World Wide Words -- 13 Oct 07
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 12 18:02:29 UTC 2007
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 557 Saturday 13 October 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 monospaced font.
A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/ekdw.htm
and includes a couple of pictures
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Topical Words: Bottle.
3. Weird Words: Geis.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Since old leather-arse died.
6. Sic.
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
MISSSSPELLINGS The IgNobel Prices mentioned last week were prizes
of course (let us set aside the self-deprecating message that came
in from a man named Price). The comic strip was Li'l Abner and not
L'il Abner. And it should have been "written", not "writen". If you
only knew how quickly that issue was put together, with two topical
items - one a book review - researched and written (or writen) with
my nose pressed against the publication deadline, you would perhaps
excuse my fingers doing their own thing from time to time without
being corrected.
ORIGINS Many subscribers pointed out that "beatnik" is usually
credited to the San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, who used it in
one of his pieces on 2 April 1958. And "t'Internet", as a way of
mentioning the online world that is used by some Northern people in
England, was said by several writers to have been coined by the
Bolton comedian Peter Kay.
2. Topical Words: Bottle
-------------------------------------------------------------------
For several weeks, the staff of the British prime minister, Gordon
Brown, has been talking up the possibility of an autumn election to
provide him with a personal mandate after the resignation of Tony
Blair in the summer (in Britain, when to call an election is in the
power of the current PM) but then last weekend he decided not to go
ahead. The good showing by the opposition Conservative Party in the
opinion polls after their annual conference is said to have been a
factor. This change of heart has produced great numbers of media
comments that adversely mention "Brown" and "bottle" in the same
sentence.
As some examples: the political editor of the Sunday newspaper The
People reported last weekend, "Gordon Brown bottled out of a snap
election last night." The Times of India commented the same day:
"In a sign Brown's honeymoon may be well and truly over, the prime
ministerial u-turn is being parodied by almost the entire British
media as 'Bottler Brown', with the press having a field day about
his indecisiveness and cynical manipulation." The following day, a
half dozen Conservative activists dressed up as bottles (Newcastle
Brown ale, naturally) as a PR stunt outside Downing Street with the
same slogan "Bottler Brown" (see http:/wwwords.org?BNBA for a pic).
A writer to the Daily Telegraph that day asked, "Since the Prime
Minister has so dramatically 'bottled it', could Brown become a new
bottle size, like magnum or jeroboam?"
The implications behind "bottle" were explained by Tony Park in The
Plough Boy in 1965: "Spirits, guts, courage ... It's the worst that
could be said about you, that you'd lost your bottle."
Though its origins are misty, we have some clues. "No bottle" was
widely used from the middle of the nineteenth century to refer to
something useless. Around the 1920s, we had "no bottle and glass"
as rhyming slang meaning that a person lacked class, in the sense
of being unimpressive or without style. This would seem to have
been taken also to mean lacking in courage. Around this time the
rhyming slang expression "bottle and glass" was used to mean arse
("ass" for US readers) and this seems to have been an influence
that led to forms like "Has your bottle fallen out?" which may
suggest that "bottle" in such forms figuratively means "guts".
The earliest example of "bottle" that I know of appeared in 1958 in
Frank Norman's book Bang to Rights, an account of prison life. The
verb, meaning to lose one's nerve or chicken out, is first recorded
at the end of the 1970s. Noun and verb, in various expressions,
were popularised by a wave of demotic writing and gritty television
programmes of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Sweeney and Minder,
that brought the slang of London to a wider audience. In the 1980s,
copywriters working for the Milk Marketing Board popularised it
further with a slogan for their product: "It's gotta lotta bottle"
(it has to be said with glottal stops to give it its full flavour).
Interestingly, it was alluded to, in the form "Notta Lotta Bottle",
on a placard held by one of Monday's bottle-garbed demonstrators
outside Downing Street.
After its heyday 30 years ago, "bottle", either as "bottle out" or
"lose your bottle", has not quite vanished from the British slang
lexicon, though in recent decades it has tended to reside in that
graveyard of outmoded expressions, the sports pages. So why the
sudden and near-unanimous burst of usage now? Step forward into the
limelight Euro RSCG, a huge French-owned global advertising agency
that has just been appointed by the Conservative party. I'd guess a
middle-aged account executive made the conceptual links "Brown" ->
"Brown ale" -> "bottle" -> "bottle out" -> "Bottler Brown" (with a
side memory of milk adverts) and went on from there.
And it worked splendidly.
2. Weird Words: Geis
-------------------------------------------------------------------
An obligation or prohibition imposed on a person.
The word is from Irish folklore, in which a geis could be a sacred
taboo, an enchantment, or a curse. To violate one led to misfortune
and death. In the heroic legends of Ireland, this is what happened
to the hero Cuchulain and to Conaire Mor, the King of Ireland, both
of whom were unable to avoid breaking their geisa (the Irish plural
of "geis"). The latter had many geisa imposed on him, such as never
to sleep in a house from which firelight could be seen after sunset
and never to be away from his capital at Tara for more than nine
nights at a time.
In Scots Gaelic it is spelled "geas" and there have also been other
spellings. Pronouncing it is an even more tricky problem. My Irish
books tell me that it's said as "gaysh", but the Oxford English
Dictionary gives three different pronunciations, including "gesh"
and "geesh" as well as "gaysh", of the three preferring "gesh". The
Shorter Oxford gives this as its sole pronunciation. The one-volume
Oxford Dictionary of English weirdly prefers "gas". No other
dictionary I have here includes it.
That's strange, since the word is a staple of modern fantasy books,
more commonly in the "geas" spelling. It seems sometimes you can't
pick up a work of that genre without mentally tripping over someone
who is under the influence of a geis. Its major sense in fantasy is
magical. It would be easy to quote a hundred examples, but two will
do. André Norton has a character say in The Year of the Unicorn, "I
have heard, by legend, that a geas is a thing of great power, not
lightly broken." Jack L Chalker wrote in A Jungle of Stars: "The
Pull began, that ancient geas laid upon him in times past by The
Race, that curse that tied him to his planetary sphere."
Terry Pratchett employs it in two of his fantasy works. To confuse
us further about the way to pronounce it, characters in both books
say it (or mishear it) as "geese". A Hat Full of Sky includes this
snatch of Scots-style dialogue: "'Tis a heavy thing, tae be under a
geas.' 'Well, they're big birds,' said Daft Wullie." This exchange
is in Sourcery:
"She just wants you to help us. It's a sort of quest."
Nijel's eyes gleamed.
"You mean a geas?" he said.
"Pardon?"
"It's in the book. To be a proper hero it says you've got
to labour under a geas."
Rincewind's forehead wrinkled. "Is it a sort of bird?"
"I think it's more a sort of obligation, or something,"
said Nijel, but without much certainty.
4. Recently noted
-------------------------------------------------------------------
FEMALE EXTINCTION Dear reader, do not reel in shock - the future
of the human race is not in doubt. This term has been used to refer
to a subtle but nonetheless serious problem of rural communities in
the UK and Ireland. The young women of these communities find life
to be too narrow and boring and are moving to the cities. Local men
often find it difficult to follow, because their lives are rooted
in the fields where their families have worked for generations. A
few towns have serious gender imbalances: Alston in Cumbria has at
least 10 unmarried men for every unmarried woman. Similar figures
are quoted for other places, such as Hythe in Kent, rural Devon and
the whole of Donegal in Ireland. The term "female extinction" seems
to have been coined by an organisation called Villages in Crisis,
which is publicising the issue and trying to tempt women back.
DOING PORRIDGE It's always a pleasure for me to come across a word
that's completely new to me, in this case the Scots "spurtle". On
Monday, a guesthouse owner from Argyll in Scotland won the Golden
Spurtle trophy, which meant she became the World Porridge Making
Champion 2007. She had 30 minutes in which to make traditional
porridge, a dish prepared solely from oats, water and salt. The
spurtle is the wooden stick - a stick, not a spoon - traditionally
used to stir porridge while it is cooking to stop it going lumpy.
It's said the true traditionalist will only stir in a clockwise
direction in order to keep the Devil away. Nobody seems to know
where "spurtle" comes from, though the Oxford English Dictionary
points tentatively at links with "spartle" and "spature" (not
forgetting the similarly dialect or defunct "spattle", "spatter",
and "spatule"), all words from Germanic or Old French sources that
derive from the Latin "spatula".
4. Q&A: Since old leather-arse died
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I wonder if you have heard a phrase that my grandmother used
with regularity (she died in 1964). "There have never been such
times since old leather-arse died". She would use it whenever she
was told about something new - if television was getting another
channel, or decimalisation was suggested, or when we told her a
sputnik had gone up. [Ann Deane, UK]
A. The expression is hardly known now except among older people.
Nigel Rees collected a number of versions from British listeners to
his radio programme in his book Oops, Pardon, Mrs Arden! Among them
was, "I haven't laughed so much since old leather arse died!" Much
the same term also appears in Nancy Keesing's book Lily on the
Dustbin: Slang of Australian Women and Families, published in 1982:
"A term of approval meaning 'very good indeed' in response to the
question, 'What do you think of ...?' is 'Damn the better since
Leather Arse died.'"
"Leather arse" is also known by itself, as a self-deprecatory slang
term among motorbike riders and horsemen. Tam Dalyell records it as
US poker slang - in the form "leather ass" - for someone exhibiting
great patience, which also appeared (in its British spelling) in a
2001 Daily Telegraph article about being successful at poker: "'The
qualities you need to succeed are aggression, timing, intuition and
perhaps, above all, patience,' [Al] Alvarez says. 'You've got to
develop what the Texans call "a leather arse".'" It may at one time
have been British services slang, to judge from one reference I've
found. There's also the politer or bowdlerised version "leather-
bottoms", which Eric Partridge and Jonathon Green record in their
slang dictionaries as a collective term for civil servants who are
so dedicated to their work they never leave their desks.
But nothing suggests who this personified Leather Arse might have
been. One posting online suggests it might have originally been
Irish and referred to Oliver Cromwell, who allegedly used to wear
leather breeches. But as the writer says, Cromwell is blamed for a
lot of things in Ireland and the story is probably just a popular
etymology.
So, while I've confirmed your grandmother was using an expression
that once was widely known, I can't help with where it comes from.
6. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Many news reports at the end of last week featured a woman who was
fined $222,000 for illegally downloading music files. This version
appeared on CBC Online: "'She was in tears. She's devastated,' said
Thomas's attorney, Brian Toder. 'This is a girl that lives from
paycheck to paycheck, and now all of a sudden she could get a
quarter of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life.'" Reg
Brehaut noted, "When you're paid peanuts, decorating it with
parsley probably doesn't help."
Gloria Bryant was stunned to learn there might be occupants of the
Geneva Convention. At least, that was the import, unintended, of a
report on Capital Hill Blue, an online news site, dated 6 October:
"The top Pentagon prosecutor in President George W. Bush's troubled
'war on terror' is leaving her post immediately. Sources say she is
'fed up' with the administration's continued attempts to ignore the
law and the tenants of the Geneva Convention in his abuse of
prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba."
On 4 October, The Local, which bills itself as Sweden's News in
English, headlined the surprising fact that "Young Swedish women
kill themselves more often." Nicholas Sanders hopes they have more
lives than a cat. Margaret L Ruwoldt heard on the ABC Radio program
PM, on Monday 8 October: "Andrew Page lectures at the School of
Population Health at the University of Queensland. In 2002, he
published a paper on farm suicides which found during the '90s one
farmer killed himself on average every four days nationally." She
remarks, "Given that the best-documented historical example
indicates a resurrection waiting period of three days, this seems
quite reasonable."
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 wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
* Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers at worldwidewords.org
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't
use this 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 needs prior permission, for which you should contact
the editor at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list