WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 306 Saturday 14 September 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. Weird Words: Stotting.
2. In Passing? Recent online advertising coinages.
3. Q&A: Wet your whistle; Yehudi; Wigs on the green.
4. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.
1. Weird Words: Stotting
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Of an animal, to bound with all four feet off the ground at once.
You must have seen nature films in which antelope or gazelle are
suddenly surprised by a cheetah. Before they run away, and also
while they are running, the animals do a weird pouncing prance, in
which they leap into the air, all four legs stiff and back arched.
This is stotting. Quite why they do it isn't understood, though it
may be a form of alarm signal, or a good way to get a better view
of the ground ahead, or they may have been bribed by the producer
to make the pictures more interesting.
The word comes from Scots, where it means to bounce, or to make
something bounce against a surface. Its origin is sadly obscure. In
Orkney, the same verb can mean to stutter, so it may be linked to
that verb through Middle English "stuten", to stutter.
A rare native English sighting is in R S Surtees' Mr Sponge's
Sporting Tour of 1851: "Up started a great hare; bang! went the gun
with the hare none the worse. Bang! went the other barrel, which
the hare acknowledged by two or three stotting bounds and an
increase of pace. 'Well missed!' exclaimed Mr Sponge".
There is a tradition that the famous Newcastle "stotty cake" - a
flat disc of soft bread, traditionally baked from left-over dough
in the bottom of the oven - takes its name from the same source.
The story goes that no local cook would consider a stotty cake
properly made unless it bounced when she threw it on the kitchen
floor. Make of this item of comestible folklorics what you will.
You may like to know that there's another name for the leaping run
of the gazelle, "pronk", which comes via Afrikaans from the Dutch
"pronken", to strut.
2. In Passing?
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Some recent coinages from the world of advertising, mostly online,
that may never make it to the dictionaries:
ADVERGAMING This is an advertising technique in which the detailed
product information is embedded in a computer game played online,
designed to actively engage the player with the marketing message.
It's aimed at young people in particular, a demographic group that
is otherwise hard to reach. These games often capture information
about the players which can be used in follow-up campaigns.
ADVERTAINMENT This is marketing-speak for television adverts that
are designed to be entertaining or funny, with the placement of the
product played down. Some have been created by Hollywood directors
such as the Coen Brothers or Spike Lee. There is now even a video-
on-demand channel in the US on which you can watch your favourites.
POP-UNDER This is a common term for a type of advertising window
that appears on your screen when you visit or leave a site. Unlike
the older pop-ups, which are extra windows that appear in front of
the one you are trying to look at, pop-unders appear behind it, so
you often only notice them when you close the main browser window.
SHOWSKELE This is the trade name for those annoying little images
you sometimes see drifting across your computer screen and which
interfere with your viewing the Web page underneath. It belongs to
United Virtualities, who say it was named after the middle daughter
of the company founder. In April they announced another technology,
Ooqa Ooqa (which daughter is that named after?), which changes your
browser's toolbar in response to any Web ad you click on.
SKYSCRAPER AD Unlike the more common banner ads, which are bars
placed across a Web page, these are advertisements that appear as
vertical bars, typically down the right-hand side of the visible
area, often containing snazzy Flash animations and other tricks.
Sometimes also called tower ads.
STREAMIES This is a collective term for people who view or listen
to streaming video or audio over the Internet - sources such as
online radio stations, webcast films and the like. The term seems
to have been around online for a couple of years and occasionally
turns up in newspaper articles, though it's mainly a jargon term in
limited circulation within the online advertising world.
3. Q&A
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Q. I got yet another of those e-mail "Fun Facts" pages forwarded to
me with a lot of false etymologies. I was able to find refutations
for all but one of these on your site. Can you prove or disprove
this one: "Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle
baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they
needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. 'Wet
your whistle' is the phrase inspired by this practice". I find this
explanation too pat and so immediately distrust it. Can you help?
[David Means, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA]
A. You're right to distrust it. These e-mail pieces are fun to
read, but they combine a morsel of truth with a large serving of
invention. They lie at one extreme of the spectrum of folk or
popular etymology, and they're a very good illustration of the way
that mistaken ideas about words and phrases can disseminate.
You can be sure that no pub cup or mug ever had a whistle fitted to
it for this purpose. If you wanted another drink, you went up to
the bar and asked for it; if the place was posh enough to have
table service, you most certainly wouldn't blow a whistle to get
attention! You sometimes see such mugs today, but they're the
pottery equivalent of your e-mail, a joke on a long-established
saying.
In the expression, "whistle" is just a joking reference to one's
mouth or throat and to the fact that one can't easily whistle when
one's mouth is dry. It's a very ancient expression: its first
recorded appearance is in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales at the end of
the fourteenth century, and it must surely be even older.
You can sometimes see the phrase as "whet one's whistle", as though
it is in need of sharpening. It would seem that those who first
wrote it that way - more than 300 years ago - were as unsure of the
real source of the expression as many of us are today. I shudder to
think what the anonymous writer of your e-mail message might make
of that version.
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Q. When we were growing up my father used a curious expression when
something happened around our house for which nobody would take the
blame. Dad would say, "Yehudi did it". Thus the blame was laid on a
phantom scapegoat. Dad's roots are from North Carolina, but he has
no explanation for this expression. The only Yehudi I ever heard of
was Menuhin. Where does this expression originate? [Creede Hinshaw,
Georgia, USA]
A. The most common story ties it to the Pepsodent-sponsored Bob
Hope radio show on NBC, which started in 1938. There was a running
gag on the show, a catchphrase of supporting player Jerry Colonna,
who would regularly ask: "Who's Yehudi?". This became extremely
popular and provoked a song in 1941.
The earliest example in print of "Yehudi" in a sense of something
that isn't there is from the Science News Letter of September 1940:
"The machine has not received a nickname as yet. Since it deals
with imaginary numbers, it may answer to the name of 'Yehudi'". A
film called Crazy Cruise in 1942 featured an invisible battleship,
the SS Yehudi. The following year, one of the very earliest US
military stealth projects was called Project Yehudi.
I haven't been able to find any earlier references, so the word
really may have its origin in Jerry Colonna's catchphrase. If it
does, then there probably is a connection with Yehudi Menuhin. The
story claims that Menuhin was engaged to play on one of the early
shows, but that Jerry Colonna didn't know who he was, and went
around asking the cast. This is supposed to have led to the running
gag of his trying to identify Yehudi.
Part of the popularity of Yehudi as a term for an invisible entity
seems to lie in a linkage in people's minds with a rhyme by Hughes
Mearns that was set to music in 1939 as The Little Man Who Wasn't
There - just when the Colonna catchphrase was becoming known:
As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
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Q. Do you know what the phrase "wigs on the green" means? [Joanne
Hassett, Ireland]
A. It's an intriguing expression that's still to be heard from time
to time, though it's seriously out of fashion, just like the wigs
it mentions.
"Wigs on the green" refers to a fight, brawl or fracas, or to a
difference of opinion that could lead to fisticuffs. It often
appears as "there'll be wigs on the green", as a warning (or a
prediction) that an altercation is likely to occur. It's originally
Irish, dating from the eighteenth century, when men usually wore
wigs. If a fight started, the first thing that happened was that
the wigs of those involved would be knocked off and would roll
incongruously about on the grass, to the amusement of bystanders
and the embarrassment of participants.
I can't leave an Irish expression without quoting James Joyce. From
Chapter 13 of Ulysses: "But Tommy said he wanted the ball and Edy
told him no that baby was playing with the ball and if he took it
there'd be wigs on the green but Tommy said it was his ball and he
wanted his ball and he pranced on the ground, if you please".
4. Endnote
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Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the
signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less
apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things
which they denote." [Samuel Johnson, introduction to "A Dictionary
of the English Language" (1755)]
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