World Wide Words -- 28 Jun 03
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 27 19:43:21 UTC 2003
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 347 Saturday 28 June 2003
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Sent each Saturday to 16,000+ 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. Topical Words: Horlicks.
3. Turns of Phrase: Eco-cement.
4. Weird Words: Magiric.
5. Sic!
6. Q&A: Gander.
7. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.
C. FAQ of the week.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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CACHINNATORY The pronunciation given for this word last week was
incorrect. It should have been /'kakIn,eIt at rI/.
HE KNOWS HIS ONIONS Many subscribers pointed out a similar French
expression, "Occupe-toi de tes oignons", literally "occupy yourself
with your onions", but meaning "mind your own business". It looks
as though there might be a connection, but accidental similarities
between languages are surprisingly common and in this case there
seems to be no link.
2. Topical Words: Horlicks
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On Wednesday of this week, the House of Commons foreign affairs
select committee asked Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary,
about a document the Government published in February on the threat
posed by Iraq's weapons (this was the one that borrowed material
without attribution from a PhD thesis found on the Internet). Mr
Straw described its creation as "a complete Horlicks".
Commentators - and not only the foreign ones - were deeply puzzled
by Mr Straw's sudden descent into the demotic. What had the trade
name of a "nourishing malted food drink", a pre-bedtime beverage
that has been around since the 1870s, to do with descriptions of
Iraq? And what would James and William Horlick of Gloucestershire
think about the borrowing of their name for a bit of deprecatory
slang? These are deep questions.
Part of the problem is that Mr Straw, like so many older people
trying to lighten a difficult situation through slang, was using a
term that flowered in the nation's vocabulary in the 1980s and
1990s but which is outmoded. It is said to have been a "society"
term; other evidence suggests it might have come out of the army,
perhaps said by a sergeant to a platoon commander after a fouled-up
exercise, as in "You made a right horlicks of that, sir". Either
way, younger people seem not to know it these days. Its meaning in
this context, to put it politely, is "a mess".
The experts are cautious about its origins. I've found a suggestion
that it came from a TV advert of the 1980s for Horlicks in which a
harassed housewife, having had a dreadful day in which everything
goes wrong and is a complete mess, finally relaxes with a cup of
the brew that soothes and refreshes. This is stretching the meaning
more than a little, so I suspect this is just a folk etymology.
Nicholas Sheering of the Oxford English Dictionary found this in
the Financial Times of 27 October 1983: "'Making a Horlicks of it,'
has passed into common language to mean making a mess, because
impatient Horlicks-makers will often not follow the directions on
the label and end up with a very lumpy drink". I wonder ... it
sounds too pat to be entirely plausible. But it does show the term
started life longer ago than most people think.
Whatever its origin, it became a euphemistic substitution. Think of
the way you might shout "sugar!" instead of another term when you
drop something on your foot. In our case, "Horlicks" replaces
"bollocks" (also spelled "ballocks", "bollux" and "bollix"), which
literally identifies the testicles, but which for the past half
century or has been a British emphatic interjection to the effect
that something is total nonsense or utter rubbish. The relevant
expression here is "make a bollocks of something" meaning to ruin
it or make a mess of it - another term well-known in the military.
We may have got this from Australia, since it's recorded there in
1919 in a book called Digger Dialect.
One thing is certain: neither the original dossier nor Jack Straw's
emphatic repudiation of it has done anything to soothe and refresh
a government in turmoil.
3. Turns of Phrase: Eco-cement
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It's a brave man who challenges the world-wide cement industry,
which produces about a thousand million tonnes of the stuff every
year. All of it is Portland cement, invented by a Leeds stonemason
named Joseph Aspdin two centuries ago (it was called that because
its finish was thought to resemble stone from quarries at Portland
in Dorset). Portland cement is made by cooking a mixture of chalk
or limestone with clay in a kiln at high temperatures, a process
that gives off large amounts of carbon dioxide. Now John Harrison,
an inventor from Tasmania, has found a way to make a cement that's
more ecologically acceptable. He replaces the calcium-based lime
with its magnesium equivalent, magnesite. This can be kilned at a
much lower temperature, so needing less fuel; more importantly it
rapidly absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air when
it sets and cures (Portland cement does this, too, but much more
slowly). Also, the new eco-cement permits large amounts of organic
waste material to be incorporated. The result, Mr Harrison claims,
is a cement that can act as a net carbon dioxide absorber; in other
words, putting up a building using his cement would be much like
planting a grove of trees.
And if eco-cements gained a foothold in our cities, they could
immediately reduce the cement industry's contribution to global
warming, reabsorbing much of what was emitted in their creation.
[Toronto Star, 27 Jul. 2002]
Basic eco-cement produces about a tenth as much carbon dioxide as
regular Portland cement. When organic material such as hemp fibre
is added, a concrete block can be built that is a net carbon sink.
[Guardian, 28 May 2003]
4. Weird Words: Magiric /m@'dZaIrIk/
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Relating to cooking.
Nothing to do with magic, at least etymologically speaking, though
as a non-cook I often feel the products of my wife's kitchen must
have been created by some such process. It's from "mageirikos", a
classical Greek adjective referring to cooking, or describing
somebody who is skilled in that art. The English word is so rare
that I can find no example other than the one from 1853 quoted in
the Oxford English Dictionary; this is from Alexis Soyer's The
Pantropheon: or History of Food and its Preparation in which he
says "The magiric science, therefore, began in the year of the
world 1656", an assertion that may be thought contentious. Derived
from it are "mageirics", a usefully obscure term for the art of
cooking, and "mageirocophobia", fear of cooking, a common
affliction.
5. Sic!
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Derrick Hurlin found a classic misplaced modifier in an issue of
the Pretoria News: "My boyfriend ... proposed to me after a three-
year relationship on a bridge in the Kruger Park at sunset". Not in
front of the lions, lady.
Elias Friedman saw a sign in the exit lane of the public parking
garage at Hartford Hospital, Connecticut. It read, "We apologize
for any delays due to excessive amounts of traffic. We are making
every effort to speed your exit and time". Mr Friedman commented,
"While Hartford Hospital is a research hospital, I was never aware
that they were researching quantum physics!"
Newspapers have been having fun with the name of the Web site set
up by the British energy firm PowerGen, which is investing in Italy
and has created the wonderful www.powergenitalia.com (it is a real
Web site, I can confirm, though not always easy to access). But you
might prefer instead www.crotch-partnership.co.uk, which isn't what
you're thinking it is, unless you know it's a firm of solicitors in
Norwich. Another odd one is http://www.whorepresents.com/, at which
you can find an actor's representative.
6. Q&A
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Q. What is the origin of "take a gander", meaning to have a look at
something? [Don Wilkins, Australia]
A. In the parody of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four that Spike
Milligan wrote for the Goon Show in 1955, he has Harry Secombe
entering an antique shop: "Good evening. Do you mind if I take a
gander around the shop?" to which shopkeeper Crun replies, "No, as
long as it's housetrained."
Sometimes my personal enthusiasm for old BBC radio comedy shows
bursts out uncontrollably ... but that Goonish joke does make the
point that "to take a gander" is as weird a formation as one might
encounter anywhere. What can a male goose possibly have to do with
looking at something?
A quick, er, gander at the word's history is illuminating. It seems
the verb "to gander" in this sense is actually American in origin,
something I find more than a little surprising, because it sounds
English to me. A little more delving, however, shows that the roots
of the expression are indeed from this side of the pond. A work of
1887, The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, says, "Gonder, to stretch
the neck like a gander, to stand at gaze". The next known example
is from the Cincinnati Enquirer of 9 May 1903: "Gander, to stretch
or rubber your neck".
There's your source. Think of a gaggle of farmyard geese, wandering
about in their typically aimless and stupid way, poking their noses
in everywhere and twisting their necks to stare at anything that
might be interesting. Geese are the archetypal rubberneckers. No
doubt "to gander" became the term because "to goose" had already
been borrowed; this was taken from the way that the birds were
known to put their beaks embarrassingly - and sometimes painfully -
into one's more private places.
The form you quote, "to take a gander", is recorded from the USA
around 1914; here, "gander" is a noun in the sense of a inquisitive
look. In the century since, that form has become much more common
while the verb has lost ground.
7. Endnote
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"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure,
and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is
rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It
becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but
the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have
foolish thoughts." [George Orwell, Politics and the English
Language, first published in Horizon (1946)]
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