World Wide Words -- 01 Dec 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 30 18:52:32 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 564 Saturday 1 December 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/qwkm.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Flavicomous.
3. Q&A: Jake-leg.
4. 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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NEWSLETTER RESCHEDULING The four-hour delay in sending out last
week's issue was an experiment that I've decided to make permanent.
The current time of publication was sensible when it was just the
newsletter going out, but Web site updates have to be synchronised
with the newsletter and have become much more complicated in recent
years. Newsletter publication and the Web site updates will now be
at 09:00 my time (GMT). The change means that I shall be awake when
this happens and can take immediate action if something goes wrong.
My apologies if this interferes with a long-standing routine.
CHORK This is a late entry to the set of combination cutlery blend
words I discussed last week. Betsy Willeford tells me it turned up
in the New York Times crossword puzzle on 23 November. One clue was
"Cuisine that may be served with a chork." The answer was Asian
fusion. "Chork" is "chopstick" + "fork".
ELECTROCUTION To judge by various comments, I should have added a
gloss to my quote from James J Kilpatrick last week. You may recall
that he was surprised to find two dictionaries that asserted that
the process need not be fatal. It is significant that the works he
mentioned are both British - Encarta and Oxford. Its original sense
was certainly execution by electricity - it was created as a blend
of "electricity" plus "execution". The term starts to appear in US
newspapers around June 1889, following the coming into force on 1
January that year of a law passed by the New York state legislature
to allow such executions. As the use of electricity became common,
the term broadened in scope to mean any death from electricity, as
a logical extension of the word to fill a gap in our vocabularies.
In the UK, where executions by electricity have never been allowed,
its judicial implications have not been appreciated. Relatively
recently it has begun to be used for an injury from the same cause.
Even in the UK, not all dictionaries agree. Collins and Chambers
say that electrocution means death, as does the new sixth edition
of the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. In all these
cases, death by electricity as a form of capital punishment is for
good reason given as a secondary meaning.
PREDATOR A Sic! item last week mentioned a job advertisement for
Fox News that referred to a "predator", a Writer/Producer/Editor.
Anthony Massey, a BBC news producer, e-mailed to say, "'Predator'
is as you suggest a jargon term of the television news business,
but it seems to be both very recent and so far confined to the US.
It may indeed be most often used by Fox News, as media companies do
develop their own internal jargon. However, the job it describes is
familiar in broadcast news organisations worldwide. It combines the
journalistic function of producer with the technical skills of a
picture editor, who assembles the film into a complete story. Now
that 'film' doesn't have to be film, or even videotape, but often
exists only on a computer server, there's no reason why one person
should not research the story, write the script and assemble the
pictures. In BBC News, and I believe in British television as a
whole, such a person is simply called a producer. We have not felt
a need to invent a new name, especially such an unpleasant-sounding
one, just because the job description has expanded to take in new
technology."
2. Weird Words: Flavicomous
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Having yellow hair.
Back in 1937, Warwick Deeping published a book entitled Malice of
Men, which included: "My mother was provoked, not only by Mrs.
Braithwaite's crowding competition, but by the lady's person, for
she was flowery and flavicomous." This led to a gentle rebuke in
Time magazine on 7 July that year in a review of another of his
books, Blind Man's Year: "When Warwick Deeping is writing in his
own person, he likes to use such stiff-legged literarities as
'flavicomous, ecology, otiose,' [and] speaks of people 'occluding'
the doorway. But his wistful better nature comes to the fore in his
characters' speeches, which are always from the heart."
Only a few writers have used this word, among them Anthony Burgess,
the remainder preferring a more straightforward alternative such as
"blonde". Back in the late nineteenth century, William Cowper Brann
was struck by an article in a Boston newspaper and wrote this squib
in his own paper, the Iconoclast of Waco, Texas:
Melanocomous, multiloquous, sanguinaceous, flavicomous, etc.,
are words that do very well for the penetralia of Boston, but
should be sawed up and fed to Texas on the monthly installment
plan.
[Multiloquous = talking a lot; sanguinaceous = resembling blood;
penetralia = secret or hidden places.]
If you are melanocomous, you have black hair. It and "flavicomous"
(and also "auricomous", also meaning having yellow hair, which has
as its starting point the Latin word for gold) derive their endings
from Latin "coma", hair. The first part of "flavicomous" is from
Latin "flavus", yellow.
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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. Q&A: Jake-leg
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Q. "Jake-leg" is a very interesting word, a pejorative used by my
Mississippi-born father to describe sloppy or inadequate work, and
the person performing it. [Ray Franklin]
A. That was a question, right? If so, I'll answer it.
"Jake-leg" is indeed an interesting American term. In the sense in
which your father used it, it's a variant of "jackleg", a person
who lacks the skills or training to do a job properly or who is
unscrupulous, dishonest or without standards. "Jackleg" was created
on the model of "blackleg", with the first element changed to the
name "Jack", perhaps from a derogatory sense it had at the time.
The first known example, from 1837, refers to a "jackleg lawyer".
The Dictionary of American Regional English records "jake-leg" in
the same sense as "jackleg" from the 1960s onwards. It may have
been influenced by "jake" (probably from "Jacob") in a Southern US
sense of a rustic or uncouth or inexperienced man. However, the
most probable reason is confusion between "jackleg" and an earlier
sense of "jake-leg" from the 1930s.
The dictionaries say that "jake" in that term is a short form of
"Jamaica ginger". This variety was also known as white ginger, made
by scraping and bleaching the roots. From about 1850, various US
patent medicines were based on it. One was Sandford's Jamaica
Ginger, which was advertised in 1877 in the Janesville Gazette of
Wisconsin with the bold and all-inclusive claims typical of the
times:
It instantly relieves Cholera, Cholera Morbus, Cramps and
Pains, Chronic Diarrhoea, Dysentery and Cholera Infantum,
Diarrhoea in Teething, and all Summer Complaints, Dyspepsia,
Flatulency, Sluggish Digestion, Want of Tone and Activity
in the Stomach and Bowels, Oppression after Eating, Rising
of Food, and Similar Ailments, Colds and Chills, Feverish
Symptoms, Pains in the Bones, Catarrhal Symptoms, Rheumatic
and Neuralgic Symptoms, Soreness and Pains in the Muscles
and Joints.
Its cheapness and high alcohol content resulted in the medicine
becoming a favourite of tramps, down-and-outs and the poorer class
of person. A court case was reported in the Iowa State Reporter in
1889: "It was alleged by the prosecution that this demand for
Jamaica ginger was not of a medicinal origin, and that many of the
grocer's patrons were Jamaica ginger drunkards, a species of
inebriates by no means uncommon."
In 1901, an article appeared in several US newspapers under the
headline "Jamaica ginger. The great American tipple", reporting the
views of the Rev Dr James N Buckley that the drink was rivalled only
by applejack as an intoxicant. The article commented:
While Jamaica ginger has a comparatively small sale in the
larger cities as a "barroom" drink, there is not another
concoction on earth that is more popular in temperance towns
and crossroads stores. Let a town "go dry" and see how
quickly the number of patrons - men - of the local drug
stores will increase. Instances have been known in which
all the bar rooms in towns which were suddenly declared
"dry" by the vote of the people put their intoxicating
liquors out of sight and became "ginger ale parlors".
As you might guess, Jamaica ginger was widely taken up during the
Prohibition period, when it continued to be sold because it was
officially regarded as a health drink. Its name had by then been
shortened to "jake". The extract was drunk neat, or it was added to
bathtub gin as a flavouring or diluted with soft drinks. When the
authorities realised the extent of its sales they tried to crack
down on it. One maker tried to get around this in early 1930 by
adding a phosphate ester, TOCP (tri-ortho-cresyl-phosphate), to the
drink to increase its solids content and so mislead tests of its
alcohol content. TOCP was a plasticiser and fuel additive, thought
to be harmless. In reality it caused an estimated 50,000 cases of a
neurological disease from which many never recovered. One symptom
was a high-stepping walk, caused by partial paralysis of the legs,
in which the toe and heel would strike the ground on each step,
making a characteristic sound.
This walk became known as "Ginger jake paralysis", "jakefoot", or
"jake-leg". The outbreak became the subject of several blues songs
in and after 1930, such as the Jake Leg Blues, the Jake Leg Wobble
and the Jake Liquor Blues. Willie Lofton rather confusingly sang:
I said jake leg, jake leg, jake leg, jake leg.
Tell me what in the world you going to do.
I said I drank so much jake, ooh Lord
Till it done give him the limber leg.
I say I know the jake leg, ooh Lord
Just as far as I can hear the poor boy walk.
The scandal - and the term "jake-leg" - became widely known at the
time. As memories of the events grew dim in people's minds over the
next couple of decades, it's not particularly surprising that a
later generation should confuse "jake-leg" with "jackleg".
By the way, though Rolf Harris's comic song Jake the Peg may come
to mind, I can find no evidence that connects either the song or
the expression to 1930s America.
4. Sic!
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Gordon Robinson tells me that the sports pages of the South China
Morning Post last Sunday reported a most remarkable reproductive
achievement. The French golf team apparently had much to celebrate
at the Mission Hills World Cup in China: "Havret turns 31 today,
while Jacquelin is anxiously awaiting the birth of his third child
in 10 days."
The issue of the Los Angeles Times for 25 November, Linda Garris
relates, contained this sentence in its travel section: "Four
months before Heathrow's Terminal 5 is to open, officials gave
media a sneak peak at the futuristic facility, which they hope will
dispel images of weary crowds searching for lost bags and waiting
for late fights." Over-stressed by scaling that peak, perhaps?
It's just my sick sense of humour, I have to concede, that made me
laugh at the title of a supplement to the Observer newspaper last
Sunday: Baking With Kids.
John Carl Bowers reports: "In last weekend's New York Times Book
Review, a firm advertised Audubon's The Birds of America, 'eight
volumes in handsome publisher's full morocco bindings' for $48,000.
Perhaps if the publisher were plain-featured the price would be
lower."
The page of the Marks & Spencer online catalogue advertising men's
suits, Gill Teicher discovered, has a footnote explaining that "A
suit compromises of a matching jacket & trousers." I've heard of
compromising situations, but compromising suits is a new one.
A. Subscription information
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* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
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