World Wide Words -- 27 Aug 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 26 17:35:56 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 456 Saturday 27 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: Digital Radio Mondiale.
3. Weird Words: Ignivomous.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Chalk and cheese; Whys and wherefores.
6. 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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ISHKABIBBLE Following up last week's Weird Word, Herb Slater found
a reference to the autobiography of Merwyn Bogue, whose stage name
was Ish Kabibble. He says his stage name comes from a song he used
to sing on the Kay Kyser Kollege of Musical Knowledge radio show in
the 1930s. The song was "Isch Gabibble (I Should Worry)", words by
Sam M Lewis, music by George W Meyer, dated 1913. Bogue said that
he changed the spelling to make it easier to say. The song seems to
be the source of the slang expression, but it doesn't help trace
its linguistic origins, since we don't know where George Meyer got
it from.
2. Turns of Phrase: Digital Radio Mondiale
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This is a technique for broadcasting digital radio programmes over
short-, medium-, and long-wave transmitters worldwide, to replace
the AM format used since the dawn of broadcasting. It's claimed to
provide listeners with near-FM quality and - more importantly - a
signal free from interference and fading. The term goes back to
1996 and became formal in 1998, when a consortium of manufacturers
and broadcasters was formed to work out a common standard. It was
realised by everyone involved that broadcasting in the lower bands
was doomed due to reception problems unless a fundamental change
was made. It is being predicted, in fact, that DRM will eventually
supersede AM in all these bands, if the many millions of listeners
throughout the world can be persuaded to replace their existing
receivers. Though it has had a lot of attention in the specialist
press, it was only in 2003 that the first broadcasts were made and
even now the number of channels is extremely limited, receivers
even more so. Because the standard is non-proprietary, it has also
been taken up by amateurs.
4. Weird Words: Ignivomous /Ig'niv at m@s/
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Vomiting fire.
In 1721, a member of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Forster of
Boston, wrote "The World alarm'd. A surprizing relation of a New
Burning Island lately raised out of the Sea near Tercera; with a
brief history of the other ignivomous mountains at this day in the
world." He might instead have called it a volcano, since that word
had been in the language for a century by then - a work of 1669 by
the German Jesuit Athansius Kircher was entitled "The Vulcano's or
Burning and Fire-vomiting Mountains, Famous in the World: with
their Remarkables" (the apostrophe in "volcano's" would give modern
copy editors a momentary spasm, but it was common then, because the
word seemed foreign and odd). "Ignivomous mountain" has a splendid
ring to it and perhaps this was why in 1875 the translator of Jules
Verne's "The Field of Ice" borrowed it for the description of the
volcano that the intrepid explorers of the story found, in defiance
of known geography, at the North Pole: "This enormous ignivomous
rock in the middle of the sea was six thousand feet high, just
about the altitude of Hecla." The word comes from Latin "ignis",
meaning fire, plus "vomere", to vomit. Note that it's pronounced
with the stress on the second syllable.
5. Recently noted
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PATERNAL DISCREPANCY This is literally the father and mother of
all euphemisms. It's been all over the British press in the past
week, because of reports that a research team from Liverpool John
Moores University has discovered disquieting information about
marital fidelity. In about 1 in every 25 families, a child has been
fathered by someone other than the man who thinks he's the father.
6. Q&A
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Q. Do you know the origin of the expression "chalk and cheese"? I
heard that it came from two neighbouring counties (I think Devon
and Dorset) and their contrasting products of chalk and cheese.
[Jeremy Redgrove, Australia]
A. "As different as chalk and cheese" is an old proverbial phrase
to suggest that two things, superficially alike, are really very
different in their qualities. There's nothing in its history to
suggest that these two counties had anything to do with it - it
sounds like yet another folk etymology to me.
The earliest example - from John Gower's Confessio Amantis of 1393
- suggests that some shopkeeper was making an illicit profit by
adulterating his wares: "And thus ful ofte chalk for cheese he
changeth with ful littel cost". The buyer was surely undiscerning;
though some British cheeses are rather chalk-like in appearance,
substituting more than a tiny proportion with chalk wouldn't fool
anybody for very long.
By the sixteenth century, the phrase had become a fixed expression,
the idea behind it being that though chalk and cheese were similar
in external appearance they were otherwise completely unlike. Hugh
Latimer wrote rather sarcastically around 1555: "As though I could
not discern cheese from chalk."
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Q. I was wondering about the origin of "whys and wherefores" and
the correct spelling. [Joseph Flanigan]
A. You have the spelling right, though I can see why you might feel
it looks odd, not least because it's one of those fixed expressions
that one trots out without thinking much about them. And one half
of it is archaic, anyway.
Few people these days, in truth, can be quite sure what "wherefore"
means. As a result, one of Shakespeare's most quoted lines is often
misunderstood. When Juliet asked, "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art
thou Romeo?", she wasn't checking to see if he was on the ground
below her balcony but asking why he was the person he was, a member
of the hated rival Montague family. It means "why", not "where".
The phrase is an interesting instance of the way English speakers
can turn one part of speech into another without breaking stride.
Conventional grammar would say that "why" is an adverb, but here it
lurks in the guise of a noun, meaning "reason or explanation".
Likewise "wherefore".
The complete expression is at least as old as Shakespeare, who used
it in the Comedy of Errors in 1590: "Was there ever any man thus
beaten out of season, When in the why and the wherefore is neither
rhyme nor reason?" Note the singular, once a common form: though
it's often misquoted, that's the way the gallant Captain Corcoran
sang it in HMS Pinafore: "Never mind the why and wherefore".
The usual meaning is a bit more than just that of the individual
words, which is why the apparent redundancy has survived - as a way
to emphasise that what's needed is not just a reason, but the whole
reason, or all the reasons. It's sometimes expanded even further,
as here from the Sunday Mirror in 2000: "The fact that she's alive
at all is a miracle. The hows, whys and wherefores are irrelevant."
7. Sic!
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"With BBC TV's instant subtitling service," Peter G. Millington-
Wallace e-mailed, "accuracy gives way to speed, with the result
that quite serious programmes risk being turned into comedy shows.
One of my favourite examples is a recent programme about food
supplements, which included 'a meagre tree-fish oil' instead of
'omega 3 fish-oil'."
Last Saturday, as Bernard Robertson-Dunn pointed out, a sub-editor
wrote a remarkable headline over a story on the Web site of the
Independent: "US editor ignites evolution row at Smithsonian over
editor institute mithsonian engulfed by row over evolution at
centre of row over evolution." Whatever he's on, can I have some?
[The headline has since been corrected to the prosaic "US editor
ignites evolution row at Smithsonian".]
Morgiana P Halley wrote: "On the subject of creative spellings, I
was recently made aware of a classified ad for a 'radio alarm saw'.
One assumes that this item was telephoned in to a clerk who had no
idea what a radial arm saw was. I've also seen ads for cars with
'radio' tires. Just humming along the road, I guess."
"In the Sainsbury's magazine for August 2005," David Coe reports,
"is an advertisement for the 'Eglu' - a plastic poultry house which
is delivered to you 'with two organic hens'. So much easier than
mechanical ones, I suppose!"
Chris Trask e-mailed: "I came across four identical signs placed
around a convenience store that is being remodelled which read
"Temporally Closed". I'm not sure if this means that time has come
to a standstill (no work has been done there in the past two
months), or if I should leave my watch outside before entering."
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