World Wide Words -- 28 Jul 07
Michael Quinion
michael.quinion at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jul 27 17:09:35 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 546 Saturday 28 July 2007
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Venery.
3. Topical Words: Bowser.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Reared its ugly head.
6. 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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GORDON BENNETT In the full piece online about this expression, I
omitted to point out that its popularity was probably in part as an
alternative to such mild oaths as "God help us" or "Gor blimey". It
is most likely, I would guess, that it was employed in the early
days as a humorous reference to such imprecations. But, as several
writers noted, "Gordon Bennett" is a very satisfactory exclamation
in its own right. Numerous subscribers remarked on the Australian
general of that name, who controversially left Singapore after the
Japanese reached it in 1942, abandoning his men. I have in the past
wondered whether this might have been the source, but the recent
discovery of a pre-war citation rules it out. However, it might be
that the general's notoriety gave a fresh impetus to the expletive
in Australia.
2. Weird Words: Venery
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Hunting; the chase.
Let us leave unexplored the other meaning of the word, which the
Oxford English Dictionary defines as "The practice or pursuit of
sexual pleasure". At times that may seem to its participants to
resemble a hunt, but it's not connected etymologically. It comes
from Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty and love.
Our sense is from Old French "venerie", which derives from Latin
"venari", to hunt. The monk in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales describes
himself as "An outrider, that loved venery", by which he meant he
loved hunting, though Chaucer's tales are so bawdy that incautious
readers might assume the other sense. "Venery" refers to hunting
game animals such as boar, hares, wolves, bears and - especially -
deer. A close relative to "venery" is "venison", nowadays always
meat from a deer but in earlier times the flesh of any hunted
animal.
"Venery" dates from medieval England and is closely connected with
the royal forests established by the Norman kings and nobles after
the Conquest of 1066 (despite the name, the royal forests included
fields and open ground as well as woods). The beasts of venery were
those that were considered most noble to hunt. There were animals
of a lower order, too, the beasts of the chase, which included the
fox, as well as beasts of the warren, such as the rabbit and the
pheasant.
3. Topical Words: Bowser
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Floods have caused enormous damage in parts of southern Britain in
the past week or so; ironically, one result is that in the worst-
hit areas local residents have lost their water supplies because
treatment plants have flooded. On Monday, BBC News reported that
drinking water was to be brought into the stricken areas using
bowsers. This word had presumably been taken from information
supplied by Severn Trent Water, the water company that is most
affected. BBC reporters - together with other radio and TV news
broadcasters and some newspapers - felt it necessary to explain
this odd term in case it would not be understood.
"Bowser" is rather specialist, not being the sort of word that you
naturally drop into daily conversation unless you run a service
station or an airport. But it's neither archaic nor especially
rare, though it doesn't mean the same thing in every country in
which it's used.
We owe it to Sylvanus Bowser, of Fort Wayne, Indiana. At the start
of the twentieth century he invented what he called the self-
measuring gasoline storage pump but which we in these days of haste
and clamour abbreviate to gasoline pump or petrol pump. That's why
such pumps in Australia and New Zealand (and to some extent also
Canada) are called bowsers, because his firm, S F Bowser & Company,
had a thriving export trade to those countries in the early days of
motoring. The device consisted of a measuring pump attached to a
tank that - those being more carefree days - could be put at the
kerbside in front of a garage.
In consequence, Bowser's firm was in the business of making fuel
storage tanks from early on, though it only trademarked the name in
1921. The firm later made its fuel tanks mobile and self-propelled,
while keeping the core idea that their contents would be dispensed
from them directly to the end user. This is what distinguishes a
bowser from the tankers that serve petrol stations, which don't
supply the public direct but pump the fuel into underground storage
tanks. Bowsers have long been used on airfields to resupply planes,
and they became well known to service people in many countries
during the Second World War.
It is only in the UK, for some unknown reason, that bowsers supply
drinking water, something for which many people are currently very
grateful.
4. Recently noted
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2.0 Fitting this term into the standard alphabetical layout of a
dictionary is going to be hard, but it looks as though the bigger
ones may have to find a way to include it, since it's now all the
rage. It began with "Web 2.0" (http://wwwords.org?2TN0) three years
ago, but the numerical second element is now turning up all over
the place. As Computer Weekly pointed out last month, "We have had
Marketing 2.0, PR 2.0, Democracy 2.0, Identity 2.0, Jobs 2.0 and
even Lunch 2.0." I've also seen "Travel 2.0" and "Government 2.0"
plus several examples of "Television 2.0". I've even encountered it
as a verb - to "2.0-ify". But don't look too closely at what "2.0"
means. It's all too often shorthand for a broadly technological,
especially Web-related, development which its promoters would like
people to believe is new, fashionable and exciting. The boring old
Web that most of us are still using is deprecated as "Web 1.0".
WIZARD ROCK To be topical, this should have appeared last weekend,
when the last of the Harry Potter books was published. According to
Wikipedia, it dates back to 2002, so I'm hardly au fait with the
zeitgeist. However, better late than never, though if I were any
later it would have to be never. Wizard Rock bands are fans of the
series who write and perform songs that relate to characters or
events in the books. Groups have names like Harry and the Potters,
The Whomping Willows, Wingardium Leviosa, Draco and the Malfoys,
The Parselmouths and The Remus Lupins. Nobody takes wizard rock
very seriously, including those involved. WizardRock.org, a fan
genre site, quotes a member of The Whomping Willows: "Half of these
bands are populated by kids who are just learning to play an
instrument and record music. The beauty of Wizard Rock is that for
many of the bands, it's nothing more than a learning experience."
COSPLAY The Wikipedia article used this term to refer to Wizard
Rock band members dressing as their character while performing.
Obviously enough, it's a blend from "costume play". To judge by the
17 million hits I got when looking the word up on Google, it ought
to be in all the dictionaries, it's so widely known. The Wilipedia
article on "cosplay" referred me to one on "glomping", which says
that this is a form of greeting, often consisting of a fervent
running hug, common among fans at Anime conventions. My vocabulary
expands ...
5. Q&A: Rear its ugly head
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Q. So many bad things today seem to be rearing their ugly heads!
What was the first thing that reared its ugly head, and who first
turned this colourfully descriptive phrase? [Arthur Hart]
A. This has indeed become a cliché. It refers to something that has
made an unwelcome appearance or has become a troublesome subject
that requires attention. This, for example, appeared in the Irish
Independent on 5 July 2007: "Critics have noted the short battery
life, an issue that has already reared its ugly head for the iPod."
Though the Oxford English Dictionary's first example is from 1946,
the use of "reared" suggests it's much older. "Reared" here means
to set something upright or hold in an elevated position. We don't
use the verb in that way any more, though we do speak of a horse
rearing. "Raised" is a good equivalent and "raised its ugly head"
is now often used instead. "Reared its ugly head" is not only a
cliché, but also an idiom, preserving an outdated verbal usage.
Tracking it down, as with most clichés, has proved impossible. So
far as I can discover, it dates from the nineteenth century. The
first appearance I know of in that exact form is in The Defiance
Democrat of Ohio of 28 June 1883: "And now the brief peace she had
known was broken. The serpent had reared its ugly head amid her
roses; it could be Paradise to her no more." The earliest example
of all is in the Adams Sentinel of Gettysburg of 29 January 1867:
"He is still in the front rank of those who are determined that
rebellion shall not again be able to rear its ugly head in this land,
and that our government shall not again go into the hands of
traitors."
Might it be scriptural? It seems not, or at least it doesn't appear
in Genesis, where you might expect it to from the first quotation.
But the simpler form "reared its head" has been around since the
time of Milton, the middle of the seventeenth century. My guess is
that some mute inglorious writer enlarged "reared its head" at some
point in the nineteenth century to provide a satisfactory image of
a disagreeable manifestation.
6. Sic!
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While Bert Forage was browsing in a gardening shop near his home in
Hobart, Tasmania, he noticed a gadget for crushing empty aluminium
cans. The advertising blurb said "Can not supplied". Duh. Not even
an empty one for practice?
"I had occasion," e-mailed Wendy Pomroy, "to look up the definition
for 'atheist' in the Encarta World English Dictionary provided with
Microsoft Word 2004 for the Apple Mac. I was delighted to find it
defined as 'somebody who does not believe in God or dieties'. A fat
disbeliever perhaps?"
On 11 July, the Guardian reported how a diver wrestled with a 3ft
lobster after it attacked him. "The lobster came at me, its claws
snapping. I could hardly get my hand across the back of its shell.
I managed to get it with a pincer movement." How else?
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