World Wide Words -- 14 May 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri May 13 15:46:06 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 440 Saturday 14 May 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. Weird Words: Fustigate.
3. Sic!
4. Book review: Word Map.
5. Q&A: Enquire versus inquire.
A. Ways to support World Wide Words.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Subscription information.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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NIPPERKIN Several subscribers mentioned that "nip", the short form
of "nipperkin" that I wrote about last week, is not only a casual
term for a small amount of spirits but is actually a legal measure
in Australia and New Zealand, of size 30ml.
Others noted that barley wine, no doubt because of its strength,
used to be sold in small bottles, usually one-third of a pint;
these were also called nips. Some US breweries sell their strong
brews in bottles of seven ounces, which is also about one-third of
a pint, which likewise are called nips. Others mentioned that in
New England, and possibly in other places, "nip" is a term for the
smallest bottle of spirits or a miniature (though the old slang
term "nip joint" recorded in the OED - an establishment illegally
selling small amounts of spirits - would now seem to be defunct).
Several correspondents pointed out that in some versions of the
Barley Mow song the nipperkin is an even smaller size, one-quarter
of a gill or 1/32 of a pint. But then it does seem to have varied a
lot down the years: Captain Grose's slang dictionary of 1811 says
it was half a pint.
Warren Jamison commented: "When I first saw 'nipperkin', I thought
it was a useful collective term for one's small fry descendants and
relatives. I intend to so use it." As it happens, there is a mainly
British colloquial term for a child, especially a boy: "nipper".
Many people asked whether this is related. It looks as though it
might be, but it comes from a different source. The word actually
derives from the informal British verb "to nip", to move quickly
("I'll just nip down to the shops for some bread.").
2. Weird Words: Fustigate
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To cudgel or beat.
This word was described back in 1896, when its entry was published
in the Oxford English Dictionary, as "humorously pedantic". These
days "fustigate" is mainly fodder for lists of difficult or rare
words. But then the word hasn't had a particularly extensive or
distinguished history - it only came into the language around 1650
and even in its prime it was always rather an uncommon or literary
word. Its creators took it from the Latin verb "fustigare", to
cudgel to death (from "fustis", a staff or club).
Sir Richard Burton used it in the 1880s in his translation of The
Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (better known as the
Arabian Nights Entertainment): "And she bade them bash me; so they
beat me on my ribs and the marks ye saw are the scars of that
fustigation."
A writer in the Living Age in 1896 used it figuratively for
severely criticising somebody or something. He wrote of Matthew
Arnold's "fustigation of dummy opponents" as part of his style.
This figurative sense survives to some extent. It appeared in the
Rocky Mountain News in 2001: "Actually, most of today's complaints
seem weak and whiny, almost apologetic. They lack the scorn and
vitriol the writers evidently feel in their hearts. So - just this
once, at the dawning of a new year - let me pass along a sample of
real fustigation from real experts, a no-nonsense, in-your-face
style for local critics to aim for."
3. Sic!
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Chris Brown poses an existential query that has occurred to many
British drivers: "Have you ever noticed those road signs, found for
example at a car park entrance or approaching a junction, that say
'Use both lanes'? Am I supposed to straddle the line down the
middle or weave from side to side?"
"One of the public gardens in our neighborhood," e-mailed Valerie
Mann from British Columbia, "hosts a plant sale every year. My
husband and I happened to trip across a sign for a particular plant
that apparently has poisonous leaves. So the helpful people who ran
the sale posted the warning: 'Be careful if you have pets who eat
plants or small children.'" I know somebody with a dog like that.
Alastair Scott found a couple of odd online headlines. On the New
Scientist Web site a story is headed "Sea birds might pay for green
electricity". Though the beak, presumably? (The story is taken from
the print edition, which has the better headline "Sea birds might
pay the price for green electricity" over a report on the dangers
to wildlife of offshore wind farms.) The BBC Web site headlines a
news story "Rubber whale helps train rescuers". (Nothing to do with
rail accidents, as it turns out: a two-ton rubber whale is helping
to train volunteers to rescue stranded mammals.)
And from the Lebanon Daily Star of 6 May, noted by W Douglas
Maurer: "As 20th Century Fox's new $130 million crusader epic
'Kingdom of Heaven' opens across theaters in Lebanon and the Middle
East today, fears that it will create fiction between Muslims and
Christians for its portrayal of Muslim fighters are being
dispelled." Creating fiction - the curse of the movie business.
4. Book review: Word Map
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The author, Kel Richards, is a journalist and author who broadcasts
for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His book is claimed to
be the first national dictionary of Australian regionalisms. It
derives from a section of the ABC's Web site of the same name - run
in conjunction with the Macquarie Dictionary - to which listeners
were invited to contribute regional words and phrases.
The editors of the dictionary were surprised and pleased by the
response, which showed that regional Australian English was not
dying out, as they had feared, but was still very much alive. It
also turned up terms that they hadn't heard about, confirming that
the spoken language can still surprise lexicographers who are, by
the nature of their work, so firmly tied to the written word.
Much of the variation can be traced to communities of immigrants
who brought with them their native vocabularies. If an inhabitant
of Victoria speaks of a "piece" rather than a sandwich, that's a
relic of a one-time Scottish presence; for a Tasmanian a "nointer"
might be the name for a spoiled child, originally a term from
English dialect that meant a scapegrace or young rascal; German
immigrants in South Australia contributed "fritz" for a type of
luncheon meat.
Kel Richards says the book is intended to be "accurate but not too
serious". That's fair comment. A quick flip through its pages finds
"Canadian passport", a derisive and mysterious term for the
hairstyle otherwise called a mullet; "dagwood dog", a deep-fried
battered saveloy (feel your arteries hardening with all that
cholesterol); "fish frighteners", one of a vast range of terms
recorded here for tight-fitting swimming trunks or Speedos;
"footpath", which in some areas is the name for a grassed strip
between the front boundary of a house and the edge of the road (one
recent correspondent tells me something similar is known in parts
of the USA as the "devil's strip"); round Brisbane, a "joombie" is
"a member of the burgeoning peasant underclass", presumably the
equivalent of the British "chav"; a "mung bean" can refer to a
totally useless person (which can include a tourist); someone in
Tasmania described as "scadgy" looks untidy and grubby by choice.
Lots of words to browse here. If you're Australian, there's also an
invitation to help improve and enlarge on the entries. One minor
annoyance: the key to the introductory map has gone awry, implying
among other errors that Tasmania is actually called the Eyre and
York Peninsulas.
[Kel Richards and The Macquarie Dictionary, Word Map: What Words
are used where in Australia, ABC Books; paperback, pp223; ISBN
0733315402; publisher's price AU$22.95.]
[It's unfortunate that the book isn't readily available outside
Australia. Big booksellers like Dymocks (http://quinion.com?DYMO)
or Angus and Robertson (http://quinion.com?ANGU) may be able to
post it to you. ABC's online shop (http://quinion.com?ABCS) will
certainly mail it anywhere in the world.]
5. Q&A
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Q. In your issue of 23 April you wrote "Earnest enquirers wish to
know." The Latin for "he said" is "inquit". Hence it always seems
correct to me to use the English "inquired" rather than "enquired".
How say you? [Barry Shandling, Toronto]
A. As you might guess, I rather disagree.
Arguments from etymology are always hard to justify, because there
are many thousands of examples of words that have shifted sense or
spelling since they arrived in English. Language is as language
does: if native speakers choose to change words or the way they use
them, that's something we just have to accept. Then there's the
difficulty of defining what you mean by "correct", since usage can
vary a lot between various communities of speakers, each of which
will firmly assert that their own way of doing things is right.
This one's particularly awkward, for both these reasons. The Latin
origin is the verb "inquirere" (based on "quaerere", to ask or
seek, which is also the source of "query"). However, the first
examples of the English verb - in the thirteenth century - began
with "en-", or even sometimes "an-". This is because the prefix
became changed in its passage into English; it arrived via Old
French, in which the word was "enquerre" (modern French has
"enquérir"). Educated people in the fifteenth century began to be
persuaded under the influence of Latin that it really ought to be
spelled "inquire", not "enquire". But educated opinion didn't
prevail, and the two forms have continued in use in parallel in
British English, roughly in equal frequencies, down to the present
day.
However, in recent times British people have developed a difference
of meaning between the two forms. "Enquire" tends to be used for
general senses of "ask" (I might enquire after your health, or
enquire about some fact or other), while "inquire" implies a formal
investigation (as in the legal forum called a public inquiry). But
this isn't absolute by any means, and British English is being
influenced by American English, in which "inquire" and "inquiry"
have long been the standard forms (though the "en-" forms are not
entirely unknown even there, albeit in rather formal situations;
also "enquiry" is relatively more common than "enquire").
Australian English stands in much the same position as British
English and is subject to the same forces. Canadian English, as so
often, is split between American and British styles, though
favouring the American.
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