World Wide Words -- 04 Jun 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 3 17:05:58 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 443 Saturday 4 June 2005
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Sent each Saturday to 23,000+ 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. Turns of Phrase: Experimental travel.
3. Weird Words: Valetudinarian.
4. Recently noted.
5. Book Review: The New Oxford American Dictionary.
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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TOP NOTCH Many subscribers suggestion a link with lumberjacks for
the origin of this puzzling old expression. John Craggs e-mailed,
"The image that sprang to mind whilst reading your article was of a
visiting team of Canadian lumberjacks demonstrating pole-climbing
at a New Forest agricultural show. They chopped a notch, banged in
a plank, and used this as a step to cut a higher notch, and so on
until they could stand on the top." Old photographs prove it was a
standard method of climbing a short way up the trunk of a big tree
to reach a place at which the trunk was free of roots and so easier
to fell. The implication is that somebody who was top-notch was
best at this physically intensive activity. However, in real life,
the lumberjacks didn't usually go up more than a few feet and so
there was no reward in having the top notch. Of course, it might
come from the exhibition bouts Mr Craggs mentioned, but I can find
no reference to anything like these at the time "top notch" arrived
on the scene.
Morgan Larkin humorously elaborated on the same idea: "In Spain
macho men were in competition to climb a pole provided with cuts
for foot gripping, with the aim of reaching the top notch. These
top excisions in the pole were so highly regarded that they became
known as Buenas Notches, which term is in use today."
In the piece, I described the folk etymology that held the origin
of "top notch" was related to notched courting candle holders, but
remarked I hadn't found evidence for either the candle holder or
the custom. Several subscribers from South Africa replied that the
custom had once been common among Afrikaner farmers of generations
ago. However, there was no holder, notched or otherwise: fathers
just cut a candle to whatever length seemed appropriate based on
their judgement of the young man. The suitor was allowed to stay
until the candle burnt out. Derrick Hurlin and Elliot Kretzmer tell
me that the custom was called "opsitkers" or "sitting up candle".
But nobody from the USA - where "top notch" first appeared - has
mentioned a similar custom.
2. Turns of Phrase: Experimental Travel
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The phrase is in the news because Lonely Planet yesterday published
its Guide to Experimental Travel. One author is Joel Henry, a 48-
year-old television scriptwriter from Strasbourg who is said to
have created the idea in 1990 (though the term is more recent).
It's also called "experimental tourism". As a surreal alternative
to the standard trudge round tourist venues, he suggests that you
should "challenge your perceptions of a city and increase your
receptiveness as a tourist" by trying alternative ways of seeing.
Alphatourism, for example: identify the first and last streets in
the A-Z, draw a line between the two and follow the route on foot
(a variation might be to draw a random shape, superimpose it on a
street plan and follow the route it marks out). Or aerotourism:
spend a day in an airport enjoying its facilities without going
anywhere. Or nyctalotourism: go to a foreign city at twilight, look
around all night and leave just before dawn. Or cecitourism: let a
trusted friend or partner walk you blindfolded round a place,
describing the sights. If all these are too mundane, you might try
"horse's head tourism": don a horse's head costume and walk around
to experience the way that people react to you.
* From the Independent, 9 Feb. 2005: About 20 miles further on, I
drive past Bodiam Castle, a 14th-century fortification. This, of
course, is a conventional tourist attraction, but experimental
tourists are permitted to visit such places, as long as they
indulge in contretourism. This involves turning your back on the
monument in question and taking a photograph of the view in the
opposite direction.
* From the Observer, 22 May 2005: "You see," he says. "That is the
thing about doing experimental tourism, it gives you a special
feeling. It makes you into a person you are not." I think about
this but I don't think I'm sure enough of the person I am to know
that I'm not the person I'm not. But then, this is precisely the
kind of topsy-turvy conundrum that experimental tourism throws up
the whole time.
3. Weird Words: Valetudinarian
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A person who is unduly anxious about their health.
The everyday word for a person of this sort is "hypochondriac", but
this polysyllabic and literary term is a good alternative at times
when it is desirable not to seem too unkind. In November 2004, the
word appeared in an obituary of the football writer Arthur Hopcraft
in the Independent: "Fastidious, set in his ways and prematurely
balding, Hopcraft had an air of the valetudinarian bachelor about
him from a relatively early age."
The word appears in the language in 1703, in the third volume of
William Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World. Dampier was an
extraordinary explorer, map-maker and buccaneer; a couple of years
after he published this volume he commanded a privateering voyage
during which Alexander Selkirk, the model for Robinson Crusoe, was
marooned. He wrote: "Many of our English Valetudinarians have gone
from Jamaica...to the I. Caimanes,...to live wholly upon Turtle
that abound there". (He's referring to the Cayman Islands, these
days famous more as a refuge for the money of the reclusive rich
than for sick people.) A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1787
remarked that: "Every one knows how hard a task it is to cure a
valetudinarian."
The word is from Latin "valetudinarius", in ill health.
4. Recently noted
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NAPPACHINO Notices in local libraries in various towns and cities
in England have begun to invite people to events of this name. When
you learn that it's a blend of "nappy" and "cappuccino", it sounds
even weirder. Basically, nappuchinos are coffee mornings at which
new mums are offered advice on the environmental and cost benefits
of using washable nappies [diapers] rather than disposable ones.
But the scheme hasn't been helped by a report from the Environment
Agency on 19 May that the environmental impact of either choice is
actually about the same.
NOODLING Readers of the Guardian in the UK were introduced to this
American term this week, one that is so specialised that none of my
dictionaries include it. To noodle is to fish by hand for catfish.
The catfish or flatheads can be up to 30 years old, five feet long
and weigh up to 100 pounds; dragging them out of their underwater
nesting holes in river banks can result in severe lacerations and
even drowning, not to mention attacks by angry turtles and beavers.
It's said the word is from an old English dialect term for a crazy
fool. Other names are hogging, tickling, grabbling or dogging. The
word is in the news because Missouri has legalised it briefly in a
few rivers (noodling is banned in many states because it results in
the killing of mature fish during the breeding season).
E-ROCRACY This must be the least attractive example of the fad for
creating words starting in the "e-" prefix for all matters digital.
I guess that it's an abbreviation for "electronic bureaucracy" (but
I'm open to correction); it refers to the proliferation of British
government Web sites: there are more than 4,000 whose names end in
".gov.uk", a group sometimes referred to as "dotgovs", in imitation
of "dotcom". There are plans to rationalise their number - and to
discourage "e-rocracy", I hope, though thankfully it doesn't seem
to be catching on.
5. Book Review: The New Oxford American Dictionary
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It's large, heavy, erudite, accessible and fairly expensive. Its
Editor, Erin McKean, is, according to American newspaper reports,
the hippest and sexiest lexicographer around. It's also the first
such work, so far as I know, with an electronic edition accessible
on the road, since it can be downloaded to your Palm, Blackberry,
or Windows mobile device. In this new edition, a press release
tells me with the modesty characteristic of such documents, Erin
McKean has added 2000 new terms and hundreds of new photographs,
plus better layout (I resist the blurb's "readability", though it's
there on page 1409).
As always, it's the new entries that provoke the most interest, if
only to confirm the belief of curmudgeons that the language is well
on its way to hell in a handcart, helped by permissive dictionary
makers who let any old neologism into their pages. Being separated
as I am from daily exposure to the raw subject matter by 3000 miles
of ocean, a lot of them are new to me, too, such as "agitainment"
("farm-based entertainment, typically developed as a revenue source
for small-scale farmers and including a wide range of activities"),
"bulgogi" ("a Korean dish of thin beef slices marinated and grilled
on a barbecue"); "buckle bunny" ("a woman who is a follower or
devotee of rodeos and cowboys"); "bridezilla" ("an over-zealous
bride-to-be who acts irrationally or causes offense"); "C-level"
("the executive level of a corporation"); "diabulemia" ("the
manipulation by diabetic patients of insulin treatments in order to
lose weight); "clueful" ("well-informed"); "fanboy" (an obsessive
male fan, usually of movies, comic books, or science fiction");
"October surprise" ("any political event orchestrated (or
apparently orchestrated) in the month before an election, in the
hopes of affecting the outcome"). And so on.
Of course, all the boring standard words of English are here, too.
If you're looking for a desk dictionary that covers the spectrum of
American English, with a fair quantity of encyclopaedic information
thrown in, you could do a lot worse. But why isn't there a digital
version for a Windows PC or Mac?
[Erin McKean [ed], The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second
Edition; published by Oxford University Press on 16 May 2005;
hardback, pp2088; ISBN 0195170776; publisher's price US$60.00.]
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