World Wide Words -- 28 Jun 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 27 10:19:41 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 593 Saturday 28 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. Turns of Phrase: Transition Town.
3. Weird Words: Singultient.
4. Recently noted.
5. Q&A: Soapbox.
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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SOAPBOX My mistake of the week was to put the famous location of
public oratory in London at Hyde Park Corner. Speakers' Corner is
indeed at one corner of Hyde Park, but at the north-eastern one by
Marble Arch, not the south-eastern one.
AHOY! It seemed otiose to flesh out my incredulity at the story of
Czech sailors transmitting this word to English by an exposition of
the geography of central Europe. But a surprisingly large number of
subscribers felt it necessary to point out that the Czech republic
is landlocked. I suppose I could have illustrated that by shifting
the locale of the traditional joke about the Swiss Navy.
That piece included a sentence that opened, "This story has been
finally scotched this week ..." Judith Lowe wrote from Australia
about an old edition of My Word that she heard on ABC radio only
two days earlier in which the phrase "finally scotched" was said to
be incorrect. She commented, "They were using the rules of Fowler
and they all reckoned he needed up-dating!"
I won't quarrel with that because the reference is to he first
edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, which is rather rude
about journalists who borrowed "scotch" as an uncommon substitute
for "destroy" or "kill". The third edition points out gently that
there are actually two verbs. One means to incise or cut that was
used in Macbeth, "I have scotched the snake, not killed it", which
implies making something harmless only for the time being. The
other, from rather later, refers to wedging a wheel, which suggests
rendering something inoperative or crippling its action.
If "scotch" is being used in the first sense, then you can no more
write about finally scotching something than you can say that it's
somewhat unique. If the word is in the second sense, then it's only
a small further figurative step to get the modern meaning of
"decisively putting an end to" something.
2. Turns of Phrase: Transition Town
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The recent huge hike in oil prices has made people in developed
countries think more deeply about ways to reduce their dependence
on fossil fuels. One scheme for doing so that has been getting more
attention in recent months is the transition-town initiative.
The principle is that people in developed nations are going to have
to learn to live with less energy and that it's better to plan for
that in advance rather than suffer the pains of sudden deprivation.
The idea is to create community-based schemes that will search out
ways to reduce energy consumption. Suggestions include limiting car
travel by cycling, walking and using public transport as well as
growing your own food and shopping locally to reduce the transport
costs that are incurred by supermarkets (an initiative known in the
US by the term "locavore", see http://wwwords.org?LOCA).
Its instigator is Rob Hopkins, who in 2005 helped create the first
two transition towns, in Kinsale in Ireland and Totnes in Devon.
* Observer, 15 Jun. 2008: Rob Hopkins, of the Transition Town
movement, says it currently has up to 700 communities registering
an interest in joining, most from the UK but some as far afield as
Australia.
* Western Morning News, Plymouth, 10 Jun. 2008: At the heart of it,
Transition Towns are about whole communities getting together to
support one another, shopping, working and relaxing locally. When
the fuels finally do run out there will be no choice, and this way
we can all be prepared.
3. Weird Words: Singultient /sIN'gUltI at nt/
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Crying or sobbing.
When next you see some thespianic practitioner accepting an Oscar
with protestations of love and admiration for everyone she has ever
worked with while flooding the lectern with tears of pleasure, you
may describe her as singultient, among other possible adjectives.
It would indeed be the mot juste, since its Latin origin lies in
"singultus", which can mean a speech broken by sobs. It could also
refer to somebody having a fit of the hiccups, a state that can
sound somewhat similar, and the Latin word sometimes appears in
medical works as an alternative name for the condition. Other rare
words from the same source are "singult", a sob, and "singultous",
having the hiccups.
One of the few appearances of "singultient" is in The Ode of Life
by Lewis Morris, of 1891: "Through the wastes of silence and sleep,
There is no more stillness nor Death, The great Universe wakes with
a deep-drawn singultient breath."
It's also in Vindiciae Academiarum, by Seth Ward and John Wilkins,
dated 1654, a satirical work mocking those who undertook a mystical
search for the original "natural language" of Adam, which would be
a universal language that would be understandable by everyone. That
would be utterly unlike the tongue-in-cheek prose of the reverends
Ward and Wilkins, which I won't even attempt to interpret:
The lynges of the faetiferous elecution, being disposed
only to introversion, was destitute at that time of all
Peristalticall effusion, which silenced the Otoacoustical
tone of the outflowing word, and suppressed its singultient
irructations.
4. Recently noted
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FUNT It sounds like a swear word and in a way it is. It's a short
version of "Financially UNTouchable", meaning people whose credit
histories are so poor that they're unable to get access to credit.
It's a rare example of a neologism that has achieved parliamentary
notice, since the British MP Stephen Ladyman raised the plight of
funts in an adjournment debate in the House of Commons on 18 June.
"Funts who do their best to repay what they owe and are responsible
in addressing their debts should be treated differently to people
who are feckless or reckless," he said afterwards. The word is the
coinage of Richard Rubin, who has created a Web site for funts.
SPYHOPPING This neat term, which turns out to be well known among
those who study marine mammals, appeared in the New Scientist two
weeks ago (I'm behind with my reading, again). Whales, sea lions
and seals spyhop - they stick the upper parts of their bodies out
of the water vertically in a way that looks like a human treading
water. Why they do this isn't clear. An experiment in Denmark has
suggested that, at least for harbour seals, they may be spyhopping
at night in order to navigate by the stars. While looking into the
word, I also came across "lobtailing", which refers to whales and
dolphins slapping their flukes on the surface of the water to make
a loud noise. "Lob" here probably comes from an old German word for
something heavy or clumsy ("lob" in some English dialects may be a
clown, country bumpkin or lout). It can also mean a thick mixture
and may be the source of the first element of "lobscouse", the
sailor's dish. The word "lobtailing" is first recorded in Herman
Melville's Moby-Dick.
WITHOUT SUBSTANCE? The philosopher A C Grayling invented the words
"anousia" and "anousic" in a Comment is Free piece on the Guardian
Web site on Wednesday: "The British government is handing over
large tracts of the school education system, along with tens of
millions of our tax money, to groups of Anousics." I won't trouble
you with the following 140-word highly polemical paragraph in which
he explains what he means by "anousia" (to read him for yourself,
go via http://wwwords.org?GRAY). His objection is to religious
groups who are running what have become known as academy schools in
the UK, privatised educational bodies set up through a government
initiative. "Anousia" is based on the philosophical and theological
idea of ousia, from the Greek term for substance or essence, which
Aristotle used to mean a specific individual thing or being. Prof
Grayling wrote, "I use the word 'Anousic' as a generic term for
'religious'. It is a neologism suggested by ancient Greek to
connote 'mindless', 'unreasoning', 'illogical'.
5. Q&A: Flat
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Q. Can you tell me why in British English we call an apartment a
"flat"? [M D Dunderdale]
A. The smart answer might be that a flat, like an apartment, is a
set of rooms most commonly on one floor of a building, so it's all
on a level and so flat. A link does exist between the two senses of
the word, though it's far from the whole story (or even storey).
The original was "flet", an ancient Germanic word traceable to the
same source as "flat", in the sense of something smooth, even and
level. "Flet" began life in Old English meaning the ground under
one's feet. It could also mean a place where one lives, one's house
or dwelling. Both senses are in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. In
the sixteenth century wills often included the word in the phrase
"fire and flet" - fire and house-room, or warmth and shelter -
typically a bequest to the widow.
It was sometimes written as "fire and fleet". It appears in that
form in an ancient northern English ballad, The Lyke Wake Dirge,
that was sung by women during a wake, the period of watching over a
dead body before the funeral:
This ean night, this ean night;
every night and awl:
Fire and Fleet and Candle-light
And Christ receive your soul.
[The fire, fleet and candlelight were the comforts
given by the living to the dead during the wake; "lyke"
means a corpse; "ean", one; "awl", all.]
The modern sense is already there in part in the idea of "house-
room". However, it was in Scotland that "flet" shifted to mean the
inner part of a house and from there a single storey of a dwelling.
By the start of the nineteenth century it had changed its spelling
to "flat" under the influence of that word. The first known example
meaning an apartment is in Sir Walter Scott's Redgauntlet in 1824,
though it only became widely known later in the century.
6. Sic!
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Andrew Palmer wonders if the proposed British rail lines mentioned
in a BBC News report on 21 June will run east to east or west to
west. He asks because its first sentence is: "Five new high-speed
main lines crossing the width and breadth of the UK may be built as
part of a review of the rail network, Network Rail says." A graphic
alongside the story shows that most will actually go north to south
(or possibly south to north).
Hunter Bowen told me about a report in The Galveston County Daily
News of Texas on 20 June, about a man who robbed a woman: "He is
described as a 30- to 40-year-old white man, 6 feet, 1 inch tall
with a large nose wearing a plaid shirt." Hunter Bowen guesses that
the nose was too big to be covered by the bandanna that most Texas
desperadoes prefer.
The Web site of the Irish Times on Tuesday featured an article with
the heading "New Garda powers outlined in liquor Bill". (The Garda
is the Irish police force and its officers are gardaí.) The story
went on, "Under the Bill, gardaí can seize containers from anyone
they believe to be under 18 and in possession of alcohol that has
been consumed or may be consumed by someone under age outside a
private dwelling." Tony McCoy O'Grady wonders if this means gardaí
will be legally required to take the piss.
The media, print and online, have widely quoted Karl Rove talking
this week about Barack Obama (Peter Weinrich saw it in the New York
Times): "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy
at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and
a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments
about everyone who passes by." Contemptuous cigarettes - what will
they think of next?
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