World Wide Words -- 17 Jan 04
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 16 19:03:20 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 376 Saturday 17 January 2004
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not reply to this mailing: my spam filter will delete
your message. Use TheEditor at worldwidewords.org instead
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Galligaskins.
3. Q&A: Oh, my stars and garters.
4. Sic!
5. Q&A: Spick and span.
A. FAQ of the week.
B. Subscription commands.
C. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
HOLIDAY BREAK There will be no issue on 31 January, as my wife and
I will be going south for a week in the warm - and with luck in the
sun, too. Next week's issue will appear as usual but the one after
that will be dispatched on Saturday 7 February.
2. Weird Words: Galligaskins
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Wide, very loose breeches.
This was a fashion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one
that eventually disappeared, as did the active use of the word,
which survives in historical contexts or as a humorous word for
nether garments.
It's an odd-looking word, well fitted to the epithet weird. It came
about through another of those cloth-eared Englishmen's attempts at
getting their minds around a foreign term. They knew it was French
in immediate origin, "gargesque", and they knew the garments were
often worn by sailors, so they assumed that the first part was
"galley", either from the oared ship, or from the cooking area on
board ship. Similar items were known at about the same time as
"gally-slops" or "gally-breeches", so that would easily account for
the conversion of the first element of the French word into
something more English-sounding. (The first of these was often
abbreviated to "slops", a similar item; the material for them was
kept on board ship in the "slop-chest", though sailors' working
garments, at least of a later period, were loose trousers rather
than breeches.)
One of the more spectacular own-goals of etymology was suffered by
Noah Webster (whose word origins were highly speculative and very
often wrong). In his famous dictionary of 1828 he said that the
word was derived from "Gallic Gascons", the inhabitants of Gascony.
He was looking too far west - the French word was taken from the
Italian "grechesca", something Greek, because the fashion for loose
breeches was originally from that country. Around the years 1580-
1620 similar garments were called "Venetians", because a comparable
fashion had been imported from Venice.
"Galligaskins" made a relatively late appearance in Sir Nigel, an
historical novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1906: "It was
a wretched, rutted mule-track running through thick forests with
occasional clearings in which lay the small Kentish villages, where
rude shock-headed peasants with smocks and galligaskins stared with
bold, greedy eyes at the travellers." This is probably a different
sense of the word, since the English Dialect Dictionary says that
it was used in Kent and other counties for work leggings, which it
described as "rough leather overalls, worn by thatchers, hedgers,
and labourers. They are usually home-made from dried raw skin, and
are fastened to the front only of the leg and thigh."
3. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I used the phrase, "Oh, my stars and garters!" today, apparently
for the first time in front of my English husband (I'm American)
and he thought it was hilarious. Can you tell me anything about its
origin? [Muddy, near Paris, France]
A. It's a fascinating expression, with a long history. To give you
the background, perhaps I should start with its core, the phrase
"stars and garters". You may be surprised to hear that this refers
collectively to honours and awards.
We have some weird ones in the UK, not least those, like OBE and
MBE, that mark a person's achievements by raising them to a status
in an empire we no longer possess. Perhaps the oddest-sounding is
the Order of the Garter, the highest order of English knighthood,
which was founded by Edward III around 1344. Since most of the
honours of knighthood and the like come with a medal in the shape
of a star, the phrase "stars and garters" appeared in the early
eighteenth century as a collective reference to all these medals,
honours and decorations and - by a figurative extension - to the
group of people that hold them. The earliest example of this
metaphoric sense is in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock,
around 1712: "While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train,
And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear". More than a century
later, Charles Dickens used it in Bleak House (1853): "His remote
impressions of the robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that
sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers", as
did Anthony Trollope 20 years later still, in Phineas Redux:
"Though the country were ruined, the party should be supported.
Hitherto the party had been supported, and had latterly enjoyed
almost its share of stars and Garters".
Your expression appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century
as a humorous expression of astonishment. There's no evidence I can
find that directly links the two, but it's hardly possible that the
exclamation is other than a jocular conflation of "stars and
garters" with older exclamations such as "thank your lucky stars!"
and "my stars!" A nice example is in The Book of Snobs by William
Makepeace Thackeray, published in 1848: "And, O stars and garters!
how she would start if she heard that she - she, as solemn as
Minerva - she, as chaste as Diana (without that heathen goddess's
unladylike propensity for field-sports) - that she too was a Snob!"
Edward Bulwer-Lytton had put it in the mouth of a character in his
novel Night and Morning in 1841: "The man, after satisfying himself
that his time was not yet come, was turning back to the fire, when
a head popped itself out of the window, and a voice cried, 'Stars
and garters! Will - so that's you!'".
4. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Amber-Jane Lewis nearly choked when she read the wrapper on her
chocolate bar: "60% less fat - and always has been!"
David Camp writes: "I think this fellow really wants to sell his
truck: 'Licensed Ford '77 F250. 4 wheel drive, with wench. $1800
OBO'. I wonder what vintage the wench is?"
A wire story sent out last Monday was spotted by Ray Heindl: "New
Jersey became the second state to allow stem cell research on
Sunday as Gov. James McGreevey signed a law he said will 'move the
frontiers of science forward.'" Mr Heindl remarked, "I guess this
is a compromise measure, allowing such research only one day per
week."
A news release from the Governor of Michigan, seen by Ari Adler,
caused him to wonder in how many places a man might die: "Flags
should be lowered to half-staff on Tuesday, January 13 and
Wednesday, January 14, 2004 to honor former Court of Appeals Judge
Gary McDonald who has died at the following locations."
5. Q&A
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. What are the origins of the expression "spick and span"? [Kevin
Wilson]
A. It's a strange phrase, isn't it? People have been playing about
with it for several hundred years, and the words on which it was
based have long since gone out of the language.
The oldest form seems to have been "spann-nyr", which is Old Norse
for a fresh chip of wood, one just carved from timber by the
woodman's axe, so the very epitome of something new. ("Nyr" is our
modern "new", while "spann" is a chip, the source of our "spoon",
an implement that was originally always made from wood, so that
"wooden spoon" is a retronym.) By about 1300 the Old Norse phrase
had started to appear in English in the form "span-new", a form
that lasted into the nineteenth century.
This evolved by the sixteenth century into an elaborated form
similar to the modern one: "spick and span new", still with the old
sense of something so new as to be pristine and unused. "Spick"
here is a nail or spike. This form seems to have been inspired by a
Dutch expression, "spiksplinternieuw", which referred to a ship
that was freshly built, so with all-new nails and timber. It is
first found in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives
in 1579, "They were all in goodly gilt armours, and brave purple
cassocks apon [upon] them, spicke, and spanne newe."
By the middle of the following century, it had been shortened to
our modern "spick and span". It had also shifted sense to our
current one, for something so neat and clean that it looks new and
unused. Samuel Pepys is the first recorded user, in his diary for
15 November 1665: "My Lady Batten walking through the dirty lane
with new spicke and span white shoes."
In modern times, it was borrowed in the United States by Procter
and Gamble as a trademark for a household cleaning product, "Spic
and Span", whose spelling has led some people to wonder whether it
might be a disguised racial slur, from the derogatory term "Spic"
for a Hispanic person. That's certainly not true, but the trademark
(and the slang term) have together encouraged an alternative
spelling of "spic" in the phrase.
A. FAQ of the week
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Tell me more about these gift subscriptions.
A. This is a proving a popular way to tell friends and relatives
about World Wide Words and at the same time mark some special
occasion. Since subscriptions to the newsletter are free, it's
hardly an expensive present, but it's the thought that counts!
To send a gift subscription, visit
http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/giftsub.htm
and fill in the form.
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://quinion.com?QA
AMAZON UK: http://quinion.com?JZ
AMAZON CANADA: http://quinion.com?MG
AMAZON GERMANY: http://quinion.com?DX
The back-issues archive for World Wide Words is at
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/worldwidewords.html
To contribute a sum to the upkeep of World Wide Words, enter this
short-form URL into your browser:
http://quinion.com?PP
This newsletter is also available as an RSS feed. The URL is:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2004. 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