World Wide Words -- 08 Dec 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 7 17:59:49 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 565 Saturday 8 December 2007
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font.
A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/glcb.htm
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Sardoodledom.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Safe as houses.
5. Q&A: Toise.
6. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
MY SENSE OF HUMOUR I was mildly concerned that the sick Sic! item
that I included last week about the Observer's supplement Cooking
With Kids might offend. Instead, James Harbeck wrote in to tell me
about the Disney work that was awarded the title of World's Worst
Book Title by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 21 November. The
title? Cooking With Pooh. Don't rush to get a copy, as it's long
out of print. To judge from the price of a single used copy listed
on Amazon.com ($199.00, and that's without the cookie cutters), it
has become a collector's item. The newspaper said that it triumphed
over several other nice titles, including Letting It Go: a History
of American Incontinence; The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North
America: A Guide to Field Identification (I mentioned it here last
March; it won the Bookseller competition for the Oddest Title of
2006); and Everything You'll Need to Remember About Alzheimer's.
2. Weird Words: Sardoodledom
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A play with an overly contrived and melodramatic plot.
It certainly looks weird enough. Until recently it was known only
to historians of the theatre, but it's having a rare moment in the
spotlight. It was one of the words in the 2007 US National Spelling
Bee, which brought on a fit of giggles on live television from the
11-year-old, Kennyi Aouad of Indiana, who was asked to spell it. So
many people went to the Merriam-Webster Web site to look it up that
the firm has recently included it in a list of 20 words from which
visitors have been asked to choose their Word of the Year for 2007.
It commemorates the French playwright Victorien Sardou. He was
extremely successful in the 40 years from 1860, creating more than
70 plays, some for the English actress Sarah Bernhardt. (One he
wrote for her in 1882, Fédora, gave the English language a new word
for a type of hat.) His plays were melodramatic spectaculars, full
of contrivance and written to a mechanical formula, often designed
as vehicles for famous actors and actresses of the day. His last
big success was the historical play Madame Sans-Gêne in 1892, seen
in 1897 in an English version starring Ellen Terry in the Lyceum
Theatre in London.
In June 1895, George Bernard Shaw wrote a highly critical article
in the Saturday Review under the heading "Sardoodledom", a word he
invented for the piece. He described Fédora as "claptrap" and he
criticised Sarah Bernhardt for becoming involved in "a high modern
development of the circus and the waxworks". Shaw used the word
again two years later in the same publication: "It is rather a nice
point whether Miss Ellen Terry should be forgiven for sailing the
Lyceum ship into the shallows of Sardoodledom for the sake of
Madame Sans-Gêne."
The word has since become shorthand for technically well-crafted
works of the period - "well-made plays" - that were created as pure
entertainment, lacking any moral or ethical position and featuring
what one critic called "a poverty of thought".
[Picture of Sardou from the December 1880 issue of Vanity Fair.]
--*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*--
GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON
If you have a friend or relative interested in words, you might do
worse than consider giving one of my charmingly inexpensive and
extraordinarily interesting books:
Gallimaufry: http://www.worldwidewords.org/gallimaufry.htm
Port Out, Starboard Home: http://www.worldwidewords.org/posh.htm
Ologies and Isms: http://www.worldwidewords.org/ologies.htm
--*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*-- --*--
3. Recently noted
-------------------------------------------------------------------
MORE VOTING When the 2007 edition of Susie Dent's annual Language
Report came out from Oxford University Press this autumn (reviewed
here on 6 October; see http://wwwords.org?SDLR), suggestions were
invited, to mark the fifth publication year of the series, for the
word which best represented the events or moods of the early 21st
century. About 1,000 people took part. By a small margin they chose
"9/11", referring to the terrorist attacks against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon in 2001. Susie Dent commented that the term
not only commemorates the events of that day but will remain as a
permanent marker for the political actions that followed it. "Like
'ground zero'," she said, "it illustrates perfectly how history can
be preserved in a word which is packed with associations and which
will evoke it instantly." Runner-up was "footprint", as in "carbon
footprint" (noted here in February 2007; http://wwwords.org?CRFP).
Third was the phrase "sex up", whose specific associations for us
in the UK are to a BBC report in May 2003 which gave huge offence
to the government and led to the resignations of the BBC's chairman
and director-general. In the report the journalist Andrew Gilligan
said that British intelligence documents on Iraq had been "sexed
up" in order to justify war.
MOOFING I'm behindhand with a report on this word. It appeared in
July in a press release from Microsoft, seemingly invented by some
ingenious PR person. I thought it was too transient to bother you
with, but a report in the Guardian last weekend resurrected it, so
perhaps I should note it for the record. A moofer is a person who
moofs, who works from anywhere except in an office. "MOOF" stands
for "Mobile Out Of Office", one of the more strained acronyms in
the language. There's now a Web site, moof.mobi, at which moofers
can exchange experiences (not moof.com, as the Guardian had it).
4. Q&A: Safe as Houses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I am curious about the saying "safe as houses", which is more
common in England than here in the States. What is it about houses
that makes them so safe, compared with anything else? [Heather
Upton, Los Angeles]
A. It's not immediately obvious, I agree. And in the history of
similes about security, "safe as houses" is a relative late-comer.
You might at various times have been as safe as a bug in a rug (an
alternative to the much older and better known "snug as a bug in a
rug"), as a sow (or a crow) in a gutter, a mouse in a malt-heap (or
in a mill or a cheese), as safe as a church, or a bank, or a fort,
or a bunker, or simply as anything. Several of them suggest comfort
or freedom from disturbance as much as physical safety.
Other expressions of similar kind imply certainty - a sure thing or
a safe bet. "As safe as eggs", for example, which is a variant on
"as sure as eggs is eggs", which makes sense of a puzzling phrase,
as eggs are notoriously unrobust. Likewise "safe as the bellows", a
strange expression of the 1850s, which appears in Henry Mayhew's
London Life and the London Poor (1851): "If you was caught up and
brought afore the Lord Mayor, he'd give you fourteen days on it, as
safe as the bellows".
The reason for all these puzzling forms is that at one time "safe"
could mean "certainly; for sure; assuredly", especially in dialect
and colloquial English. Francis Grose wrote in 1790, "He is safe
enough for being hanged" as an example of Cumberland dialect, which
meant that the person was certain to be hanged. Among other cases,
The English Dialect Dictionary a century later includes "it is safe
to thunder", Lincolnshire dialect meaning it was sure to do so.
As a result, "safe as houses" has often meant something that was
certain to happen. In 1894, Mrs Arthur Stannard, writing as J S
Winter, used it in her novel Red Coats, "You know the Colonel is as
safe as houses to come round after church parade." In The Penang
Pirate by John Conroy Hutcheson (1886) appears this: "If you was to
strike one with a rope's end - if only in lark, mind you, to make
him move quicker - why, you'd be a dead man 'fore morning, safe as
houses!" In Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy of 1874 this
dialogue appears: "'He must come without fail, and wear his best
clothes.' 'The clothes will floor us as safe as houses!' said
Coggan."
There's clearly more going on than at first sight we might think.
After all this time, we can't penetrate the minds of the inventors
of the expression. But it's unwise to draw parallels with related
expressions. "As safe as a church" and "as safe as a bank" suggest
the security of a physical structure. But the reference is probably
figurative in both cases - to God's protection and to financial
security.
John Hotten argued in his Slang Dictionary of 1859 that "safe as
houses" may have arisen when the intense speculation on railways in
Britain - the railway mania - began to be seen for the highly risky
endeavour that it really was and when bricks and mortar became more
financially attractive. But that ignores the figurative nature of
the phrase, which, even so early after its coining, must have had
little in users' minds to do with any actual building.
5. Q&A: Toise
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I came across "toise" in the novel St Ives, by Robert Louis
Stevenson: "'Are you acquainted with the properties of the spine?'
he asked with an insolence beyond qualification. It was too much.
'I am acquainted also with the properties of a pair of pistols,'
said I, toising him." Any idea what it means exactly? Is it a
typographical error? [Daniel J Matranga]
A. This is possibly the most obscure question I've ever been asked.
My reason for including it is that it leads us up an interesting
linguistic byway, where I hope you will not abandon me in despair
at my antiquarian investigation of the incredibly obscure.
The rag-bag of miscellaneous recollections that I call my memory
reminds me that a toise was an old French unit of length. By an
unremarkable coincidence, it appears in an SF book I've just been
reading, Brasyl by Ian McDonald, in which the speaker is French:
"The Amazon drops only fifty toises over its entire length".
A few moments' enquiry turned up the extraordinarily useful fact
that a toise is six French feet or about two metres, six and two-
fifths English feet. It derives from Latin "tensa (bracchia)", the
outstretched arms, from "tendere", to stretch. It was the distance
between the fingertips when an adult male stretched his arms out
horizontally side to side.
The most interesting thing about it, the word in this sense being
long defunct in France and virtually unknown everywhere else, is
that it's closely similar to the nautical fathom, long regularised
as six feet. This word comes from Old English, in which it refers
to the same distance measured in the same way.
Without doubt, fascinating cross-language stuff. But what does it
have to do with the matter?
The only person the OED cites as a user of the verb is Stevenson,
both in St Ives and in his earlier work, The Master of Ballantrae:
"At the same time he had a better look at me, toised me a second
time sharply, and then smiled." The OED says it is "very rare",
which is an undeniably accurate statement, since no other example
exists in literature - at least that I can find. Stevenson being
Scottish, I wondered if it might be a Scots term, but nothing like
it appears in any of my dictionaries. It seems to derive directly
from the French verb "toiser", originally to measure.
My Larousse tells me that in French "toiser" today means to regard
someone with contempt or defiance. So, to toise is figuratively to
measure someone, to eye them from head to foot in an appraising and
disapproving way. A century ago a critic in The Reader said that
Stevenson's usage "seems a trifle strained". Can't dispute that.
6. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Cliff Card was browsing the Web to read about the newly elected PM
of Australia and came across the opening sentence of the biography
entry in Wikipedia for Mr Rudd's wife: "Thérèse Rein is the 26th
Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia." Busy man. [Ms Rein is
actually the spouse of the 26th Prime Minister of Australia.]
Remaining with Australia and the new PM, Lesley Beresford reports
that The Advertiser of Adelaide commented on changes to overseas
positions in the wake of the election: "A brace of former Liberal
heavyweights - three from [South Australia] - hold diplomatic posts
and could be recalled by Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd at short
notice". How many in a brace? [My dictionaries confirm just two.
It's from Old French "bracier", to embrace, from Latin bracchia,
"arms".]
Across the water in New Zealand, John Neave scratched his head over
an announcement on the TV One Sports News last weekend: "The All
Blacks have only two weeks to complete their last-minute training."
Something, as he says, doesn't quite add up.
A Guardian piece on Tuesday described current political cooperation
between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, even though
sectarian separation between communities in Belfast is maintained
by 30 big "peace walls". Michael White noted that this separation
is increasing: "A new wall opened last month", which is of course
the exact opposite of the intended effect.
Greg Putz, the clerk of the Saskatchewan legislative assembly, was
quoted on the CBC News Web site last Monday as saying "Many members
have springs coming through and there's lumps and holes and they're
hard to move." It might sound like politicians everywhere. But no,
he was actually talking about the 100-year-old chairs that they sit
in, which are to be replaced at a cost of about CDN$125,000. Many
thanks to Harold Crandall for sending that in.
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. For a list of
commands, send this message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org:
INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS
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/ .
B. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
be sent to me at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org . I do try to
respond, but pressures of time often prevent me from doing so.
* Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers at worldwidewords.org .
Submissions will not usually be acknowledged.
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't
use this address 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, there are several ways to do
so. Visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/support.htm for details.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. 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
the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed publications or
on Web sites or blogs needs prior permission, for which you should
contact the editor at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list