World Wide Words -- 26 Apr 03

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 338          Saturday 26 April 2003
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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: Popinjay.
3. Turns of Phrase: Neurotheology.
4. Book Review: Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions.
5. Sic!
6. Q&A: Lead-swinger.
7. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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LEAD-SWINGER  A last-minute change of plan resulted in the contents
list for last week's issue advertising the wrong Q&A piece, about
lead-swinging rather than kettles of fish. Time heals all things,
even newsletter errors, and the missing piece is below.

KETTLE OF FISH  Following last week's piece, Henk Rietveld wrote to
say that he had heard, while working in Newfoundland, that "kettle
of fish" was a corruption of "quintal of fish", a measure either of
100 pounds or a hundredweight. This is possible, since a quintal
was also known in the forms "kintal" and "kentle" in Newfoundland
and New England, the last of which could easily have been misheard
as "kettle". It can't be ruled out, since the quintal was the usual
measure of fish catches. Against it is the fact that the figurative
kettle of fish seems to have appeared in Britain, while "kentle" is
an American form.


2. Weird Words: Popinjay
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A vain or conceited person, one given to pretentious displays.

This deeply insulting word is now rather dated or literary. A good
example can be found in Joseph Conrad's short story The End of the
Tether of 1902: "When he looked around in the club he saw only a
lot of conceited popinjays too selfish to think of making a good
woman happy".

Dictionaries say a "popinjay" was also at one time the usual name
for a parrot, and in that lies the origin of the derogatory term.
What could be more gaudily and squawkingly in your face than a
parrot? What more perfect term for an empty chatterer, fop or
coxcomb? Who's a pretty boy, then?

It's an ancient imprecation, already of some age when Shakespeare
used it in Henry IV, but the literal parrot sense goes back even
further, to the latter part of the fourteenth century. It was also
used for a device on a post to shoot at, the archers' equivalent of
the quintain, usually it seems because the mark was a figure of a
parrot. That explains references such as this one, in Old
Mortality, by Sir Walter Scott: "When the musters had been made,
and duly reported, the young men, as was usual, were to mix in
various sports, of which the chief was to shoot at the popinjay, an
ancient game formerly practised with archery, but at this period
with fire-arms".

The word travelled with the bird from Africa and can be traced back
to the Arabic "baba", through Spanish "papagayo" and Old French
"papeiaye". One of the earlier English versions (it had lots of
forms before it settled to the spelling we know now) was "papengay"
but it seems the ending was changed because people thought the name
referred to a sort of jay.


3. Turns of Phrase: Neurotheology
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This new and emotionally charged scientific field is trying to find
out what effect the workings of the brain have on religious belief.
One of the stimuli for such investigations is that some people who
suffer from temporal-lobe epilepsy experience religious revelations
or hallucinations during seizures, even if they are atheists. Work
in the field roughly divides into two types: either stimulating
spiritual experience with drugs, or studying brain activity during
such experiences using imaging techniques to see which regions of
the brain change. Such events seem to exist outside time and space
and the evidence suggests they are caused by the brain losing its
perception of a boundary between the physical body and the outside
world. It may be that what causes these spiritual experiences also
leads to other kinds of intangible events, such as reports of alien
visitations, near-death episodes, and out-of-body experiences. The
oldest example of the term I can trace is the title of a book by
Laurence O McKinney published in 1994.

The neurotheologians have done a useful service in showing how
these deep and life-changing experiences operate in the brain. In
doing so, they have not explained them away; but they do help to
explain the persistence and even the validity of religion in a
secular society.
     [The Dominion (Wellington, New Zealand), 2 Jun. 2001]

To adherents of a controversial, fledgling science called
neurotheology, these moments of serenity are little more than
common blips in brain chemistry.
                                 [UFO Magazine, Jan. 2002]


4. Book Review: Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions
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An American recently wrote to me of the problems she had had with
food names while over here in Britain. What were courgettes, for
example, or aubergines, or mangetout? And what was this mysterious
vegetable called swede she was offered in the cafeteria? By careful
questioning and observation she discovered that she knew these as
respectively zucchini, eggplant, snow peas, and rutabaga. British
cooks in America might equally be puzzled by arugula, which they
call rocket back home, yet another vegetable that changes name in
its passage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Orin Hargraves, a lexicographer with feet that are figuratively
planted on both sides of the Atlantic, has produced a book that
will be a great help to speakers of either regional form who are
trying to resolve differences of language in business, commercial,
legal and social life. Two very useful introductory chapters detail
the main differences in spelling between the two Englishes. After
that, successive chapters discuss the language of government and
law, education, medicine and health, food and clothing, transport,
sports and leisure, and everyday life. Perhaps the most immediately
valuable chapter is the one headed "Things You Don't Say", listing
the differences in taboo language between the two countries.

For example, if you're American, don't ask for a "shag" (a layered
haircut) in a British hairdressers, since it is slang for an act of
sex, or refer to your backside as a "fanny" (British slang for the
female genitals); Brits in America should be careful about asking
for a "fag" when they want a cigarette, not just because of the
fear of being assaulted in a public place by anti-smoking zealots,
but because it is American slang for a homosexual.

The set of chapter headings, though it gives an impression of the
scope of the book, hardly does justice to its compendious nature.
Opening it at random, for example, turned up a table of magazine
names and profiles (so you know what is meant by the Beano or
"Redbook") and of icons of the small screen whose names have become
common terms (explaining who Mister Rogers and Arthur Daley were,
among others); another couple of random stabs led me to information
on medical trademarks and how the names of cakes differ between the
two countries; another turn of the page revealed a discussion of
banking and investment terms. Pages 143-4 contain a table of fruit
and vegetable names that would have helped my American
correspondent greatly.

Recommended!

[Hargraves, Orin Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions,
published by Oxford University Press. Published in the US in 2002
and in the UK on 24 April 2003; hardback, pp305; ISBN 0-19-515704-
4; publisher's prices US$27.50, GBP16.99.]

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5. Sic!
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John Neave e-mailed from New Zealand: "I know what they mean, but
somehow it doesn't sound right - the announcement on TV One today:
'Now on prime-time television: the All-new Antiques Roadshow!'" At
almost the same moment, Anne Greening found this advertisement in
her newspaper in South Africa: "For Sale. Antique factory". Is that
where they make the all-new antiques for the show?

John Riggs wrote: "My son recently started driving lessons and has
been given a card by his instructor to record the date and time of
each lesson.  Also included on this card is a list of conditions,
one of which refers to the notice required for cancellation of a
lesson. It states that if less than 24 hours notice is given the
fee may 'be fortified'".


6. Q&A
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Q. I have always understood a "lead-swinger" to be a slacker,
someone who feigns illness or injury to avoid working. A bit of
cursory research unearthed a definition that described it as a
World War I army phrase referring to the taking of a sounding to
determine the depth of water, which was apparently an easy task.
This doesn't quite ring true in my mind: first, this depth-sounding
technique is much, much older than World War I; second, I know
military slang transfers fairly freely between different branches
of the service, but how or why would this nautical practice come to
be associated with a land army instead of a navy? Any insights
would be most welcome. [Pete Brown]

A. The expression does seem extremely puzzling, but it is possible
to rationalise the maritime and army usages. To fill in the blanks
we need to go into the background a bit more. Aficionados of
Captains Aubrey and Hornblower can skip the next paragraph.

At sea, the lead was a literal lump of lead weighing nine pounds
(four kilos) fixed to a long line, usually with tallow on the
bottom. The leadsman cast the lead over the side to establish the
depth of water (there were coded markers fixed to the line so that
he could determine the depth in the dark). The tallow brought up a
small sample of the sea bottom, which would give an experienced
navigator who knew the coast more details about where the ship was.
The job of the leadsman was both skilled and arduous. The safety of
the ship often depended on him, since the only time he was needed
was in shallow water in which there was a risk of grounding. He was
working under the eye of the officers all the time, often soaked to
the skin because he had to be at the ship's side no matter what the
weather. The wet line and heavy weight made it hard work to cast
and pull up the lead each time, and the action had to be repeated
at frequent intervals.

As you say, none of this fits with the idea of "swinging the lead"
as a term for idleness or malingering - quite the reverse. You have
found why so many writers on word histories are puzzled by the
slang phrase. The article you read is surely wrong to suggest that
the army usage ever literally referred to depth-sounding, though it
was right to say that the term arose in the military early in the
twentieth century.

It seems to have been a typical landlubberly misunderstanding of
the job of the leadsman, seen by soldiers as something easy rather
than the hard task it really was. Note that the army usage even
gets the term wrong, since sailors never referred to "swinging the
lead", which would be an unskilful waste of energy, but to "casting
the lead", a precise and accurate technique.

Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional
English, says that there was an earlier military slang term "to
swing the leg", with the same sense, which was converted by folk
etymology into "swing the lead". I've not been able to confirm the
existence of this older term, but it would help to explain how a
nautical term came into army use.


7. Endnote
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"Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage
for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret
agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking
mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of
constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance.
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne."
[Quentin Crisp; quoted in the "Cassell Dictionary of Contemporary
Quotations" (1996)]


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