World Wide Words -- 23 Aug 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 22 08:51:43 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 601 Saturday 23 August 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: Virtual water.
3. Weird Words: Dandiprat.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Lukewarm.
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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FESCENNINE Several readers, better informed about the geography of
Italy than I am, have pointed out that the Etruscan town Fescinnia
that's the source of this word can't be in Tuscany, where I put it.
Though nobody seems to know its location for certain, it's usually
taken to be near either Civita Castellana or Corchiano, which are
in the Lazio region.
SIC! Ton Stauttener e-mailed from the Netherlands: "You mentioned
the word 'incinerate' in an automatically translated Belgian ad.
Maybe your readers would like to know what caused this error. Dutch
has the word 'verassen', meaning 'to incinerate' (literally: turn
to ashes), and 'verrassen', meaning 'to surprise'. The unfortunate
author of the ad probably made a typo, using 'verassen' instead of
'verrassen'."
2. Turns of Phrase: Virtual water
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During the World Water Week conference held in Stockholm this week
(17-23 August), the environmental group WWF released a report that
demonstrates the extent to which the UK consumes the water of other
countries.
The concept of virtual water was created by Professor John Allan of
King's College, London, who was awarded the 2008 Stockholm Water
Prize for it. It measures the amount of water that's used in food
production and in industrial processes such as the manufacture of
textiles. The WWF report says 62% of the water consumed in Britain
is virtual water from other countries.
Another term for it is "embedded water". Other technical terms that
environmentalists use when discussing problems of water supply are
"water footprint", the amount of water, both virtual and visible,
used by a country, a business or an individual (a term closely
related to "carbon footprint", see http://wwwords.org?CRFP), and
"blue water", water withdrawn from ground and surface reserves, as
opposed to "green water", which is taken directly from rainfall.
* Khaleej Times, Dubai, 22 Mar. 2008: The concept of "virtual
water" holds immense relevance for the water-scarce countries. Much
water can be saved by cultivating only those food crops which need
less water and importing the food items and other agricultural
produce that need high amounts of water.
* Belfast Telegraph, 21 Apr. 2008: Academics behind the "virtual
water" calculations have also created a worldwide league table for
the water footprint of different countries. The US is the biggest
offender, with a water footprint of close to 2,500 cubic metres per
year per capita, while Italy is a close second. Britain's water
footprint is relatively modest at 1,245 cubic metres per year per
capita.
3. Weird Words: Dandiprat /'dandIprat/
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A dwarf or small boy; an insignificant or contemptible person.
When the Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth wrote a letter to a friend
in April 1795, she commented on her recent reading, "It is a scarce
and very ingenious book; some of the phraseology is so much out of
the present fashion, that it would make you smile: such as the
synonym for a little man, a Dandiprat."
She was somewhat premature: the word survives to be included in at
least a few modern one-volume dictionaries because it does turn up
from time to time in historical or fantasy fiction. In evidence of
this, I place before you a quotation from Forward the Mage by Eric
Flint and Richard Roach of 2002:
Who is so wise as to distinguish, with unerring precision,
between a little man, a dwarf, a gnome, a midget, a shrimp,
a runt, a pygmy, a Lilliputian, a chit, a fingerling, a
pigwidgeon, a mite, a dandiprat, a micromorph, an homunculus,
a dapperling, a small fry or someone with bad posture,
weighted down with the cares of the world?
though this perhaps proves no more than that Messrs Flint and Roach
possess a thesaurus with historical pretensions.
Nobody has the slightest idea where the word comes from. It first
appears in the language in the early sixteenth century in the sense
of a small coin current at the time, curiously worth 1½ pence, but
then quickly develops its other senses.
4. Recently noted
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VISUACY If you don't know this word, don't worry, that's because
it's new, one that Christopher Allen, writing in The Australian on
16 August, called a "horrible neologism". "Visuacy" is shorthand
for "visual literacy" and appeared in a report, the National Review
of Visual Education, published that day in Australia. It argues
that society is heavily saturated with images, which are words in a
visual language that should be taught to young people so that they
can navigate and interpret them. Visuacy, the report argues, should
be put alongside literacy and numeracy as a foundation skill in
compulsory schooling.
AUREOLATE I came across this word in the obituary of the Queen's
former milliner, Simone Mirman, in the Guardian on 14 August: "The
Queen Mother harked back to the aureolate hats of her youth, wide-
brimmed and cargoed with frail flowers and feathers." The writer
presumably meant a hat with a light-coloured brim, as aureolate is
surely related to "aureole", a circle of light or brightness that
surrounds something. To my surprise, the Oxford English Dictionary
doesn't include it and it is only extremely rarely to be found
outside entomology, in which it is used for a diffused coloured
ring. Might "aureolate" be a term of art in hat-making? Like other
similar words, it's from Latin "aureola (corona)", a golden crown,
in particular in paintings the gold circle around the head of a
person represented as holy.
5. Q&A: Lukewarm
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Q. This question was posed on the US television programme, The
Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, "Who is Luke and why does he
have his own temperature?" [Jan Pearce]
A. I presume no good answer was given, which is why you're turning
to me? That's the trouble with these smart lines, they're fun for a
moment but leave you unsatisfied and wanting more. As it happens,
it's an interesting question and I've spent a few intrigued minutes
delving into the history of "lukewarm".
The word has been spelled in all sorts of different ways down the
centuries, including "lew-warm", "loo-warm" (a necessity in our
house), "lewke-warm" and "luckwarm". The first part was mainly in
dialect use and transmitted orally, so the spelling only settled
down to our modern version in the eighteenth century.
"Luke" has, of course, nothing to do with the given name. It comes
from an Old English adjective "hléow" that may be linked to "hleo",
shelter or lee, and to another Old English word meaning debilitated
that developed into "lew", weak or wan. To be lukewarm is to be
only weakly warm, tepid.
An odd sidelight is that from the thirteenth century, "luke" by
itself could mean "lukewarm", as could "lew" (the English Dialect
Dictionary reported a century ago that it was then very widely used
in various spellings throughout England, Scotland and Ireland). So
you could argue that "lukewarm" means "warm warm".
6. Sic!
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Kelly went to a gynaecologist in Riverside County, California, for
a routine examination, only to encounter this notice: "All pregnant
women who expect to have a male baby can arrange for circumcision
before delivery!!!" Intrauterine operations are a great medical
advance, to be sure.
Over-heated Olympics language: "Forgive me if the quotation is not
exact - I was driving at the time," e-mailed Chris Church. "But did
I really hear a sports reporter on BBC Radio 4's Today programme
say, 'In just one jump, he qualified for the triple jump'?" Terry
Dowling swears he heard a reporter on BBC News say of the winner of
the 100m sprint, "He has literally exploded onto the athletics
scene."
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