World Wide Words -- 28 May 05
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri May 27 17:01:02 UTC 2005
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 442 Saturday 28 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. Turns of Phrase: Agroterrorism.
3. Sic!
4. Weird Words: Xenoglossy.
5. Recently noted.
6. Q&A: Top notch.
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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DEKKO Subscribers in Australia and New Zealand contributed more
words of similar meaning to this slang term mentioned last week,
whose meaning is "look". One from Australia was "squiz", which is
often said to be a blend of "squint" and "quiz". For all we know,
it might be, though the only certainty is that it comes from
nineteenth century Devonshire dialect. Another, from New Zealand,
is "gink". This is also from British English dialect ("geek" or
"keek"). Bernard Scott remembers this being used together with
"shufti" and "dekko" in the 1960s: "Each had its own shade of
meaning. Taking a shufti was to check out a situation, possibly for
danger. Having a dekko was to observe in an inquisitive manner,
while taking a gink could be a bit furtive - 'Take a gink at this
men's magazine!'" Yet another from New Zealand was "gecko", almost
certainly humorously altered from "dekko" by blending it with
"gink" or possibly even "gander" as an allusion to the lizard.
NIPPER At the risk of boring you if you have had enough about the
alleged nautical origins of this slang term for a young person, I
must close off and tidy up the discussion by mentioning a message
that has arrived from the author John Harland. He is sure that the
supposed origin in weighing anchor is just a yarn. He believes the
false leap of association was made in 1890 in a book by R C Leslie,
Old Sea Wings, Ways and Words in the Days of Oak and Hemp. In the
way of such stories, it has been perpetuated by many authors since,
but he says it was debunked in an authoritative article in the
journal Mariner's Mirror in 1951.
PALOOKA I've updated the piece on the Web site, correcting a minor
error and clarifying some points. See http://quinion.com?PALO .
2. Turns of Phrase: Agroterrorism
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This term has been around for several years (the earliest examples
I can find are from 1999), but has mostly been used by specialists
up till now. It has gained a higher profile in the past year or so
and has been in the news because the first International Symposium
on Agroterrorism was held earlier this month. Agroterrorism is the
deliberate introduction of a plant or animal disease that disrupts
agriculture and so causes widespread economic loss along with fear
and instability. The risk is potentially high in the USA, which is
a major agricultural country with huge exports, so that the effect
of a terrorist attack might be felt well beyond its own borders. As
yet, no successful attack by agroterrorists anywhere in the world
is known to have happened, though there have been reports of small-
scale strikes by Palestinians and Israeli settlers on each other's
crops. Threats in New Zealand to spread foot-and-mouth disease have
been blackmail by individuals, not terrorism. Known cases of food
contamination in various countries, or of threats to contaminate
food, have also proved to be the work of would-be blackmailers or
disgruntled employees.
* From the Aberdeen News, South Dakota, 2 May 2005: Agroterrorism
is a largely hypothetical problem ... The United States has never
experienced an agroterror attack, but some of the hijackers
involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were known to have been
interested in agriculture and crop dusting.
* From USA Today, 9 May 2005: Inspections of imported food at the
nation's entry ports have declined since the Department of Homeland
Security took over the job in 2003, a new government report says.
The drop means the government is reducing its first chance to
discover a foreign disease or an act of "agroterrorism" before the
food is distributed nationwide.
3. Sic!
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Rik Kabel found "a wonderful amphiboly" in the New York Times of 19
May (an amphiboly is a grammatically ambiguous phrase or sentence;
I would name it amphibology, but that's a distinction that makes no
difference). That issue included the headline "Miramax Founders in
Deal to Distribute Video Programs".
4. Weird Words: Xenoglossy /'zEn@(U)glQsi/
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The ability to speak a language without having learned it.
This sounds like a really neat trick if you can manage it.
However, a typical place to find this rare word is the Journal of
Parapsychology. That's because the ability is regarded as a psychic
phenomenon. It might come about because a person has been regressed
to a previous incarnation through hypnosis. Or a medium might be in
communication with a spirit person who speaks another language. The
OED dates its first appearance to 1914; it's from Greek "xenos",
stranger or foreigner, plus "glossa", language; another spelling is
"xenoglossia".
It sounds as if it's related to "speaking in tongues", which is
regarded among Christian groups such as the Pentecostal and
Charismatic movements as evidence of the presence of the Holy
Spirit (though the phenomenon is found in many religions and has
been recorded from the earliest historical times); the formal term
for that is "glossolalia" (the second half from Greek "lalia",
speech).
But from a language point of view the difference is profound: in
"xenoglossy" the implication is that a real language is being
spoken that is intelligible to native speakers and in which the
person can converse, while "glossolalia" is a succession of
meaningless syllables interpretable only through faith.
5. Recently noted
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PHEROBOT Words in "-bot" form an unending stream. This bot doesn't
actually sniff the air, though its name might suggest otherwise, as
the pheromones are virtual ones - pulses of infrared radiation sent
by a member of a swarm of autonomous robots when it finds something
of interest. The idea behind the research is that eventually such
robotic swarms will be able to make collective decisions based on
the information they acquire.
SAVANNAH This isn't a grassy plain but a cross between a domestic
short-haired cat and a serval, a long-legged wild African cat. The
savannah is distinctive: it's twice the size of a normal cat, and
has spots, stripes, a long neck and oversized ears. The breed dates
back to the 1980s, but they're in the news because they've become a
fashionable (and very expensive) accessory among trendy big-city
dwellers in the USA. They're more like dogs than cats, love being
taken for a walk on a lead, and find water irresistible to play in.
They're also illegal in many states and cities (which ban animals
that are wild or partly wild), which makes owning them all the more
desirable.
6. Q&A
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Q. We all know "top notch" means the best or top quality. But was
there a real notch in some situation where there could actually be
a "top notch"? [John Schestag]
A. The short answer is that we don't know but wish we did.
The problem is that the term appears in print for the first time in
the 1840s already fully formed in its modern sense with nothing to
point to where it comes from. The earliest example I've come across
is in an advertisement in the Huron Reflector of Norwalk, Ohio,
dated 29 April 1845, which is worth quoting for its period flavour:
J. WHYLER Has just arrived from the Great Emporium, with a
Tremendous Cargo of Spring and Summer Goods, Which he is now
unloading at his Old Stand in Norwalk - consisting of the
choicest selections he ever made - the top notch of Fashions
and Patterns - and an extensive variety of DRY GOODS, to suit
his Old Customers and every other person who will give him a
call.
The term becomes widely recorded in the later 1840s and early
1850s, suggesting that it had suddenly come into fashion, perhaps
because of some incident or happening, though there's nothing to
show what that might have been. It seems clear enough that there
was some sort of activity in which notches or notching played a
part and in which reaching the top one was to be first-rate or the
very best. But what that might have been is a mystery. A plausible
idea is that it was a scoring system in some game.
An ingenious explanation was recently put forward by a contributor
to a British mailing list. He alleged that at one time a suitor
visiting his beau was allowed by the girl's father to stay just as
long as a courting candle continued to burn. The candle was set in
a holder that permitted it to be raised or lowered by a system of
notches, so changing its burning time. If the father really liked
the young man, he set the candle on its highest notch, in the hope
that by spending a lot of time together the couple would decide to
marry.
This has all the hallmarks of folk etymology, not least because I
can't find any reference to a courting candle, so called, before
very recent times, nor to the custom. Many illustrations of candle
holders with this name exist online, but all I've seen are made
from a metal spiral, with no notches in sight.
Nice story, though.
S. E-mail contact addresses
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