World Wide Words -- 05 Oct 02

Michael Quinion DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 4 17:53:27 UTC 2002 

WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 310         Saturday 5 October 2002
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Sent each Saturday to 15,000+ subscribers in at least 119 countries
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: Edacious.
3. Sic!
4. Review: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition.
5. Q&A: Adam's off ox.
6. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.
C. Help support World Wide Words.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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GOBO  Subscribers to this newsletter come from so many backgrounds
that it is not surprising that several lighting technicians should
have got in touch after the Weird Words piece on this word appeared
last week. They added many other jargon terms of their profession,
too many to quote here. One term is both intriguing and puzzling
and would have been an interesting Weird Word itself: "cucoloris".
This is the usual name for a large perforated gobo placed in front
of a lamp to project a diffused shadow pattern. It would seem to be
the origin of the abbreviated form "cookie" that I mentioned in the
piece (if so, the latter would have no biscuit links). But where
does "cucoloris" come from? My sources are totally silent on the
matter - no dictionary I've consulted has even heard of the word,
not even the big Oxford English Dictionary. Could it be from Latin
"cucullus" for a hood or cowl? Or perhaps somebody's name?

VIRUSES  Being at the sharp end of newsletter mailings, I quickly
get to see absolutely every virus that appears. Dozens of copies of
the most recent one, named Bugbear, have been turning up this week.
It takes recipients' details from address books on infected systems
and so it is difficult to find out who the actual sender is. I urge
subscribers who currently don't have one to get a virus checker and
use it regularly.

AMAZON LINKS  I've now had time to write my own routine to provide
short links to the various Amazon sites. I prefer my own because it
will be under my full control and less likely to fail. The revised
versions are used in this mailing.


2. Weird Words: Edacious
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Relating to eating.

That, at least, is the literal sense of the word, since it comes
from the Latin verb "edere", to eat. But even in Latin it had a
stronger sense of voracious consumption and that was carried with
it into English. It was brought into the language - surprisingly
recently - by classically educated writers at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. It never really caught on and is now almost
extinct, perhaps because "voracious" is a better established and
more vigorous-sounding alternative. The Roman writer Ovid created a
maxim in his Metamorphoses: "Tempus edax rerum", time devours
everything. As a result, in its rare appearances the word is most
likely to be linked with time. Thomas Carlyle used it in this way
when he referred to events "swallowed in the depths of edacious
time".


3. Sic!
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The eight o'clock Radio 4 news on Tuesday reported a ruling by the
British Medical Association that medical staff attending a crash
could "take a blood sample from all drivers involved in a road
accident without their consent". My wife immediately said that she
wished it to be known that she will never give consent to being
involved in a road accident.


4. Review: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition
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Long before the monumental Oxford English Dictionary had been
completed, the need for a condensed version had already been
recognised - 2002 is in one way the centenary of the Shorter OED,
as work on it began in 1902, though its first edition came out only
in 1933. This fifth edition, in two large volumes, is a revision of
the fourth edition of 1993, which was sold as the New Shorter
English Dictionary. So this should really be the Newer Shorter, but
understandably the publishers have gone back to the old title.

This edition reflects the changes in dictionary practice and format
that Oxford has been pursuing in recent years, first with the one-
volume New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE) and with recent
editions of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD). The emphasis is on
clean design and ease of navigation, and every part of the layout
has been rethought. Each page has three columns; individual senses
are set off by bold numerals within blocks that delimit major
categories of meaning and parts of speech; the more important terms
have grey-tinted boxed texts with illustrative quotations (each
contains the author's name, but no work or date information; a
pity, even though limitations of space are too great to permit full
citation details); senses are grouped within each block with the
earliest first.

As you would expect from an extraction of the essence of the OED,
it is firmly based on historical principles, so dealing with the
development of the language over time, rather than being a snapshot
of the language as it is today. It aims to include every word that
has been used in general English since 1700. The growth in English
vocabulary in the past decade means many new words have been added
(about 3500 altogether), connected with politics, biotechnology,
electronics, telecommunications, the Internet, and other fields. It
remains more academic and formal in approach than NODE or COD, a
"pure" dictionary with no usage notes or encyclopaedic entries.

It's definitely a work for somebody who has a strong interest in
the history and development of the modern language (and quite deep
pockets, too). It is an important new edition and promises to be
popular (Oxford say they have already sold the first print run and
have had to order another impression).

A CD-ROM has also been issued, currently only in Europe, but will
be published in the USA later this year. This runs under Windows
and can either be installed complete with all data and sound files
(which needs 447Mb of disk space) or just with the program and help
files. The layout looks the same as the CD-ROM and online formats
for the big OED (for a sample, see the OED's word of the day at
http://www.oed.com/cgi/display/wotd) except that the background is
white rather than a sickly yellow. By default it starts with a
random word of the day and automatically looks up any word copied
to the clipboard, though both features can be turned off. An
advanced search feature allows you to find things in the full text,
and lets you choose between the dictionary text and quotations. You
can also choose whether to show pronunciations, etymologies and
quotations in entries.

Pronunciations in the CD-ROM (and the printed work) are given in
the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), standard within Oxford
Dictionaries. You can choose to hear them if you have a sound card;
they are read in several male and female British English voices.
Where well-known differences of opinion over pronunciation exist
(as with "controversy" and "forte", for example), all the forms are
given both in IPA and as sound files. In general they're fine,
though "blackguard" is said as if it were two separate words
instead of the usual "blaggard" (which is what the IPA says it
should be). The spoken forms of some other words are also in
conflict with their IPA equivalents; the Latin tag "fons et origo"
is said without the "t" as though it were French; "Byzantine" has
the stress on the first syllable in the spoken version but on the
second in IPA. The IPA symbol for the vowel in French words like
"chanson" or "enfant" (turned script a with tilde above) does not
reproduce.

The price of the CD-ROM, including VAT, is the same as that of the
printed version, which is uncomfortably out of line with publishing
practice and Oxford's pricing policy with other reference works. It
will be too expensive for most private buyers; even institutional
ones, who can reclaim the VAT, will find it to be hardly cheap.

[Trumble, William & Stevenson, Angus [eds], The Shorter Oxford
Dictionary on Historical Principles, Fifth Edition, published by
Oxford University Press on 26 Sep 2002. Two vols, 3792 pages; ISBN
0-19-860575-7. Publisher's prices GBP95.00; CDN$200.00. The CD-ROM
has ISBN 0-19-860613-3 and is currently available only in the
UK/Europe (US publication later in the year); publisher's price
GBP95.00 including VAT.]

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5. Q&A
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Q. In the movie It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Nick the bartender
says something to George Bailey that sounds like "And that's
another thing, I don't know you from Adam's oft ox". Am I hearing
that correctly? If so, I've never heard that expression before.
What does it mean? [Steve Justino]

A. Nearly right. It's actually "Adam's off ox".

Some discussion about this expression followed its use by President
Clinton in a news conference in June 1993. It puzzled many American
commentators then, because it's a phrase that is known only in some
parts of the USA.

It's one of a whole set of expressions of which the basic and
oldest form is "not to know somebody from Adam", meaning that the
person is entirely unknown to the speaker. That form is recorded
from Britain in a report of a court case at the London Sessions as
far back in 1784: "Some man stopped me, I do not know him from
Adam". It's almost certainly older in the spoken language.

This expression has so long been a familiar idiom that people have
felt the need to make it more emphatic. Speakers in various parts
of the US have at times commented they don't know somebody from
"Adam's housecat", "Adam's brother", "Adam's foot", and "Adam's pet
monkey". "Adam's off ox" is easily the most puzzling of these
variations to us today, because the days of ox teams are now long
past. The off ox was the one on the right-hand side of the team,
furthest from the driver, less visible and so - figuratively at
least - less well known.

It is found in print from 1894 onwards, but must surely be older.
One of its appearances was in Flying U Ranch by B M Bower, of about
1914: "Andy shook hands all round, swore amiably at Weary, and
advanced finally upon Miguel. "You don't know me from Adam's off
ox," he began genially, "but I know you, all right, all right."

The Dictionary of American Regional English has rather a nice map
of its distribution, based on the research it did in the 1960s. Its
informants then must all have been older people. It is now even
less well known, except from the occasional old film and US
presidential folk idiom.


6. Endnote
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"Listen, someone's screaming in agony - fortunately I speak it
fluently." [Spike Milligan, "The Goon Show", BBC Radio (1959);
quoted in "The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations"
(2001)]


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