World Wide Words -- 18 Sep 04

Fri Sep 17 18:30:12 UTC 2004

WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 410        Saturday 18 September 2004
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Sent each Saturday to 20,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK      ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org        wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Topical words: Brainstorming.
3. Sic!
4. Weird Words: Makebate.
5. Q&A: Blot one's copy book.
A. Subscription commands.
B. E-mail contact addresses.

1. Feedback, notes and comments
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PLASTIC SNOW  I asked last week what names people gave to the white
plastic bags that become caught in trees. Hilary Maidstone reported
that the Norfolk Women's Institute Federation discussed the matter
recently and that one speaker called them "Hackney Roses" (Hackney
being a deprived inner-city area of London). Karen Mora said: "In
my state, plastic bags blowing through town are called "Arkansas
tumbleweeds"", while Bob Rosenberg noted that in the eastern USA he
had heard them called "Jersey tumbleweeds". (Perhaps they should
call in Tony Soprano, the well-known New Jersey waste management
consultant.)

WORLD FAMOUS IN NEW ZEALAND  This phrase, spotted by a visitor to
that country and included in the "Sic!" column last week, produced
a flood of explanatory notes from Kiwi subscribers. The phrase, it
transpires, has long been the humorous slogan advertising a drink
called Lemon & Paeroa, L&P for short, and has been taken up by many
other NZ firms in affectionate and patriotic tribute.

2. Topical words: Brainstorming
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The Daily Mail ran a story this week that the Welsh Development
Agency has sent its staff on training courses in which they were
told not to use this expression for fear of upsetting a person with
a mental illness or disability.

Few of us would regard the word so negatively, though we might once
have done so. That's because "brainstorm" has had two distinct
senses, one created in Britain, the other in the United States. The
British one is older, recorded in a medical dictionary compiled in
1894 by George Gould. He defined it as "a succession of sudden and
severe phenomena, due to some cerebral disturbance", or in other
words a transient fit of insanity. British writers used it in the
following years, as P G Wodehouse did facetiously in Mike in 1909:
"'He's off his nut.' 'I know. But what did he do? How did the
brainstorm burst? Did he jump at you from behind a door and bite a
piece out of your leg, or did he say he was a tea-pot?'"

The word was almost unknown in the USA until a sensational murder
trial in March 1907. Under the headline "New York Adds a Term to
its Slang vocabulary", the Washington Post wrote: "It may be that
this word occurs somewhere in the literature of insanity, but
nobody excepting, possibly, a few professional students of that
sort of thing had ever heard of it until Dr. Evans declared upon
the witness stand that that was what ailed Harry Thaw on the night
when he shot Stanford White." Dr Evans argued that the defendant
had a sudden burst of insanity, a brainstorm, that caused him to
want to take revenge. This defence or something like it has often
been used since, though in 1919 the Trenton Evening Times commented
that it was "more or less a fake defense in the field of criminal
jurisprudence".

Around the late 1920s or thereabouts - in the USA in particular -
the term began to refer to a flash of mental activity leading to a
bright idea. This developed into the modern sense of an intense and
often informal group discussion aimed at generating ideas and ways
of solving problems. This later sense is known at least by 1940, to
judge from the Times Recorder of Zanesville, Ohio, dated 5
September 1940: "This constant scientific work was not done in any
eager volunteer brainstorming by ambitious army enthusiasts." But a
link with the idea of an eccentric genius or mad scientist who had
productive flashes of inspiration was certainly known in Britain in
the interwar years, to judge from the odd-bod inventor created by
Norman Hunter, whose first book, The Incredible Adventures of
Professor Branestawm, came out in 1933.

The group-creation sense came across the water to Britain during
the Second World War and is now the most common one. Both in the
USA and here, it has entirely eclipsed the mental illness sense, so
much so that I have to assume that the promulgator of the advice is
guessing that the word might conceivably be misunderstood in that
way rather than taking note of its early history. The ruling is
clearly an earnest and well-meant attempt at preventing unnecessary
distress, but it is easy to mock it - as the Daily Mail did - as
political correctness gone mad. However, the Welsh Development
Agency points out that it is responsible under the Race Relations
Act and disability legislation to train staff in equality and
diversity issues.

3. Sic!
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Colin Hall reports on a unfortunate side-effect of giving a product
the trade name of Digital Blue: "Dundee City Council has recently
issued video cameras to primary schools and has helpfully provided
a handout for teachers who are going to use them. Especially in the
present climate of paranoia regarding children, calling it 'Digital
Blue Movie Creator' does seem a little forward!"

Pattie Tancred e-mailed from Australia: "I am a Hansard editor, in
which capacity, as you can imagine, it is my privilege often to be
in close proximity to some extraordinarily creative, or, as some
would have it, mangled, language. My recent favourite, uttered by a
member of our parliament at a committee hearing, is: 'Here lies a
can of worms that requires urgent leadership'. So heroic in tenor
and proportion is this that our office has adopted it as a motto."

4. Weird Words: Makebate
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A person who creates contention or strife.

We've all met people like this, whose chief aim or pleasure is to
spread discord and disharmony. Sir Walter Scott was a great user of
this word, as here in The Abbot (1820): "Elsewhere he may be an
useful and profitable member of the commonweal - here he is but a
makebate, and a stumbling-block of offence."

Somebody who is a "makebate" is clearly making a bate. The second
half survives today in "abate" and "debate"; it comes from Latin
"battere", to beat or fight (the first sense of "debate" in English
in medieval times was to quarrel or battle). As a noun, "bate"
described discord that was severe enough to result in a fight.

British readers might think they recognise in this another form of
"bate", a fit of rage or bad temper, an example of which appeared
in the Daily Mail in January 2004: "Shrieking with simulated
frustration, Clarkson flew into a bate, picked up a hammer and
smashed his desktop to smithereens." But the evidence suggests this
is a respelling of the verb "bait", to persecute a person with
persistent attacks, so that a person was said to be in a bate (or
bait) as a result of being baited.

Among the other senses of "bate", one in particular is known to
falconers. A hawk that beats its wings in agitation and flutters
off the perch is said to "bate". This is ultimately also from Latin
"battere", but directly from the intermediate French "batre", to
beat, linked to the verb to "batter".

5. Q&A
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Q. What does "blotted her copy book" mean? [Ann Waddell]

A. "To blot one's copybook" means to commit some gaffe that spoils
one's record. It's mainly a British or Commonwealth phrase, though
rather old-fashioned. A look at recent examples shows that it has
survived almost exclusively in sports journalism. A typical example
appeared in the Racing Post on 19 July 2004: "Westender, last
year's Champion Hurdle runner-up, blotted his copybook in dramatic
style when refusing at the first fence of the beginners' chase and
catapulting jockey Timmy Murphy to the ground in the process."
Another recent British example, from the Daily Telegraph, shows how
it was once more widely used: "At the end of the war, Deedes notes,
Muggeridge of MI6 'blotted his copybook by befriending PG Wodehouse
and his wife'" (Wodehouse had been accused of treachery because he
broadcast on German radio during the War.)

Our schools now don't have copybooks, or bottles of ink to blot
them with, but at one time the image would have been evocative. The
books contained examples of handwriting for pupils to copy in the
spaces provided. To drip or smear ink on your copybook was a sign
of inferior penmanship or clumsiness that was greatly looked down
on. An example appeared in 1871 in Little Men by Louisa May Alcott:
"Franz heard him say his lessons there, so no one could hear his
blunders or see how he blotted his copybook."

It wasn't until the era of the copybook was almost over that the
phrase took on a figurative meaning. The first case I can find is
dated 1933, from A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan: "Mr
Stannix told me that he would have been safe for the vacant under-
secretary-ship last spring if he hadn't blotted his copy-book."

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