World Wide Words -- 14 Jun 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 13 08:41:11 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 591 Saturday 14 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. Topical Words: Contextomy.
3. Weird Words: Gorbellied.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Chin wag.
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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PATIBULARY James Caplan and Jean-Pierre Aoustin pointed out that
"patibulaire", the French equivalent of last week's Weird Word, is
common, referring to a person of sinister appearance, perhaps one
who looks as though he deserves hanging.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE Randall Bart commented on the source of this
phrase in the snakes and ladders board (chutes and ladders in the
US), "The cliché refers to an impossibility on most boards. Looking
through the images at BoardGameGeek, about 10% of the boards have a
snake that takes you to square one. In the current Hasbro edition,
square one is a ladder, and the lowest you can fall on a chute is
square six. This may be the exact same board (except for art) that
Milton Bradley introduced 50+ years ago. Of the ones with chutes or
slides (whether Milton Bradley/Hasbro or a knock off), I don't see
a single one where you can go back to square one. I wonder if the
original author of the cliché had seen a board with a snake leading
to square one, or just assumed there must be." Since the expression
is originally British, it may be that the British board at one time
did have a snake down to square one. Perhaps a historian of British
board games might comment?
John Simpson is sure, despite my dismissal of it, that the BBC's
one-time football diagram is the source. He commented "I was, for a
time during World War II, on the staff of the Admiral responsible
for the administrative backup of the Fleet Air Arm, including the
operational training of young pilots who had completed their basic
flying training on the other side of the Atlantic. Occasionally,
one had to be sent back for further basic training: this was known
among the trainees as being 'sent to square six'. No one had any
doubt what the reference was or that it came from the football
diagram."
Alain Gottcheiner contributes a French connection from Brussels:
"Perhaps I can offer a bit of help. The French locution 'retour à
la case départ' is older than the English locution, which could
well be its translation. This French expression comes from the Jeu
de l'Oie [the game of the goose], a variant of Snakes and Ladders,
dating back to the 16th century, popular enough to have its own
museum in Rambouillet, near Paris. In that game, some effects (like
being caught by another player's piece) will send you back to the
square marked 'départ' in French, but usually '1' in English
variants."
PREVENTIVE VERSUS PREVENTATIVE "Growing up in the Midwest US," Dan
Perlman commented, "we actually used preventive and preventative
differently - 'preventive' was an adjective, as in a 'preventive
action'; preventative was a noun, specifically an herbal, medicinal
or vitamin 'cure' - misnomered since it was taken in advance of a
cold or flu in order to ward it off. We often took preventive steps
in early winter by downing a preventative before going out to play
in the snow." Kerry Walsh said, "I was taught that a 'preventative'
was a condom and that mainframe computers had to have 'preventive'
maintenance. We always laughed at the newbie operators who said the
computer was down for preventative maintenance."
John Britton noted that the controversy over such pairs reminded
him of his long-standing dislike of "orientate" versus "orient",
meaning to locate yourself on a map. The longer form has been the
subject of much complaint, though only in the last half century,
whereas the word has been around since 1849. The Merriam-Webster
Dictionary of English Usage dismisses such complaints out of hand,
"The criticism comes down to this: 'orientate' is three letters and
one syllable longer than 'orient'. That would seem like rather a
trivial concern, but the word seems to draw criticism for no better
reason than that."
WACKY SPELLING In the Recently Noted piece about the slang term
"whack-evac" last week, I changed the spelling of the first word to
fit British orthography, though over here the word means "funny or
amusing in a slightly odd or peculiar way", not crazy. Several US
subscribers pointed out that it is usually spelled without the "h"
in that country, whose natives invented it. I stand corrected.
IN SEASON Bob Johnson wrote, "I note your use of 'unseasonably'
last week. Of course, there is no such word, even though it's used
nearly exclusively when 'unseasonally' is meant. I'm wondering if
you have a comment." I do. "Unseasonably" dates to the sixteenth
century, while "unseasonally" is known only from 1941. Precedent
alone makes my version correct. Style books I've consulted agree
that "unseasonably" is correct the way I used it, based on their
view that "seasonable" means "appropriate for the time of year"
("hot weather is seasonable for summer"), while "seasonal" means a
thing occurring at or associated with a particular season ("the
seasonal migration of geese"). But we are in good company, since
that elegant writer Alistair Cooke criticised William Safire in
2002 for using "unseasonably" in one of the latter's On Language
columns in the New York Times. Cooke was roundly rebutted in a
later column.
2. Topical Word: Contextomy
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We haven't heard much in the mainstream press in the UK about the
European Union's Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, though it
was passed in 2005 and became British law on 26 May. It prohibits
traders from treating consumers unfairly, which may seriously cramp
the style of several firms I have the misfortune to deal with. It
also strengthens the laws against misleading advertising, which is
likely to outlaw contextomy.
One group that's in the front row facing the firing line - the one
that has attracted most press comment - includes publishers and
theatre managers. Their ability to creatively extract key words and
phrases from reviews and use them as blurbs on book covers and
placards is notorious. Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times in
1998 that all critics "learn the hard way that a flattering phrase
tossed off casually can become an advertisement nightmare somewhere
down the line."
The drama critic may be apocryphal who wrote that he "liked all of
the play, except the lines, the acting and the scenery", only to
find that he was quoted as saying he "liked all of the play", but
such tricks are meat and drink to the unscrupulous. Sinatra At The
London Palladium in 2006, which presented recordings of the late
singer on video screens, was promoted with the description "Energy,
razzmatazz and technical wizardry", although the Observer's critic
had actually written "For all the energy, razzmatazz and technical
wizardry, the audience had been short-changed." In another recent
notorious case, Linda Winer, theatre critic of Newsday, reviewed
Walmartopia, a satire on Wal-Mart, in September 2007, saying it was
terrible: "Though the heart is in the right place, the style is as
simple-minded as the huge smiley buttons that define the level of
the collegiate soft-target spoofing". Among other comments, she
also said the director "uses every cliché known to recent parody to
neutralize the preachiness - and betray the point - of this little-
guy-fights-back inspirational story". In an advert in the New York
Times her comments turned into "This deft, fun, little-guy-fights-
back inspirational story has its heart in the right place."
Such extracts from reviews are called "pull quotes" in the jargon;
massaging them into more favourable versions is "quote doctoring".
Another word, with apologies to Stephen Potter, is "quotemanship"
(or "quotesmanship"). "Contextomy" is yet another term, one used
principally by academics in reference to literary misquoting. The
ending "-tomy" means cutting up and has here been neatly reversed
into "context". It was created by the historian Milton Mayer in
1966 in reference to a much more significant issue, the misquoting
of the Torah for propaganda purposes by Julius Streicher, editor of
the Nazi paper Der Stürmer in Weimar-era Germany.
Blurbs are hardly such a weighty matter. And there's doubt whether
the new EU directive will do much to temper the eternal enthusiasm
of puffers for mangling quotes to commercial benefit. We must wait
and see.
3. Weird Words: Gorbellied /gQr'belid/
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Having a protuberant belly; corpulent.
It seems probable that it derives from Old English "gor" or "gore",
meaning at first dung or dirt; in the sixteenth century it shifted
sense to our modern one of blood that has been shed as a result of
violence.
"Gorbelly" came along early in the sixteenth century, in a poem by
John Skelton. The adjective followed soon after - Shakespeare used
it in his Henry IV, Part One: "Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye
undone?" It dropped out of use in the nineteenth century, with one
of the last users in a direct line from the ancients being Douglas
Jerrold, who wrote "The gorbellied varlets, with mouths greasy with
the goods of cheated worth."
These days it appears only rarely, being a word resurrected to give
a sense of another age in historical fiction or fantasy, as - for
example - Harry Turtledove's alternate history, Ruled Britannia, in
which the English failed to defeat the Armada in 1588 and in which
the delightful scene-setting opening line is "Two Spanish soldiers
swaggered up Tower Street toward William Shakespeare." Turtledove
writes later, "'Consumption catch thee, thou gorbellied knave!' a
boatman yelled."
To save anyone pointing it out, it's also in James Joyce's Ulysses.
4. Recently noted
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BUILDERING The Los Angeles Times introduced me to this word in a
story last Saturday about the much-publicised climb of the New York
Times building by two mountaineers. The art of climbing man-made
structures can be called urban climbing, but "buildering" is more
common, a term formed as a blend of "bouldering", for climbing on
large boulders, with "building". It goes back at least as far as
the book Bouldering, Buildering and Climbing in the San Francisco
Bay Region, by Marc Jensen, published in 1984. However, people have
been climbing buildings for fun for well over a century, the first
among them being the night-climbers of the Cambridge colleges in
the UK. A rare term for the sport is stegophily, which may be
translated from the ancient Greek as "love of roofs".
5. Q&A: Chin wag
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Q. A friend of partially Irish ancestry, who is a most delightful
conversationalist, enjoys a visit, which he refers to as having a
"chin wag". I had never heard this apt term before. What can you
tell me about it? [Lila Nelson, Minneapolis]
A. On this side of the big pond, it's regarded as so common as to
be unremarkable, though it feels a bit old-fashioned. Stabbing my
electronic pin at a collection of newspaper articles I speared this
one from the Racing Post of 16 March 2008: "He seems to understand
that yes, we all enjoy watching football and having a good chin-wag
about it, but, at the same time, we've all seen thousands of
matches before so let's not get too carried away."
To have a chin wag in current usage is to have a gossip or a wide-
ranging conversation on some mutually interesting subject. It goes
back a long way. As an example of the byways searches can take one
down, the earliest example I've found is from the North Lincoln
Sphinx, a regimental journal prepared by and for the officers and
men of the second battalion of the North Lincolnshire Regiment of
Foot. The issue for 28 February 1861, prepared while the battalion
was based in Grahamstown, South Africa, included some jokey revised
"rules" of whist, whose first item was "Chinwag is considered
rather as an addition to the game, than otherwise, and is allowed."
A footnote said that it was an "American slang term for excessive
talking."
I wonder if the footnoter is correct. All the early examples are
British, including this one from Punch in 1879: "I'd just like to
have a bit of chin-wag with you on the quiet." The English slang
recorder, John Camden Hotten, included it in the second edition of
his Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words in 1873, but
intriguingly defined it as "officious impertinence". It was more
often used in the sense of those whist rules to mean idle chatter
or inconsequential talk or to suggest unkindly that some person
couldn't stop talking. Wagging one's chin, indeed.
6. Sic!
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Some people remain with us for centuries, or so World Magazine of
17 May seems to be implying: "Theological and fiscal conservative
J. Howard Pew supported Billy Graham and funded a biography of John
Calvin when he was alive." Thanks to Ralph Cabrera for that.
"This is perhaps more on the lines of extraneous additions," Jim
Tang comments from Hawaii, "but if you're including 'statements of
the bleeding obvious', as you did last week, this headline from the
Associated Press, dated 7 June, which I read on the San Francisco
Chronicle's Web site would fit the type: 'Man jumps from plane with
no parachute, dies'."
The curse of the over-abbreviated headline struck Eric Tilbrook the
same day. The Calgary Sun of Alberta confused him momentarily on 7
June with "Fresh biker questions dog government". On reading the
story below, he found that it didn't concern a cheeky motorcyclist
and a canine administration, but alleged links between an MP and a
biker gang.
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