World Wide Words -- 04 Dec 04
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 3 20:15:56 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 421 Saturday 4 December 2004
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Sent each Saturday to 21,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Guerrilla gig.
3. Sic!
4. Weird Words: Musterdevillers.
5. Noted this week.
6. Q&A: From whence.
A. Subscription commands.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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FLY IN THE OINTMENT In my Feedback notes on "Bug" last week, I
mentioned having found examples of "fly in the ointment" from the
1870s. Doug Hills e-mailed from British California to say that the
idiom almost certainly comes from the book of Ecclesiastes in the
King James version of the Bible: "Dead flies cause the ointment of
the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour."
CENTRIFICAL Many subscribers pointed out that this is an example
of what some American linguists have recently begun to refer to
informally as an eggcorn: a spell-as-you-speak error. (Geoffrey
Pullum invented the name a year ago. It comes from the story of an
American woman who wrote "egg corns" when she meant "acorns", as in
her dialect the first vowels are identical; she probably also says
"beg" like the first syllable of "bagel". Other eggcorn examples
are "supposably" for "supposedly" and "nucular" for "nuclear". As
another instance, subscriber Katie Gaines mentioned the frequent
appearance of "intrical" when "integral" is meant.) A common US way
to say "centrifugal" is close enough to "centrifical" for the error
to be often committed to writing. That's especially likely if the
word is stressed on the second syllable rather than the third. One
reason why it sounds right to many ears is that it includes the
very common suffix "-ical".
Lots of people referred, sometimes vehemently, to the fact that
centrifugal force doesn't actually exist, but is a virtual force
based on our subjective sensory experiences (it's really inertia
trying to keep a body moving in a straight line). My university
physics has had about 40 years to rust away, but I did know that,
honest. But my concern was with words, not Newtonian mechanics -
despite the faulty physics, "centrifugal" is a well-attested word -
and to divert into explaining it would have overweighed the piece.
If anyone needs to know the facts, there are plenty of Web sites
that explain them: please don't e-mail me about it!
LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE It was suggested by many subscribers that
Lippy Leo Durocher may have taken his simile from Ben Franklin's
famous experiment of flying a kite in a thunderstorm in order to
charge a Leyden jar, an early form of capacitor. As children in
North America often try to catch lightning bugs (fireflies) in a
bottle, usually with little success, others suggested this as the
origin. Both are certainly possible. Also, I am told that Durocher
was manager of the Dodgers, not its coach.
SAGGAR Subscriber Cretia Shire pointed out that modern small-scale
potters still use saggars, but as an enclosure to allow materials
such as seaweed or pine needles to be placed against the piece to
create interesting markings or colourings. Linda Ferzoco quoted
another member of her e-mail discussion group, to which she had
sent the item: "Isn't it interesting that the only people who fire
in saggars today use them for exactly the opposite function to
traditional potters - to make marks on the ware?"
NEWCASTLE TRAM DEPOT Michael Mellor and others doubt the veracity
of the sign mentioned in the Sic! column last week. He points out
that the depot closed in 1950, 16 years before Australia converted
its currency to dollars. It looks very much like a hoax, despite
the convincing photograph posted online.
PROBLEM WITH THE WEB SITE For 36 hours from last Sunday, none of
the redirection links (like http://quinion.com?QA) worked. (These
allow short-form alternatives to what would otherwise be very long
links that would clutter up the newsletter.) It eventually turned
out that a vital configuration file had somehow disappeared for no
reason that any of us can discover. The system is back in working
order now. Apologies for any inconvenience.
2. Turns of Phrase: Guerrilla gig
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A guerrilla gig is one in which pop musicians (most often punk
rockers, for some reason) descend on a public place to give an
impromptu performance. They tell their fans about it by text
messages and other electronic media. It hit the news when a group
called The Others staged a 30-minute gig in a London Underground
train and then in the lobby of pop-music station BBC Radio 1. The
technique is clearly borrowed from the flash mobs of 2003 (see
http://quinion.com?F89H); the name reflects a variety of other
anti-authoritarian techniques that we've heard about, of which the
best known are "guerrilla gardening" (cultivating public ground in
an urban location where one isn't authorised, as a political
statement), "guerrilla architecture" (in which designs are created
to challenge conventional ideas about the form and function of
buildings), and "guerrilla marketing" (gaining public notice
through unconventional methods). Guerrilla gigs certainly fit this
last model, since one aim is to get publicity for indie bands that
aren't signed to a record company.
* From Wired News, 4 Aug. 2004: "The strength of this movement is
in its community," said Imran Ahmed of New Musical Express. "Gigs
can be organized in a matter of hours. The venue, time and any fee
will be communicated via message board, text or blog; the community
then congregates at a place beforehand and then all head down to
the guerrilla gig together."
* From the Independent, 11 Sep. 2004: If you believe all you read,
the streets of London are currently paved with amps and speakers
awaiting the latest guerrilla gig by some band of charity-store-
clothed individuals who always claim to have just played with The
Libertines/Babyshambles (delete as appropriate) and are going to
shake up rock just like the Sex Pistols did with punk.
3. Sic!
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John Blois found this disquieting headline in The Globe and Mail of
Toronto on November 26: "ER delays killing heart patients". While
we're on the subject, Pete Jones found this on the BBC Web site:
"It takes four days for a dog whelk to eat a mussel, which in the
last ten hours undergoes a series of fatal heart attacks."
An environmental newsletter called Edie News startled James Carson
in Glasgow with a headline in its 26 November issue: "UK could be
stretched to meet 2004 recycling target." As he says, it sounds
painful as well as extremely difficult.
And finally, Harry Ward reports: "In Chicago a pharmaceutical van
had lost a stick-on letter 'k' yielding 'Sic Room Supplies'". But
this newsletter doesn't require their services, as subscribers just
keep sending 'em in ...
4. Weird Words: Musterdevillers
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A type of mixed grey woollen cloth.
Among the arrangements made by the council of the city of York to
welcome Richard III on 4 August 1483 were detailed instructions on
what to wear. In modern spelling, it ended "All others of whatever
occupation, dressed in blue, violet and musterdevillers, shall meet
our sovereign lord on foot at St James' church." The fabric was
common in that century and the next. Though by Richard III's visit
the cloth was being woven in many towns in England, it is said to
have originated in the place in Normandy now called Montivilliers;
its usual English name (in wildly varying spellings at this period)
is a version of the way that town's name was spelled in medieval
times. The cloth was prized and it often appeared in wills of the
period, as in that of John Estcourt in 1427: "To Juliana Bolle my
gown of musterdevillers and to Sir Thomas Drury my fellow canon the
fur of the same gown." (Did the two legatees solemnly get together
with scissors?)
5. Noted this week
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TEXTONYM The Feedback column of New Scientist last week introduced
us to yet another new word ending in "-nym" (from Greek "onuma", a
name). Not only do we have such well-established terms as synonym,
antonym, eponym and pseudonym, a rush of creative energy in recent
years has given us contranym, a word that means its own opposite,
such as "cleave"; retronym, a term invented to clarify another word
whose meaning has become ambiguous through cultural or technical
evolution, such as "acoustic guitar" or "two-parent family"; and
aptonym, the name of a individual that matches his occupation, such
as a Mr Butcher who is a surgeon or a dentist named Payne. (New
Scientist calls this form nominative determinism. But I digress.)
When you text a message on a mobile phone, textonyms are the words
generated by a set of key presses when the phone is in predictive
mode, guessing what word you want. For example, 7-4-6-6-3-7 brings
up the words phones, simmer, and sinner. New Scientist says: "The
random nature of the groupings produces some eerie resonances when
you consider the words together. What about apron arson, for
example? Can a barge be described as acrid? Has an anode ever
cooed? Can you debug death? Does the study of maths result in
oaths? If the bane of the band was acne, would they be cured if a
cane came?"
6. Q&A
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Q. Last week you quoted Sir Christopher Wren as referring to "The
Ailes, from whence arise Bows or Flying Buttresses to the Walls of
the Navis." I'm sorry to learn that Sir Christopher used the
redundancy "from whence". [Marty Robinson]
A. This is another of those grammatical shibboleths, like avoiding
a plural verb with "none" or not splitting one's infinitives, that
are open to linguistic debate, to put it mildly. The argument
against this form is that "whence" already includes the idea of
coming from some place, so that including "from" makes it
tautological.
The debate is complicated by the fact that "whence" is not that
common a word these days, being rather literary; I had trouble
finding a modern example that wasn't prefixed by "from". This is
from Newsday of 11 November 2004: "He is a legendary figure in his
native England, whence I have just returned." That's a good example
of the "proper" use.
Objectors to "from whence" have support in logic, but logic doesn't
feature much in English constructions, especially idioms, which is
how one perhaps should regard the phrase these days. One newspaper
archive I consulted, hardly comprehensive, contained more than 250
cases of "from whence" just in 2004. It succeeds because it is
informal and colloquial compared with "whence" used alone, a
construction that is unusual enough to force readers to stop and
work out the meaning.
And even a brief look at historical sources shows that "from
whence" has been common since the thirteenth century. It has been
used by Shakespeare, Defoe (in the opening of Robinson Crusoe: "He
got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived
afterwards at York; from whence he had married my mother"),
Smollett, Dickens (in A Christmas Carol: "He began to think that
the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the
adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to
shine"), Dryden, Gibbon, Twain (in Innocents Abroad: "He traveled
all around, till at last he came to the place from whence he
started"), and Trollope, and it appears 27 times in the King James
Bible (including Psalm 121: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the
hills, from whence cometh my help").
Though Dr Johnson objected to it in his Dictionary of 1755, calling
it "A vicious mode of speech" (he meant it was reprehensible, not
depraved or savage), most objections to it are no earlier than the
twentieth century. One reason may be that its critics are unaware
of its long pedigree.
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