World Wide Words -- 17 Apr 04
Michael Quinion
TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 16 18:03:36 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 388 Saturday 17 April 2004
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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: Psytrance.
3. Weird Words: Estovers.
4. Noted this week.
5. Q&A: Silver bullet.
6. Sic!
7. Q&A: Diddler.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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FOLDEROL A cascade of gently reproving messages arrived concerning
the words I quoted from the Pogo comic strip, "Deck the halls with
Boston Charlie, / Walla Walla Wash, and Kalamazoo". All pointed out
that the lyric may be nonsense but that the words in it are real.
My knowledge of US geography has improved as a result to the extent
that I now realise that Walla Walla is a real place in Washington
state. And having now found online a reproduction of the actual
comic strip, all of you who told me that in any case it should be
"Deck us all with Boston Charlie" were proved right.
SPAM FILTERS If you didn't get last week's issue, it was because
it triggered a lot of spam filters. Many objected to my reference
to n*k*d w*m*n (in the piece on body sushi). Others regarded the
piece on the name of a type of pharmaceutical as evidence that it
was drug-related spam. We really have got to a situation in which
the cure is at least as bad as the disease.
2. Turns of Phrase: Psytrance
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By the time the names for musical styles hit the mainstream press
they're often about to go out of fashion. However, a festival of
"psytrance" music recently held in Brixton, south London, suggests
that this genre is moving out of specialist clubs, away from the
meditation and yoga crowd, and is about to become more widely
popular. The Glastonbury Festival will devote a whole day to it
this summer. It has had various names, such as "Goa trance" and
"psychedelic trance". As these names suggest, it's a blend of
psychedelic and trance music, essentially electronic in nature with
a thumping beat and highly repetitive style which makes the average
listener drift into a dissociated state. The reference to Goa is
not accidental: it was originally very much linked to blissed-out
hippies swaying to the beat on the beaches of south India.
3. Weird Words: Estovers
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An ancient right to take timber for certain purposes.
This is one of the rights that were granted to some tenants under
the medieval feudal system; it allowed them to take wood from the
estates of the manor. It has almost totally died out except as a
esoteric historical term, though a very few people still retain the
right, for example in the ancient New Forest in southern England
(which was indeed once new, but that was shortly after the Norman
Conquest, more than 900 years ago). It's usually described as the
right to take dead wood for fuel. This was certainly one of its
meanings (though the supposed rule that you were allowed to take
dead branches "by hook or by crook", that is, by using only a blunt
instrument to pull down dead wood, is almost certainly a folk
etymology, as even the earliest recorded examples of that phrase
show it being used in the modern sense of "by any means possible").
However, estovers was a much broader term than that. It encompassed
any legitimate cutting of timber, for a variety of purposes. Before
the word came into the language in the thirteenth century, such a
right was usually called a "boot" or a "bote", from Old English
"bot", an expiation, compensation or remedy, literally a making
better. (Our fossil phrase "to boot", as well as or in addition to,
comes from the same source.) In this situation it meant something
useful or profitable. Examples were "housebote", the right to take
timber with which to repair your house; "haybote" or "hedgebote",
to repair fences, and "ploughbote", to repair agricultural
implements. Another was "firebote", which was the one that referred
specifically to fuel.
"Estovers" is from Old French "estovoir", to be necessary. So they
were literally the necessities allowed by law. In later centuries,
the term was extended to refer to an allowance of food and clothing
to imprisoned felons, and to a pension given to a widow.
4. Noted this week
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SINDONOLOGY A few newspapers employed this rare word last Tuesday
in reports that Italian scientists have found a ghostly image on
the back of the Turin Shroud. The experts who study the shroud are
called "sindonologists" and the field is "sindonology". Both words
are from Greek "sindon", a shroud.
5. Q&A
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Q. On 8 April, the US National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice,
told a national commission that "there was no silver bullet that
could have prevented" the attacks of 11 September 2001. What is a
"silver bullet"? Where does it originate? [Gerald Guo, Taiwan;
related questions came from Tony Nolan, Jim Williams and others.]
A. Dr Rice's comments were widely reported and brought the phrase
to the notice of many people who hadn't previously encountered it.
Americans frequently use it to refer to some simple and seemingly
magical solution to a complicated problem.
We have to look into European folklore to find out where it comes
from. There are lots of stories involving silver bullets as the way
to kill some supernatural enemy. Werewolves were believed to have
been given the power to change form by the Devil in return for
acting as his servants. Nothing ordinary could kill one - only a
silver bullet would do it. Basically, what a stake through the
heart was to a vampire, a silver bullet was to a werewolf.
Later, the same idea was applied to anything supernatural. Some of
the legends say that a hare, who was either a witch in disguise or
the familiar of a witch, could only be killed in this way. Others
refer to any man who had sold himself to the Devil, or sometimes to
the Devil himself, who could be scared off by such means. Another
legend says that a silver bullet would never miss its target.
Obviously, these legends couldn't appear before guns were invented,
but the first examples are actually rather late even so: the first
I know of is dated about 1700 and the stories didn't become common
until the early nineteenth century. The legends are common to many
European countries, but the figurative sense is characteristically
American.
When that began to appear is hard to pin down. It may be that the
Lone Ranger show (on radio from 1933 and later on television) had
something to do with it, since he used silver bullets (and indeed
had a horse called Silver) and typically arrived out of nowhere to
perform miraculous feats.
You can see the sense evolving in this quotation from a newspaper
in Pennsylvania, the Bedford Gazette, dated 19 September 1951:
"'There are those who warn against viewing the atom as a magic
weapon,' he continued. 'I agree. This is not a silver bullet which
can deliver itself or otherwise work military miracles.'" The
earliest example I can find in a clearly figurative sense is in the
Chronicle Telegram of Elyria, Ohio, for 18 March 1971: "Drug abuse,
as virtually other major problem, is ... not given to simplistic
silver bullet solutions."
6. Sic!
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In its issue of 8 April, the Leavenworth Times of Kansas had a
story about a couple of teenagers finding an alligator in a local
creek: "Doehring said he assumes a local person had obtained the
alligator when it was much smaller in size. The creature grew and
started to become viscous and unmanageable, so it was turned
loose." (Thanks to Ed Enstrom for passing this on.)
David Gallop witnessed a possible public admission of incest after
lunching in a restaurant in British Columbia, Canada, on 7 April. A
biographical note about an artist exhibiting there read, "He is the
father of four children, and a grandson."
7. Q&A
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Q. I was raised in Eastern Kentucky. I always heard the older folks
that have long since passed away call baby chicks "diddlers". As
the chicks grew they became "fryers" and then "layers" and then
"setters". When they became too old for frying, they became
"boilers". Have you any information where the word "diddlers" could
have originated? Could it be an Indian word or foreign word that
migrated into America by ship? [Glenna Calton]
A. It certainly did come into the United States by ship, quite a
long time ago, I would guess.
According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, the word
"diddle" is indeed a well-known term for a baby chick or a
duckling, chiefly known from the south Appalachians. It's also a
call to such animals. However, DARE doesn't know "diddler" - this
may be a local variation it hasn't recorded. It could easily have
evolved from "diddle", however, so there's nothing mysterious about
it.
The English Dialect Dictionary gives the clue to where it comes
from. It, too, has "diddle", which it found recorded in various
counties, including Somerset. It says it's a dialect word for a
duckling, though it could also refer to a suckling-pig. So it looks
very much as though emigrants took the word to America.
The origin is murky, but an earlier sense was to walk unsteadily
like a child, which might easily have been transferred to the young
of various farmyard animals. It seems to be connected with several
other words, including "dither", "dawdle" and possibly "toddle",
and to a set of lesser known terms that include "daddle" and
"dadder". There are several other senses of "diddle" known, the
best-known being "to cheat or swindle", but these aren't connected.
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Michael Quinion
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