World Wide Words -- 05 Aug 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 3 16:26:08 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 547 Saturday 4 August 2007
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Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 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/gmfp.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Humicubation.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Jericho.
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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COSPLAY I added a comment about this last time as an aside without
taking the time to look into it in any detail. Lots of subscribers
filled me in, most pointing out that it's mainly Japanese and is
closely linked with Anime, Japanese television and film animation.
Kevin McLoughlin commented that "Young people in Japan take cosplay
very seriously. Last year I saw mostly teenage cosplay aficionados
in full plumage at their spiritual home, Jingu-bashi in Tokyo. The
'cos' part displayed an astonishing mishmash of elaborate costumes
of dubious authenticity with Marie-Antoinette vying with Goth diva
as the most popular themes. The 'play' part consisted of dressing
up, posing and preening. It had nothing to do with music. I suspect
the more recent adoption of 'cosplay' to describe wizard rockers
adds a somewhat disparaging tone that the critic would not have
applied to serious rockers in costume."
GORDON BENNETT Comments continue to arrive concerning this British
expletive. Lin Gilbert passed on a story about the Gordon Bennett
Cup motor race in the early years of the twentieth century: "The
1903 race was held in Ireland, and caused a huge rise in prices for
accommodation and food in the surrounding area, giving rise to the
expletive. I'm sure I've seen this story in several motor racing
magazines, but can't give a reference." For the full story behind
the expression, see http://wwwords.org?GORD .
BOWSER Several correspondents mentioned that this is an old word
for a dog, especially in the USA, though it's hard to see how it
came about, other than as a play on "bow-wow". Vino Kanapathipillai
told me my assumption that the water-carrying sense of the word was
peculiarly British isn't correct: "In South Asian countries also -
at least India and Sri Lanka that I know of - the bowser delivers
water to villages and village pumps."
2. Weird Words: Humicubation
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Lying on the ground, especially in penitence or humiliation.
Once again we are in the realm of obscure words whose tenuous hold
on existence is maintained by people who create lists of obscure
words for our enjoyment and edification. Many writers and online
dictionaries define it simply as "lying on the ground", but on the
few occasions on which it has been used in real life it has always
had associations with religion.
That's the result of its first, and perhaps its most significant,
appearance. That was in one of a series of tracts written in the
1650s by John Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry in Ireland, opposing
the views of the English materialist philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
Bramhall wrote: "He is afraid, that 'this doctrine' of fasting, and
mourning, and tears, and humicubation, and sackcloth, and ashes,
'pertaineth to the establishment of Romish penance.'"
But in its etymology "humicubation" has no reference to penitence.
It comes from the Latin words "humi", on the ground, plus "cubare",
to lie down. The first bit is closely related to Latin "humus",
which we have taken over as the name for the organic component of
soil. The second element is the source of "cubicle" (originally a
bedchamber, a place in which one lies down), and "concubine" (a
person with whom one euphemistically lies down).
3. Recently noted
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GLURGE This expressive term turned up in a glossary of television
jargon in the Observer newspaper last month. It was defined as a
"mawkishly sentimental story with facts fabricated to tug on the
heart strings." It's quite well known, with examples dating as far
back as 2000 and possibly even earlier. It would seem to have been
created as an expressive noise, indicative of revulsion. Others in
the list are "Irritainment" (an annoying but compulsively watchable
show), which dates from the middle 1990s; "Zitcom" (comedy aimed at
teenagers), of which the earliest example I can find refers to the
film American Pie, which was described in the St Paul Pioneer Press
in 1999 as "a gross-out zitcom ... a hornucopia of teen encounters
with sex, booze and effluvia"; and "Hathos" (feelings of pleasure
derived from hating something or somebody), a blend of hatred and
pathos that first appeared in The New Republic in 1986. Two more
are based on "broadcasting": "Lifecasting" is the broadcasting of a
person's life 24/7 (a sense unconnected to that of the artistic
process of taking a mould directly from the human form and using it
to create a sculpture); and "Slivercasting", which is programming
aimed at an extremely small audience, which can be found in an
article in the New York Times as far back as 1984, though it seems
to have suddenly become more popular only last year.
HUMP DAY Be thankful that it's over for this week. Hump day? It's
Wednesday, the middle of the working week, the day on which you
begin to feel it's all downhill to the weekend. It's one of the
more slangy entries in the new edition of the Collins Australian
Dictionary, which came out on, yes, Wednesday. Other newly added
words that have attracted some attention in press reports include
"me-media", a sarcastic alternative to the formal "user-generated
content", which refers to sites like MySpace, Facebook or Flickr;
"rewilding", a policy of returning the environment to a natural or
untamed state; "lactivist", a woman who believes strongly in the
value of breast over bottle for babies; and "ecotecture", referring
to environmentally friendly architecture.
POND SWOOPING Though it's well known among aficionados of extreme
sports (it dates back a decade or so), this colloquial term refers
to an activity sufficiently specialist that it only occasionally
surfaces in print - a rare appearance was in the Observer last
weekend. It's also called extreme skydiving. Pond swoopers start
out with a normal skydive over water, but come down faster than
usual so they can zoom along horizontally just above the surface,
dragging both feet in the water for as long as they can without
landing. Losing control and splashing into the water is called
"chowing". Where no suitable body of water exists, swoopers may use
cornfields instead, dragging their feet through the crop. Injuries
are common.
4. Q&A: Jericho
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Q. I have come across a reference to "Jericho" in the Diary of a
Country Parson (1758-1802) by James Woodforde. He remarks on the
building of a fence in the garden of his parsonage in Norfolk, "so
that those working in the kitchen can not see who goes to Jericho."
He makes no further reference, presumably knowing that all who read
it would understand it. It made no sense to me until I started to
think of the word applied to chamber pots when I was a wee lad (no
pun intended), the "jerry". He must be referring to the outside
privy. Any thoughts? [Adrian Cook]
A. You're almost certainly right in your supposition.
It's a very clergymanly joke, since it's a reference to scripture,
specifically to an event told in the second book of Samuel. Jericho
is the place in Palestine where - as you may have heard - the walls
once came tumbling down, the story of which is told in another Old
Testament book, Joshua. The book of Samuel relates that King David
sent ambassadors to King Hamun of Ammon, who treated them with
insolence and humiliated them. The King James Bible of 1611 says:
Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, and shaved off the
one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in
the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away. When
they told it unto David, he sent to meet them, because the
men were greatly ashamed: and the king said, Tarry at Jericho
until your beards be grown, and then return.
>From about 1650 onwards "Jericho" could mean a place of retirement
or concealment, or a place far distant and out of the way.
There is a persistent tale about Henry VIII that seeks to explain
this meaning. He is said to have had a country retreat, Jericho
Priory, at Blackmore in Essex. The 1894 edition of Cobham Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says it "was one of the houses of
pleasure of Henry VIII. When this lascivious prince had a mind to
be lost in the embraces of his courtesans, the cant phrase among
his courtiers was 'He is gone to Jericho'. Hence, a place of
concealment." Henry's bastard son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond,
was certainly born there in 1519 to his young mistress, Elizabeth
Blount, but that had been specially arranged as a quiet place of
retreat by Cardinal Wolsey. The priory wasn't dissolved until 1525
and even in those slack days you can hardly imagine that the monks
allowed unrestrained hanky-panky on the premises. It's clear that
the tale is built purely on the coincidence of names.
The expression "go to Jericho" could be used as an impolite request
to go away, pretty much the same as "go to hell". William Makepeace
Thackeray used it that way in The Virginians in 1858: "'Some one
below wants to see master with a little bill,' says Mr. Gumbo.
'Tell him to go to Jericho!' roars out Mr. Warrington. 'Let me see
nobody! I am not at home, sir, at this hour of the morning!'" It
also appears in an Irish novel of 1899, Light O' The Morning by L T
Meade: "'Molly! Molly!' here called out Linda's voice; 'mother says
it's time for you and Nora to come in to wash your hands for tea.'
'Oh, go to Jericho!' called out Molly." It still occasionally turns
up today.
But as you surmise, James Woodforde was using it more directly for
"a place of retirement or concealment". He must indeed have meant
the privy. It was usual, before modern sanitation, to put it at the
bottom of the garden, as far away from the house as possible. The
parson would seem to have been ensuring the modesty of the members
of his household by building a fence so that they could visit the
privy without being observed.
What immediately came to my mind, as it did to yours, was the pot
which in Britain is slangily called a jerry. Might this indeed be
from "Jericho"? It would be good to think so. The dates are right,
since "jerry" starts to appear in the middle of the nineteenth
century, after Parson Woodforde wrote his diary entry.
However, the OED doesn't include the privy sense of "Jericho" and I
can find no other examples, so it may have been a little private
joke of Mr Woodforde's. All the authorities argue - though they do
so tentatively - that "jerry" is in reality from "jeroboam", a
double magnum, a bottle of wine four times the size of a standard
bottle, whose name - to continue the Biblical associations - is
named after a king of Israel mentioned in the first book of Kings.
This origin feels a bit too clever and highfalutin, as "jeroboam"
has never been a household word, though you may guess that the
colour of the jerry's contents helped the association.
Spurred by your question, I decided on a practical test, perhaps in
the process inventing the sub-discipline of experimental etymology.
We have here an old china jerry or po (another British term, of the
late nineteenth century, borrowed from French pot de chambre). This
was handed down years ago from my wife's grandmother and now forms
the base of an informal umbrella stand. A quick test shows that its
capacity is exactly four bottles of wine. This may be coincidental,
but it's intriguing.
However, I suspect we may never be able to prove the matter one way
or the other unless somebody can find further written examples of
"Jericho" in the sense of a privy.
5. Sic!
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Dodi Schultz reported last Sunday, "Today's New York Times tells
the tale of a good-hearted soul who has taken to saving homeless
kittens and persuading people to adopt them. The Times describes
her as 'a vivacious woman with a dirty-blond ponytail named Tammy
Cross.' Not a bad choice. I can't imagine a ponytail named, say,
Agatha."
"The July issue of History Today," says Reg Brehaut, "tells us that
the first cartoon character 'was the creation of a distinguished
British artist who celebrates the 250th anniversary of his birth
this year'. Forget about cartoon characters - tell us more about
this immortal!"
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