam
Goldwyn once earnestly pleaded with his writers not to use the same
tired old expressions: "Let's have some new clichés," he urged. (As
it happens, new clichés come along all the time, the most recent
being "regime change", but I digress.)
Robert Hartwell Fiske (also the editor and publisher of the online
journal Vocabula Review) is hard enough on shop-worn phraseology
that he surely wouldn't approve of adding yet more overused words
and phrases to the language. But he's with Sam Goldwyn on the need
to eliminate existing ones. The main body of the book is a list of
several thousand such words and phrases, mostly accompanied by
lists of appropriate substitutes, after the style of a thesaurus.
This is the unique feature of this book that distinguishes it, for
example, from the dictionaries of clichés by Eric Partridge and
Nigel Rees.
His views are forthright. Foreign phrases, he feels, are "simply
wearisome". Grammatical gimmicks like "something or other" or "you
had to be there", he argues, "attest to just how dull and dimwitted
we have become". Ineffectual phrases - in which group he includes
formations such as "it is interesting to note that", or "the fact
remains" - are only used, he suggests, by ineffectual people. He is
equally rough on the tendency to pack words together to form fixed
phrases, as poor writers do when they automatically add "and abet"
to "aid", always describe "errors" as "egregious", or only allow
things to be "closely" allied. Other categories are "infantile
phrases", "overworked words", "plebeian sentiments", "moribund
metaphors", "torpid terms", "popular prescriptions", and "wretched
redundancies". (On the evidence of the last four, Mr Fiske could
well add another: "abominable alliterations".)
Pungent comment is mostly limited to the introduction, though each
term is identified in the text by one of his catchphrases to show
the type of mistake he feels it to be. He says in an introductory
Apologia, "If the tone of my commentary is sometimes acerbic, it's
because tempered persuasion is effete, and considered argument
tiresome". Hardly the approach of someone who is sensitive to the
insecurities and difficulties of a poor writer striving to improve
and who wishes to help. It is easy to mock clichés; it is equally
easy to forget they can reflect a lifetime of problems with clear
thinking and clear exposition, unaided by good education.
Mr Fiske's dislike of clichés is absolute. Mine is less so, and I
would have liked to see an acknowledgement that they have their
place. They serve as journalists' shorthand (as, for example, does
"regime change"), they provide comfort at times of bereavement or
crisis, and they can help people who lack fluency to communicate
day by day. But politicians and bureaucrats cannot defend their use
to disguise hard truths or avoid having to say what they mean.
Writers who aspire to a fresh, elegant style in educated standard
written English must also eschew clichés. Mr Fiske seems to have
his eye only on this constituency - he is similarly dismissive of
dialect, colloquialisms, and non-standard English of every kind, a
blindness to diversity that one must regret. Such notionally non-
standard usages may not have their place in a polished piece of
literary English, but that is not the only valid form of writing.
If you can put his vehement strictures and narrow focus to one
side, you will find something of value here. It's a pity that most
people who write badly enough to need this book won't think of
getting a copy, or will be put off by the title and the opening
chapters.
[Fiske, Robert Hartwell "The Dimwit's Dictionary: 5000 Overused
Words and Phrases and Alternatives to Them", published by Marion
Street Press Inc, Oak Park, IL on 15 September 2002; ISBN 0-
9665176-7-9; paperback, pp400; publisher's price US$19.95.]
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4. Sic!
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Evan Parry found this on the front page of the Metro edition of the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Wednesday: "The two 7,400-foot-long
tunnels, each 18 feet 10 inches in diameter, will allow trains to
travel between downtown Minneapolis and the Mall of America in
about two years". And over here we think British trains are slow!
This appeared in the "Daily Mail" on Thursday in reference to a
television presenter currently being hounded by the press: "He had
been pictured seemingly using drugs in a Sunday newspaper at his
home just days ago". How very downmarket - most media people use
rolled twenty-pound notes. (Spotted by Caroline O'Reilly.)
5. Weird Words: Gremlin
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An imaginary mischievous sprite.
Not just any sprite, but one that you feel must be responsible for
that unexplained fault you have just experienced with some device,
especially a mechanical or electronic one. If the car won't start,
or the computer is acting up, one may blame gremlins.
The word looks so much like the name of some immemorial archetypal
being that it comes as a surprise to discover that it is not known
before the early years of the last century and was in its heyday
among RAF pilots in World War Two. By 1942, news of their coming
had reached "Newsday" in the USA, which described them, one hopes
tongue in cheek, as "exasperating pixies, often clad in caps,
ruffled collars, tight breeches and spats, who delight in raising
hell in Allied planes". Gremlins, another report says, were "fond
of drinking petrol, distracting the pilot, interfering with radio
communications, and even causing the pattern of stars to distort,
thereby making accurate navigation impossible".
Roald Dahl's first children's book, published in 1943, was called
"The Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story" and he did claim to have
invented the name. However, there is a lot of evidence that it was
around earlier. Some trace it back to the Royal Flying Corps in
World War One, others to RAF operations in India and the Middle
East in the 1920s. In those days, the most common beer available in
the mess was brewed by Fremlin; it is plausibly said that the name
comes from a blend of this name with "goblin", so a gremlin was a
creature that was first viewed, you might say, through the bottom
of a bottle. It explains a lot, especially those spats.
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OLOGIES AND ISMS
As most of you already know, I wrote OLOGIES AND ISMS, from Oxford
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little higher and my royalties increase a notch.
OLOGIES AND ISMS is about the building blocks of English - the
beginnings and endings, and sometimes the middles - that help form
or adapt many of the words we use. How often do you see a common
medical or technical word without quite knowing what it means? Does
your blood run cold when you hear "haemophilia"; do you perhaps
pale at "paleobotany"? If you can decipher such words - undo their
language code - you can understand others of like kind.
OLOGIES AND ISMS is now on sale in Australia and New Zealand. And
despite what amazon.ca wants to tell you, it is also available in
Canada, so Americans can get it by mail order without waiting for
official publication next Spring.
OLOGIES AND ISMS will be a unique and valuable addition to your
reference library and would make an enjoyable holiday gift for your
friends and family. For more details and sample entries, point your
browser at http://www.worldwidewords.org/ologies.htm . Then run,
don't walk, to your nearest bookstore or online retailer.
===================================================================
6. Q&A
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Q. I've heard the term "hang a Louie" (mainly from New York
cabbies) for "turn left", but I've never heard the corresponding
one for "turn right". Is there one? [Kevin Banas, Toronto]
A. Whilst "hang a Louie" seems well recorded and quite common
(though where it comes from is far from clear), there is much less
agreement on what you call the opposite turn, no doubt for socio-
cultural reasons beyond the remit, or indeed the understanding, of
this writer.
The reference books suggest "hang a Ralph" or "hang a Ralphie", but
I wasn't at all sure this was the current situation. So, as so
often, I turned to the locals on the American Dialect Society
mailing list. They listed several phrases that were known to them
from various places, including "hang a Ralph", but also "Hang a
Roscoe", "hang a rooie", and "hang a Richie". Several of those who
replied said that they never used any such term and basically
thought that the deasil turn was the boring but obvious "hang a
right".
The New Yorkers among them preferred "hang a Ralph" but even they
said that "hang a right" was more common. A quick search on the
Google database indeed showed that "hang a right" was the most
common general form, with "hang a Ralph" coming in a poor second
and the other two absolutely nowhere.
Those from the Boston area remarked that around there they tended
to "bang a Louie" rather than hang one (or even just sedately take
one), which was taken by the less charitable on the list as a
comment on the driving habits of Bostonians. 'Nuff said.
If you're doing a U-turn, incidentally, most said that a common
phrase was the rhyming form "hang a U-ie".
7. Endnote
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"Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that he
sometimes has to eat them." [Adlai Stevenson, "The Wit and Wisdom
of Adlai Stevenson" (1965); quoted in the "Oxford Dictionary of
Thematic Quotations" (2000)]
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