World Wide Words -- 21 Oct 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 20 16:38:16 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 510 Saturday 21 October 2006
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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
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A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/dyue.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Ultimo.
3. Your help requested!
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: High dudgeon.
6. Over To You: Morgan's Orchard.
7. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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LEECH-FINGER This came up in the Weird Words piece on "leech" last
week. Several subscribers asked whether the legend associated with
it also explained why engagement and wedding rings were put on the
same finger. This is so; Latin "vena amoris", literally "vein of
love", was applied to the vein supposed to run directly from the
ring finger on the left hand to the heart. An early example of the
term appeared in Treatise of Spousals by Henry Swinburne, dated
1680: "The finger on which this ring [the wedding-ring] is to be
worn is the fourth finger of the left hand, next unto the little
finger; because by the received opinion of the learned ... in
ripping up and anatomising men's bodies, there is a vein of blood,
called vena amoris, which passeth from that finger to the heart."
GRINGO Subscribers were universal in their belief that the song
that was supposed to have inspired this term was really "Green Grow
the Rushes, O" and not "Green Grow the Lilacs", as the questioner
had it. As it happens, both songs have been cited as sources in
versions of the tale, though the former is the more common, not
least because lilacs are usually thought to be, well, lilac.
2. Weird Words: Ultimo
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Relating to last month.
"Ultimo", together with "instant" and "proximo", is an example of
an outdated commercial language. Few businessmen would today begin
a letter "With reference to yours of the 14th ultimo", or "yours of
the 23rd instant", or "Please attend this office for interview on
the 11th proximo", but it was once standard and taught in the best
books. All three were commonly abbreviated, to "ult", "inst" and
"prox" respectively.
"Ultimo" and "proximo" are both Latin, shortened forms of "ultimo
mense", in the previous month, and "proximo mense", in the next
month. Many reference works say "inst" is from Latin "instante
mense", in the current month. But the Oxford English Dictionary
points out that it has always been expanded to the English word
"instant", in the specialised meaning of "current".
By 1922, such terms were being satirised in Punch:
Bear up, brave clerklets, though the lights of learning
Your quaint commercial English sadly shocks,
And even your bosses are agreed in spurning
Your "inst", and "ult", and "prox".
I like the pleasant jargon: I should miss it
If firms no more ("per pro" before their name)
Should "thank me for past favours and solicit
Continuance of the same".
3. Your help requested!
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Three years ago, I asked subscribers for donations to help support
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This newsletter and the Web site are free. They will stay that way.
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One way to contribute is by credit card using PayPal. All you have
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Please e-mail me at wordsdonations at worldwidewords.org for the
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4. Recently noted
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BABYCCINO This popped up in newspaper article recently. It turns
out to have been coined a couple of years ago by some genius at the
Starbucks coffee chain as a blend of "baby" and "cappuccino". It's
a drink for the offspring of caffeine addicts, consisting of warm
milk with the froth from a cappuccino, but without the coffee. You
might get a sprinkle of chocolate or nutmeg on the top. It's in the
news in the UK because the same drink, under the same name, has
just been launched by the Costa coffee shop chain.
NOVEL Michael Skube wrote in the Washington Post back in August:
"College students nowadays call any book, fact or fiction, a novel.
I have no idea why this is, but I first became acquainted with the
peculiarity when a senior at one of the country's better state
universities wrote a paper in which she referred to The Prince as
'Machiavelli's novel'." Various academics and researchers over on
the American Dialect Society's forum have agreed with Mr Skube's
observation, pointing out, with a wealth of examples, that "novel"
is increasingly being used to refer to any substantial prose work.
It would seem from their examples that Homer wrote novels, as did
Shakespeare. The usage is by no means limited to students, as some
of the examples come from publisher's blurbs and academic works.
There's also the expression "fictional novel", which is acquiring
some currency, presumably to help to resolve the type of prose work
concerned. The reverse term, "non-fiction novel", however, is a
well-attested term that goes back to Truman Capote's 1966 work of
narrative reportage, In Cold Blood.
FLYING COLLARS Neal Stephenson's SF novel Snow Crash includes the
line, "She has passed the frisking with flying collars." This was
surely a mistake, but it's a surprisingly common one, with dozens
of examples to be found online. The image is delightful, but it's
sad that so many people seem not to have heard of "flying colours",
because they don't associate "colours" with the bravely fluttering
flags of a military force. To finish a battle with your colours
still flying implies that your force has survived intact. I've
tracked it back to a reference in The Play of Dicke of Devonshire,
ascribed to John Heywood and dated about 1626, in which it refers
to a defeated army being allowed to leave the field with colours
flying, that is, in honourable defeat. So it didn't at first imply
you had triumphed, though that is the later sense from which the
expression derives. It has nothing to do with ships passing and
showing their colours to each other, which is often given as the
origin.
5. Q&A: High dudgeon
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Q. I have seen others attempt to answer this, but apparently
maddeningly little is known. You always seem to manage to find
something interesting, however - so, here is the question: from
whence the phrase 'in high dudgeon'? Thank you, and I am an avid
fan of your site. [L Crary Myers]
A. "Maddeningly little is known" is unfortunately a fair summary.
I'll try to add a little more, but it is one of a distressingly
large group of words for which we have no idea of their origins.
The group includes a couple of others also ending in "-udgeon":
"bludgeon" and "curmudgeon".
"Dudgeon" means a state of anger, resentment, or offence and often
turns up as "in dudgeon" or "in high dudgeon" The Oxford English
Dictionary can't give its source, though it's sure it's not from
the Welsh word "dygen", meaning malice or resentment, which has
been suggested in the past. It does point to "endugine", a word
recorded just once, in 1638, with the same sense, which might have
given us a clue, but doesn't help at all.
It also records another sense of the word, itself mysterious, for a
kind of wood used by turners, especially the handles of knives or
daggers. It has been suggested it was another name for boxwood. It
appears in Shakespeare's Macbeth: "I see thee still, / And on thy
blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, / Which was not so before." Later
the word was used for a dagger whose handle was made of this wood.
It just might be that a state of anger or resentment could have led
to the grabbing of a dudgeon knife with intent to redress a slight,
but there's no evidence whatever of the connection.
6. Over To You: Morgan's Orchard
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Many subscribers responded to the request last week for information
on this term in cribbage. All agree it refers to a hand holding two
pairs of cards for a score of four points.
Johnnie Johnson commented, "I was taught to play the game by my
maternal grandfather during the 1950s. It was then a very popular
game in the working men's clubs of Northamptonshire (and no doubt
elsewhere also). He used the term 'Morgan's Orchard' to mean a hand
with two pairs. Sometimes he would use the term 'Apples and Pairs'
for the same hand. To indicate a non-scoring hand he would say
'nineteen', which by a fluke in cards and mathematics is a score
impossible to achieve in Cribbage." Many others mentioned "19" in
this sense.
John Murphy e-mailed: "I have played cribbage for nearly 60 years.
I've played in England, Wales, Scotland, Malaysia and various parts
of the Middle East. The term Morgan's orchard has been widely
understood to mean a score of four from two pairs. My grandfather
told me (so long ago!) that the phrase was a pun on two pears, for
a small orchard, Morgan being the stereotypical Welshman of the
time. From his recollection the phrase was commonly used by
soldiers in the Great War."
Several subscribers pointed to a posting on a discussion forum in
which it was asserted that the Morgan of the expression was from a
company that owned orchards in Kent that supplied most of the pears
and apples to London, or one that owned the barges in which they
were shipped up the Thames. In the absence of confirming evidence,
which I haven't yet discovered, we have to take this as a popular
etymology. The real origin seems to be undiscoverable.
Gillian Christie e-mailed from New Zealand with a variation: "My
brother-in-law uses the term Kelly's orchard to refer to having two
pairs in the hand. He has lived all his life in New Zealand but
does have Irish ancestry - so I wonder if the choice of name is
related to location?"
John Murphy explained some other expressions associated with the
game: "'Two for his heels' is scored for turning up a Jack (knave)
after the cut. 'One for his nob' is scored for holding the Jack of
the same suit as the turned-up card." There's also "peg out" for
ending the game, taken from your marker peg reaching the end of the
scoring board, which was once a common colloquial term for dying.
7. Sic!
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Michael Grosvenor Myer read in The Times last Friday: "A hungry
galaxy that is stuffing itself with smaller ones that are trapped
like flies in a spider's web has been discovered using the Hubble
Space Telescope." He hopes it was being charged an adequate rental
for its time on the facility.
"When a street in a new Wellington suburb was named some five years
ago after a member of an old local family," Patricia Norton reports
from New Zealand, "the street sign went up: 'Glady's Hook Place'.
After a couple of years it was corrected, as someone had worked out
what the old lady's name had become on marriage, and it then read
'Glady's Scott Place'. It has now recently been corrected again,
and the wonderful apostrophe is no more. A real shame. The sign had
been one of the sights of Wellington, on my tourism route for out-
of-town visitors." [Readers of the online version (see the head of
the newsletter for the link) will find a photo of the old sign,
complete with its intrusive apostrophe.]
"Real estate agents certainly add to the gaiety of nations, bless
them," e-mailed Lucy Buxton from Sydney. "In this week's Wentworth
Courier we are informed that, 'Brimming with breathtaking panoramic
views and the sound of lapping waters, this rare property is a
"must have" for those seeking an intimate relationship with the
harbour.'" Do they mean it floods at high tide?
An Australian Government Web site (http://quinion.com?STUD), David
Rowlands discovered, has this fine example of a hanging modifier:
"Originally a fine wool merino stud, John started working on
'Lyndfield Park' in 1959". [Note for mystified readers: in Britain
and Commonwealth countries "stud" is a common abbreviation for
"stud farm".]
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