World Wide Words -- 22 Nov 03
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 21 20:02:55 UTC 2003
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 368 Saturday 22 November 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: Iraqification.
3. Weird Words: Tiffin.
4. Sic!
5. Q&A: Dealybob.
6. The Annual Fund Drive Is Over.
7. Q&A: Year's mind.
A. FAQ of the week.
B. Subscription commands.
C. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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VOLVELLE Ivy Vann tells me that versions of these, called sizing
wheels, are still used in newspaper layout work: "They tell you the
percentage of change in size (up or down) when you match the object
in question's current size with the size you wish it to be".
MCJOB Many American subscribers mentioned that "McMansion" has a
different sense for them to the one that I gave. David Coe painted
a word picture from a British perspective: "My partner is American
and her family lives in New Jersey. They use the term to connote a
style of nouveau-riche, over-sized house on a small plot cheek-by-
jowl with similar houses in a development. They generally feature
over-large doors, an atrium entrance hall, all en-suite bathrooms,
gold fittings and often pillared porticoes with heraldic stone
animals". Del Shortliffe added that, "These homes earn the prefix
'Mc-' because they are generic in design and incredibly quick in
construction - as if produced on a conveyer belt for a status-
conscious client unconcerned with aesthetic nutrition".
2. Turns of Phrase: Iraqification
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The US Administration's current policy in Iraq is summed up by this
word, which encapsulates the idea that power and control should be
transferred to local politicians and armed forces as quickly as
possible. It's on record earlier in the year, before the invasion
of Iraq, but it only began to appear frequently in the American and
international press quite recently. Its use was stimulated further
by the news a week ago of a shift in US policy towards reducing the
period of occupation, involving the speeding up of the creation of
a new constitution and the holding of elections by June 2004. The
training schedules of recruits from the Iraqi police and the Iraqi
army are also to be accelerated. One aim is to bring home as many
US and British troops as can be spared as quickly as possible. For
some commentators the term is unfortunate, as it evokes memories of
an unsuccessful previous attempt at a policy of similar kind - the
Vietnamisation policy of President Nixon of the late 1960s and
early 1970s.
>>> From Newsweek, 17 Nov. 2003: And while Rumsfeld is routinely
restaffing community draft boards, no one is seriously considering
that idea - yet. But the Pentagon chief conceded that McCain was
right to warn him against signaling U.S. retreat through
"Iraqification."
>>> From the Washington Post, 9 Nov. 20003: While Iraqification
will not solve our immediate security problems, we must move more
quickly to transfer meaningful political authority to Iraqi
leaders.
3. Weird Words: Tiffin
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Lunch.
This word is still very much alive in its traditional heartland of
urban India. Lunches are often cooked at home by workers' wives and
then transported perhaps 20 or 30 miles to their places of work by
tiffin-wallahs, each three-tiered tiffin-carrier probably passing
through several hands in the process.
"Tiffin" is a word that perhaps more than any other evokes British
India. It entered the language at the very beginning of the
nineteenth century, perhaps because the fashion for eating dinner
mid-afternoon was giving way to a main meal taken later in the day,
requiring a lighter midday meal and a name for it. Why the much
older "luncheon" or "lunch" wasn't used isn't clear. Instead, the
English in India borrowed "tiffing", an old English dialect or
slang word for taking a little drink or sip. (I forebear from
suggesting that the habit among some sahibs of drinking their lunch
had something to do with the popularity of the term.)
An early example is from a guide book, Cordiner's Ceylon, of 1808:
"Many persons are in the habit of sitting down to a repast at one
o'clock, which is called tiffen, and is in fact an early dinner".
4. Sic!
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David McKeegan spotted a sign prominently displayed at his local
leisure club's swimming pool. It reads as follows: "Can members
please shower before entering the pool or spa as it upsets the
chemical balance".
Duane Campbell sometimes watches American TV ads in open-mouthed
astonishment: "There is an eye moisturizer being advertised now,
and I watched the commercial, pen in hand, several times to make
sure I got this right. It contains 'biologic aqua absolute standard
premium grade of pure all natural water'".
5. Q&A
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Q. What is the meaning of "dealybob"? Where did the word originate?
[Imelda Anwar, Singapore]
A. This puzzled me, too, since I'd never come across the word. An
online search suggested that it could be one of those hand-waving
words for a nameless small object or something whose name for the
moment one can't remember, perhaps a thingummy or thingamajig, a
whatsisname, or a doohickey ("Put this dealybob on the end of a
hose, feed it into the drain pipe and turn on the water"). I've
also found it used for some unclassifiable event or activity ("Data
goes on a long, pointless Method Acting dealybob in this last-
season episode"). It seems to be originally and mainly American.
As so often, it's hard to find out where it comes from, though it's
plausibly suggested that it derives from "deal". Several slang
senses in American English are based on its meaning of a business
agreement or transaction. One of them is some unspecified action or
turn of events, as in expressions like "what's the deal?", which
can mean "what's going on?". By the 1940s "deal" could refer to any
unspecified thing or person. The next step was to put "-y" on the
end to turn it into a sort of diminutive, and then "-bob" was added
as a meaningless flourish or ornament, presumably from one or other
of the expressions that contain it, like the now outmoded
"thingumbob". So Americans ended up with "dealybob".
The first part of the word seems to have been borrowed for two US
trade names, although in a slightly different spelling. In the
1960s a "deelybobber" was a type of construction toy. In the 1980s
the same name (though often spelled "deelybopper") was applied to
that daft headwear that consisted of two balls on flexible antennae
attached to a band. Though both words are in the OED, neither is
listed in any American dictionary, most probably because their
periods of fashion were too short-lived to register in any
dictionary that takes a snapshot of the current state of the
language.
6. The Annual Fund Drive Is Over
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Very many thanks to all those who have contributed through PayPal,
or by post or electronic transfer. I was going to go on asking for
contributions for another couple of weeks, but you have been so
generous that to continue is unnecessary!
Apart from paying the costs of operating the Web site, I shall be
using part of your contributions to make a donation to the costs of
operating the list server at the LINGUIST list, through which this
newsletter is distributed each week. I've also been able at last to
purchase several desirable but expensive reference works, including
the four volumes so far published of the Dictionary of American
Regional English.
Thank you all again for your help. It is greatly appreciated, as
are your many kind comments about the newsletter.
7. Q&A
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Q. In the prayers-for-the-people section of our Episcopal service,
the priest will include someone who has died and will mention, for
example, "John Doe, whose year's mind falls on this day". I asked
him the derivation of that phrase and he didn't know. Any ideas?
[W.D. Lawrence]
A. I'm not surprised your pastor didn't know the derivation. It's a
phrase that went out of popular use several centuries ago and
survives only in this very special ritual situation.
The first thing to realise is that "mind" here is a reference to
remembrance or commemoration. It's a relative of phrases like "time
out of mind" (time immemorial), or the old English proverb "out of
sight, out of mind", or when you say "that puts me in mind of ..."
or in the idiom "to call to mind" (which gives the clue why "mind"
should be equated with memory).
A "mind" was once an act of memory or recollection, though it
became obsolete in this sense about five centuries ago. It survives
in this ecclesiastical phrase to refer to an act of commemoration
of a departed soul, in "year's mind" for a requiem sung on the
anniversary of his or her funeral, or perhaps a mention in prayers.
There was not only a "year's mind" but also "twelvemonth's mind"
and "month's mind".
However, this last phrase could also have the sense of an earnest
desire or longing, a usage that turns up in Shakespeare and many
other places, though it went out of use in standard English in the
nineteenth century. For example, in Tobias Smollett's Humphry
Clinker (1771), "The humour seems to be infectious; for Clinker,
alias Loyd, has a month's mind to play the fool, in the same
fashion, with Mrs Winifred Jenkins".
A. FAQ of the week
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