World Wide Words -- 13 Aug 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 12 18:13:18 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 454 Saturday 13 August 2005
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Sent each Saturday to at least 25,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS
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: Sudoku.
3. Over to you.
4. Weird Words: Fanfaronade.
5. Recently noted.
6. Q&A: Duct tape.
7. Sic!
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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AGA SAGA In this piece last week, the name of the Swedish inventor
of the Aga was given as Gustav Dorén instead of the correct Gustaf
Dalén. Can't read my own handwriting, it seems!
MONKEY HURLAGE Lots of subscribers pointed out that in the US the
verb "hurl" can also mean vomit and so this expression I featured
last week might have a different meaning to the one I gave. The
sole arbiter of truth here has to be Scott Adams, who writes and
draws the Dilbert cartoons in which the expression appeared. I've
written to him for his adjudication, but have so far not received
an answer. Watch this space for updates.
2. Turns of Phrase: Sudoku
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The word Sudoku means "single number" in Japanese and refers to a
puzzle consisting of a 9-by-9 grid of squares, each divided into
nine 3-by-3 squares. Some of the squares already contain a number.
The aim is to fill in the remainder so that every horizontal and
vertical line, and every 3-by-3 square, contains the numerals 1 to
9 with no repeats. The puzzle first appeared in the USA in the
early 1980s under the name "Number Place" and was taken up by the
Japanese publishing house Nikoli in 1984. It has been very popular
in Japan for many years but has only recently become a widespread
and addictive craze here in the UK (the derived term "sudokumania"
has been coined for it). It has now returned to the USA and has
also become common in other countries. The first puzzles were
featured in the Times back in November 2004 and soon after in the
Daily Mail and several other newspapers, though the craze really
took off around May 2005. The Mail's puzzles are comparatively
easy, I'm told, with 32 of the 81 squares already filled in. Others
have fewer and are correspondingly harder.
* From the Daily Mail, 12 May 2005: "There is no adding up,
subtraction, multiplication or division in Sudoku. You do not even
need to know that two plus two equals four. But, boy, can it make
your brain ache, your pulse race and knuckles whiten as you grip
your pen in exasperation or, finally, ecstasy!"
* From the Independent, 22 Jul. 2005: And filling the committees is
a complex task, like trying to complete 30 inter-related Sudoku
puzzles simultaneously.
3. Over to you
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Among the many queries that stump me completely was one last week
from Rachel Becker, who wants to know more about the background and
meaning of a chant she learnt as a child in New Zealand: "First the
worst, second the best, third the golden eagle". I've found a few
examples, but nothing to indicate where it comes from. If anybody
knows, they will scratch the itch of ignorance that is affecting at
least two people.
4. Weird Words: Fanfaronade
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Arrogant or boastful talk.
Sir Thomas Urquhart, who among many other accomplishments wrote a
book with the title Logopandecteision, or, An Introduction to the
Universal Language, mentioned in a work of 1652 "The Gasconads of
France, Rodomontads of Spain, Fanfaronads of Italy." He was well
travelled and claimed to be fluent in the languages of all these
countries, so he might equally have said the word was Spanish or
French, though that would have spoiled his roll-call of countries.
English borrowed it directly from the French "fanfaronnade" with
the same sense. This derives from "fanfaron", a braggart, which in
its turn comes from "fanfare", the same word as in English. So a
person guilty of fanfaronade is blowing his own trumpet.
It's far from being a compliment, of course. As Sir Walter Scott
put it in The Surgeon's Daughter, one of his Chronicles of the
Canongate, dated 1827: "Dr Gray ... was an enemy to every thing
that approached to fanfaronade, and knew enough of the world to lay
it down as a sort of general rule, that he who talks a great deal
of fighting is seldom a brave soldier, and he who always speaks
about wealth is seldom a rich man at bottom."
At about this time, the word returned to its roots and could mean a
literal fanfare. Charles Dickens used it like that in one of his
short stories, Somebody's Luggage of 1862: "And hark! fanfaronade
of trumpets, and here into the Great Place, resplendent in an open
carriage, with four gorgeously-attired servitors up behind, playing
horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled 'the Daughter of a Physician' in
massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat."
You might prefer one or other of Urquhart's alternatives, both also
of European origin. A "gasconade" was also extravagant boasting, in
reference to a supposed characteristic of the Gascons of SW France.
For more on "rodomontade", see http://quinion.com?RODO.
5. Recently noted
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STYGOBIOLOGIST Anyone reading New Scientist gets used to names for
practitioners of arcane disciplines, such as "pharmacoeconomist" or
"archaeogeophysicist", but last week's issue produced one even more
rare. A stygobiologist researches stygobites, small animals such as
crustaceans that live in stygian watery environments in limestone
rocks. All three words derive from "Styx", which in ancient Greek
myth was one of the nine rivers of the underworld, over which
Charon ferried the souls of the dead.
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH The revised second edition of this
single-volume work came out this week. An interesting development
is that purchasers get free access to the online edition until the
end of January 2007. There's little to add in general to previous
reviews(*), since the style and approach are unchanged. The list of
newly included words has some interesting nuggets. "Lollywood" is a
name for the Pakistani film industry, based in Lahore. The British
phrase "drinking in the last chance saloon" refers to a situation
in which there's a last opportunity to put things right. "Flehmen"
is a behavioural response found in many male mammals when they
detect particular smells from females, characterised by a curling
of the upper lip and a raising of the head. A "throwdown" is a
performance by or competition between DJs, rappers, or similar
artistes. And "undercrackers" is a British informal term for men's
underpants.
[Oxford Dictionary of English, revised 2nd ed, published by OUP on
10 August, hardback pp2088; ISBN 0-19-861057-2; publisher's price
GBP35.00. Please use the links in Section C at the end of this
newsletter if you want to purchase it from Amazon.]
(*) See http://www.worldwidewords.org/reviews/node.htm and
http://www.worldwidewords.org/reviews/re-fou1.htm .
6. Q&A
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Q. Is that universal sticky tape stuff that everyone has in their
garage toolkit called duct tape or duck tape? I've seen and heard
it both ways. [Jonas Wetherell]
A. It's possible to make a case that either is right. The story
behind the stuff is confusing enough to require some sorting out.
Bear with me while I trace the evidence and the contrary opinions,
though I must warn you that I come only to a tentative conclusion.
The first example of "duct tape" I found is from an advertisement
in a newspaper in Wisconsin in September 1965. There are lots of
earlier examples of "duck tape" in the same archive that date back
to the early 1940s (and the Oxford English Dictionary has found one
from 1902), which might suggest that it's the older form. But that
is misleading. This duck tape isn't the triple-layer, tearable,
silver, sticky-backed stuff but plain cotton tape. The material has
been called duck for four centuries, though it was originally made
from linen, not cotton. It was a lighter and finer material than
canvas, often used for seamen's trousers and sometimes for sails on
small craft. Duck tape was widely used at one time for the vertical
binding tapes of venetian blinds.
The usual story about the origin of the adhesive material is that
it was developed by the Permacel division of Johnson & Johnson in
1942 for the US Army as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition
boxes. The tape proved immensely versatile and was used for all
sorts of repair purposes on military equipment. These facts come
from Johnson & Johnson's historians, so ought to be accurate. But
the story goes on to say that because the fabric backing was made
from cotton duck and perhaps because it repelled moisture "like
water off a duck's back", it became known to soldiers as "duck
tape". However, there's no known use of "duck tape" in any document
of the Second World War that anyone investigating the matter has
looked at, which suggests this story about the origin of the name
is just a folktale.
Some time after the War, it is said, engineers begin to use the
tape to seal the joints in air-conditioning ducts. This tape was
manufactured in the same way, though to match the ducting it was
coloured silver rather than the green of the Army version. Because
of this use, it became known informally as "duct tape".
"Duck tape" is a trademark of Henkel Consumer Adhesives, dating
from 1982, who sell it under that name in several countries. John
Kahl, the CEO of the firm, has been reported as saying that his
father chose the name after noticing that "duct tape" sounded like
"duck tape" when customers asked for it. (The collision of the two
"t"s in the middle of "duct tape" causes the first one to be lost
by a process called elision.) The term "duct tape" has never been
trademarked, though several compound terms that include it have -
it looks as though it had become generic before anybody thought of
registering it. Apart from a one-off instance in the Oxford English
Dictionary of "duck tape" from 1971 (which looks like a case of the
"duct" - "duck" elision), I can't find "duck tape" in the adhesive
sense until the 1980s.
My view is that the original name was "duct tape", given informally
to it by heating engineers post-war, and the "duck tape" version is
elision in rapid speech, later capitalised on by a manufacturer.
But, as things stand, nobody knows for sure.
7. Sic!
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Tom Dooley "got a good roar" from a message on the Yahoo group New
Okie Pioneers, a homesteading interest group: "Dave and I are both
raw feeders and my uncle called me last weekend with a cow that had
broken her back leg - so we butchered her along with a couple from
Arkansas."
In the current issue of Shooting Sportsman the following biological
oddity struck the eye of Jim Brewster: "Schonbrunn was built during
the forty-year reign of Maria Theresa, and there she welcomed child
prodigy Mozart to her court when he was just six years old and gave
birth to Marie Antoinette...".
A sign noticed by Tom Larsen in an appliance repair shop in San
Francisco: "Customers leaving their repairs for more than 60 days
will be disposed of."
The Norcal Hostels Web site intrigued Catherine Pantsios with this:
"In addition to the friendly staff at our front desk, guests can
check out a variety of equipment, including Frisbees, flashlights,
footballs, basketballs, soccer balls, playing cards, alarm clocks
and a clothing iron." But is there any restriction on what you can
do with the front-desk staff once you've borrowed them?
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