World Wide Words -- 05 Apr 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 4 15:10:55 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 582 Saturday 5 April 2008
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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. Turns of Phrase: Nanofood.
3. Weird Words: Hearth-money.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Shoot oneself in the foot.
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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MINERAL PATIENCE Many readers were struck by the image created by
this phrase from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García
Márquez that a subscriber asked about last week. Dan Perlman tells
me it's a direct translation of the author's Spanish, "paciencia
mineral". He said "I've seen the phrase used here in South America
as 'paciencia mineral de montaña', or 'mineral patience of the
mountain'; it may not have originated with Márquez. The English
ought idiomatically to be something like 'the patience of a rock',
but the translator probably decided to go with the more poetic-
sounding literal translation." John Laybourn concurred and added,
"All the examples I have found, from South America and Spain, seem
to describe heroic degrees of long-suffering." Many readers noted
the similarity of form to Andrew Marvell's "vegetable love" in his
famous poem To his Coy Mistress ("My vegetable love should grow /
Vaster than empires, and more slow.") However, it seems likely from
the dating of the few non-Márquez English-language examples we know
of that their writers have taken the phrase from the English
translation of his work.
MOSEY Other theories about the origin of this word were mentioned
by a number of readers; several noted one that had been put forward
by Eric Partridge. In his Name Into Word in 1950, he suggests it
might derive from the slouching manner of itinerant Jewish vendors,
so many of whom were named Moses or Mose or Mosey. Others had been
told it originated in the name of Moses because of the Biblical
flight of the Jews into Egypt and their wandering for 40 years in
the wilderness. Neither story survives scrutiny. Some readers said
that a Spanish origin from "vamos" in the south-western US wasn't
out of the question, listing several other Spanish words that had
undergone substantial modification, such as "jacquima" becoming
"hackamore". Perhaps I should have made clearer that the argument
against a Spanish origin is as much geographical as linguistic, as
the earliest recorded examples are from the East Coast of the US
(Virginia and Philadelphia).
QUOCKERWODGER "I knew the toy as a child," wrote the Rev John Carl
Bowers from Brooklyn. "It's a marionette whose limbs and body parts
are loosely connected by loops of string, the whole suspended from
a single string attached to the head. Jerking that single string
causes the marionette to flail about in grotesque and unpredictable
postures; it's not 'controlled' as we understand a puppet to be.
The amusement is in seeing what extremes of posture your jerking
can generate. Hotten's description matches my recollection - note
that he refers to jerking 'a' string. Forcing the puppet into
grotesque postures also accords well with the political meaning."
ROYAL NAVY If you are a serving or former RN member and would like
to help me with a language question, please send an e-mail with the
subject line "Royal Navy" to wordseditor at worldwidewords.org.
2. Turns of Phrase: Nanofood
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Whenever the prefix "nano-" appears, referring to any manipulation
of matter at near-molecular levels, controversy follows. Opponents
of such techniques argue in particular that they should not be used
in foodstuffs until we know much more about their effects on human
bodies.
"Nanofood" refers to the employment of nanotechnological techniques
in any part of the food chain - cultivation, production, processing
or packaging - not just in food itself. Companies are researching
the possibilities, some of which sound like science-fiction - smart
dust that's inserted into plants and animals so farmers can monitor
their health in real time; packaging that includes smart sensors
that can sniff out gases given off by deteriorating food or tell
you when it is ripe; a drink whose flavour can be changed just by
microwaving it; and stabilise nutrients in food, such as omega-3
fats, iron, or vitamins - which degrade quickly in storage - by
enclosing them in separate tiny containers. The only foodstuffs
currently available that have been modified through nanotechnology
are a few nutritional supplements, but this is expected to change
within a year or two.
The word first came to public attention as the title of a report of
in 2004 by a German firm, the Helmut Kaiser Consultancy. It is in
the news because of another report, published by Friends of the
Earth in March 2008, which takes an extremely sceptical view of the
technology and the likelihood of it being accepted by consumers.
* Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Mar. 2008: Food packaging using
nanotechnology is more advanced than nanofoods, with products on
the market that incorporate nanomaterials that scavenge oxygen,
fight bacteria, keep in moisture or sense the state of the food.
* Daily Mail, 20 Jan. 2007: But while the food industry is hooked
on nanotech's promises, it is also very nervous. For if British
consumers are sceptical about GM foods, then they are certainly not
ready for nanofood.
3. Weird Words: Hearth-money
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A tax upon hearths or fireplaces.
As today, 5 April, is the end of the tax year in the UK, a curious
choice of date that derives from the 1752 change to the calendar,
it seems appropriate to feature a word relating to taxation.
English kings and their advisors were ingenious in devising ways to
tax their subjects. Hearth-money was brought in during the reign of
Charles II in 1663. It was levied at two shillings a year on every
hearth in the kingdom. This doesn't sound like a lot, but a couple
of shillings went a great deal further then than today's equivalent
of 10 pence does now. It was also called "hearth-tax" and "chimney-
money". People hated it. It was repealed as one of the first acts
of that curious composite sovereign William-and-Mary in 1689 on the
grounds that it was
not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge
of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man's house
to be entered into, and searched at pleasure, by persons
unknown to him.
It should not be confused with "hearth-penny", a pre-Conquest name
for a payment of one penny a year by better-off householders to the
papal see at Rome, a tax that ended with the Reformation. As every
home had to have a hearth for cooking and heating, to have one was
equivalent to being a householder. The tax was also known as "Rome-
scot" (see http://wwwords.org?SCOT for more on "scot") and Peter's
pence. There were also "smoke farthings", which were offerings made
by householders to their cathedral church at Whitsun. The payment
is known from the fifteenth century under that name, but in the
eighteenth century, when the tradition was spluttering to its end,
writers began to call it by the grandly Latinate moniker "fumage"
(from "fumus", smoke).
4. Recently noted
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NO MO' PHONE Our times are hardly short of issues that can induce
fear, anxiety and dread, so do we need any more, let alone words to
describe them? These worried musings were induced by a survey (that
word might better be in quotes, since it was an online one, whose
respondents were self-selected) for the Post Office in the UK. It
found that 55% of the 2,000 people who contributed said that they
never switch off their mobile phone as they want to keep in touch
with friends or family; 9% said that having their phone switched
off makes them anxious. The Post Office has coined a term for this
fear: "nomophobia", which only makes sense in a country that calls
the devices mobile phones, as it's short for "no mobile phobia".
It's a dreadful term, doubtless fated to vanish together with the
papers it was printed in this week, but then there's no classical
Greek term for being without a telephone that could have been used
instead (Julane Marx suggests the rather neat "atelephobia", which
does have Greek roots, though presumably it would refer to a fear
of losing access to any kind of telephone). The term "cellphobia"
is known online, but hasn't yet reached the print media; we also
have "crackberry" for BlackBerry addicts. Stewart Fox-Mills of the
Post Office was quoted in the Glasgow Daily Record as saying that
"Being out of mobile contact may be the 21st century's latest
contribution to our already hectic lives. Whether you run out of
credit, lose your phone or are in an area with no reception, being
phoneless can bring on panicky symptoms." The Post Office press
release claimed hyperbolically that nomophobia "now ranks alongside
traditionally stressful situations such as getting married,
starting a new job and going to the dentist."
SPIRIT HELPERS It's not unusual to encounter words in widespread
use within a group but which are almost entirely unknown outside it
and which aren't recorded in dictionaries. One such turned up this
week, "egregore", which derives from Greek "egregoroi", watchers
(the personal name Gregory, "watchful", is from the related Greek
verb "gregorein", to watch; "grigori" has been used as another name
for "egregores"). It has two distinct meanings in occult practice.
One refers to a spirit created by a witch or wizard to carry out a
specific task, often a mundane one, as Susan Moonwriter Pesznecker
describes in her book Gargoyle, 2007. "There are all sorts of jobs
that can be given to an egregore, with 'guard dog' type duties and
going out to fetch information being the most common". The other
sense is that of a group mind or group soul brought into being by a
group of people united by emotional or spiritual ties of any sort,
though the term is most common in Wicca to refer to the collective
spirit of a coven. This sense is more common in European languages;
it is linked to the concept of the group mind in psychology and to
the ideas of Rosicrucianism and Theosophy. The earliest example in
English I can find - which is in the first sense - is in a book by
Benjamin Charles Jones, dated 1884: "I must be fair, and point out
that there are those who fancy he is a fallen angel, an Egregore, a
guardian angel of somebody else's property."
YOU'RE A WHAT? Charlie Brooker wrote with undiluted venom in the
Guardian on Monday about the new series of The Apprentice in which
aspiring entrepreneurs are presented with challenges. He execrated
in particular what a writer in another newspaper called "moronic
businessisms". He quoted one contestant as boasting that, "I'm a
red-shelf player; I give 120%; I'll kick, scream and gouge my way
to the top of the boardroom and no force in the universe can stop
me." I can find no reference to "red-shelf players" anywhere. Did
Charlie Brooker mishear? Did the contestant invent it? Or is there
some cultural reference that I'm missing? If you know, do tell.
5. Q&A: Shoot oneself in the foot
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Q. Eric Partridge says that "to shoot oneself in the foot" dates
from the 1980s and means that a person has made a self-defeating,
counter-productive blunder. I remember the expression much earlier.
In the post-World War Two days it meant to take a self-inflicted,
relatively minor wound in order to avoid the possibility of death
or greater peril, essentially an act of cowardice. When and how did
this change to the modern meaning? [J Michael Mollohan]
A. In the sense of a minor self-inflicted injury for the reasons
you give, it is certainly older. My erratic memory suggests it was
a well-known tactic in the First World War, rather too well known
to officers and medics even then to be easily carried off. I found
a reference in a 1933 book, Death in the Woods and Other Stories by
Sherwood Anderson. An American is recounting his experiences as an
aviator in the British Army in that war, in which he suffered a bad
crash and was taken to hospital: "The fellow who had the bed next
to mine had shot himself in the foot to avoid going into a battle.
A lot of them did that, but why they picked on their own feet that
way is beyond me. It's a nasty place, full of small bones." The
technique has indeed continued into more recent times: hearings
held in November 1969 into the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam
War were told that one soldier had "shot himself in the foot in
order to be medivac-ed out of the area so that he would not have to
participate in the slaughter." It still happens on occasion.
As a literal expression describing an accidental injury, it turns
up in the nineteenth century and is perhaps even older. I would
guess that such accidents have been occurring ever since firearms
became portable enough for men to be careless with them. The first
example that I can find is a sad report in the Appleton Crescent of
August 1857: "Mr. Darriel S. Leo, Consul to Basle, accidentally
shot himself through the foot, four or five days ago, in a pistol
gallery at Washington, and died on Sunday of lockjaw." A search of
US newspapers found 187 items between 1960 and 1965 reporting that
a man had accidentally shot himself in the foot; it's no doubt a
common injury down to the present day (it's difficult to search
for, since so many examples are now figurative).
I'm sure that the expression "shoot oneself in the foot" grew out
of such accidents, usually the result of incompetence, and has led
directly to our current meaning of making an embarrassing error of
judgement or inadvertently making one's own situation worse. That
men did it deliberately as a way to avoid combat is only a side
meaning.
The Oxford English Dictionary's first figurative example, from the
US, is dated 1959. It's in an extended metaphor in William White
Howells' Mankind in the Making: "Many a specialist has shot himself
in the foot when he thought he was only cleaning a paragraph." The
OED's next example is from Aviation Week in 1976: "Why we seem to
insist on shooting ourself in the foot over this issue, I'll never
know."
So the conversion to the modern figurative sense was in the air in
the US from the end of the 1950s (and may indeed, as I suspect, be
older). But it became common from the early 1980s and by 1986 had
given rise to the shortened allusive description "foot-shooting".
6. Sic!
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"Don't most people know this already?" was Tom Gould's comment on a
front-page teaser headline advertising an article inside (what's
the newspaper term for these?) that appeared in The Tennessean on
26 March: "Don't expect smart car dealer soon."
What a difference a misplaced hyphen makes. Annie Clarke reports
that the London freesheet Metro included a headline on 27 March:
ANTI-YOUTH CRIME EVENT.
"The instructions on a carpet cleaner," e-mailed Pete Swindells,
"caused me momentary confusion: 'Empty when full'."
Department of athletic horticulture. Henry Drury was reading the
Home & Living section of the Sunday Telegraph for 30th March and
found this property advert: "Paradise Cottage, West Berkshire, a
glorious Grade II listed four bedroom hotchpotch of a cottage.
Gardens and a stream run through the property."
Bankers struggle against their reputation for unfeeling arrogance
but error messages like the one that Roger Jones encountered on the
Barclays Bank Web site don't help: "We suggest you try to log in
later and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."
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