World Wide Words -- 08 Apr 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 7 17:34:39 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 482 Saturday 8 April 2006
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Sent each Saturday to at least 32,000 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: Exercise bulimia.
3. Weird Words: Abacot.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Can of worms.
6. Sic!
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
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A formatted version of this newsletter is available
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1. Feedback, notes and comments
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PURSED-LIPPED The principal comment about last week's piece was
that the term was old enough to predate purses with metal lips and
clasps. Others pointed out that one sense of the verb "to purse"
given in the Oxford English Dictionary (a sense that's older than
the examples of "purse lip") is "[t]o contract, to draw together
(the lips, brow, etc.) in wrinkles or puckers, suggesting the
tightly drawn-in mouth of a purse", which also suggests a purse
with a drawstring to close it.
Several subscribers argued that the presence of the verb "to purse"
made "pursed lips" obvious, which explained why dictionaries didn't
include it. Some do give helpful definitions: the Oxford Dictionary
of English says "(of the lips) to pucker or contract, typically to
express disapproval or irritation". But others explain the verb by
the single word "pucker", which doesn't give the right idea at all
- you might guess that "purse-lipped" meant positioning the lips to
prepare for a kiss, quite the wrong idea. Even the OED's definition
fails to communicate the essential idea of disapproval.
EUGEROICS Several subscribers learned in classical Greek came to
my aid in finding the origin of this word featured last week. The
most probable origin is the verb "egeirein", to arouse or awaken
(which, incidentally, I learned is the term in the Gospels that is
usually translated as "resurrect" or "raise from the dead"). So
"eugeroic" would be a partial and extremely irregular blend of "eu"
+ "(e)ge(i)r(-ein)" + "-(o)ic". Others pointed out that the word is
confusing, since it seems to include the "ger-" stem from Greek
"geras", old age, that turns up in words like "geriatric".
KUDOS The April 2006 edition of MED Magazine, the monthly webzine
of the Macmillan English Dictionaries resource site (which should
be online at www.macmillandictionary.com/profile/emagazine.asp very
soon if it's not already there), includes a short review of World
Wide Words, which gives it 23 points out of a possible 25.
2. Turns of Phrase: Exercise bulimia
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Bulimia is a well-known condition in which those affected have an
obsessive desire to lose weight, which shows up as bouts of extreme
overeating followed by fasting or self-induced vomiting or purging.
Less well known is the variation "exercise bulimia", in which the
urge to lose weight leads individuals to engage in a frenzy of gym
activity as a socially acceptable way to purge their bodies of
unwanted nourishment and remove the guilt associated with eating.
It's often hard to diagnose, since it may not be obvious whether a
person is just exercising a lot or is out of control. The term is
over a decade old, but has been receiving more attention recently
because Jamie-Lynn DiScala, who plays Meadow in the US television
series The Sopranos, admitted in 2005 to having the disorder. A
less common term for it is anorexia athletica.
* From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 Mar 2006: Her exercise
bulimia started when she was in her 30s and her son was in the
hospital. She'd run up and down the stairs to his room. When he got
out, she continued the compulsive exercise by running seven miles a
day, followed by stomach push-ups, sit-ups, leg lifts and other
calisthenics.
* From Town & Country, 1 Sep. 2005: If you find yourself going to
great lengths to hide how much you hit the gym, or you feel
depressed when you miss a session, it may be a sign that you have
exercise bulimia and should consult a mental-health professional.
3. Weird Words: Abacot
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This word does not exist.
Generations of reference books once included this term, including
the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia, dated 1771: "the
name of an ancient cap of state worn by the kings of England, the
upper part whereof was in the form of a double crown".
The trouble is, the word doesn't exist. It was a misprint, which
first appeared in Edward Hall's Chronicle of 1548. It was copied by
Raphael Holinshed in his own Chronicles of 1577 and hence by many
others, including Nathan Bailey in his Dictionary of 1721 and Noah
Webster in 1828 (but not by Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of
1755, who was presumably saved from the blunder because the word
was too rare and specialist to be included). A very few writers
have used it in the reasonable belief that it was a real word,
including George Augustus Sala, in his 1859 book Twice Round the
Clock, or The Hours of the Day and Night in London, "The chandelier
is of abnormous size, for any number of glittering festoons have
been added to its crystal abacot." (In case you're wondering,
"abnormous" is a real word, meaning irregular or misshapen.)
James Murray, the famous editor of the Oxford English Dictionary,
found that the original word was "bycoket", which was indeed a form
of headgear, a cap or headdress with a peak both in front and
behind, whose name derives from an Old French term for a small
castle crowning a hill. He triumphantly proved his case in an
article in the Athenaeum in February 1882: "There is not, never
was, such a word". In the OED's entry for "bycoket", he described
the perpetuation of "abacot" as "a remarkable series of blunders
and ignorant reproductions of error".
One may argue that since the word appears in dictionaries, and has
- albeit rarely - been used, then it exists and ought to be treated
as a proper word. If it were more common, that argument would have
great weight (there's no shortage of words that have been altered
out of recognition through popular error), but as it has almost
never been used, we may allow Dr Murray's view to prevail.
Notwithstanding that argument, the word remains an awful warning to
the writers of reference works who may be tempted to copy material
from earlier works without checking their sources.
4. Recently noted
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IDEOPOLIS Raise your glasses in a toast to London and Edinburgh,
which this week have been designated ideopolises in the report of a
study by the Work Foundation. An ideopolis is literally a city of
ideas - a metropolis in which a large proportion of the workforce
is engaged in what the report calls "knowledge industries", which
include healthcare, teaching, architecture, the media, artistic
creation, research and development, and computing. The report has
identified nine factors that drive the formation of an ideopolis,
especially the presence of a university with good ties to its city
that acts as a "knowledge hub" and stimulates growth. Other factors
include diversified but specialised industries and good
communications. The end-product is frequently manufactured goods,
but of a sort - such as pharmaceuticals or semiconductors - that
need the input of complex ideas based on research.
BLOOK One of the telltale signs to dictionary makers that a new
word is becoming established is that compounds and derivatives are
readily formed and used. That's most certainly true of "blog", the
abbreviated form of "weblog" that has spawned terms like "warblog",
"videoblog" and "litblog". "Blook" is the most recent form, a blend
of "blog" and "book". A blook is a blog that has been turned into a
book. The word has been in the news because of the inaugural award
in the genre, sponsored by a self-publishing Web site named Lulu,
which named it the Blooker Prize (one for m'learned friends, you
may feel). A total of 89 blooks were submitted for the Blooker by
"blauthors" from more than a dozen countries. The winner was Julie
Powell, who spent a year cooking all 524 recipes from Julia Child's
Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Among unsuccessful entrants
was "Belle De Jour: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call-Girl".
The PR Newswire summed that up with the headline "Cooker Beats
Hooker to win Blooker".
5. Q&A: Can of worms
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Q. I was wondering if you knew the origin of the idiom "open a can
of worms". I've heard that it might be associated with Pandora's
box. [Kari Frisch]
A. To open a metaphorical can of worms is to begin to examine some
complicated state of affairs, the investigation of which is likely
to cause trouble or scandal and to give you much more than you
bargained for. A recent example appeared in the Washington Times:
"Uncovering past ownership, however, can open its own legal can of
worms in exposing art theft."
It has long since become an overused and overrated journalistic
cliché, which rather lends itself to mixed metaphors: "Africa is a
huge can of worms and we can no longer stick our heads in the sand"
(from the Daily Record of Glasgow of 17 March 2006). The earliest
example I've found is from a syndicated article in the Ironwood
Daily Globe of Michigan in 1951: "The question of command for
Middle East defense against Soviet aggression is still regarded as
'a can of worms' at General Eisenhower's SHAPE headquarters here."
We're certain that the expression has nothing to do with Pandora's
Box. The evidence suggests that the original cans of worms were
real cans with actual worms in them, collected as bait for fishing.
Here's one in a largely forgotten work of 1914, Diane of the Green
Van, by Leona Dalrymple: "There are times, alas, when even fish are
perverse! Thoroughly out of patience, Diane presently unjointed her
rod, emptied the can of worms upon the bank, and returned to camp."
It's easy to see how an angler - more probably a non-fishing friend
or relative of an angler - who opened a can containing a wriggling
mass of worms would see it as something that was best left closed
and unexamined.
6. Sic!
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"The new 'Moo' brand on the supermarket dairy shelves should appeal
to connoisseurs of the unusual," Chris Church says. "It's described
as: 'Tasty milk from British farmers'."
A small sign on a path near Mount Cook village, New Zealand, notes
that the surroundings are "A revegatation area" (see the online
version of this edition for a photograph). This looks like no more
than an extremely public error for "revegetation". But there are
enough examples to be found in official documents both there and in
Australia to make me wonder if it's an accepted spelling.
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