World Wide Words -- 26 Jun 04
Michael Quinion
TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Sat Jun 26 19:52:21 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 398 Saturday 26 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
<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: Frigorific.
3. Sic!
4. Q&A: Ducks and drakes; Gravy train.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Useful URLs.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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LATE POSTING When I said last week that this week's mailing would
be sent out later than usual, I didn't expect it to be this much
delayed. Our plane was two hours late returning from Italy, then
the baggage handlers at Gatwick Airport took another two hours to
unload our luggage. I've not yet had a chance to read my mail, so
responses to last week's issue will have to wait until next week.
2. Weird Words: Frigorific
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Causing cold; chilling.
The chill here is from Latin "frigus", cold, a root that's also the
source of "refrigerate" and "frigid", as well as the obsolete
"frigor", a state of extreme coldness.
A search through a database of recent newspaper articles suggests
strongly that the most common appearance of "frigorific" is in that
characteristically American phenomenon, the spelling bee. This
report in the Palm Beach Post on 24 February 2004 on the finals of
a regional event is typical: "And for the next 45 rounds, McDowell
and Duran took turns before the microphone, batting words away with
scarcely a pause. They spelled superencipherment and aerolithology,
gorgonize and subaqueous, eutrophic, alpaca and frigorific".
I'm mildly surprised the contestant recognised it, as it has never
been common and the examples I've gleaned suggest that when it has
appeared, it has been in some technical or scientific context. For
instance, if you will turn to your copy of the Iowa City Press
Citizen for 30 September 1925, you will read a report that the
gaseous element helium had been liquefied for the first time (the
report's headline announced that it had been melted, which is a
difficult feat, because helium is the one element that can never be
frozen in the first place): "At the frigorific laboratory of the
Charlottenburg Polytechnic a specialty is made of experimenting
with and studying all matter and the changes produced when exposed
to extremely low temperatures."
3. Sic!
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Vivienne Mawson e-mails from Tasmania with a quote from the acting
head of a large research organisation: "The existing Environmental
Management Policy is considered an appropriate umbrella vehicle to
encapsulate the gambit of environmental matters including energy
rather than formalise a separate energy policy." She comments that
the writer is "Clearly a devotee of the Humpty Dumpty School of
Word Meanings. I like the image of the umbrella on wheels, too."
4. Q&A
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Q. Where does the phrase "ducks and drakes" come from and what is
the full version of the saying? [Darren Wallis, Australia]
A. The full saying is "to play ducks and drakes" and it usually
means to behave irresponsibly or recklessly, to squander one's
wealth, or to heedlessly throw away something of value.
To play ducks and drakes from the sixteenth century on was to play
that immemorial game of throwing a flat stone across water so that
it skips and bounces several times before it sinks. Why it was
given that name is uncertain, apart from the obvious association of
both ducks and drakes with ponds and rivers. I've seen it explained
as referring to the way ducks bob their heads in their courtship
rituals, or the way water fowl rise from a pond, or as an allusion
to the passing of these birds over water. The association of ideas
is clear enough, even if the exact analogy is uncertain.
The first example recorded in English is from The nomenclator, or
remembrancer of Adrianus Junius of 1585, by John Higgins: "A kind
of sport or play with an oister shell or stone throwne into the
water, and making circles yer it sinke, etc. It is called a ducke
and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake." (That last part may remind
some readers of the old Mother Goose children's rhyme:
A duck and a drake,
And a halfpenny cake,
With a penny to pay the old baker.
A hop and a scotch
Is another notch,
Slitherum, slatherum, take her.)
By about 1600, the game had become associated in people's minds
with idle play, in which some object is thrown carelessly away. Out
of that came the idea of squandering things.
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Q. At home we have been wondering where the phrase "gravy train"
originated. Any help would be gratefully received. [Philippa
Michaelson, UK]
A. We in Britain are thoroughly conversant with the gravy train, a
form of transport by which a person can make a lot of money for no
more effort than riding on it. It was heaven-sent as an expression
to be borrowed when writing in recent years about the excessive pay
and bonuses of those fat cats who run the British railways. And
here's a more recent example from the Guardian last January: "Long-
running attempts to clean up the European parliament's notorious
'gravy train' image were scuppered yesterday when EU governments
blocked a new pay and perks package for MEPs."
Despite our happy acceptance of the phrase, it comes from across
the big pond. Perhaps that's why some British writers have
expressed confusion, muddle, and doubt about its origins. Might,
one pondered, have "gravy train" have been a mishearing for "gravid
rain"? "Since", he wrote, "gravid means laden with eggs, a gravid
rain would seem to imply a fall of eggs (possibly laid by golden
geese?) from the sky." Ingenious, tortuous even, but about as wrong
as it is possible to be. Since another form of the phrase is known,
"to ride on the gravy boat", you might think it started life as a
joke on the name of the container for gravy placed on the table
during meals, so called because it is often roughly boat shaped.
But, alas for a promising theory, "gravy boat" in this sense isn't
recorded until the 1940s and is clearly a joke on the older "gravy
train". American etymologists have puzzled over it as much as
anyone: Charles Earle Funk thought it might have arisen in
"railroad lingo, in which a gravy run or a gravy train meant an
easy run with good pay for the train crew." This is much more
probable, but unfortunately there's no evidence to support it -
none of the known appearances of "gravy train" refers to a literal
train.
The experts do generally agree that the phrase has its source in
the slang use of "gravy" for something easy or cushy, simple to do,
or an unexpected benefit. This is recorded in the major references
books as appearing slightly earlier (1910) than gravy train (1914).
As a result of the digitisation of old newspapers in very recent
times, I can take these dates back somewhat. For example, advice to
potential advertisers appeared in The Daily Independent of
Monessen, Pennsylvania, in October 1906: "If you buy right and then
tell an exacting public in a clear, concise way, just as you would
over your counter, you are then getting in line for good gravy."
There is some slight evidence that "gravy" goes back rather further
than that. If it is the source of "gravy train", it would have to,
because I found the latter in the Courier of Connellsville (also in
Pennsylvania) in November 1895, almost two decades before the
previously oldest known example: "Johnston claims that Reuben
Nelson and another tall negro were in New Haven the night of the
escape and that they broke into the lockup. Johnson further states
that the next day Kelson laughingly told him that the New Haven
lockup was 'a gravy train.'"
But why and how do trains come into the picture? We don't know,
which leaves the matter in an uncertain and unsatisfactory state.
A. Subscription commands
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