World Wide Words -- 19 Apr 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 18 16:12:30 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 584 Saturday 19 April 2008
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Topical Words: Black Hole.
2. Weird Words: Stillicide.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Panic button.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Topical Words: Black Hole
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The death of the famous American physicist John Wheeler last Sunday
raised an intriguing language question. Most of his obituaries say
he invented the term "black hole" for the astronomical phenomenon;
in most cases this was the headline or lead-in to the text.
For example, the New Scientist wrote about him, "With his flair for
poetry, Wheeler coined the terms 'black hole' and 'wormhole', words
that captured the imaginations of physicists and the public alike."
The Daily Princetonian, at his old university of Princeton, said he
was "a legendary physicist who coined the phrase 'black hole' and
who left an indelible mark on the physics department in his four
decades as a University professor". The Guardian's piece explained
that, "in a talk at the Goddard Institute, New York, in 1967, [he]
spontaneously came up with the name 'black hole' to describe it."
The Oxford English Dictionary might seem to concur, as its first
citation is from a 1968 article by John Wheeler in American
Scientist.
But did he really invent it? Other obituaries said not.
The Scientific American noted: "Wheeler recalls discussing such
'completely collapsed gravitational objects' at a conference in
1967, when someone in the audience casually dropped the phrase
'black hole.' Wheeler immediately adopted the phrase for its
brevity and 'advertising value,' and it caught on." The Daily
Telegraph obituary differed only in one detail: "A student at the
conference called out 'black hole' as a suggestion, and Dr Wheeler
made the name stick." This, not incidentally, is over a subhead
that says that he coined the term.
John Wheeler himself never claimed that he invented "black hole".
Stephen Hall wrote in an article in the New York Times in October
1992 that "The term, Dr. Wheeler said in an interview, was actually
suggested by someone else - he can't remember who - during a 1967
meeting at the [Goddard] Institute for Space Studies in New York
and was intended as a substitute for 'gravitationally completely
collapsed star.' 'After you get around to saying that about 10
times,' Dr. Wheeler recalled, 'you look desperately for something
better.'"
So he didn't coin it - he popularised it. But the chances are high
he will go down in history as its creator. It raises an intriguing
question about the way in which a tale that's denied by its central
figure can still be widely believed.
There's some doubt even that the unnamed person at the meeting had
invented it on the spot. Fred Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book
of Quotations, this week found an earlier example in the issue of
the Science News Letter for 18 January 1964, in a report by Ann
Ewing on a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS): "According to Einstein's general theory of
relativity, as mass is added to a degenerate star a sudden collapse
will take place and the intense gravitational field of the star
will close in on itself. Such a star then forms a 'black hole' in
the universe."
Whoever it was Ann Ewing heard use the term at the 1964 meeting
might have been the one who suggested it to John Wheeler at the
1967 one. Or it may have been someone else who heard it or who had
read the report. Or it could be a case of separate and unconnected
inventions. The latter is certainly possible because of "black
hole" having been at one time the official name for the lock-up in
a barracks. The infamous appearance of the term in British history,
the only reason the term in that sense is still remembered, is the
incident in 1756 known as the Black Hole of Calcutta in which 146
Europeans were confined in a cell overnight, of whom only 23
survived until the morning.
Does it matter who invented "black hole" as a snappy alternative to
the phrase "gravitationally completely collapsed star"? If we're
happy to ascribe legends to our great men, probably not. If we
prefer truth to fiction, then it's worth putting the record
straight.
2. Weird Words: Stillicide /'stIlIsaId/
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A falling of water in drops.
The word is not one of that melancholy collection ending in "-cide"
that refers to an act of killing or something that kills (suicide,
pesticide), though it does come from the same Latin verb, "cadere".
However, here it means not to strike down or slay but simply to
fall. The first part is from Latin "stilla", a drop; the English
word is a reformulation of Latin "stillicidium", falling drops.
The Latin word could mean in particular the drip of rain from the
eaves of a house, which is exactly equivalent to an ancient meaning
of our "eavesdrop". This meaning led to the main historical sense
of the word, a legal term in Scots law. If a householder let rain
fall from his eaves on to the land of a neighbour, he needed the
neighbour's permission. John Erskine explained this in 1754 in his
Principles of the Law of Scotland: "No proprietor can build, so as
to throw the rain water falling from his own house immediately upon
his neighbour's ground, without a special servitude, which is
called of stillicide."
It's not a word much encountered these days. When it appears it is
in the sense of falling water, not the Scottish legal one. It turns
up a poem in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire: "Stilettos of a frozen
stillicide", one of a collection of unusual words in that section
that also includes "shagbark", "torquated", "preterist", "iridule",
"vermiculated", and "lemniscate". Its most famous use is perhaps
that by Thomas Hardy, again in a poem: "They've a way of whispering
to me - fellow-wight who yet abide - / In the muted, measured note
/ Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide."
3. Recently noted
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FREEMALE Yet another term invented by those who survey or their
publicists, this appeared first in Australia in the middle of March
2008. A demographic survey compiled by a database marketing company
reported that unmarried women now outnumber married women in that
country for the first time since World War I (just: 51.4%). As an
indication of its fizzy, pop slant, the report announced, "Bridget
Jones meets Sex and the City". The same report invented an unlovely
acronym, "SPUD" (Single Person Urban Dwelling) for all these women
living alone. Michelle Cazzulino, writing in the Daily Telegraph in
Australia, fought back by creating "AOBWRTASIALBJ" (Angry Old Bag
Who Refuses To Accept She Is Anything Like Bridget Jones). She
might instead have called herself a "quirkyalone", a term dating
from 2000 that has gained more currency than I suspect "freemale"
will ever achieve.
EXERGAME It's hardly a household word, but it does already have a
history - the first example I've found is from 2005, though the
related "exergaming" is known from 2004, "exertainment" goes back
to 1994 and the idea itself is even older. It's in the news this
month because a games company is about to release an exergame for
the Wii. Exergames (formed from "exercise" plus "game") are video
games that require players to make physical movements that interact
with the games and so undertake a controlled workout, which might
simulate yoga, aerobics, boxing, or even ski jumping.
4. Q&A: Panic button
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Q. Who first hit the panic button? [James Morris, Singapore]
A. We don't absolutely know for certain (I ought to have a digital
rubber stamp available with that on) but the evidence points to US
military pilots of the Korean War.
An early example is dated August 1950. A once famous but long-gone
builder of military aircraft, the Republic Aviation Corporation of
Long Island, issued a jokey guide to the slang of jet pilots in its
magazine The Pegasus as an "educational aid" to civilian pilots who
were retraining to fly jets. The only item of interest was "panic
button", defined as a "state of emergency when the pilot mentally
pushes buttons and switches in all directions". There are several
contemporary examples in other aviation magazines, one of which
referred disparagingly to some MiG pilots during the Korean War as
"panic-button boys" who bailed out at the first sign of action.
What's uncertain is the exact origin. To judge by a short article
by Lt Col James L Jackson of the US Air Force in American Speech in
October 1956, even the flyboys weren't sure at the time. He said
that "to hit the panic button" was used to mean "the person spoke
or acted in unnecessary haste or near panic." He identified four
possible button contenders, but concluded:
The actual source seems probably to have been the bell
system used in the Second World War bombers (B-17, B-24)
for emergency procedures such as bailout and ditching,
an emergency bell system that was central in the experience
of most Air Force pilots. In case of fighter or flak damage
so extensive that the bomber had to be abandoned, the pilot
rang a "prepare-to-abandon" ring and then a ring meaning
"jump." The bell system was used since the intercom was apt
to be out if there was extensive damage... The implications
of the phrase seem to have come from those few times when
pilots "hit the panic button" too soon and rang for emergency
procedures over minor damage, causing their crews to bail out
unnecessarily.
This is supported by a quote from The Lowell Sun of Massachusetts,
dated December 1950, that refers to US troops in Korea ("But they
have a phrase to describe this senseless gossip mongering. They
call it 'ringing the panic button.'"), by one from the Daily Review
of Hayward, California, on 3 January 1951 ("The expression stemmed
from the signal given by the pilot of a plane which is in serious
trouble. He pushes a button sounding a buzzer which means everybody
is to bail out."), and by a note in the New York Times Magazine on
13 May 1951: "Someone remembered the 'panic button' in an airplane
that is pressed when time comes to abandon ship."
In 1955, a glossary of Air Force slang appeared in American Speech,
compiled by Leo Engler from pilots at the Bergstrom Air Force Base
in Austin, Texas. Under "hit the panic button", he wrote:
There is a switch called the 'panic button' in the cockpit
of a jet aircraft which jettisons objects, including extra
fuel tanks, in order to lighten the plane. Conditions under
which this switch is used are usually quite desperate. In
case of a power failure, for example, when all the prescribed
remedial procedures fail, the pilot might in desperation
'push everything that's out and pull everything that's in,'
in the hope that he might accidentally do something helpful.
This fits the definition that appeared in another glossary of 1950,
in the 20 November issue of Pacific Stars and Stripes: "The Panic
Button automatically drops the wing tanks, rockets, and bombs when
a pilot has to jettison weight to keep flying."
I'm not convinced about Jackson's dating, despite his note that
"[d]iscussion with Air Force officers and airmen reveals that the
phrase to hit the panic button was in use during the Second World
War". There's no example of the phrase on record before 1950, but
on the other hand there are lots of them in the years that follow,
early ones all linked to the Korean War. The Daily Review article
also noted that "It's a new phrase which blossomed in the Korean
war. And now you hear it on all sides. It's always uttered as broad
humor. Whenever an outfit makes a routine move, the big joke is
that 'somebody pushed the panic button.'"
Whatever the precise origin, there's no doubt that the phrase was
popular among flyers in the Korean War and that it filtered back to
the US civilian population and from there to the whole English-
speaking world. It proved a useful term for any button or switch
that operated some device in an emergency or which raised an alarm.
5. Sic!
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Chris Robinson found a printed notice on the door to the toilets in
the Burger King opposite St Pancras International Station: "TOILETS
FOR PAYED CUSTOMERS ASK STAFF FOR ASSISTANCE". "Assuming I decoded
the misspelling and punctuation correctly," he comments, "I think I
used them wrongly as no one had paid me. I was also dubious about
what assistance I might get if I asked for it."
"Black bears talk at city library". Cat Pragoff was amazed to learn
of this forthcoming demonstration of ursine communicative powers in
a headline in the New Hampshire Union Leader of 11 April. It turned
out that it was just a talk about black bears by some human. How
disappointing.
Sticks and stones? Dennis Ginley found this sentence in the sports
section of the Oregonian for 15 April: ""The rift boiled over in
January 2005, when Cheeks called out Miles during a film session,
spurring Miles to unleash a profanity-laced tirade against the
coach that Cheeks said included several racial epitaphs."
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