World Wide Words -- 12 Feb 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Feb 11 19:06:04 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 427 Saturday 12 February 2005
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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
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Topical Words: Morganatic.
3. Weird Words: Velocipedist.
4. Sic!
5. Q&A: Hobson's choice.
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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GYP You may remember the item in the newsletter of 8 January about
"gyp", in the sense of something that causes one pain ("My ankle is
giving me gyp"). I said then, correctly, that it was not connected
with gypsies, and especially not with the derogatory verb "to gyp",
to cheat or defraud, but came from English dialect. However, Chris
Colton e-mailed querying "gyppy", as in "gyppy tummy", a term for
diarrhoea. This does have the same origin as "gypsy" - a mangled
form of "Egyptian". "Gyppy tummy" is noted by Eric Partridge as
World War Two services slang for the ailment suffered by British
forces in the North African desert campaign, and it was a phrase
that was common in Britain after the War. Having recently returned
from Egypt with a case of it, I can attest to its power! It seems
certain that "gyppy" was influenced in its creation by the pain
sense of "gyp", but also built on "gyppy" or "gippy", a slang term
for an Egyptian that can be traced back to Lord Kitchener's army in
Egypt in the 1880s and 1890s.
2. Topical Words: Morganatic
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As I write, the news has just been announced that Prince Charles is
to marry his long-term lover Camilla Parker Bowles on 8 April in a
civil ceremony. The news reports focus on the unique arrangements
that have been worked out to make this marriage possible within the
legal and religious constraints on the heir to the British throne
marrying a divorcée, not least that the title Princess Consort has
had to be invented for her (modelled on the term Prince Consort
created for Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria) so that she
doesn't have to be called Queen Camilla when Charles succeeds to
the throne.
One phrase that has appeared in almost every article written in
recent years about the possible union of Charles and Camilla is
"morganatic marriage", many putting it forward as a possible
solution to the difficulties. However, it is now clear this idea
was ruled out from the start. It's a sensitive term in British
royal circles, since in November 1936 King Edward VIII proposed a
morganatic marriage to Mrs Simpson as a way of getting around the
fact that she, too, was a divorcée. However, it was rejected out of
hand on the grounds that British law and tradition don't permit
such royal marriages and he ended up abdicating instead.
Morganatic marriage was originally and mainly a German custom. It
was marriage between a high-ranking man and a woman of lower rank
(rarely the other way round) in which the woman keeps her former
status and in which any children of the marriage are not allowed to
inherit the property of their father or his rank or titles (his
dignities, in the jargon of this esoteric legal field). It has its
roots in an idea common in medieval Germany that people who entered
into a variety of transactions, not just marriage, were expected to
be of similar social standing. The most celebrated such marriage in
modern times was that between Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie
Chotek, both of whom died in the assassination at Sarajevo in 1914
that triggered the First World War.
Another name for it was "left-handed marriage", because the custom
was that at the altar the husband extended his left hand to the
bride, not his right, as a mark of their unconventional union. It's
unfortunate that in English this phrase could also at one time
refer to a coupling that wasn't a marriage, either an adulterous
relationship or one in which the couple hadn't bothered with the
formalities. A "left-handed wife" was a mistress.
The word "morganatic" deeply puzzled etymologists at one time and
some believed that it derived from the marriage of the fairy
Morgana (also known as Morgan le Fey, from the Arthurian legends)
to a mortal. This would link it to the idea of the "fata morgana",
a type of mirage seen in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and
Italy. However, this has long since been disproved.
Oddly, the source of "morganatic" turns out to be a German one
meaning "morning gift", which sounds like a contradiction (the
medieval Latin term was "matrimonium ad morganaticam", based on the
sixth-century German "morganegiba" for which the modern German
equivalent is "Morgangebe"). But the term morning gift refers to an
old custom in which the husband would give a present to his wife
the morning after the marriage was consummated. In a morganatic
marriage that's all the wife got.
3. Weird Words: Velocipedist
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A rider of an early type of bicycle.
It appeared on English roads about 1818: a strange vehicle with two
wheels, one behind the other, joined by a horizontal beam on which
the rider sat, pushing the contraption along with his feet. This
was an early precursor of our modern bicycle, the invention of a
German named Karl Drais. The name for the contraption was varied:
Drais called it a "Laufmaschine", a running machine; the French
described it as a "velocipede", from the Latin words for "swift
feet". The English borrowed the French term, but also called it a
"draisine" after the German inventor, as well as "dandy-horse"
(because it was taken up by the fashionable young men of the period
called dandies), or a "hobby-horse" (abbreviated to "hobby"), after
the ancient toy of a stick with a horse's head that children would
pretend to ride.
The machines seemed innocuous enough, but they caused problems.
They weren't easy to learn to ride, since nobody had any experience
of the art of balancing required. The original Drais version had a
brake, but the ripped-off French, English and American versions
didn't, which resulted in accidents. Roads, even in towns, were
often so rutted that riders took to the pavements (sidewalks), to
the terror of pedestrians. The Times reported in June 1819 that
"Mrs. Bearham, wife of Mr. Bearham, maltster, of Hunsley, Hants,
returning home lately in her cart, the horse took fright at a
velocipede and she was thrown out and killed on the spot."
4. Sic!
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"My partner and I," Joan Beecroft e-miled recently, "were touring
southern Labrador and went to visit a lighthouse museum that was
undergoing renovation. A hand-lettered sign on one side of the
building said 'watch for falling deberee' but another around the
back had 'watch for falling deberree.' One can imagine the
conversation between the sign-writers!"
Deven Black offers this to puzzle over: Specialty Food News, an e-
mail newsletter from the US Food Institute, reported recently that
"Studies show that green tea in mice can decrease the spread of
cancer to liver, bone and other sites." Now work out the recipe.
Found by Keith Ghormley on a Web site reviewing digital cameras:
"Memory card corruption can happen with any card type and any
camera manufacturer, nobodies immune." "So I guess," he wrote,
"there are some advantages to being a nobody."
"Post-industrial or post-mortem?" Chris Church e-mailed. "A recent
feature in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph business supplement
tells us that a Blackburn textile company has 'shifted its dying
operations to Egypt'."
5. Q&A
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Q. I am surprised that the expression "Hobson's choice" does not
appear in your online archive, as I was hoping to find out whether
there was a real Hobson involved. [Homer Cox]
A. There was indeed a real Mr Hobson. He was the proprietor of an
extremely prosperous carrier's business that ran between Cambridge
and London. Thomas Hobson took it over when his father of the same
name died in 1568. The Dictionary of National Biography says that
he "conducted the business with extraordinary success, and amassed
a handsome fortune". He continued to travel to London in person
until shortly before his death in 1631, aged about 86. John Milton
wrote a poem about him shortly after his death, which said that he
died of enforced idleness, having been prevented from travelling
because of an outbreak of plague: "And surely Death could never
have prevailed, / Had not his weekly course of carriage failed".
However, it wasn't his carrier's firm that gave rise to the term,
but his other business hiring out horses. Many of his customers
were undergraduates; these young men often treated his horses very
badly, driving them too hard and wearing them out. He kept telling
them that they'd get to London just as quickly if they didn't push
mounts so hard, but that had no effect. So, to give his horses some
time to recover, he instituted a rota. The most recently returned
horse was put at the back of the stable queue, and customers had to
take the next one available at the front, which was therefore the
most rested. There were no exceptions to the rule: if the customer
didn't like the horse he was offered, he could take his custom
elsewhere. So Hobson's choice was no choice at all.
Richard Steele put it this way in an article in the Spectator of 10
October 1712: "When a Man came for a Horse, he was led into the
Stable, where there was great Choice, but he obliged him to take
the Horse which stood next to the Stable-Door; so that every
Customer was alike well served according to his Chance, and every
Horse ridden with the same Justice: From whence it became a
Proverb, when what ought to be your Election was forced upon you,
to say, 'Hobson's Choice'".
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