World Wide Words -- 30 Sep 06
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 29 17:13:20 UTC 2006
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 506 Saturday 30 September 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/wgyl.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Nugiperous.
3. Recently noted.
4. Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of our Vanishing Vocabulary.
5. 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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PLUMBER'S CRACK Subscribers clearly have a low sense of humour, in
two senses, as my passing reference to this new entry in the Oxford
English Dictionary online generated more comment than anything else
last week. Other expressions for this artisanal anatomical feature
were "plumber's cleavage" (and "brickie's cleavage"), "refrigerator
repairman's bottom", and "electrician's butt". An Australian tells
me it's known there as the "coin slot", as with vending machines -
I wonder what you get if you try it? Another Australian knows it as
"builder's smile". Paul Warren, at the University of Hull, told me
of "backal cleavage", "backal" being an invented colloquial term,
the opposite of "frontal". Roxane van Beek explained that a Dutch
equivalent is "bouwvakkersdecolleté", which translates into English
as "builder's cleavage".
WHEN BUCK WAS A CALF Following up my mention of this term meaning
a long time ago, Ken Macpherson pointed out that Buck and Bright
were once common names for a team of oxen. The examples I've found
suggest that the duo were also sometimes horses and that at one
time "Buck and Bright" came near to being a generic term for an ox
team. This reminiscence appeared in the Stevens Point Daily Journal
of Wisconsin in March 1930: "When our forefathers settled on the rich
loamy lands, tributary to the river, the ox played an important part
in the scheme of things. Buck and Bright were the names given these
faithful animals and when the emigrants came trekking in with the
covered wagons to settle on the land, it was Buck and Bright who toted
them in and did the heavy work around the homestead after they finally
got settled."
BADA BING I forgot to give the origin of this term, but subscribers
were quick to repair the omission. Several noted a probable origin in
the drum-and-cymbal triple stroke that accompanied the punchline of a
comedian's joke in burlesque. The Oxford English Dictionary agrees,
rather tentatively, though it also notes the Italian "bada bene",
mark well.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM A number of subscribers mentioned the
600-pound gorilla, or 800-pound gorilla, or 900-pound gorilla (as
with so many of us, he seems to have gained weight as the years
have passed). They suggest that this is a related expression for
something very big that is being studiously ignored.
My books say instead it is a thing so big that it's an overwhelming
presence, irresistible force or insuperable difficulty, as with a
bookseller who described Amazon as "the 900-pound gorilla of the
trade", or a Wal-Mart opponent who claimed the firm "are the 900-
pound gorilla, and they will do anything they can legally", or the
restaurateur who called Caesar salad "the 900-pound gorilla of the
category, cited almost 300 times on menus in the top 200 chains".
This fits the old joke, "Where does a 900-pound gorilla sleep?"
("Anywhere he likes").
But the gorilla is clearly muscling in on the elephant's linguistic
territory, as illustrated in US Newswire in July this year: "The
political discussion of health care reform will continue to ignore
the 900 pound gorilla in the room until the influence of insurer
and drug company campaign contributions are stripped out" and the
Lexington Herald-Leader of March: "The 900-pound gorilla in the
room during the closing days of an even-year session is always the
executive budget".
It is also being challenged, but only so far in jokes, by the 500-
pound (or 600-, or 800-, or 2000-pound) canary as well as the less
common 300-pound budgie or budgerigar.
2. Weird Words: Nugiperous
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Given to inventing trifles.
Nathaniel Ward was born in England in 1578. He became a minister
but as a result of his unpopular Puritan beliefs left the country
for the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1634. During his 18 years in
America he wrote two books, of which the second, usually known as
The Simple Cobbler, was published in 1647.
Ward liked to coin words, of which many have achieved a sort of
immortality within the Oxford English Dictionary, though most of
them have him noted as the sole user. Among them are "exadverse",
directly opposed; "fool-fangle", a silly trifle; "nudiustertian",
the day before yesterday, "perquisquilian", thoroughly worthless,
and "transclout", to disfigure with clouts or misshapen clothing.
He was particularly offended by women's fashions, which led to this
splendid outburst:
Whatever Christianity or civility will allow, I can afford
... but when I hear a nugiperous gentledame inquire what
dress the Queen is in this week ... I look at her as the
very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a
cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she
were of a kickable substance than either honoured or
humoured."
As the word has never been used since except in reference to this
passage, we're not even sure what Ward meant by it, let alone how
he pronounced it. But it is certain that he took it from Latin
"nugae", nonsense or trifles.
3. Recently noted
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ERIS? WHO SHE? The dwarf planet officially known as 2003UB313, the
one that orbits beyond Pluto and whose discovery led to the latter
being dethroned as a major member of the stellar in-crowd, has now
been given its permanent name. Everyone has been calling it Xena,
the nickname its discoverer Mike Brown gave it, which he took from
the name of a character in a television show. But both he and the
International Astronomical Union thought this wasn't classy enough
for a permanent name and the IAU has accepted his suggestion of
Eris. She's a figure from Greek classical mythology, the goddess of
strife. Considering the furore over the heavenly status of Pluto,
it's an appropriate name. Its moon is now officially Dysnomia after
Eris's daughter, whose name means "lawlessness". Every commentator
has noted that in the TV series Xena was played by Lucy Lawless.
POM A subtle ruling concerning this word was widely reported on
Wednesday. As part of a crackdown on racist language in advance of
the visit by the English cricket team to defend the Ashes in
November, Cricket Australia consulted the Australian Human Rights
and Equal Opportunities Commission. That body ruled that the
epithet can be used to refer to English visitors, provided that it
isn't uttered in conjunction with other coarse language that would
render it hurtful, racist, offensive or humiliating. So the locals
can call the visitors "poms", but not "you pommie bastards". But
the reporter covering the story for BBC radio unfortunately didn't
think to get a ruling from an etymologist and perpetrated the old
tale that the term derives from "prisoner of his majesty". For the
real story, see http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pom1.htm. (The
Telegraph and Guardian both got it right, congratulations.)
4. Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of our Vanishing Vocabulary
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Reviewed by Jonathon Green, the editor of The Cassell's Dictionary
of Slang and many other language-related works.
Do words have "lives"? It is imaginable: there's birth (coinage),
marriage (combinations, phrases, 'portmanteau-words'), family (the
spreading tree of etymological development), old age (the dread
notation Obs[olete]) and death (excision from common speech and
from all but the largest dictionaries). And some of these lives are
workaday, dug in for the long haul, others are flashily ephemeral,
fashionable and momentary; some are barely visible: one of the
longest, some 1,913 letters naming a protein and its attendant
amino acids is unknown outside the laboratory.
In his new book Michael Quinion, having dealt, one might suggest,
with the linguistic cradle in Port Out, Starboard Home (2004), his
study of the origins of many popular phrases, has now turned to its
grave: those words that have left the language, or which, if not
wholly absent, exist only as historicisms and curiosities, useful
no doubt for the authors of cod-Victoriana and similar pastiches,
but definitely long since removed from the menu of contemporary
speech.
As he points out in his informative introduction, the reasons for
words leaving the language are widespread, and the lists of the
lost are potentially huge; to tackle the entire lexis would be
exhausting for both researcher and reader: "you wouldn't be able to
lift the resulting volume". Thus he has chosen to concentrate on
five areas: food and drink, health and medicine, entertainment and
leisure, transport and fashion, and names, communications and
employment. Each of these is in turn subdivided: transport and
fashion for instance offers information on carriages, "ruffs and
cuffs and farthingales", the names of cloth, and of wigs and hats.
As should be obvious, what links all these sections is that the
material under consideration is not merely dead words, but outmoded
terminology. "Eidothaumata", a form of "magic lantern" show, a
"maidenmaker", the human operator of a primitive washing machine,
and the "natty scratch", a form of short wig, are all underpinned
by a common response; we don't do things like that any more. The
areas of life to which they pertain - visual entertainment, laundry
and hairdressing - continue to flourish, but the equipment is quite
different. Even the card and other games that Gallimaufry lists,
are certainly no longer played - or if they are, then the names,
again, are quite new.
Why does one word last and another disappear? When the technology
dies, so too do its descriptors. Such is the underpinning of
Gallimaufry's memorials, whose disappearance, however regrettable,
represents a form of backhanded tribute to progress. "Not needed on
voyage", as trunks marked for the hold rather than the cabin were
labelled on similarly defunct transatlantic liners.
This is a fascinating book, full of the kind of authoritative
information his readers have come to expect, and my only regret is
that, as acknowledged, Mr Quinion has resisted slang. "Gallimaufry"
(which aside from meaning a medley or a dish made from leftovers
also meant, in slang, both a mistress and what her seventeenth-
century admirers might have termed her "aphrodisiacal tennis
court") is a worthy successor to POSH and underlines Michael
Quinion's pre-eminence as an expositor of etymology. It is, as they
used to say around 1820, the "bang-up prime twig" and a positive
"tippy".
[Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary; published
by Oxford University Press on 28 September 2006 in the UK and in
the rest of the world shortly; hardcover; ISBN 0198610629, pp272;
Publisher's price in the UK GBP12.99 and in the US $25.00.
For details see http://www.worldwidewords.org/gallimaufry.htm
To order online, follow these links:
Amazon UK: GBP7.79 http://quinion.com?G84Y
Amazon USA: US$16.50 http://quinion.com?G34Y
Amazon Canada: CDN$19.77 http://quinion.com?G91Y
Amazon Germany: EUR21,90 http://quinion.com?G27Y ]
5. Sic!
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Margaret Orleans noted that an anonymous APF wire reporter told the
recent story of uncovering the early hominid skeleton in Ethiopia,
the one nicknamed Selam, after "pain-staking work spanning three
years to scrape away the rock." This reanalysis has made it to at
least one news outlet: http://www.physorg.com/news77982530.html .
"Starvation Heights, by Gregg Olsen," writes Elizabeth Rothman, "is
the telling of a historical tale of murder and avarice in the Puget
Sound area of Washington, United States, those murders having taken
place in the early years of the twentieth century. The book is a
rich source of bad sentences, but the one that stood out was this,
describing an aspect of the layout of two adjoining apartments:
'The closet wall, where Mary's head would rest when she lay down,
separated the head of Dora's bed in her apartment'." OK, I concede.
Dan Brown isn't *that* bad a writer.
BBC News online on 26 September included this sentence: "Tony
Ddumba, 16, said he was talking to the local man who died just
moments before he was crushed by the crane." Dr John Wilson's
medical expertise leads him to believe the local man in fact died
moments after being crushed, not before. A judicious comma might
have retrieved the sentence.
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