World Wide Words - 07 Jun 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 6 08:55:38 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 590 Saturday 7 June 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. Weird Words: Patibulary.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Back to square one.
5. Q&A: Preventative or preventive.
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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RETURN OF THE TRAVELLERS Drifting down the Danube was fun, though
the weather was unseasonably hot. But that's so usual we've grown
to expect it. Every time we go on holiday to another country, some
local guide always remarks, "it's not usually this hot here at this
time of year", this holiday being no exception. Unfortunately, we
have no power over the weather at home. I can also report that the
Danube isn't blue, but a dirty green-brown colour.
STUNNED MULLETS Many readers pointed out - following my review two
weeks ago of the dictionary Stunned Mullets and Two-Pot Screamers -
that it would have been worth a note to explain to readers who only
associate mullets with a deeply unfashionable hairstyle that the
example in the Australian phrase is a fish. David Mackenzie quoted
me the explanation from the Australian National Dictionary Centre:
"The phrase, first recorded in the 1950s, alludes to the goggle-
eyed stare (and sometimes gaping mouth) of a fish that has been
recently caught and made unconscious. A person typically looks like
a stunned mullet as the result of a sudden shock or surprise." But,
come to think of it, the other sort of stunned mullet would make an
even better image.
LOCAL LANGUAGE "I'm not sure if you are looking at dialects at
all," writes Marcia Woolf, "but I think Leicestershire pit villages
are, if you'll excuse the pun, a mine of interesting words and
usages. My grandmother upset me terribly when I was a small child
by saying she was 'starved' when she meant she was freezing cold,
and 'fridge' is used for itchy or scratchy clothing. The crumpet-
versus-muffin debate doesn't exist in Leicestershire, since they're
called pikelets. In Yorkshire a surprised person might 'go to the
foot of our stairs' but in Leicestershire you go to Bagworth, a
local village, whose name is pronounced 'Bagguth'. If a person in
Leicestershire has an itchy nose they're told it's a portent of
being 'kissed, cursed or shoved up somebody's entry' - an entry, I
make haste to explain, being the passageway between two terraced
houses, so presumably meaning to be pushed aside."
2. Weird Words: Patibulary /p@'tIbjQl at ri/
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Of or relating to a gallows or hanging.
This turned up in a book of curious and interesting words, whose
author took its meaning from Winter's Tale, a futuristic work of
magical realism of 1983 by Mark Helprin. Mr Helprin defined it as
meaning "delicate in motion, graceful and muffled as in the quiet
sound made by ballet slippers. Only to be used in winter and at
night." The words-book author clearly didn't check in the Oxford
English Dictionary, where he would have found far less pleasant
associations.
The word is from Latin "patibulum", originally a fork-shaped yoke
that was put on the necks of criminals or a fork-shaped gibbet in
the shape of a vertical letter Y. It could also mean the horizontal
bar of the crucifixion cross, or a forked prop to support vines.
Despite the solemn and religious associations its etymology brings
to mind, the Oxford English Dictionary says "patibulary" has mainly
been used humorously in English. That's based on citations such as
this, from the Sporting Magazine in 1801: "A certain Corn-Buyer,
which had undergone the discipline of a patibulary suspension on a
gallows." But others were deathly serious: in The French Revolution
(1837) Thomas Carlyle wrote of the gibbet as "the grim Patibulary
Fork 'forty feet high'".
The word is now extremely rare. There's one appearance in a work by
Samuel Beckett ("the patibulary melancholy of the lemon of lemons")
and an occasional historical reference, such as this in a book by
Edward Payson Evans about the one-time habit of executing animals:
"Hangmen often indulged in capricious and supererogatory cruelty in
the exercise of their patibulary functions."
3. Recently noted
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HIC! James Fraser asked about "pinocity": "I first heard it from a
New Zealand winemaker on a Wine Spectator video I received as part
of my e-mail service from that magazine. In your opinion, is this a
new word?" It's certainly new to me, but then I'm no wine expert.
It presumably means having the nature or characteristics of a wine
made from pinot noir grapes. There is some small amount of evidence
for it as winery jargon. The earliest that I can find is in John
Winthrop Haeger's book of 2004, North American Pinot Noir.
STAYCATION Ken Thomson heard this word on TV in San Francisco and
thought it had a nice ring to it. It's a stay-at-home vacation. It
seems to have first appeared in 2005 but has become significantly
more visible in the past three months because of financial concerns
as the economy weakens and the price of fuel keeps going up. Other
reasons were given in the Washington Times on 23 March: "Increasing
concerns over the environment as well as the desire for more family
time add to the staycation's popularity."
WHACKY Chris Smith reports from Shetland that a friend of his -
married to an American diplomat but with a multifarious career of
his own - has just got a book out with the title Last Swill and
Testament: The Hilarious, Unexpurgated Memoirs of Paul 'Sailor'
Vernon, which (possibly unwisely) gives an excellent preview of its
contents. Mr Vernon notes that US diplomats who are sent home on
psychiatric leave are sometimes cruelly and sarcastically called
"whack-evacs", a play on "med-evac". I've since found the term is
also used in the US Peace Corps.
4. Q&A: Back to square one
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Q. Do you have any idea about the origin of the phrase "back to
square one"? [Allan Todd]
A. By saying that we are "back to square one" or "back in square
one" we mean that some problem or error has lost us all the ground
we have gained in some enterprise, so that we are now back at the
beginning and must start again. It appeared, for example, in a
Reuters report dated 13 May 2008 in a quote from the Airbus chief
executive: "We have to make some progress but we are not back to
square one."
As you noted in your e-mail to me, there's a persistent story that
it's linked to the early days of broadcasting in Britain. The first
radio commentary on a football match was broadcast by the BBC on
22nd January 1927. To help listeners visualise the pitch [playing
field] and where the players and ball were, the producer, Lance
Sieveking, worked out a scheme of dividing the pitch into eight
numbered squares and had a diagram published in the BBC's listings
guide, Radio Times. The commentator could then say the ball was
currently in square five, or square three, or whatever. Square one
was to one side of one of the goals.
Ingenious though this suggestion is, it hardly seems plausible, not
least because it's hard to equate being at square one on the pitch
with having made no progress (though the teams change ends at half
time, commentators didn't invert the diagram). The numbering scheme
was abandoned in the middle 1930s, and the twenty-year gap between
then and the first appearance of the expression in print is further
indication that it isn't the source.
The real origin is suggested by the first example we currently know
about, which Fred Shapiro of Yale Law School recently found in the
Economic Journal in 1952: "He has the problem of maintaining the
interest of the reader who is always being sent back to square one
in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders."
5. Q&A: Preventative or preventive
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Q. I was astonished recently to find you using "preventative". My
dear late mother decried the word, claiming, as people are wont to
do, that it didn't exist, but was a corruption of "preventive".
Being a dutiful son I accepted her position unquestioningly, and
have abjured its use, thus enjoying a smug superiority hearing it
used in American TV commercials and popular programs. Perhaps you
will set me right? [Chuck Galle, New Hampshire; a similar question
came from Robert A Arey in New Jersey]
A. Your mother was in good company, since "preventative" has been
widely disliked down the years. The first known written objection
was penned in 1869 by Richard Bache in a book entitled Vulgarisms
and Others Errors of Speech (that's put me in my place). Extreme
dislike continues in some style guides: Bryan Garner says in his
Modern American Usage, "The strictly correct form is 'preventive'
(as both noun and adjective) though the corrupt form with the extra
internal syllable is unfortunately common."
It may not be immediately clear why Mr Garner considers my longer
form to be corrupt. "Preventative" includes the ending "-ative",
which nobody objects to in "talkative" or "exploitative", and it
has been in the language since the seventeenth century, about as
long as his preferred "preventive", though it is today much less
common. His reason is that adjectives that end in "-ive" that are
based on Latin roots are traditionally formed from the Latin past
participle stem, in this case "praevent-", from "praevenire", to
come before, so making "preventive".
Another similarly controversial pair is "interpretative" and
"interpretive". This one makes me twitch a little, since I was for
many years a heritage interpreter and often needed the adjective in
articles and reports. I preferred "interpretive", as did most of my
colleagues. A reader bitterly complained to me once that it was
ill-formed and that "interpretative" was the correct form. Henry
Fowler, in the first edition of Modern English Usage in 1926,
agreed with him, the Latin past participle stem in this case being
"interpretat-", so making "interpretative".
The third edition of Fowler, edited by Robert Burchfield in 1996,
noted that "interpretative" is under pressure from "interpretive",
as "quantitative" is threatened by "quantitive" (the Latin past
participle here is "quantitat-", so "quantitative" is correct by
the usual rule). One reason for the shorter forms being preferred
may be the difficulty of correctly articulating those stuttering
syllables in the middle of the words.
So why do I like "interpretive" and "preventative"? It can't be
that I prefer short forms over longer, since there's one of each.
My chosen pair sound better to me than their alternatives; perhaps
I just like words of four syllables. Paint me idiosyncratic.
6. Sic!
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Vivian Pryles wondered mightily at a caption in The Age, Melbourne,
of 3 June. It was under a photograph of a zoo handler facing a very
happy animal. "Dokkoon the Asian elephant trumpets her approval at
being two months pregnant to Melbourne Zoo handler Dave McKelson".
Good work there, Dave. The Age, a bunch of spoilsports, changed the
caption for the Web version.
As statements of the bleeding obvious go, Linn Barringer notes, the
caption under a video report on the online news site CBS4Denver on
22 May was a beauty: "Police shoot woman with gun."
In an op-ed piece by Ethan Gilsdorf in the Boston Globe on 31 May:
"When someone nearby fires up a grill, I can smell the unmistakable
blend of lighter fluid and charcoal. Then meat. Hmmmm. Chicken?
Beef? Next the dog two doors down begins to whelp. Stuck on the
back porch again. She only wants to be heard. Who can blame her."
"Perhaps," John Emery suggests, "we could start a fund to support a
neutering program for Mr Gilsdorf's neighborhood."
Elizabeth Rothman found this sentence in Tudor Parfitt's The Lost
Ark of the Covenant: "His own luck was mixed. On the one hand, he
inadvertently made one of the greatest discoveries in recent times;
on the other, he died six years later without knowing it." Seems
like the best way to go ...
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