World Wide Words -- 12 Jul 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jul 11 12:32:53 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 594 Saturday 12 July 2008
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Weird Words: Doryphore.
2. Recently noted.
3. Q&A: Noggin.
4. Q&A: Slanging match.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Weird Words: Doryphore /'dQrIfO:(r)/
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A pedantic critic of minor errors; a nit-picker.
We owe this word to Sir Harold Nicolson, who introduced it to the
world in the Spectator magazine in August 1952. In an issue of the
same magazine later the same year, he described a doryphore as a
"questing prig, who derives intense satisfaction from pointing out
the errors of others." A writer in the New Yorker in 1989 told of
being taken to lunch one day by its editors: "They were rigidly
abstemious, lest they fuddle their minds and give hostages to
subsequent doryphores on returning to work." (Your present editor
follows a similar regime, with less success.) Herb Caen commented
in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1996: "For a doryphore, what is
more delightful than a mistake in a correction?"
Sir Harold took it from French, in which it's the usual name for
the Colorado beetle, hence a pest. "Doryphora" was at one time the
genus containing the potato beetle, though its formal name these
days is Leptinotarsa decimlineata ("decimlineata", ten-lined, in
reference to its striped back). The old genus name was taken from
Greek "doruphoros", a spear-carrier, which is echoed by a one-time
folk name for the insect in the US, the ten-striped spearman. The
French presumably acquired their term for it from its old genus
name.
As an aside, "doryphore" was French slang for the occupying German
soldiers in World War Two and later became a derogatory term for
tourists, much as the locals in Cornwall call them emmets (ants).
2. Recently noted
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PONGLISH We have many examples of words for composite languages in
which native vocabulary has been influenced by English: Franglish,
Japlish, Spanglish, Hinglish, Chinglish, Russlish. Ponglish is the
newest, an unfortunate coinage.. It results from the influx of many
Polish workers to the UK since Poland joined the European Union.
Until now their main contribution to English culture has been to
generate dinner-party wonder at plumbers and electricians who turn
up on time, do a good job and charge reasonable prices. The Daily
Telegraph wrote last week that Ponglish was particularly trendy
among young Poles, who have created terms like "drinkowac" (dreen-
ko-vatsh), which means to have a drink, or perhaps two. Workers
going home to Poland have taken Ponglish with them, so stay-at-home
Poles have learned "szopink" (shopping) or "tiszert" (T-shirt).
Polish orthography, although consistent, seriously distorts the
look of English words, particularly when Polish endings are added;
"drajwnic" means nothing to an English speaker until it is said
("driveneech" - it just means driving). "Highstreet" has quickly
been adopted by Poles in London, a contributor to the piece noted,
because Poles don't have the equivalent of the way that London is
made up of lots of little towns, each with a main street.
TESTING, TESTING Anthony Stevens introduced me to a jargon term of
food retailers he had heard from his son, who works for the British
supermarket chain Tesco. It's a partial acronym, "wibit", used as a
test to decide whether to send items to waste or put them back on
the shelves as reduced-price goods. It stands for "Would I Buy It?"
A second form is used by a member of management to ask of a shop-
floor worker: "wybit?", meaning "Would You Buy It?". Both are rare
in print, but have clearly been in use for many years. They are, as
Mr Stevens points out, rare examples of interrogative acronyms.
3. Q&A: Noggin
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Q. What's the origin of "noggin" for a person's head? Is it
regional slang? I do not see it in my compact OED (which is the
edition of 1933, I believe). My Webster's Dictionary gives it only
as the third definition with no etymology. [Larry Nordell]
A. The Oxford English Dictionary's come on a bit since then. The
Second Edition of 1989 suggested, on the basis of early examples
then known, that it was US slang. A recent revision online has
taken the origin back a century and found that it started out as
British sporting slang, originally from boxing.
"Noggin" has been in the language since the late sixteenth century.
The first sense was that of a small cup or other sort of drinking
vessel. This may well have been regional to start with, but became
established as a standard term. It's much better known, though, as
the name for a small quantity of alcohol, usually a quarter of a
pint, in which the name of the container has been transferred to
its measure and its contents.
It seems to have been the idea of a container that gave rise to the
fresh sense of a person's head, which started to be used in the
eighteenth century. The first known example is from a farce called
The Stratford Jubilee, which mocked the festival of that name that
was organised by the actor David Garrick in Stratford-upon-Avon in
September 1769 to commemorate William Shakespeare (during which, by
the way, the British weather did not co-operate: it bucketed down
with rain): "Giving him a stouter on the noggin, I laid him as flat
as a flaunder." (Here, a stouter is a stout blow; "flaunder" would
now be spelled "flounder".)
"Noggin" is a good example of that rare and memorable phenomenon, a
long-lived slang term, since it has stayed in the language, always
as slang, for two and a half centuries.
4. Q&A: Slanging match
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Q. How did the expression "a slanging match" develop? It's meaning
is well-known, but how did "slang", meaning informal language, make
its way into this compound noun? [Evan Parry, New Zealand]
A. Its meaning is well-known in British and Commonwealth circles,
but puzzled comments when I used it a couple of years ago suggest
that Americans are less familiar with it. A slanging match is an
exchange of abuse or a vituperative argument.
The experts are sure the origin is indeed the noun "slang", which
dictionaries note is itself in origin slang, though nobody has the
slightest idea where it is from. It dates from the middle of the
eighteenth century. Before then the usual word was "cant", for the
secret language of thieves and beggars, from Latin "cantare", to
sing, via a disparaging reference to medieval church services and
the whining speech of some beggars.
The link with "slanging match" comes about through "slang" becoming
a verb meaning to abuse or insult people, which is known from the
early decades of the nineteenth century. Since much slang is itself
disparaging or insulting, it's not hard to see how this developed.
In 1864 Charlotte M Yong wrote in her novel Trial, "I never had
such a slanging in my life!"
"Slanging match" appears at the end of the century to mean a bout
of verbal fisticuffs. An early example is in a book by Thomas E
Taylor, Running the Blockade: A Personal narrative of Adventures,
Risks, and Escapes during the American Civil War: "A slanging match
went on between us, like that sometimes to be heard between two
penny steamboat captains on the Thames."
Intriguingly, in view of its current distribution, early examples
were as common in the US as they were in Britain. It would seem
that Americans fell out of love with it but we Brits didn't.
5. Sic!
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The curse of the misplaced apostrophe struck the Sunday Telegraph's
Web site last weekend. A story was headlined "Civil servant's £128
million in bonuses". "That's one lucky civil servant," commented
Eric Thompson, "Clearly I retired too soon."
Lots of people forwarded an Associated Press headline: "Panda moved
after China quake gives birth to twins." One earthquake is enough
for anybody; to have twin offspring is surely overkill.
The last National Symphony Orchestra concert led by Leonard Slatkin
prompted a headline in The Washington Post: "Slatkin Gets His Rich
Desert". Walter Sheppard said, "My wife and I were in the audience,
but we couldn't decide whether he got the Gobi, the Mojave, the
Sahara, or the Painted."
A. Subscription information
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Michael Quinion
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