World Wide Words -- 20 Dec 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 19 13:41:15 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 618 Saturday 20 December 2008
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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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For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Halcyon.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Bold as brass.
5. Elsewhere.
6. Q&A: Shoot one's cuffs.
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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CUPERTINO Fr Paul Gargaro commented on last week's piece about
this term for an error caused by a spelling checker: "It seemed
ironic that St Joseph of Cupertino is a patron saint of people
taking exams. Microsoft seems to have failed that one, even if, as
you mention, it seems to have passed the re-sit!"
Subscribers supplied examples of spellchecker horrors. "About
twenty years ago," Stan Fleischman recalls, "using a word processor
on an Apple Macintosh with a primitive spell checker, I typed the
phrase 'professional software developer'. To my dismay, the word
processor 'corrected' this to 'professional software deviant'."
Richard Street remembers: "It was only as a letter was going in its
envelope that something made me read it through again. I'm glad,
for I had unwittingly accepted a suggested spell checker change
from the unrecognised 'Dear Mr Cookson' to the alternative 'Dear Mr
Coonskin'."
"A standard intro to linguistics textbook," notes Miriam Miller,
"is commonly known by the surnames of its authors: Frumkin and
Rodman. Some years ago a student handed in a term paper which
referred to this text frequently. The student had the spellcheck
enabled and didn't bother to proofread the final product, so every
reference to the textbook appeared as 'Foreskin and Rodman'."
Dr Morgiana Halley is suffering along with other teachers who have
reported one spellcheck issue in particular: "The one that is
driving me right round the twist at the moment could probably be
fixed, but I have no idea to whom I should address a complaint. It
seems that if one writes 'definately', the spellchecker's first
response is 'defiantly' instead of 'definitely'. In this autumn
term alone, with about a hundred students in four classes, I must
have received over 500 papers with 'defiantly' in place of
'definitely', and I credit them all to automatic spellcheckers.
Several students have brought their papers back to challenge my
manual correction, because 'that's what the spellchecker said'."
Randall Bart's e-mail sent me not to a spellchecker but a medical
dictionary: "When I was using Forte Agent 1.x, which included an
early release of the Wintertree spellchecker, I found that
'ehrlichiosis' was corrected to 'hermaphrodism'."
BLACK FRIDAY Following up my note in the last issue about the
North American post-Thanksgiving meaning of this phrase, Darryl
Francis e-mailed, "Here in north Cumbria Black Friday (or Black-
Eyed Friday) is a term applied to the last Friday before Christmas,
when the locals go out and get slaughtered (drunk) during Friday
lunchtime, afternoon and evening, and end up fighting each other
(for no good reason!). The weekly newspapers invariably carry
reports along the lines of 'Wigton police arrest 32 on Black
Friday' and 'Carlisle cops arrest 55 on Black Eyed Friday'."
2. Weird Words: Halcyon /'halsI at n/
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Calm or peaceful; happy or carefree.
We're in the fabled halcyon days of calm weather, traditionally the
seven days each side of the winter solstice on 21 December.
The story goes back to a Greek legend that the kingfisher nested in
the sea at the time of the winter solstice and that its floating
nest brought calm to wind and water, what we now call the halcyon
days, "halcyon" being from the Greek name for the kingfisher,
alkuon. A romantic version of the legend was told by the Roman poet
Ovid about Ceyx and Alcyone. She was the daughter of Aeolus, the
god of the winds, and he was the son of the morning star. Ceyx was
lost at sea and Alcyone was inconsolable. The gods took pity on
them, turning them into kingfishers so that they might continue to
live together. When they mated each year at the winter solstice the
gods calmed the winds and seas so Alcyone might brood her eggs
safely.
Alcyone's name became "halcyon" in Latin, because of a mistaken
belief that its real source was two Greek words meaning "conceiving
on the sea" (folk etymology has a very long history). When the word
first came into English, in reference to the Greek legend, it was
usually written in the Greek way, but when it became a general word
meaning peaceful or calm, the Latin form took over.
For us today, "halcyon days" often evoke a past time, the carefree
days of our youth. An example is in The Innocents, by Sinclair
Lewis (1917): "Halcyon days of sitting in rocking-chairs under the
beech-trees on locust-zizzing afternoons, of hunting for shells on
the back-side shore of the Cape, of fishing for whiting from the
landing on the bay side, of musing among the many-colored grasses
of the uplands."
3. Recently noted
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ARBOGLYPH Mike Hoke introduced me to this word, which doesn't
appear in any dictionary I have here. It's easy to work out that it
refers to carvings on trees. Aspens are preferred, because the
carvings show up black on the white bark. J Mallea-Olaetxe wrote a
book in 2000, Speaking Through the Aspens, about the arboglyphs of
Nevada and California, carved by Basque shepherds who emigrated to
the high country around Lake Tahoe in the late 1800s. "Arboglyph"
is relatively modern - the earliest example that I can discover is
in Aboriginal Australia by Robert Ellis and Jean Ellis, dated 1984.
That book also introduced me to "dendroglyph", another word for the
practice, known at least as far back as 1918, when Robert Etheridge
published The Dendroglyphs, or Carved Trees of New South Wales.
4. Q&A: Bold as brass
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Q. I'd like to ask if you could fill in the gaps about the meaning
of the expression "as bold as brass". It's usually said to refer to
a certain very bold Mr Brass Crosby, at times described as the
Mayor of London, at times the Chief Magistrate of London. And it's
said that the phrase goes back to his times, in other words the
eighteenth century. Do you have any insights? [Nigel Ross, Italy]
A. Thank you for introducing me to Mr Brass Crosby and to the story
that connects his name with the expression. Mr Crosby was a lawyer
and politician, a supporter of John Wilkes, who became Lord Mayor
of London in 1770. He had a famous run-in with Parliament, which
regarded publication of reports of their debates as a breach of
parliamentary privilege. When two printers accused of publishing
reports appeared before the City magistrates, Crosby freed them;
later he arrested a messenger from the House of Commons who had
demanded a third printer be brought before the House. Crosby was
called to the bar of the House and, despite arguing forcefully for
the ancient rights of the City, was committed to jail. He became
highly popular through his defiance.
The first known use of "bold as brass" is in George Parker's book
Life's Painter of Variegated Characters in Public and Private Life
of 1789: "He died damn'd hard and as bold as brass. An expression
commonly used among the vulgar after returning from an execution."
This is so soon after Mr Crosby's troubles with Parliament that
it's plausible there's a connection with his curious first name.
The problem, as so often, is that there's no direct evidence, nor
is any ever likely to be found for a term that from Parker's
description began as slang, which by definition was transmitted
orally. For the same reason, it might have been widely known and
used for many years before Mr Crosby's time. We just don't know.
What is certain is that the idea behind it is much older. Brass has
often been thought cheap and vulgar, a debased or pretentious rival
to gold, whose use in musical instruments has suggested stridency.
In the sense of a person who is impudent or insensible to shame,
"brass" had by Crosby's time been in the language for two centuries
(Shakespeare is the first known user); "brassy", for someone having
a face of brass and so unblushing, impudently confident or forward
is slightly older (though its use for a woman who is tastelessly
showy or loud in appearance or manner is relatively recent, as is
"brass cheek"). "Brass face", an impudent person, is known from the
seventeenth century. So an inventive Londoner would have had no
shortage of precedents on which to base the alliterative "bold as
brass".
5. Elsewhere
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AMPERSAND A dispute in the travel business, Julane Marx, tells me,
has one firm suing another to prevent its using an "&" in its name,
because the suing firm has trademarked it. http://wwwords.org?TRDM.
MORE WORLD WIDE WORDS UPDATES I've updated or expanded more pieces
on the World Wide Words Web site this week. The first piece has
been substantially rewritten as the result of new information:
Lynch and lynch law (http://wwwords.org?LNCH)
Polychronic (http://wwwords.org?PYCC) and
Zorbing (http://wwwords.org?ZBNG).
6. Q&A: Shoot one's cuffs
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Q. Would you explain "shot his cuffs"? I think I know what this
means but can find no printed explanation. [Don Richardson]
A. It's a phrase that's relatively easy to find in dictionaries and
books on idioms. All will tell you the obvious, that to shoot your
cuffs is to pull or jerk your shirt cuffs out so that they project
beyond the cuffs of your coat. At this point, all the reference
books I've consulted abandon the reader, leaving him wondering why
anybody would do such a thing.
It has long been a precept among tailors - I am intrigued to learn
that several guides to good dressing today continue to repeat the
opinion - that a properly dressed man should allow about a quarter
to half an inch of shirt cuff to peep out of his jacket sleeves,
just enough to show his cufflinks. To shoot one's cuffs is to make
sure that this desirable state of dress is achieved. Since one way
to do it is to jerk the shoulders and arms so that the cuffs pop
into view, "shooting" them (in the verb's sense "cause something to
move suddenly and rapidly in a particular direction") is a good
name for it.
As a gesture, it can mean several things. One is described in Susan
Lenox by David Graham Phillips, published in 1917: "And he 'shot'
his cuffs with a gesture of careless elegance that his cuff links
might assist in the picture of the 'swell dresser' he felt he was
posing." But it is often a mark of displaced emotion, especially
nervousness: "As he talked, David continuously straightened his
clothes - he smoothed his tie, shot his cuffs, snugged his collar,
pulled up the creases in his trousers from his thighs. Then he'd
cross one ankle over his knee, pull up his sock, cross the other
ankle." (Michael Crichton, Prey, 2003.)
A man often dresses formally and makes an effort at some difficult
time, such as an interview for a job or meeting the father of the
woman he is proposing to marry for the first time. A desire to look
one's best is important and helps one's courage. You can tell how
significant it is for the whole man to look as polished as possible
under such circumstances by the number of times descriptions also
refer to smoothing his hair, adjusting his tie or collar, brushing
up his shoes, neatening his clothes, straightening his shoulders or
in other ways making sure he looks smart.
Other emotions are also recorded: "Captain von Heumann would twirl
his mustaches into twin spires, shoot his white cuffs over his
rings, and stare at me insolently through his rimless eyeglasses."
(E W Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman, 1899); "Gurin rose wearily to
his feet and shot his cuffs by way of showing impatience." (Abe and
Mawruss by Montague Glass, 1909); "He shot his cuffs fiercely. The
British Lion was roused." (P G Wodehouse, The Intrusion of Jimmy,
1910); "Everything about him, from his stiff upper lip to his
shoot-the-cuffs manner, implied take-charge authority and
competence." (Simon Hawke, The Wizard of Whitechapel, 1988).
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