World Wide Words -- 22 Feb 03

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 329        Saturday 22 February 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. Turns of Phrase: Nutrigenomics.
3. Topical Words: Credible.
4. Weird Words: Willy-nilly.
5. Q&A: Go south; Make no bones about it.
6. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.


1. Feedback, notes and comments
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OUT THERE  A number of Canadian subscribers attempted to register
at the dialect site I listed last week, which describes itself on
its home page as "designed for speakers of North American English",
but found to their surprise and disgruntlement on trying to take
the test that they were not considered to be North American. Not
being in that category, I didn't try the test, so didn't discover
the error. I did assume, though, that a linguistic site would know
what it meant when it wrote "North American English"!


2. Turns of Phrase: Nutrigenomics
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Yet another term in "-genomics" for us to add to pharmacogenomics,
toxicogenomics, chemogenomics and even aromagenomics. Our current
obsession with genes is reflected in the growing list of words that
borrow the word "genomics", the study of the human genome, to make
fashionable but often unlovely neologisms.

This term refers to the study of our food and how it influences our
health through interactions with our personal genetic make-up. It
is suggested, in the hand-waving way of futurist commentators in
this field, that one day many of our ailments might be treated not
with drugs but with special diets. However, the complexity of the
factors influencing health - not merely diet and heredity, but also
economic and social conditions, culture and behaviour - are likely
to make it difficult to isolate the influences of food from all the
others.

Though it is often confused with "nutritional genomics", from which
the name seems to be derived, the latter speciality usually refers
instead to the genetic manipulation of plants so that they generate
valuable vitamins and minerals to improve diet.

"Nutrigenomics" researchers hope to do away with such blanket
generalizations and instead target diets to specific people.
                                              [Newsweek, Sep. 2002]

Nutrigenomics is the study of how different foods can interact with
particular genes to increase the risk of diseases such as type 2
diabetes, obesity, heart disease and some cancers.
                            [United Press International, Jan. 2003]


3. Topical Words: Credible
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Heavily armed soldiers with tanks surrounded Heathrow airport last
week as a result of what was described as a "credible threat" from
terrorists to the security of aircraft and passengers.

"Credible" seems here to be used in the way that people have
employed it ever since it appeared in the English language in the
fourteenth century: of something that is convincing or is capable
of being believed. (It came from Latin "credibilis", worthy of
being believed, from the verb "credere", to believe.)

At least, we have to assume that the intelligence reports on which
the mobilisation was based do fall into this category. I suspect,
though, that the speaker had in mind a subtly different sense of
the word that grew up in the Cold War years, sometime before 1960.
A credible threat was one the other side would find believable, and
a credible nuclear deterrent was one that was effective in keeping
the other guys in line because they would believe its owners were
ready and willing to use it. So, something that was credible was
able to persuade people that some event would happen.

In the middle 1960s, American politicians borrowed that extended
sense for "credibility gap", the chasm between the true facts and
what people believe them to be, especially situations in which
people refuse to take official statements at their face value, a
situation that is all too evident today following last weekend's
world-wide peace marches. It was only from the late 1970s onwards,
though, that young people borrowed the word in a much weakened
sense to make "street credibility", or "street cred", to mean, not
that you are believable, but that you are worthy of the respect of
your peers.

Despite these modern examples, it is a little formal and old-
fashioned, in particular when it refers to the idea of personal
trustworthiness in semi-archaic terms like "credible witness". It
may be a sign of our distrustful age - or perhaps only of the
hyperbole of advertisers - that the negative is much more common: a
quick look at the Web through Google showed five times as many
instances of "incredible" as "credible".


4. Weird Words: Willy-nilly
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Whether one likes it or not; haphazardly.

The original sense of this odd word appears at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, when people used it to suggest that something
must be done no matter whether one is willing or unwilling, whether
one wants to or not. It's a modified form of an older phrase that
is variously expressed as "will I, nill I" or "will ye, nill ye",
or sometimes as "nilling willing".

"Will" here is used in its sense of wanting to do something, to
wish or desire that something should happen (when you make your
will, you are using the same sense: you are expressing your wishes
for the distribution of your goods after you die). "Nill" is very
old, known before the Norman Conquest, but has long since vanished
from the language. It was the opposite of "will", so to nill is to
want not to do something, to refuse or reject some course of
action.

So "will I, nill I" can be expanded into "be I willing, be I
unwilling", combining the two sentiments with the implication that
it doesn't much matter what you feel. More recently, this conflict
gave rise to an implication that a person was not sure whether to
do something, and so suggested he was undecided or indecisive. Even
more recently, the associated sense has grown up of embarking on
some project without planning or in a disorganised way.


5. Q&A
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Q. When I (in the UK) refer to something as having been destroyed
or lost or otherwise rendered permanently unserviceable, I say it's
"gone west". In similar circumstances Alistair Cooke (speaking from
the USA) talks about things "going south". Where do "going west"
and "going south" spring from (my dictionary gives several possible
alternatives for "west", but does not recognise "south"); and are
there differences (in meaning or usage) between these two phrases?
[Alison Hill, Devon]

A. They mean the same thing, but "go south" has largely supplanted
the older "go west" in the USA and seems likely to do so everywhere
else fairly soon. In Britain, younger people use "go south", so
leaving us older ones sounding geographically challenged.

Let's take them in order. The origins of "go west" - meaning to
die, perish, or disappear - seems anciently to be connected with
the direction of the setting sun, symbolising the end of the day
and so figuratively the end of one's life. "Going west" has been
linked to dying in English since the sixteenth century, though the
idea must surely be much older. It is sometimes said that it refers
to the ride westwards that condemned prisoners in London took along
Holborn from Newgate Prison to the gibbet at Tyburn, where Marble
Arch now stands. My own feeling, not supported by much in the way
of evidence, is that this story, even if true, is a particular
application of an older viewpoint.

There's a typically American association, of course, summed up in
the exhortation to "Go west, young man, go west!", often attributed
to Horace Greeley, but actually said by John Soule, a newspaperman
in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1851. His meaning was not the negative
one of death or dissolution, but one of hope to young men (only by
implication young women, too) to make their way west as pioneers
and take up a new life of promise. However, to the relatives and
friends of the departing hopefuls back East, it must have seemed a
little like a premature death, since they were unlikely ever to see
them again.

The shift in sense of "go west" to one suggesting something had
terminally broken down is much more recent: the big Oxford English
Dictionary has no examples before 1919.

Contrast that with "go south", which is first recorded in the
1970s, though it was rare until the beginning of the 1990s, after
which it experienced explosive growth. The early evidence suggests
it was business jargon: Random House Dictionaries say their first
example is from Business Week in September 1974: "The market then
rallies, falls back to test its low - and just keeps 'heading
South,' as they say on the Street." Note the quote marks around the
phrase, showing that the writer considers it slang. The phrase
seems to have later been taken over into technical fields such as
computing (which needs as many terms for equipment and software
failure as it can find), where significant numbers of examples
appeared from the early 1990s on.

Where did it come from? My guess is that it's based on graphical
images. Think of sales charts that show worse results as a line
going downwards (even at times figuratively "through the floor"),
using an ancient convention that regards height as good and depth
as bad. Then combine that with maps, which by an equally ancient
convention have north at the top. So a firm that was failing had
its sales going figuratively in a southerly direction.

Why are we changing over? The associations of death and decay with
a westwards direction have been growing less strong with time, and
have survived only through a conventional idiom. The new expression
has vigour and seems certain to prevail.

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Q. What is the origin of the expression "make no bones about it"?
[Jean Cantlay, Australia]

A. This is so ancient, dating practically from time immemorial,
that it has long since achieved the status of an idiom. When you
think about it, the saying is certainly odd. Why should the notion
of having no hesitation or scruples in speaking about or dealing
with some matter, no matter how awkward or unpleasant, have any
connections with bones?

It has been argued that the phrase had its origin in dice games,
since dice have called "bones" since the fourteenth century at the
latest, for the good reason that they were originally carved from
bone. The image presumably is that the player doesn't stop to call
on Dame Fortune or talk to the dice (after the manner of craps
players: "Baby needs new shoes!") but just rolls them.

A more probable, but somewhat surprising, origin is from the meal
table. The oldest version of the expression is "to find bones in
something", meaning to find a difficulty or objection in some
course of action. The first example is from one of the Paston
letters of 1459. It seems to have been linked especially with soup:
to have a bone in that certainly presented difficulties in eating
it. To "find no bones" in something meant that you had no problems
or difficulties. The idiom seems to have grown out of that.


6. Endnote
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"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
[Rudyard Kipling, "The Jungle Book" (1894).]


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