World Wide Words -- 12 Jun 04
Michael Quinion
TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 11 17:36:17 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 396 Saturday 12 June 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
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Contents
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1. Weird Words: Antimacassar.
2. Noted this week.
3. Q&A: Bail out.
4. Sic!
5. Q&A: Pig in a poke.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Useful URLs.
1. Weird Words: Antimacassar
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A protective or decorative cloth over the back of a chair.
To find the inspiration for this term, we must go back to the very
start of the nineteenth century and to Mr Rowland of Hatton Garden
in London, who invented what the Oxford English Dictionary
describes as "an unguent for the hair". He claimed it was based on
sweet oils imported from Macassar or Makassar, a seaport now named
Ujung Pandang on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. (His unguent
was basically palm oil with some additions but may never have been
anywhere near Macassar.) Macassar oil was sold in deeply embossed
square glass bottles and was promoted in terms as extravagant as
any of the period, as here from the Edinburgh Advertiser of June
1812:
MRS. RAEBURN, NORTH BRIDGE, Has just received A FRESH
supply of that beautiful production, MACASSAR OIL, for
the HAIR, a preparation that surpasses all others for
eradicating all impurities of the Hair, and increasing
its growth where it has been bald for years; strengthening
the curl, and imparting a beautiful gloss and scent; in
fine, rendering the hair of ladies, gentlemen, and children
inexpressibly attracting. View Rowland's Essay on the Hair.
This inestimable Oil has also received the august patronage
of their Royal Highnesses the Princess of WALES and Duke of
Sussex, and a great number of the nobility.
The essay, by the way, had been written in 1809 by Rowland's son:
objectivity in advertising wasn't their goal. Among the nobility
using the product was Lord Byron, who mentions it when speaking
witheringly of his wife in his Don Juan of 1819:
In Virtues nothing earthly could surpass her
Save thine "incomparable Oil", Macassar!
And while we're on literary associations, it's also mentioned in
the White Knight's poem in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-
Glass.
The fashion for oiled hair became so widespread that in desperation
housewives began to cover the backs of their chairs and sofas with
washable cloths to preserve the fabric coverings from being spoilt.
Around 1850, these started to be known as "antimacassars".
They came to have elaborate patterns, often in matching sets for
the various items of parlour furniture; they were either made at
home using a variety of techniques such as crochet or tatting, or
bought from shops. By the beginning of the twentieth century, they
had become so associated in peoples' minds with the Victorian
period that the word briefly became a figurative term for it.
2. Noted this week
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D-DAY The commemorations last weekend of the 60th anniversary of
the D-Day landings by Allied forces in Normandy caused many people
to ask what the "D" stands for. Some writers in British newspapers
suggested that it's short for "Debarkation" or other terms, but the
boring truth is that it is short for "Day". The term is recorded
from the end of the First World War in 1918. It's a military code-
name for a particular day fixed for the start of an operation. In
itself it doesn't mean anything. A related expression is "H-Hour",
the designated hour at which the operation is to start.
3. Q&A
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Q. How about a segment on the phrase "bail out", meaning to escape
from some difficult situation? I'm guessing it is spelled that way,
but I don't know why. I wonder if it was originally used for
leaving an aircraft before landing, or if there is some other
origin. [Ian Woofenden, USA]
A. Presumably you're in part unsure whether it's "bail out" or
"bale out"? In this, you join lots of other people who are unsure
when to use which spelling in several of the senses of both words.
Is it a "bale" of hay, or example, or a "bail"? Do you "bail" water
out of the bottom of a boat, or do you "bale" it? You can easily
find examples of both spellings in both these senses. When you're
referring to an emergency exit from an aircraft by parachute, or
the sense you give, the position is even more complicated, because
British and American usage differs.
Let's clear the ground a bit. "Bale" is the correct spelling when
we're referring to a large bound parcel or closely pressed package
of some substance, such as cotton, hay or paper. This comes
ultimately from an old Germanic word that's related to "ball". On
the other hand, when we're clearing water from the bottom of a
boat, we correctly "bail" it out, from French "baille", a bucket.
And if we're speaking of the temporary release of a person from
prison while awaiting trial, that's "bail", too, but it comes from
yet a different source, an Old French word meaning custody or
jurisdiction, itself from Latin "bajulare", to bear a burden: when
someone bails a person from prison, he's taking on the
responsibility of ensuring that the accused person will turn up for
his trial. Among other senses, British readers will know that the
crosspieces bridging the stumps in cricket are also called bails;
this is from the Old French "baile", meaning a palisade or
enclosure, perhaps from Latin "baculum", a rod or stick. The common
figurative sense of getting somebody or something out of trouble
("the government had bailed the company out with the equivalent of
2.7 billion euros in aid") comes either from the boat dewatering or
the parachuting sense, probably the latter.
No wonder people get confused.
There's little doubt in anybody's mind about the legal or cricket
senses: both are always "bail". There's more confusion about the
"tote that bale" and "bail that boat" senses, though dictionaries
are clear those spellings are the correct ones. The aircraft one is
rather more of a problem, perhaps because its connection with the
other senses is less than obvious. There's little doubt from the
early evidence that aviators were thinking that telling the crew to
escape from an aircraft in danger was like bailing water out of a
boat. For example, Eric Partridge, in A Dictionary of Forces'
Slang, published in 1948, gives this as the origin. However, to
muddy the waters still further, he spells the term as "bale out".
The Oxford English Dictionary concurs in that spelling, and
suggests that people may have been influenced in spelling it that
way by the image of an escaping airman being a bale or bundle
thrown through the aircraft door. (Or could it be that the
parachute itself was viewed as such a bundle?)
The current position is that when the idea concerns escaping from
some potentially difficult situation, American English virtually
always uses "bail out", perhaps under the influence of the legal
sense of "bail". British English seems to be divided about 50:50
between that and "bale out", and it's easy to find examples of
"baled out" in the English press: "Von Brauchitsch threw the
steering wheel out of the car and baled out" (Independent, 18 Feb.
2003); "'He was heading for a stone wall and I didn't fancy jumping
that so I baled out,' he said after the horse had been caught and
returned safely" (Daily Telegraph, 11 Feb. 2004). Most, but not
all, British dictionaries give this form either as the main one or
an acceptable alternative.
4. Sic!
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While proof-reading the draft Americanised text of the forthcoming
US edition of my book, I found the phrase, "a well-attested United
Statesge on board ship". The original was "a well-attested usage on
board ship". There were half a dozen other examples in the text -
it's wonderful what an automated search and replace can do!
"Very socially responsible poultry they breed in North Devon,"
writes Louden Masterton. "Last month, I spotted an unpunctuated
sign reading 'CHICKENS KEEP DOGS ON LEADS'."
Bob Stone and Edward Pixley both found this in the New York Times
e-mail newsletter last Monday: "For all the legislative posturing,
the prospects for a measure banning indecent material reaching
President Bush's desk before the November election is not assured."
Will the President be disappointed, we wonder?
5. Q&A
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Q. All my life I have heard the phrase "a pig in a poke". Do you
know where this phrase originated? [Mike Baker]
A. Though the current version in full is "Don't buy a pig in a
poke", don't buy or accept something without first checking or
assessing it, it's first recorded in London around 1530 in a form
intended to be good advice to honourable traders: "When ye proffer
the pigge open the poke", but its best known early appearance is in
John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all
the proverbes in the Englishe tongue of 1546 (a title usually and
with good reason abbreviated to Proverbs), where it appears in the
form "Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke". About 1555,
Heywood included it in his other famous compilation work,
Epigrammes, in the almost modern form "I will never bye the pig in
the poke".
Many Americans of the southern states know a "poke" as a purse or
wallet, but in Heywood's day it was a general term for any small
sack or bag (a usage that has survived in Scotland). A poke, for
example, was a suitable container into which to stuff a piglet for
sale in the local market.
The proverb encapsulates that wise advice to purchasers of goods,
"caveat emptor", let the buyer beware - always inspect the goods
before you pay for them. Make the seller open his poke and show you
the pig within.
Incidentally, the proverb has its counterparts in other languages,
such as French: "Acheter chat en poche" ("To buy a cat in a
pouch"), and German: "Die Katze im Sack kaufen" ("To buy a cat in a
sack"). Why the expressions in these languages refer to cats and
not pigs is an intriguing mystery, and makes one wonder whether
there's some link here with another expression, "to let the cat out
of the bag".
A. Subscription commands
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Michael Quinion
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