WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 370 Saturday 6 December 2003
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent each Saturday to 18,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
<http://www.worldwidewords.org> <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Change the outgoing address to TheEditor at worldwidewords.org if
you reply, to stop your message being dumped by my spam filter
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Plain English Campaign Awards 2003.
3. Review: The Adventure of English.
4. Weird Words: Brummagem.
5. Q&A: Dear John letter.
A. FAQ of the week.
B. Subscription commands.
C. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
UNOBTANIUM Mike Weber fired back this comment: "I first saw the
word used in an article in an American sports car magazine around
1970. The racing driver Dan Gurney used it in an explanation of the
astronomical cost of parts for his Porsche. He said the cost was so
high due to the fact that they were made of unobtainium. My guess
is that it had some currency as a buzzword in racing circles at the
time. There is indeed evidence the word was used in the racing-car
business back in the 1970s, possibly Roger Penske of the Porsche
team. The word is still closely linked to Porsche parts, I find.
Bruce Campbell writes: "Another term similar to these is dubium. It
arose after a very detailed and precise analysis of a sample, with
a listing of the ingredients and their amounts. A management person
took the time to add the column of amounts and found the total was
a number close to 100 percent, but not exactly. He sent a message
to the analysts asking why the total was not 100 percent. After a
short delay, the list was revised with the addition of dubium. To
the gratification of the management person, the total amount now
reached exactly 100.00 percent".
2. Plain English Campaign Awards 2003
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Plain English Campaign - a British pressure group that lobbies
for public information to be presented in clear, straightforward
language - held its annual awards on Tuesday. It gave its Foot In
Mouth award for the most baffling statement by a public figure to
the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for this: "Reports that
say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because
as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we
know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know
there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown
unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know". John Lister, the
spokesman for the campaign, said: "We think we know what he means.
But we don't know if we really know".
In the days since, journalists and academics have queued up to
assert that Donald Rumsfeld was talking sense, moreover sense
expressed in the simplest and plainest words available, ones that
the Plain English Campaign should be applauding, not criticising.
The trouble is, Mr Rumsfeld's statement needs work to appreciate,
because he's talking philosophy. (You might argue that he left out
one category, that of unknown knowns - things we know, but we don't
know that we know - but this is perhaps a comment better reserved
for a seminar on metacognition.) It would seem that the PEC has put
its own foot in its own mouth, again. Last year, you may recall, it
criticised the actor Richard Gere for a statement that was cogent,
if oddly expressed, so hardly fitting an award given for "the most
baffling statement by a public figure" (see my piece on the 2002
awards at http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/pec2002.htm).
Runners-up in this section of the awards included California's new
governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his comment to an interviewer
that "I think that gay marriage is something that should be between
a man and a woman", but that isn't baffling, just daft; the British
politician Chris Patten was singled out for saying about the UK's
main opposition party that "Having committed political suicide, the
Conservative Party is now living to regret it", which is a nice
quip, but also hardly baffling.
The best part of the awards are always the Golden Bulls for the
year's worst examples of gobbledegook. These are among the winners:
The online retailer jungle.com was asked: "Do you still sell blank
CDs?". The company replied: "We are currently in the process of
consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we
stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range
consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and
employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result
of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through
jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more
mainstream suppliers". So that would be a "no", then?
The British pharmacy chain, Lloyds, wrote a letter of apology that
was trying to say that an assistant had dispensed the wrong tablet
and that the mistake had not been spotted by the pharmacist. This
is part of a 181-word passage in the letter: "The cognitive process
that staff will go through when interpreting prescriptions and
selecting drugs is almost intuitive in that the prescription will
be read, a decision is then made in the mind of the individual
concerned, they will then make a selection based on what they have
decided. When an error is made either mentally or in the physical
selection process it is difficult for the individual concerned to
detect their own error because in their own mind they have made the
correct selection".
And Warburtons Bakers said this in an advertisement in the trade
magazine The Grocer: "With a launch burst of 550 TVRs - and £34m in
'premiumisation' opportunities - we're confident you'll rise to the
challenge". Don't worry if you didn't understand any of that - it's
incomprehensible to marketing professionals, too.
[For more, see http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/awards.html.]
3. Review: The Adventure of English
-------------------------------------------------------------------
British readers need no introduction to novelist and broadcaster
Melvyn Bragg: among many other activities, he is Controller of Arts
at London Weekend Television and president of the National Campaign
for the Arts. He has presented 25 radio programmes about English
under the punning title of The Routes of English; ITV has just
finished broadcasting his series telling the story of the evolution
of our language from earliest times. This is the book of the
television series.
It's a chronological journey from the genesis of the language in
the fifth century to the present day, along the way passing and
noting the key milestones, such as the growth of Old English and
the influence of King Alfred, the shock of the Norman invasion in
1066 that drove the native language from power and influence for
three centuries, and the resurgence of English after the loss of
England's possessions in France. He describes the influence of the
translators of the Bible such as Wycliffe and Tyndall and key
writers such as Shakespeare. Later chapters trace the energetic
growth of English in the New World, the West Indies, India and
Australia. He ends with a coda that suggests English is likely to
split into several varieties so that it will cease to be a lingua
franca for much of the world's population. He is not afraid to make
the journey in part a personal one, based in the Cumbrian dialect
of his youth in Wigton, a dialect that has within it more than an
echo of the Norsemen who colonised that part of the country before
the Norman Conquest.
Mr Bragg admits that he is no expert in the field. Sometimes this
results in his leaving the reader no wiser. He refers at one point
to the Great Vowel Shift which occurred between the late fourteenth
and late sixteenth centuries, making light of his lack of expertise
by quipping that it "can take a lifetime to investigate and another
to explain". It's true that academics are still working on it, but
it would have been nice if he had at least told the reader that it
was a process in which the long vowels in English shifted to the
values they have today, which is why Shakespeare sounds as though
he might be intelligible but Chaucer is a foreign language.
His section on slang is brief and misleading, as it is limited to
that of Cockneys, with a brief excursion into the slang of the
ancient universities; fascinating though those are, they represent
a minuscule part of the slang lexicon.
I spotted several etymological howlers in the TV programmes. So I
came to the book with forebodings, to find my fears confirmed. He
has uncritically accepted many common folk etymologies, such that
"highfalutin" is from the high, fluted smokestacks of Mississippi
river boats, that "nitty-gritty" is the detritus left in the bottom
of slave ships after a voyage, and that "the real McCoy" derives
from the cattle baron Joseph McCoy. He even believes that "tip" is
from the first letters of "To Insure Prompt (Service)". He devotes
more than a page to the tales told about "OK", without making it
clear that its origin in the presidential campaign of Martin van
Buren in 1840 has been accepted ever since Allan Walker Read
discovered it in the 1960s. He says firmly that Davy Crockett "was
one of the first exponents of 'Tall Talk' - using new words like
'skedaddle', 'hunky-dory' and 'splendiferous'", but in fact it was
later writers, trading on Crockett's reputation, who invented many
of the outrageous words often linked to his name (the first use of
"hunky-dory" we know about is from thirty years after Crockett's
death). He says that "to carry the can" derives from boys employed
in woollen mills to move the cylinders of spun yarn from machine to
machine (as this bit of misinformation in the television series was
accompanied by pictures of Quarry Bank Mill near Manchester, I know
which site guide told him that, because he told me the same story a
couple of months ago).
These faults diminish the book. That's a great pity, as Melvyn
Bragg has great skill as a populariser and he writes beautifully.
He is at his best when he explores the relationship between society
and language and when he focuses on the role that individuals have
played in influencing the growth of English. It's very sad that
what is otherwise an interesting and accessible work has been let
down by sloppy research.
[Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English: the Biography of a
Language, published by Hodder & Stoughton on 13 October 2003;
pp354; ISBN 0-340-82991-5; publisher's UK price GBP20.00. Available
from Hodder & Stoughton in all Commonwealth countries other than
Canada. To be published in North America by Arcade in Spring 2004.]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
UK: GBP14.00 (http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?)
DE: EUR 32,45 (http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?)
[Click on a link or paste it into your browser to order online. If
you do so you get World Wide Words a small commission that helps to
pay for the Web site and operating expenses. See also the Web site
page http:/www.worldwidewords.org/support.htm .]
4. Weird Words: Brummagem
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Of things that are cheap, showy, tawdry, or counterfeit.
The British Midlands city of Birmingham was at one time also called
"Brummagem", a local variant on its name. Although it has been a
major industrial city ever since the Industrial Revolution - in
1862 George Borrow described it as "the great workshop of England"
- its reputation was often for poor-quality goods. This all began
in the seventeenth century when it was no more than a village. In
1691 Guy Miege noted in his book The New State of England that it
was "particularly noted a few years ago for the counterfeit groats
made here, and from hence dispersed all over the Kingdom" (a groat
was a four-pence coin, of silver when genuine).
In the nineteenth century, great quantities of cheap plated goods,
such as trinkets and gilt jewellery, were being made in Birmingham.
As a result, its bad reputation resurfaced, so much so that its old
name came to be used figuratively for anything that was considered
tawdry, not just items of Birmingham manufacture. An example is in
a work of 1862, The Reminiscences of Captain Gronow: "The equipages
were generally much more gorgeous than at a later period, when
democracy invaded the parks, and introduced what may be termed a
'brummagem society,' with shabby-genteel carriages and servants".
The city's workmen were thought to be clumsy and unskilled, hence a
"Brummagem screwdriver" was a hammer (an insult that has been
applied to several other places and nationalities as well). The
days of such abuse are now long past, and few people associate the
ideas behind "Brummagem" with the modern city of Birmingham.
5. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. As a non-native speaker of the English language, I still wonder
where the phrase "Dear John letter" comes from. I have always taken
it to be a letter in which the recipient is told a love affair is
over, but I might be amiss. [Pien Metz]
A. No, you have it right. It's conventionally a letter from a woman
to a boyfriend or husband saying that all is over between them,
usually because the woman has found somebody else. A much more
recent phrase that reflects today's sexual equality is "Dear Jane
letter".
The expression seems from the evidence to have been invented by
Americans during the Second World War. At this time, thousands of
US servicemen were stationed overseas for long periods; many of
them found that absence didn't make the heart grow fonder. The
unhappy news was necessarily communicated in a letter. A writer in
the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, NY, summed it up in August
1945:
"Dear John," the letter began. "I have found someone else
whom I think the world of. I think the only way out is for
us to get a divorce," it said. They usually began like that,
those letters that told of infidelity on the part of the
wives of servicemen... The men called them "Dear Johns".
Why "Dear John"? That isn't entirely clear but a couple of pointers
give a plausible basis for it. "John" was a common generic name for
a man at this period (think also of terms like "John Doe" for an
unknown party to a legal action). Such letters were necessarily
written in a formal way, since any note of affection would
obviously have been out of place. So a serviceman getting a letter
from his wife or girlfriend that started so stiffly knew at once
that a certain kind of bad news had arrived.
A. FAQ of the week
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. What's the easiest way to change my subscription address?
A. Either go to http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm
and select the "change" option, or send the following message
to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org from the address at which
you are currently subscribed
CHANGE WORLDWIDEWORDS newaddr
replacing "newaddr" with your new address. The list server will
send a message to your new address, asking for confirmation of
the change. The change will take effect when you reply to this
message from your new address.
B. Subscription commands
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address, or subscribe,
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm You
can also send a gift subscription: see the same page for the link.
Or, you can send a message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org
from the address at which you are (or want to be) subscribed:
To leave, send: SIGNOFF WORLDWIDEWORDS
To join, send: SUBSCRIBE WORLDWIDEWORDS First-name Last-name
C. Useful URLs
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To order goods from Amazon, please use one of these links, which
gets World Wide Words a small commission at no extra cost to you:
AMAZON USA: http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?QA
AMAZON UK: http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?JZ
AMAZON CANADA: http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?MG
AMAZON GERMANY: http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?DX
The back-issues archive for World Wide Words is at
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/worldwidewords.html
To contribute by credit card via PayPal to the upkeep of World Wide
Words, enter this short-form URL into your browser:
http://www.quinion.com/cgi-bin/r.pl?PP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2003. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at <http://www.worldwidewords.org>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online
newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include
this note and the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed
publications or on Web sites requires prior permission, for which
you should contact TheEditor at worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------