World Wide Words -- 24 Jul 04
Michael Quinion
editor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jul 23 20:37:14 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 402 Saturday 24 July 2004
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Sent each Saturday to 19,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
<http://www.worldwidewords.org> <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Gazebo.
3. Sic!
4. Q&A: How's your father.
5. Noted this week.
6. Review: Presidential Voices.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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MEA CULPAS Sharp-eyed subscribers spotted that - as the result of
an editing error - I had made Glendower into Hotspur's father in
Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I. And many others pointed out that I
had seemed to mistranslate the French proverb in the piece about
bulls and bears by quoting the English version instead - the French
one refers to killing the bear, the English merely to catching one.
In the piece about the ramping cat, I left out a vital "not" in the
last line. The reference in Shakespeare to a couching lion indeed
is to what we would now call a crouching one, though I have since
learned that a couchant animal in heraldry is lying with its body
on its legs but its head erect. David Oesterreich and Nick Dunlavey
argued that my conclusion was wrong. The latter wrote: "I think
Hotspur is citing four examples of animals in states against their
nature. The griffin has had its wings clipped, the raven has
moulted, and in the last line we have an almost paradoxical
contrast between a lion that is lying down (instead of being
fierce) and a usually timid old Puss that is fiercely rampant."
2. Weird Words: Gazebo /g'zi:b at U/
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A small building, usually in a garden, with a good view.
This word is surrounded by more mystery than an earnest etymologist
would like. It appears in 1752 without any warning or antecedent in
part four of a book by William and John Halfpenny with the title
New Designs for Chinese Temples, an influential work that was aimed
at the then new English fashion for the oriental in design and
architecture.
Little is known about William Halfpenny, who described himself as
an architect and carpenter, not even if this was his real name
(another architectural writer of the period, Batty Langley, said he
was actually called Michael Hoare), nor whether his collaborator
John Halfpenny was his son, as some have assumed, or even existed.
The word "gazebo" is equally mysterious. A lot of people have
assumed that - like the temples described in the book - it must be
of oriental origin. If it is, nobody has found its source. Failing
that, etymologists have made an educated guess that he named the
structure tongue-in-cheek, taking the ending "-ebo" from the Latin
future tense and adding it to "gaze", so making a hybrid word that
might mean "I will look". If true, the model was probably "videbo",
"I shall see", or perhaps "lavabo", literally "I will wash", taken
from the Latin mass of the Roman Catholic Church to refer to the
towel or basin used in the ritual washing of the celebrant's hands.
Early gazebos were often a tower or lantern on the roof of a house,
a projecting balcony, or a structure attached to the top of a wall.
Only much later was the word applied to a summerhouse, usually one
with open sides. To be strict about it, only those edifices with a
good view may be given that name; all others are mere shelters.
3. Sic!
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The Globe and Mail, Toronto, began a story last Saturday thus: "A
Royal Air Force plane carrying Prince Charles was involved in a
'near miss' incident with a passenger jet earlier this year, air
traffic controllers said Friday." So far, so good, though many
people think "near miss" is a nonsense phrase; their opinion is
supported by the headline, which startled Duncan Morrow: "Prince
Charles' plane nearly missed collision with passenger jet". His
comment: "I think that's spelled 'splat'!"
Last Tuesday, The Age (Melbourne) reported a murder in these terms:
"The body of Ivens (Toon) Buffett was found with a gunshot wound in
his parliamentary office." "It is just as well," e-mailed Peter
Wheatley, who spotted it, "that he wasn't shot in a more painful
place."
4. Q&A
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Q. Can you explain the origin of "how's your father" and what it
actually means? [Kate in Australia]
A. You take me back to my youth in west London and to my dear old
dad, one of whose phrases this was.
To my ear it's certainly an outdated expression, even in Britain,
where it was once most popular. There are several senses, the most
common of which is as a low slang phrase for a leg over, or a bit
of the other, in other words a casual sexual encounter, especially
in phrases such as "a spot of the old how's-your-father" or the
irresistible invitation "Awright darlin', fancy a bit of how's yer
father?". It has also been employed as yet another of those hand-
waving words, in this case for a person whose name one cannot for
the moment remember.
All these derive ultimately from the fertile imagination of the
music-hall comedian Harry Tate, born in 1872 and popular from
before the First World War to his death as the result of an air
raid in 1940 (although if you listen to a 1912 recording of the
famous motoring sketch that he toured for more than thirty years -
at http://quinion.com?H18K - you might wonder why; truly that was a
different age). When he was supposedly stumped for an answer in one
of his sketches, he would break off and ask "how's your father?" as
a way to change the subject.
This became a catch phrase and was picked up by servicemen in the
First World War. John Brophy (who edited Songs and Slang of the
British Soldier: 1914-1918 with Eric Partridge) wrote that it was
"turned to all sorts of ribald, ridiculous and heroic uses". Our
modern meaning is a relic of those times.
5. Noted this week
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SAVIOUR SIBLING This British term is back in the news this week
following a decision by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority. It has agreed to permit embryos to be screened before
implantation for some desirable genetic characteristic that would
help cure a sickly existing child. An example would be to create a
baby whose umbilical cord blood could save the life of a sibling
with a rare blood disorder. The term is a specific application of
the more general "designer baby"; as a result, the blended
expression "designer sibling" has also appeared.
6. Review: Presidential Voices, by Allan Metcalf
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Too many words have been written about the verbal infelicities of
the current US president for me to add many more. But Mr Bush has,
usually unwittingly, added many neologisms to our vocabulary, such
as "misunderestimate", "mential", "arbo-tree-ist", and
"embetterment", as well as provoking "Bushism" to describe them.
It was his verbal mannerisms that led Allan Metcalf to write this
study of the writing and speaking styles of the various holders of
the office, and the words and phrases which they have contributed
to the language. Thankfully, Bush's blunderings - Professor Metcalf
says they exemplify "the ruinous effect of a high-class education"
- form only a small part of the work.
He points out that George Washington is the first known user (not
necessarily the same thing as inventor, of course) of "bakery" and
"indoors" among many others; that John Adams was the first to write
down the word "caucus" (although he certainly didn't invent it);
that Theodore Roosevelt named the "lunatic fringe" and invented a
new meaning for "muckraker", as well as creating "nailing jelly to
the wall" as a graphic description of a futile act; that Harry
Truman provoked "whistlestop" in our current sense and rendered
famous "the buck stops here". Professor Metcalf is sure that
Jefferson made by far the biggest contribution to the permanent
vocabulary of our language, adding such words as "Anglophobia",
"electioneering", "indecipherable" and "authentication".
By no means every linguistic contribution by US presidents has been
welcomed. Jefferson was much criticised for "belittle"; Warren
Harding's use of the then rather rare "normalcy" caused much debate
on both sides of the Atlantic. These are now established - though
the latter is largely restricted to the USA - but others, such as
Washington's "jabble", meaning "to mix together", or John Adams'
"qualminess", for "nausea", have been less successful.
This book provides an intriguing sidelight on the histories of the
US presidents and will interest anybody who wants to know more
about their impact on the language.
[Allan Metcalf, Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George
Washington to George W Bush, published by Houghton Mifflin on 14
July 2004; paperback, pp256; ISBN 0-618-44374-6, publisher's price
$12.95.]
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Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
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