World Wide Words -- 07 Oct 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 6 18:03:53 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 508 Saturday 7 October 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/bfhs.htm
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Darknet.
3. Weird Words: Oxter.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: On the ball.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
EXPLETIVE-DELETED SPAMMERS Spammers have recently stepped up their
use of the worldwidewords.org domain as a dummy one from which they
falsely appear to be sending their messages. As a result, I've had
a few annoyed responses from spammees, and some sites have barred
me from sending e-mail messages to their customers. There's little
I can do about this except try to explain that, honest, it wasn't
me who sent out a million messages advertising the latest penny
stock or anti-impotence medication. You can all help, though, by
keeping your anti-virus and anti-spyware precautions up to date
(you have some, right?), so that there's less opportunity for the
black hats to harvest addresses from newsletters or correspondence.
2. Turns of Phrase: Darknet
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a confusing term because it has two meanings.
The older one, popularised by an influential discussion paper The
Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution, of 2002, saw it as
the collection of peer-to-peer systems that permitted the illegal
sharing of copyright digital material across the Internet. In a
review of J D Lasica's 2005 book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against
the Digital Generation, it was explained thus: "Darknet is the
lawless underground economy in which computer users share and trade
music, movies, television shows, games, software, and porn. In a
sense, it's the black market of the Internet."
The second meaning has grown up in the past couple of years and is
now the more common. To evade crackdowns on public file-sharing
systems, some users have set up private, invitation-only networks.
Others have adopted similar methods to circumvent censorship or to
avoid legal oversight for other reasons - some private forums are
said to be used by hackers and paedophiles.
* Daily Record, 1 Sep 2006: A darknet is an encrypted, anonymous
section of the internet where users meet, chat and swap data.
* Times of India, 4 Dec. 2005: Fed up of controls imposed on the
internet by everybody from the government to workplaces and the
service provider at home, Charles Assisi tries exploring the
darknet. A part of the internet where entry is by invitation only.
3. Weird Words: Oxter
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The armpit.
This is still to be heard in parts of Northern England as well as
in Scotland and Ireland, and most of the works in which it is to be
found are by authors from those regions.
It can be used more widely to refer to the underside of the upper
arm or the fold of the arm when bent against the body, or even the
armhole of a jacket. It can have an even more general sense, to
judge from the way Robert Louis Stevenson used it in Catriona in
1893: "I'll confess I would be blythe [blithe: happy] to have you
at my oxter, and I think you would be none the worse of having me
at yours." George Macdonald Fraser almost made it sound rude in his
Flashman and the Mountain of Light of 1990: "A lackey serving the
folk in the gallery put a beaker in my hand. What with brandy and
funk I was parched as a camel's oxter, so I drank it straight off".
The word is from Old English "oxta", which has related forms in
some modern Germanic languages. It appears to be linked to Latin
"axilla" in the same sense, a diminutive of "ala", the wing of a
bird, and so is a distant cousin of "aisle".
4. Recently noted
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REPROTECTED Kevan Pegley found this puzzling term on the Virgin
Atlantic Web site: "We are sorry to announce the cancellation of
certain flights between Manchester and Orlando over the next month.
Passengers will be reprotected onto our Manchester/Orlando services
operating on the same date." It turns out that this is jargon of
the airline business. As another example, it has recently also been
used on the lastminute.com site: "In the unlikely event of company
failure, or airline failure the consumer will be protected either
by being reprotected onto another airline or receiving their money
back." "Protected" is understandable, but why "reprotected"?
MANCATION This is from "man" plus "vacation", a fairly appalling
formation, and refers to a man going on holiday with his male pals
(the implication is that they're all heterosexual). It's newish and
was popularised in this summer's romantic comedy film The Break-Up.
A hotel is to open in Florida devoted to poker parties, hand-rolled
cigars, buckets of beer and sports tickets in order to attract the
mancation crowd.
FUTOSHIKI For its readers who are sated on sudoku, the Guardian
last weekend introduced another fiendish Japanese logic puzzle,
futoshiki. This is played on a five-by-five grid using the numbers
1 to 5; no number may appear more than once in the same row or
column. Some squares are linked by greater-than or less-than signs
to show relationships between numbers and a square or two are
filled in to start you off. The name is said to mean "not equal".
DESIGNEE When this unfamiliar word appeared in a magazine article
recently, I wondered for a moment whether it was a person who had
been subject to a makeover by a designer. No, of course not, silly
me, it was someone who had been designated by another to carry out
some official purpose. It's formal and bureaucratic, widely known
in the USA but rare in the UK. The Oxford English Dictionary has
yet to notice it, though the earliest example I can find is from
1912, in an advertisement by a senatorial candidate in Colorado.
BAD MARKS A report in the Manchester Evening News last Tuesday
described how the British retailer Marks & Spencer had refunded a
customer her money, apologised, and removed a product from stores
because of a grammatical error. The item was a children's pyjama
top, on which above a picture of two giraffes were the words "Baby
Giraffe's". The buyer was reported as saying that she didn't want
to dress her child in a top containing a glaring grammatical gaffe.
It's a small victory for the Lynne Truss Tendency, but how sad that
a follow-up report in the Guardian on Friday was headed "M&S: The
pedant's store". While M&S is correcting grammar, perhaps it could
amend the "Five items or less" notice that I spotted on Friday in
the Bristol branch.
5. Q&A: On the ball
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. While visiting England recently I went to the Royal Observatory
in Greenwich. While I was there I was told that the red ball on the
observatory was raised each day. In the old days the ship captains
in the Thames would look for it in order to set their timepieces. I
have no problem with that. We were then told this is the origin of
the expression "on the ball". Far be it from me to question an
actor dressed as John Flamsteed, but I thought I would check with
you. Can you confirm or deny this information? [Bill Morris]
A. I deny it, vehemently. It's sad that someone who works for a
famous scientific institution like the Royal Observatory should go
so badly wrong when it comes to a simple matter of looking up a
phrase in the dictionary and checking a bit of history, but that's
the way it so often is.
Details first. (As you've been there, you know all this, but I'll
just explain to the masses.) The red ball is what's called a "time
ball". The one at Greenwich was - still is - used to signal 1pm
local time. At 12.55 the ball is raised halfway up its mast and at
12.58 it is sent all the way to the top. At 1pm exactly, it falls.
Time balls were common in the nineteenth century before easy access
to wristwatches and radio made them redundant. They were especially
important to seafarers, who needed an accurate time reference to
set their navigational chronometers.
The Greenwich time ball was first used in 1833. If we turn to the
Historical Dictionary of American Slang we find that the first
recorded appearance of the phrase "on the ball" is from much later:
the early years of the twentieth century. By itself, that's not
enough to disprove your costumed interpreter's thesis, but when we
look at the way it was used around that time, it's obvious that it
comes from sports, in particular from baseball.
The original form was "to put something on the ball", meaning that
the pitcher gave it deceptive motion or unusual speed. I've found
this from 1909: "Cates had something on the ball. The two innings
he worked he had the Pirates buffaloed." An example that appeared
in the Washington Post in July 1906 shows the way the expression
developed:
Hahn's case is no different from that of many other good
pitchers. He has simply arrived at the stage which all good
pitchers dread. Ball players do not attempt to explain why
these things are. They say: "He's got speed and a curve,
but, there's 'nothing' on the ball." This vague "nothing"
is the thing. It means that the pitcher has lost that little
"jump", or some peculiar deceptive break with which he has
fooled batters. If he loses that, he is gone.
By the 1930s, it had broadened its application and appeal to mean
somebody who was especially alert or capable, presumably by being
amalgamated with an earlier expression that advised budding
sportsmen to "Always keep your eye on the ball". "On the ball" was
later still exported to Britain.
6. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes jargon out of context leads to weird images. From a job
advertisement that appeared in New Scientist last week: "You will
be responsible for driving the development pipeline". Incidentally,
the same issue featured an ad for a "robotic scientist".
And sometimes headlines reek of a perverted sub-editorial sense of
humour, as did one in the Sun on Thursday that was forwarded by
Steve Clarke: "Cops drop probe into Joey's Bum". The story concerns
a footballer named Joey Barton who mooned at Everton fans after a
match against Manchester City last weekend; the report said that
the police have now decided to take no action following an
investigation.
Wendy Pomroy has been re-reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken
Follett, in which an oddly dispersed dwelling appears: "Tom had
moved out of the guest-house and had built himself a fine two-room
house, with a chimney in the village."
A. 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. You can join or
leave the list, change the address at which you are subscribed or
temporarily suspend membership during absences. 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).
B. 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
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/gallimaufry.htm ,
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