World Wide Words -- 29 Nov 03
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 28 20:27:30 UTC 2003
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 369 Saturday 29 November 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. Turns of Phrase: Drive-by-wire.
3. Sic!
4. Weird Words: Unobtanium.
5. Q&A: Jumbo.
A. FAQ of the week.
B. Subscription commands.
C. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
TIFFIN Manoj Nair added this word picture to my description of the
background to this word in modern India: "There are what are called
'Tiffin trains' in Mumbai, these being suburban trains which run at
the post morning rush time and primarily take the lunch boxes from
the housewives to the husbands. You will frequently find entire
train coaches full of tiffin-wallahs and the tiffin bags. In cities
like Mumbai, where people may have neither the time to spare nor
the money to spend, it becomes very critical that the midday meal
makes its appearance right at the desktop and right at the
appointed time. It is a modern wonder".
Balaraman Ravindran wrote of a broader sense of the word that is
now common: "I am not sure how it is in the rest of India, but in
the South we now use it to mean any light meal as opposed to the
three-course once-a-day meal. The larger meal might be brunch,
lunch or dinner depending on the individual family, but never
breakfast. Also the word has come to apply to the typical foods
that comprise these light meals". Manoj Nair recalls: "I did my
Engineering degree in Chennai (former Madras) and in my hostel we
used to come over for evening tea at around 4:15pm. Along with the
Tea, we were served light eatables, also called 'Tiffin'".
Many sharp-eyed subscribers pointed out that in that piece I used
the word "forebear" (an ancestor) when I meant "forbear" (refrain).
To those who asked how I could do such a thing, I was tempted to
borrow the late, great Dr Johnson's riposte to a woman who asked
why he had defined "pastern" in his Dictionary to mean the knee of
a horse: "Ignorance, dear Madam, pure ignorance". But no, it was
just a typographical error.
2. Turns of Phrase: Drive-by-wire
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The idea is to remove the mechanical linkages between the controls
of a car and the devices that actually do the work. Instead of
operating the steering and brakes directly, the controls would send
commands to a central computer, which would instruct the car what
to do.
The great advantage being put forward for this is that the computer
is able to make the steering, suspension and brakes work together
to give the car better handling, especially in bad road conditions,
to give better fuel consumption, and to react to emergencies faster
than a human driver could. Though the vehicle would look much the
same, it would be transformed into what one industry expert calls
"a computer network with a car wrapped round it".
The problem for car manufacturers, who are actively researching the
systems, is that getting them right is likely to be much less of a
problem than convincing drivers - familiar with crashing computers
at home - that their cars won't do the same.
It's no accident that the term sounds like "fly-by-wire", which is
a method of controlling commercial aircraft that has been in use
for more than a decade. The term "drive-by-wire" has been around
since the middle 1990s, though in early examples it could instead
refer to methods of automatic steering using circuits embedded in
the road surface.
>>> From New Scientist, 8 Nov. 2003: As far as the industry is
concerned, it is only a matter of time before drive-by-wire becomes
standard. But some safety experts are questioning the wisdom of
this radical change. They point out that fly-by-wire has a bumpy
track record. Will the car industry learn from these mistakes, they
ask, or make them all over again?
>>> From Business Wire, 12 Dec. 2002: Drive-by-wire may have to be
proven first in a secondary system, such as the parking brake,
before consumers grow more comfortable with the idea of replacing
the traditional primary control systems in their vehicles.
3. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Koppel found a job ad for the British Lung Foundation (whose
significance for North Americans depends on their knowing that the
word "carer" is British for what they call a caregiver): "It states
that 'The British Lung Foundation is a rapidly expanding dynamic
charity with an enthusiastic team of staff aiming to improve the
lives of those suffering from lung disease and their carers'. I'm
not sure what their carers are doing to them, but it's a good job
that the BLF is there to help them".
4. Weird Words: Unobtanium
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A material that is unobtainable, often because it doesn't exist.
The name combines "unobtainable" with the "-ium" suffix that marks
the names of chemical elements. It refers to some useful material
that suffers from the serious disadvantage that it either doesn't
(yet) exist, or that it does exist but is so rare that even folding
money can't get you any. It's a potent excuse for non-delivery: if
only you had some unobtanium, you say apologetically, creating the
required result would be easy-peasy; without it, it's impossible.
The appeal of the word "unobtanium" is so great that at least two
manufacturers in the US have in recent years used it for their
products - for example, a maker of sunglasses has trademarked it
for earpieces. You might regard this as a triumph of the forces of
promotion and PR over those of technology. The firm claims a first
use of the name in 1987, which is also the date of the earliest
example I can find online, though it is surely older.
One must be careful to distinguish between "unobtanium" and
"handwavium". Unobtanium is something that might conceivably exist.
Contrariwise, handwavium refers to a way of circumventing a problem
by breaking the laws of physics, as if one might banish an
insuperable objection by waving a hand at it. Bad science-fiction
stories often employ handwavium to solve knotty problems. Star Trek
is full of such devices, such as the replicator, the transporter or
the phaser (which neatly disintegrates a person without a hint of
energy release or even a puff of steam). Any writer who creates a
faster-than-light space drive, for example, is employing
handwavium, though this device is so consecrated by its widespread
use and utility as to be acceptable within the SF genre.
5. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I want to find the origins of "jumbo", as in "jumbo sausage" for
example. Was it an invention from "jumbo jets"? Any help to satisfy
my curiosity would be great. [Andrew Baker]
A. Many people, especially here in Britain, would immediately think
of the famous African elephant of that name at London Zoo.
Jumbo arrived from Paris on 26 June 1865 and he remained in London
for years, giving rides to thousands of children and becoming a
great favourite with the public. When fully grown he was the
largest elephant known at the time, standing 12 feet tall and
weighing over six tons. However, the Zoo became worried that Jumbo
was getting very cantankerous and difficult (bull elephants are
notoriously hard to keep captive) and that he would become a danger
to his keeper and to the public. The Zoo sold him to Barnum and
Bailey's Circus in 1882 (he was sadly to be killed by a train in
Ontario three years later).
The sale aroused huge passion and indignation, including a protest
from Queen Victoria. You can judge his popularity from a comment in
Mark Twain's Following the Equator about Barnum's intending
purchase of him: "Jamrach said it was no use to think about it;
that Jumbo was as popular as the Prince of Wales and the Zoo
wouldn't dare to sell him; all England would be outraged at the
idea; Jumbo was an English institution; he was part of the national
glory; one might as well think of buying the Nelson monument".
Jumbo the giant elephant certainly popularised the name as an
epithet for something of large size and you can find many examples
recorded from the 1880s onwards. His influence was greatest in
North America, where Jumbo became a great attraction during his
short residence (Thomas Alva Edison, always the publicity hound
ready to jump on a popular bandwagon, named one of his new electric
dynamos "Jumbo" in 1884). The word has been around ever since,
especially in North America, as a neat way to describe anything
large of its type, and led to compounds like "jumboburger", "jumbo-
sized", and "jumbo pack". Walt Disney clearly had him in mind when
he named his cartoon elephant Dumbo. However, the introduction of
the "jumbo jet" in the 1960s helped to move the word into
international English and to popularise it more widely.
Jumbo the elephant, though, is often said not to be the origin of
jumbo the word, because it has been found in an 1823 work about
racing in reference to a big clumsy person. However, this appears
just once, with no further examples turning up until after Jumbo
had become famous. It is possible that the older word was not in
fact the source (though we have to remember that slang terms were
often very badly recorded at this period). It's also suggested that
Jumbo got his name from "mumbo-jumbo", a word for a West African
deity (inappropriate, as it happens, because Jumbo had been
captured on the other side of the continent). Oddly, though neatly,
"mumbo-jumbo" is also thought to be the origin of the earlier slang
"jumbo".
The most plausible suggestion is that given in W P Jolly's book of
1976 about Jumbo. He says that his keeper at London Zoo gave him
that name - soon after he arrived - from the Zulu "jumba", a large
packet or parcel (which he certainly was: even as a rather sick
four-year-old, Jumbo was five feet high and weighed about half a
ton).
A. FAQ of the week
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. When I go away for a while, do I have to leave the list to stop
newsletters coming?
A. By no means. There's a special command that you can send to the
list server to tell it to suspend mailings. This saves you the
hassle of leaving and rejoining. All you have to do is send a
message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org from the e-mail
account at which you receive the newsletters. The body of the
message should contain the command:
SET WORLDWIDEWORDS NOMAIL
If possible, there should be no other text in the body of your
message (turn off your signature if you can) or at least insert
a couple of blank lines after the command.
When you return, send another message:
SET WORLDWIDEWORDS MAIL
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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 .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list