World Wide Words -- 20 Nov 04
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 19 18:42:18 UTC 2004
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 419 Saturday 20 November 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: Mobisode.
3. Noted this week.
4. Weird Words: Jackanapes.
5. Q&A: Nave.
6. Sic!
7. Q&A: Bug.
A. Subscription commands.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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COPPER-BOTTOMED Several subscribers queried this expression, which
I used in the piece about "Hoosier" last week. They realised it was
intended to mean "authentic, trustworthy", but were puzzled where
it might come from. It's old-fashioned now. It refers figuratively
to the copper sheathing on the hulls of old-time wooden ships, clad
as a protection against the teredo, a worm-like mollusc that bored
into the planks and destroyed them.
CONTRIBUTIONS A couple of queries have come in about the absence
of my usual autumn call for donations to support this newsletter
and the Web site. Because I've been plugging my book so much, to
make an appeal for money as well seemed inappropriate!
2. Turns of Phrase: Mobisode
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It's not an instance of Soprano violence. It's a new word invented
by the mobile telephone firm Vodaphone that reached many newspaper
columns last week, though whether it will become a usual term is
open to doubt. It was used in a press release that also announced
that the firm has launched its 3G (third-generation) mobile phone
service in the UK and Europe. A "mobisode" ("mobile" + "episode")
is a specially created mini-television series suitable for showing
on the two-inch phone screen of these new handsets. Vodaphone has
signed a deal with Fox in the USA to produce 24 one-minute spin-off
episodes of its drama 24 with a parallel sub-plot under the title
24: Conspiracy. Many other providers are also being signed up to
provide video services, especially sports and news organisations.
"Vodafone will begin offering the one-minute episodes in January in
the United Kingdom. The 'mobisodes,' as they're being called, will
be introduced later in 2005 in up to 23 more countries where
Vodafone operates, mainly in Europe, as well as in the United
States through the company's Verizon Wireless joint venture."
[The Toronto Star, 12 Nov. 2004]
"Vodafone also plans to introduce a 'Mobisodes' service next year,
in cooperation with 20th Century Fox, providing short, made-for-
mobile episodes related to television series like '24.' While these
will feature exclusive content, Vodafone acknowledges that a major
goal is to generate viewers for the TV show."
[The International Herald Tribune, 11 Nov. 2004.]
3. Noted this week
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FONETOGRAPHY If my suspicion is that "mobisode" won't catch on,
how much less likely is it that this rather awful construction will
prosper? It has been created by another phone company, Nokia, to
describe taking photographs using a mobile phone. It's the title of
an exhibition at the gallery of the Association of Photographers in
London that opened last Wednesday. It shows mobile-phone images by
David Bailey, Rankin, Sir Peter Blake, Nan Goldin, Tracey Emin and
Richard Young, among others. The Guardian's report on this was
complemented by ten tongue-in-cheek tips from its picture editor
for getting the best out of your camera phone. Number 5: "Don't
breakdance and try to take pictures at the same time - this causes
camera shake".
4. Weird Words: Jackanapes
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A cheeky or impertinent person.
The most widespread story connects the origins of this word with
William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. He was steward of the Royal
Household under Henry VI, but was accused of treason and banished
in 1450, only to be murdered at sea off Dover. His emblem was an
ape's clog and chain (a clog here being not a type of shoe but a
heavy block of wood to stop the animal escaping). This led to his
being described in a scurrilous poem the year before his death as
"ape-clog" and posthumously as "Jack Napes".
Though "Jack Napes" might therefore seem to derive from the ill-
fated duke, something that has often been assumed, the experts are
sure that it came from another source and was applied to the Duke
because of his odd emblem. The real origin probably lay in a
playful name for a tame ape, in which the second part was a case of
metanalysis (in which "an ape" has been turned into "a nape"), with
an "s" on the end to make it match other surnames of the period,
like Jacques or Hobbes.
It went through various forms until it settled down to its modern
spelling. The idea behind it moved from a pet name for an ape to a
man acting in some way like an ape. The OED gives the sense in one
of its wonderful definitions as "One who is like an ape in tricks,
airs, or behaviour; a ridiculous upstart; a pert, impertinent
fellow, who assumes ridiculous airs; a coxcomb."
5. Q&A
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Q. I would like to know the origin of "nave". I was once told that
early small churches would use an upturned boat on a small
structure to create a room for worship. Do you know if this is true
or why the word is used in an ecclesiastical context? [Pat Aithie]
A. There's no doubt that the word for the part of a Christian
church intended for the use of the laity comes from the Latin
"navis" for a ship (as does "naval", for example). Why this should
be so isn't obvious, especially as the word isn't known in English
until the naturalist John Ray included it in his book Observations
Made in a Journey through Part of the Low-countries in 1673. So
it's definitely much too recent to have been the term for a
primitive church.
It's sometimes said that it's an allusion to the Christian church
being like a ship exposed to the buffeting of the waves of the sea.
It's much more likely that the shape of the building suggested the
simile, because it's usually long and thin and often has a pitched
roof that fancifully looks a bit like an upturned boat's keel.
6. Sic!
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John Orford, who lives in the Philippines, was perusing a wall the
other day. It held an advertisement: "Picnic chairs and tables for
rent-free delivery." "How generous," he thought at first. But then
he noted how the meaning changed when he substituted a dash for the
hyphen. Punctuation rules, OK?
Harry Rolnick e-mails: "This sign was recently placed on a lamppost
a block from my house in downtown New York. I was told it was a
plea for business, but its misplaced dash sounds more like a news
story for a supermarket tabloid: 'Part-time baby sits in East
Village'."
The BBC online news on Friday 12 November featured an item about
the plans of the Virgin Group to expand its airline holdings. But
Tony Glaser was intrigued by one sentence: "It is also setting up a
no-thrills airline in the US." He commented that a really boring
airline that promised no thrills was OK by him.
Louden Masterton spotted an "upgrade your security" notice in a
Biggleswade locksmith's window last week. It exhorted people to
"beat the rouge traders!". Just a cosmetic exercise?
7. Q&A
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Q. What about the origin of a computer "bug"? My understanding is
that one of the first computers (the room-filling monsters) would
occasionally short out because a moth or other insect had gotten
inside and bridged the gap between two circuits. It might be nice
to say more about this, or if it is apocryphal, set it to rights.
[Robert Sterner]
A. The most common version of this story is that "bug" results from
an incident with the US Navy's Harvard Mark II computer soon after
the end of World War Two, in which a technician cured a fault by
extracting a moth from between the contacts of a relay in the
system. It is also said that this was the source of "debug", the
process of finding and removing errors from a computer program.
The incident really did happen: the log book, dated 9 September
1947, survives with the actual moth taped to it. (A picture is at
http://quinion.com?MOTH; that page says it happened in 1945 but
recent research shows it actually happened two years later).
The log entry itself blows to pieces the story about this being the
origin of "bug" by noting under the insect, "First actual case of
bug being found". This makes it clear that "bug" for a fault was
already in use. Indeed, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (an early
programmer who worked on the machine and who invented the computer
language COBOL) used to tell this story in lectures and would
remark that the word was applied to problems in radar electronics
in World War II.
It's actually older still. An early recorded use is in reference to
the inventor Thomas Alvar Edison and appeared in the Pall Mall
Gazette in 1889: "Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two
previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph - an
expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some
imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the
trouble". Edison is also known to have used the term in private
correspondence. It seems it wasn't new even with him: an electrical
handbook of 1896 suggests it had long been used by telegraphers as
a joke term to suggest noisy lines were caused by bugs getting into
the cables.
"Debug" is also recorded before the moth incident: a writer in the
Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1945 wrote "It ranged
from the pre-design development of essential components, through
the stage of type test and flight test and 'debugging' right
through to later development of the engine."
The story about the moth actually obscures an intriguing item of
old American slang.
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