World Wide Words -- 27 Jan 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 27 18:01:29 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 478 Saturday 28 January 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. Weird Words: Charabanc.
3. Noted this week.
4. Q&A: Agitory.
5. Q&A: Tattoo.
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
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/sbdy.htm
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1. Feedback, notes and comments
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FREE AT LAST! The manuscript of my next book will be sent to my
publisher next week. My wife and I are celebrating by vanishing to
the other side of the globe for a holiday. Next week's issue will
be the last for six weeks. Normal service, or what passes for it
around here, will begin again with the issue of 25 March.
2. Weird Words: Charabanc
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An early form of bus, used typically for sightseeing trips.
The original was French, "char-à-bancs", a carriage with benches,
so called because the original horse-drawn charabancs in France had
rows of crosswise seats looking forward. In that spelling it has
been known in English at least since Lord Byron mentioned it in his
journal in September 1816, though within ten years it had been
Anglicised as "charabanc" (so foreign, these accents).
The heyday of the charabanc in Britain was between the First and
Second World Wars, when it had been motorised but not yet fitted
with any very effective shelter from the weather. It was definitely
regarded as a conveyance for the holidaymaking proletariat - those
disparagingly referred to by their social superiors as "trippers" -
not so much a vehicle as a self-propelled pub, conveying a drunken
rabble who threw bottles and bellowed bawdy songs. This was a huge
exaggeration, of course, as most charabanc excursions were sober.
H G Wells made plain his disdain for the occupants of such vehicles
in his story The New Accelerator of 1903: "He gripped my arm and,
walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot, went shouting
with me up the hill. A whole char-a-banc-ful of people turned and
stared at us in unison after the manner of people in chars-a-banc."
British speakers usually said it as "sharra-bang" when they didn't
abbreviate it to "sharra" (written "chara").
3. Noted this week
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REBRITANNICISING This splendid neologism (at least, I can't find
it anywhere else) turned up in a letter to the Observer last Sunday
from the British political analyst Simon Partridge. He wrote, "The
idea of Britishness was reintroduced by the Tudor dynasty which
secured the throne of England-Wales in 1485. In many ways this was
a rebritannicising of the medieval state after the Anglo-Saxon and
Franco-Norman interregnum."
CASTING ONE'S PODS The Guardian last week included a long article
by Tim Dowling about the podcasting phenomenon, the posting of
audio files online for downloading to MP3 players (originally the
Apple iPod, hence the name), a word that first appeared in its
columns two years ago. The article included several derivatives of
the term that have appeared since, such as "podsafe", music that is
safe to include in podcasts because rights are owned by the artist
and so not subject to copyright, and "podclasses", which are a new
form of distance learning, especially teaching foreign languages.
The article added: "New gadgetry is probably the single biggest
topic in the podcastosphere (heads up, dictionary editors!)" Duly
noted, Mr Dowling, with a wince.
COCKTAIL I make this my word of the week. A celebration is planned
in Las Vegas on 13 May to mark its 200th anniversary. This is based
on the first citation for "cocktail" in the OED, which is from an
American newspaper, The Balance of Hudson, NY, dated 13 May 1806.
The event is being jointly organised by The Museum of the American
Cocktail and the United States Bartenders' Guild. On that day they
will be presenting the first annual American Cocktail Awards (The
Olives), to honour "bartenders and establishments in pre-dinner
cocktail and cocktail menu excellence". Alas, the US dictionary
expert David Barnhart has thoroughly rained on their parade this
week by finding an earlier example in a journal called The Farmer's
Cabinet, dated 28 April 1803. Sorry about that, chaps ...
[See http://www.cocktail200.com/ for the festivities, plus my piece
on cocktail at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-coc3.htm ]
4. Q&A: Agitory
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Q. Sitting at my computer, I was listening to the dogs barking and
carrying on. It seemed to me they were especially agitory (they
certainly agreed), and to confirm this, I went looking for
"agitory" in etherspace. I found many uses of it, but no citation
for the word or other direct definition. Help! [Brandon Sussman]
A. You will struggle to find this word in any dictionary. None of
mine include it, not even the Oxford English Dictionary. Did you
perhaps create it as a mental blend of "agitated" and "jittery"?
I've found "agitory" in a few places, but mostly in a political
context. A 1942 issue of The Valley Morning Star of Harlingen,
Texas has, "Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's speeches are of an agitory
nature. Far from contributing to the morale of workers in war
plants, they are riling them exceedingly." The online appearances
are also political in nature. One says "The medium of multiple
copies of cheap agitory pamphlets reinforced the message of lay
involvement." Another has "I would hold him as a[n] agitory-
propagandist!"
These all look like a try at creating an adjective from "agitator"
or "agitation" in the political sense. Why they're bothering, I'm
not sure, since "agitational" is quite common and is in a lot of
dictionaries (more often American ones, for some reason). Others
searching for a word with that sense have tried "agitatorial" or
"agitatory" - the former is in the OED, as a rare word, but not the
latter. However, "agitatory" is common online, and also turns up
quite often in books, which makes me wonder why it hasn't hit the
dictionaries.
My guess is that the appearances of "agitory" you've found and I've
quoted are all from "agitatory" with the middle syllable elided, a
process called grammatical syncopation. This sometimes happens with
words that have a repeated, stuttery syllable. A common example is
"interpretative", which is shortened to "interpretive". A very few
cases of "agitorial" are to be found online, no doubt created from
"agitatorial" through the same process.
In your sense, I'd stick to "agitated" ...
5. Q&A: Tattoo
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Q. I've been wondering about the term "tattoo". It is used for the
ink drawings on a body as well as for military festivals. On the
homepage of the Edinburgh Tattoo I found the explanation "The word
'tattoo' comes from the closing-time cry in the inns in the Low
Countries during the 17th and 18th centuries - 'Doe den tap toe'
('Turn off the taps')" for the word, but how did it get connected
to its two modern meanings? [Frank Danielzik, Denmark]
A. That story shouted "folk etymology" at me. Then I consulted the
standard references and discovered it's correct. My instincts are
deserting me - definitely time for a holiday.
The first sense of the term was a signal on a drum or a bugle to
call soldiers to their quarters at night. It's first recorded in
1644, during the early stages of the English Civil War. Colonel
John Hutchinson was then the governor of Nottingham Castle and head
of the Parliamentary garrison in the city (he was to be later one
of the signatories of Charles I's death warrant). In his standing
orders he wrote: "If anyone shall bee found tiplinge or drinkinge
in any Taverne, Inne, or Alehouse after the houre of nyne of the
clock at night, when the Tap-too beates, hee shall pay 2s. 6d."
(Today that would be about GBP5.00 or $8.)
By the following century, the usual phrase was "to beat tattoo",
which makes clear that by then it was usually sounded on a drum,
hence one of our modern meanings, a rhythmic tapping or drumming
("He beat a tattoo with his fingers on the table-top.") And it's
clearly related to "taps" in the sense of a bugle call for lights
to be put out in army quarters (which was originally also sounded
on a drum).
In the form you quoted from the Web site, "doe den tap toe", "tap"
is the spigot of a beer barrel. It seems that the Dutch police had
a neat way of closing the pubs at night, by making the rounds and
instructing innkeepers to shut the taps on their casks.
The other sense of tattoo, to mark the skin with pigments, could
not be more different. It was brought back from the South Pacific
by Captain Cook, and appears in his journal for July 1769: "Both
sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language.
This is done by inlaying the Colour of Black under their skins, in
such a manner as to be indelible." It could be from any one of
several Polynesian languages, such as Tahitian, Samoan, or Tongan.
6. Sic!
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On 21 January, the local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio (which its first
editor punningly named The Blade) carried a story on the effect of
oil-price rises which included, "For investors, who just two weeks
ago were celebrating the Dow's climb above 11,000, there has been a
palatable shift in mood." The local person who noted it wondered
whether this was a error for "palpable" or the careless use of a
spell checker.
Ed Ver Hoef comments: "To request to receive 'RV Tech Tips' at
their Web site, you are asked to 'Sing Up Here', but it didn't say
how high. Perhaps only sopranos need apply."
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