World Wide Words -- 26 Aug 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 25 17:53:58 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 502 Saturday 26 August 2006
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent each Saturday to at least 45,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS
Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/thdp.htm
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Impignorate.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Geronimo.
5. Sic!
A. E-mail contact addresses.
B. Subscription information.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE OK, so it's moderately arcane. The controversy
over how many planets there are and what to call the various bits
of solar system real estate is probably not the stuff of headlines,
though the topic has been getting lots of press attention. You may
feel that I devoted too much of last week's newsletter to the topic
for there to be yet more in this issue. But it's the only occasion
during World Wide Words' ten-year life in which we've been able to
watch a tiny corner of our language evolve almost day by day.
The debates this past week at the International Astronomical Union
meeting in Prague have, for example, rejected not only the proposed
word "pluton" for trans-Neptunian planetary objects but also all
the alternatives thought up by ingenious astronomers: "plutonian
object", "planetino", "plutoid", "plutonoid", "plutonid", "plutid",
and "plutian" are all out. Also dismissed have been "Tombaugh
object" and "Tombaugh planet", which were put forward in honour of
Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto.
This mini-saga began a couple of weeks ago with publication of the
draft resolution that would for the first time define what was
meant by "planet". Then there were nine of them. The resolution
would have added Ceres, Charon, and the body unofficially known as
Xena, making twelve. A resolution passed at the IAU meeting on
Thursday afternoon instead reduced the number to eight. Pluto is
officially no longer a planet.
The key new rule is that to be a planet a body must have orbital
dominance in its own neighbourhood, meaning that it has become big
enough to sweep up all the junk nearby. Pluto can't meet that
requirement, because its elliptical orbit overlaps with that of
Neptune.
Pluto is now officially a "dwarf planet", a celestial object big
enough to have become spherical through the effect of gravity but
not big enough to have cleared its neighbourhood of all potential
rivals. This term covers outer-system objects like Varuna, Quaoar,
Sedna, and Xena (officially and temporarily 2003 UB313) plus at
least one of the asteroids, Ceres. More dwarf planets are expected
to be announced: currently a dozen candidates are listed but that
keeps changing as new objects are found and existing candidates
become better known.
One other term invented and defined at the meeting: "small solar
system body". This is everything orbiting the Sun that isn't a
planet or a dwarf planet.
As a result of events in Prague, I've had to rewrite last week's
Turns of Phrase item on the (now non-word) "pluton" and the Topical
Words piece on "planet". I've also added another piece on "dwarf
planet". See the Web site home page for links to these.
TRUNCATE YOUR MNEMONICS The resolution means that mnemonics for
remembering the order of the planets, such as "My Very Early Model
Jeep Sits Unused Needing Petrol", "Men Very Easily Make Jugs Serve
Useful Nocturnal Purposes", "Mary's Violet Eyes Made John Stay Up
Nights Proposing", and "My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine
Planets", have become less useful. For the moment we can mentally
erase the last word but no doubt new versions will appear soon. At
least we won't have the job of creating new ones for the horrendous
MVEMCJSUNPCX that would have resulted from adding Ceres, Charon and
Xena to the list.
2. Weird Words: Impignorate
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To place in pawn; to pledge or mortgage.
This was chiefly a Scots term, the Oxford English Dictionary says,
taken from Latin "pignerare", to pledge. So it isn't surprising to
find it in Daniel Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia of 1830: "In
the year 1468, Orkney and Zetland were impignorated to James III of
Scotland, as a portion of the dowry of his Danish queen". Another
Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, used it several times in letters, as
here to a friend from Honolulu in 1889: "I have got the yacht paid
off in triumph, I think; and though we stay here impignorate, it
should not be for long, even if you bring us no extra help from
home."
But you will search in vain for a more recent serious use, except
in the occasional crossword puzzle clue. A supposed letter from a
poet to an editor who had displeased him appeared in some American
newspapers during 1905: "I tell you, without supervacaneous words,
nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me. I warn you that I
would vellicate your nose if I thought that any moral diarthrosis
thereby could be performed - if I thought I should not impignorate my
reputation."
[Supervacaneous: superfluous, redundant; Ignoscible: pardonable;
Vellicate: to irritate, prick; Diarthrosis: articulation (usually of
bones).]
3. Recently noted
-------------------------------------------------------------------
HOBBIT This term, closely associated with Tolkien, was seized upon
by the press in October 2004 to describe a supposedly new species
of tiny humans found in a cave on Flores, an island to the east of
Bali. Its discovery was described at the time as one of the most
spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology in half a century (or
even the last century, depending on which newspaper you read). Any
publishers who rushed to add this new sense of "hobbit" to their
reference books are now going to have to check they were cautious
enough in defining it. An international team of scientists reported
this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
that the skeleton was probably of an ancestor of the modern pygmies
who now inhabit a nearby island and not a previously undiscovered
member of the human family at all.
CHAV This British term for an underclass marked out by ignorance,
fecklessness, mindless violence and bad taste is always derogatory.
It was a surprise, then, when the Leeds Evening Post reported that
the supermarket chain Asda (owned by Wal-Mart) is to trademark the
term for items such as clothing and gold jewellery. Now that's
really going downmarket ...
AGNOTOLOGY Over on another list, Joel Berson noted that this word
appeared in an article about corporate responsibility in the New
York Times last Tuesday. Agnotology is the study of culturally-
induced ignorance. It was created by Robert Proctor, Professor of
the History of Science at Stanford University and first used in
another article in the same newspaper in 2003. Ignorance, he says,
is frequently not just the absence of knowledge but the result of
cultural forces, such as media neglect or corporate or governmental
secrecy, suppression and manipulation, as well as a result of our
selective memories, inattention, and forgetfulness. The word is
from Greek "agnosia", ignorance. He need not have bothered to
create it, since the Oxford English Dictionary has "agnoiology",
first recorded in 1856, for which its second definition is "that
department of philosophy which inquires into the character and
conditions of ignorance".
NON-PAPER This popped up in an article on an Indian news Web site
this week. It's diplomatic jargon: a non-paper is an unofficial
message or discussion document used to convey one government's view
to another while keeping nothing on record. Grant Barrett, at the
Double-Tongued Word Wrester site, has found it going back to 1980.
LOW TRICKS This is the daft story of the week. Members of a group
called the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers claimed that their
cows have developed a distinctive regional accent derived from that
of their Somerset owners (because of the devoted personal attention
they get, natch). The Somerset dialect is so easy to imitate, with
its drawn-out vowels and long "r" sound - an "oo-ahhh" accent, you
might shorthand it as - that actors refer to an all-purpose generic
West Country impression as a Mummerset accent. Phonetics expert
Professor John Wells was quoted in the Guardian as saying that some
birds have been recorded chirping differently depending on where
they live, so that variations in moo were not impossible. He also
commented: "In small populations such as herds you would encounter
identifiable dialectical variations which are most affected by the
immediate peer group." The consensus, though, is that the whole
story was a cheesy silly-season PR stunt.
4. Q&A: Geronimo
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I have long been puzzled why paratroopers (in the US anyway)
yell "Geronimo" (St Jerome in Spanish) as they jump from their
planes. Any ideas on the origin? [Jim Byrne]
A. I have to put a linguistic health warning on this one, because
the story is anecdotal, though widely told. But it was mentioned
for the first time so soon after it was said to have been created
that it seems highly plausible. According to the story, it isn't
St Jerome but the Native American chief who is being invoked.
The cry is first reported in the New York Herald Tribune for 9
May 1941 in a report worth repeating in full:
When a parachutist steps to the open door of a plane 1,500
feet above the landing field, braces himself, and then
catapults his body out into the air, he invariably shouts
"Geronimo!" If there are twelve men making a mass jump
they all yell "Geronimo!" They shout it with such vehemence
that those watching from the ground can hear it distinctly.
It means that they are not afraid.
The use of "Geronimo" dates back to the early days of the
501st Parachute Battalion, 'way back in last October. Two
sergeants got into an argument about being afraid. One
said that to prove he was not scared stiff he would yell
something as he jumped. When he left the plane the only
thing that came to mind was the name of the famous Indian
chief. So he hollered out "Geronimo!" It has since become
the watchword of the battalion. There is a note of mixed
defiance and assurance in it.
More recent versions of the tale change some of the details and
fill it out a good deal. The first person ever to shout Geronimo
is said to have been Private Aubrey Eberhardt of the US Army's
parachute test corps at Fort Benning, Georgia, in July 1940. They
were due to make their first group jump the following morning and
to calm their nerves, members of the platoon went to see the 1939
film Geronimo and to have some beers. Eberhardt was teased about
whether he would be too scared to jump. According to the story
that Gerard M Devlin told in his book Paratrooper! in 1979, he
said, "All right, dammit! I tell you jokers what I'm gonna do! To
prove to you that I'm not scared out of my wits when I jump, I'm
gonna yell 'Geronimo' loud as hell when I go out that door
tomorrow!"
He reputedly did, and a tradition was born ...
5. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'm a technical writer," e-mailed Jon Voskuil. "This instruction
in one of my user guides managed to make it through five reviews
before one of the engineers caught it: 'Be sure to place the
document back on the platform promptly when the screen asks you to
do so. If the Placement Timeout (default 5 seconds) expires before
you do, the system will not be able to read the chip successfully.'
The engineer thought I was underestimating the life expectancy of
our customers."
Someone I know only as Christina saw a prediction on a newspaper
billboard in Thatcham in Berkshire: "NEWBURY BRIDE TO BE FOUND
DEAD". Following up the story, she found that correct punctuation
would have transformed the sense. It should have been "NEWBURY
BRIDE-TO-BE FOUND DEAD".
A. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to respond to something in a newsletter, ask a question
for the Q&A section, or otherwise contact Michael Quinion, please
send it to one of the following addresses:
* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
be sent to wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't
use this to respond to published answers to questions - e-mail
the comment address instead)
* Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list
server should be addressed to wordssubs at worldwidewords.org
Please ask before sending attachments with messages.
B. Subscription information
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address or resubscribe,
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm .
You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a full list
of commands, send a message containing the following two lines to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org:
INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS
END
The "END" ensures that the list server doesn't get confused by your
signature or other text added to the outgoing message.
This newsletter is also available as an RSS feed. The address is
http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .
Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ This
page also lists back issues of the online formatted version (see
the top of this newsletter for the location of the current issue).
C. Ways to support World Wide Words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Wide Words newsletter and Web site are free, but if you
would like to help with their costs, here are some ways to do so.
If you order any goods from any of these online stores (not just
new books), you can use one of these links, which gets World Wide
Words a small commission at no extra cost to you:
Amazon USA: http://quinion.com?QA
Amazon UK: http://quinion.com?JZ
Amazon Canada: http://quinion.com?MG
Amazon Germany: http://quinion.com?DX
If you would like to contribute a sum to the upkeep of World Wide
Words through PayPal, enter this link into your browser:
http://quinion.com?PP
You could also buy one of my books, of course. See
http://www.worldwidewords.org/posh.htm and
http://www.worldwidewords.org/ologies.htm .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2006. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online
newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include
this note and the copyright notice immediately above. Reproduction
in printed publications or on Web sites requires prior permission,
for which you should contact wordseditor at worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list