World Wide Words -- 16 Apr 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 15 21:10:05 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 436 Saturday 16 April 2005
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent each Saturday to 22,000+ subscribers in at least 120 countries
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Dog-whistle politics.
3. Sic!
4. Weird Words: Bowdlerise.
5. Book review: In Other Words.
6. Q&A: Hooplehead.
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
TUFTHUNTER Following my note last week about spotting a usage of
this obsolete term of rebuke, several people queried the similarity
in sense and form between "tuft" and "toff". I might have said that
it is commonly believed that the latter term, for a rich or upper-
class person, does indeed derive from "tuft". I've expanded the
item into a Weird Words piece on the Web site, which will be
uploaded this weekend to http://quinion.com?TUFT .
2. Turns of Phrase: Dog-whistle politics
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Australians will be familiar with this term for a type of targeted
political campaign message, since it has been known there since at
least 1997. It has started to appear in Britain during the current
election campaign because of the Australian political guru Lynton
Crosby. He ran four campaigns for John Howard before transferring
his person and his skills to the UK and another Howard, the leader
of the Conservative party, Michael Howard. The phrase refers to a
campaign message that will not cause general offence, but which
contains a coded message to which sympathetic voters will respond,
in the same way that a dog will hear a supersonic whistle inaudible
to the humans around it.
* From the Observer, 10 Apr. 2005: The net also plays into the
Tories' hands by facilitating the 'dog-whistle' campaigning at
which Michael Howard has become increasingly adept. Just as a dog-
whistle is inaudible to humans but is heard by every canine within
miles, Howard has been beaming messages at targeted groups - anti-
abortion campaigners, and people hostile to immigrants, gypsies and
asylum-seekers - which, if broadcast in the normal way, might repel
the majority of voters.
* From the Independent on Sunday, 27 Mar. 2005: The Tory leader's
choice of issues, from immigration to travellers and abortion, is
said to be an example of "dog-whistle politics". "You call home
your traditional supporters of the party who have drifted away by
appealing to their basest instincts and stirring up fear and
prejudice and ugly gutter politics. But you do so at a pitch that
cannot be heard by others. It's a hit-and-run approach," says Mr
Hain.
3. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Island monks fly in satellite to watch Pope funeral". That was the
headline on a Reuters story dated 8 April, spotted by Phil Glatz.
Prosaically, the Cistercian monks on Caldey Island, off the coast
of Wales, wanted to temporarily install a satellite dish to watch
the funeral on television, but rough seas meant the equipment had
to be ferried in by helicopter.
This turned up in a review of a Merle Haggard/Bob Dylan concert in
the Chicago Sun Times on 4 April, which Julie Johnson noted: "Back
when Haggard was 30, live club music in Nashville was about proper
dancing. At Bakersfield beer joints, the morays were gone and folks
were buckle-polishing and dancing to rock 'n' roll."
It startled David Stone that on 5 April a report on sfgate.com, the
online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, included a quote
from Christopher Christie, the US Attorney for New Jersey: "You
can't lie to the federal government with impunity and get away with
it." You reckon?
David Coe was horrified by the front page banner of the Sunday
Times last weekend: "Nicole on Love - Kidman bears her soul". "I
checked the article," he reports, "but no play on words seems
intended - Dear God, what has become of the famed and feared subs
of Printing House Square?"
The New York Times is not immune to such problems: "There is a lot
to fear from 'Dicken's World,' a Charles Dickens theme park going
up near a shipbuilding town east of London where the author spent
his boyhood." Thanks to Walter Sheppard for passing that on.
4. Weird Words: Bowdlerise
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To remove material that is considered improper or offensive.
An advertisement appeared on the front page of the Times of London
on 15 December 1818, placed by Messrs Longman, Hunt, Rees, Orme,
and Brown, to tell the public about their new books. First in the
list was "THE FAMILY SHAKSPEARE; in which nothing is added to the
original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which
cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family. By THOMAS BOWDLER,
Esq." (To avert messages pointing out a typographical error, that
spelling of the Bard's name was once common and unremarkable.)
Bowdler, a man of independent means, had trained as a doctor but
following a breakdown in his health spent the rest of his life in
charitable undertakings, such as continuing the work of the prison
reformer John Howard. He was concerned that in Shakespeare's works
"Many words and expressions occur which are of so indecent a nature
as to render it highly desirable that they should be erased." He
also complained about the unnecessary and frivolous allusions to
Scripture, which "call imperiously for their erasement". Alas, his
attempts to sanitise the works of the master played sad havoc with
their quality and he was bitterly criticised for his prudery and
heavy-handed editing (though the ten-volume work went through five
editions by the 1860s). He died in 1825, having done much the same
job on Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.
The verb is recorded as first used by General Perronet Thompson in
1836, in his Letters of a Representative to his Constituents during
the session of 1836. Though the Family Shakespeare has long since
vanished from booksellers' shelves, the name of its editor lives on
as a byword for prissy censorship.
5. Book review: In Other Words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This book was first published in North America and has now become
available from Oxford University Press in the UK. It presents some
intriguing examples of words from other languages for which English
has no good equivalents - the author, Christopher Moore, calls them
"untranslatables".
The author's intention is to say something about the culture of the
originating language group though the mental associations certain
words evoke for native speakers - associations that cause problems
for translators. For example, he argues that Spanish "duende" for a
quality of passion and inspiration, especially in the performing
arts, has no good English equivalent. In Arabic, it seems, "bukra"
literally means "tomorrow", but it really refers to an
indeterminate future in comparison to which Spanish "mañ;ana" is
urgent.
In some cases, English has got around the difficulties by taking
over the word and its associations as a job lot. For example, the
Irish "craic" literally means "chat", but that doesn't begin to
describe the mixture of fun, laughter, music, storytelling and good
company that's really understood and which has resulted in the word
becoming widely known in Britain and beyond. Though Chinese "feng
shui" would need a long paraphrase to render it in English, we've
got around the problem by taking over the original.
Many of the examples are wryly humorous, such as "Drachenfutter",
"dragon fodder", the peace offering German husbands make to their
wives when they have engaged in some inappropriate behaviour. The
Italian "attaccabottone", for a boring person from whom it is
impossible to escape, lacks a good English equivalent. In Tierra
del Fuego, a "mamihlapinatapei" is a shared private and unspoken
moment "when each knows the other understands and is in agreement
with what is being expressed".
It's a slim volume, with some small things to think about, but with
the cultural background for each word severely constrained by the
brief entry given to each. It's worth considering for browsing, but
for a more meaty look at untranslatable words, Howard Rheingold's
They Have a Word For It (see http://quinion.com?THAW) is worth a
considering.
[C J Moore, In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most
Intriguing Words Around the World, Oxford University Press; 31
March 2005; hardback, pp127; ISBN 0192806246; publisher's UK price
£9.99; available in the USA from Walker & Company, ISBN 0802714447
and in Canada from Fitzhenry & Whiteside, ISBN 1550418645]
ONLINE BOOKSTORE PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
Amazon USA: US$10.50 (http://quinion.com?M94G)
Amazon Canada: CDN$15.16 (http://quinion.com?M39A)
Amazon UK: GBP6.99 (http://quinion.com?M24K)
Amazon Germany: EUR16,50 (http://quinion.com?M66J)
Barnes & Noble: US$11.20 (http://quinion.com?M71X)
[Please use these links to order. See Section C for more details.]
6. Q&A: Hooplehead
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. On the HBO series "Deadwood", Ian McShane's foul-mouthed
character Al Swearengen often refers to people he doesn't respect
as "hoopleheads". Clearly it's not a compliment, but is there a
more precise definition and origin of the term? [Victoria Stefani]
A. Like many people in the UK, I've been following this series with
interest and am looking forward to the second season. This usage by
the Al Swearengen character intrigued me, too, but my habitual
indolence is so great that it was your question that provoked me to
look it up.
"Hooplehead" is not a common American slang term (most of the
examples online have been taken from the series, which has probably
given it more exposure than it has ever had before). It refers to a
foolish, ridiculous or worthless person. Swearengen uses it as an
all-purpose dismissive insult, which is pretty much how it seems to
be used in real life.
According to Professor Jonathan Lighter's Historical Dictionary of
American Slang, it probably derives from Major Hoople, a character
in a once-famous cartoon strip called Our Boarding House, which
featured the goings-on at Martha Hoople's rooming establishment. It
was written and drawn by Gene Ahern and began to appear in
September 1921, though Martha's husband, Major Amos Barnaby Hoople,
doesn't appear from ten years' away globetrotting until 27 January
1922. The Major was a layabout given to whopping lies about his
achievements and addicted to get-rich-quick schemes. One writer has
described him as "perhaps the greatest windbag, stuffed shirt and
blowhard ever to 'hrumph' his way across the funnies page".
"Hoople" as a derogatory term is recorded from the late 1920s and
remained common for decades because the strip continued until 1981.
But Professor Lighter's first, and only, recording of "hooplehead"
is dated 1994.
You will have spotted that producer David Milch and his team of
writers - unless they're privy to previously unknown information -
have used anachronistic language. It would not have been possible
for the real Al Swearengen to have used the word in 1876, 40+ years
before Gene Ahern invented the character and over a hundred years
before it was first recorded in print. Oops.
A. Subscription information
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address, or subscribe,
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm .
You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a full list
of commands, send a message containing the following two lines to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org:
INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS
END
The "END" ensures that the list server doesn't get confused by your
signature or other text added to the outgoing message.
This newsletter is also available as an RSS feed. The address is
http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .
Recent back issues are archived at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/
B. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to respond to something in a newsletter, ask a question
for the Q&A section, or otherwise contact Michael Quinion, please
send it to one of the following addresses. All others are now
permanently discontinued - please update your address book.
* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
be sent to wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't
use this to respond to published answers to questions - e-mail
the comment address instead)
* Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list
server should be addressed to wordssubs at worldwidewords.org
Please do not send attachments with messages.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Wide Words newsletter and Web site are free, but if you
would like to help with their costs, here are some ways to do so.
If you order any goods from any of these online stores (not just
new books), you can use one of these links, which gets World Wide
Words a small commission at no extra cost to you:
Amazon USA: http://quinion.com?QA
Amazon UK: http://quinion.com?JZ
Amazon Canada: http://quinion.com?MG
Amazon Germany: http://quinion.com?DX
Barnes & Noble US: http://quinion.com?BN
If you would like to contribute a sum to the upkeep of World Wide
Words through PayPal, enter this link into your browser:
http://quinion.com?PP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2005. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at <http://www.worldwidewords.org>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online
newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include
this note and the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed
publications or on Web sites requires prior permission, for which
you should contact wordseditor at worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list