World Wide Words -- 25 Oct 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 24 09:21:24 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 610 Saturday 25 October 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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A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/synm.htm
The newsletter is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font.
For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Fuliginous.
3. Vote for World Wide Words.
4. Q&A: In-laws.
5. Review: Chambers Slang Dictionary.
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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A SPECIAL WELCOME to everybody who joined the mailing list this
week following a mention by William Safire of my book Port Out,
Starboard Home in the New York Times last weekend and of World Wide
Words in the Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter on Wednesday.
UPDATES Three pieces on the Web site have been updated with fresh
information. The three are on the British slang term "mullered" (go
via the link http://wwwords.org?MULL), on "nitty-gritty" (follow
http://wwwords.org?NYTY) and which is right, "predominately" or
"predominantly" (http://wwwords.org?PRED).
2. Weird Words: Fuliginous /fju:'lIdZIn at s/
fju{lm}{sm}l{shti}d{zh}{shti}n{schwa}s
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Sooty.
The diarist John Evelyn wrote in 1661 about the smoke of coal fires
in London that "Her Inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure and
thick Mist, accompanied with a fuliginous and filthy vapour ...
corrupting the Lungs, and disordering the entire habit of their
bodies, so that Catharrs, Phthisicks, Coughs and Consumptions rage
more in this one City than in the whole Earth besides."
"Fuliginous" can also refer to a sooty or dusky colour ("the whole
body is of a rather light fuliginous or brownish grey", which is in
a description of the bird called Bonaparte's shearwater) or to some
noxious vapour said in old medical texts to be formed by combustion
within the body and which particularly affected the head ("It is
not amiss to bore the skull with an instrument to let out the
fuliginous vapours" - The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.)
The word is from Latin "fuligo", soot, which has also been used in
English with the same meaning. "Fuligo ligni" is the Latin name for
wood soot, a form of charcoal; it used to be listed in the British
Pharmacopoeia as an antispasmodic, for instance to help with the
treatment of whooping cough.
3. Vote for World Wide Words
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L-Soft, creators of the LISTSERV mailing list software on which the
World Wide Words newsletter is distributed, runs biennial Choice
Awards, which it calls a "worldwide recognition program for email
list communication excellence." The World Wide Words newsletter has
been nominated for the 2008-09 awards and with your support could
win, though we're running a bad second at the moment. Do visit the
awards site and vote (go via http://wwwords.org?LCAS). Though there
are some restrictions on voting, the old election Irishism applies:
"vote early, vote often".
4. Q&A: In-laws
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Q. In Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Snawley refers to himself as "father-
in-law" of two boys he palms off to Mr. Squeers' miserable school.
As we would refer to him as their step-father, I was wondering if
the latter term is relatively new and whether "in-laws" for the
spouse's family is a recent term as well. [Mitch Kramer, Vermont]
A. Dickens is very clear about the meaning of the term. Mr Snawley
says, "The fact is, I am not their father, Mr Squeers. I'm only
their father-in-law" and goes on to say, "You see, I have married
the mother."
The law here is Canon Law, specifically the rules of affinity that
prohibit marriage between relatives. At one time, the rules not
only stopped blood relatives from marrying, but also relatives in
which the only connection was one through marriage. The most famous
case was that at one time a man could not marry his deceased wife's
sister or a woman her dead husband's brother. The sister of a man's
dead wife was considered as much off limits for marriage as if she
were his own sister - she was a sister "in law". (In the UK, such
unions were explicitly made legal by Parliament early last century,
as was marriage to the children of either - one's niece or nephew
by marriage.)
All these "-in-law" forms came into the language in the fourteenth
century. For several centuries, they could also be applied to other
relationships created by marriage. A daughter-in-law or son-in-law
could be the child of a spouse from a previous marriage, since they
were also covered by the Canon Law rules. As Dickens makes clear,
the reverse relationship of father-in-law was often applied to what
we would now call a step-father.
The "step-" prefix has had a mixed history. The source is an old
Germanic word that could mean bereaved or orphaned (in Old English,
a stepchild or stepbairn was an orphan). "Stepfather", "stepmother"
and "stepdaughter" are much older than the "-in-law" equivalents,
known from Anglo-Saxon times, with "stepbrother", "stepson", and
"stepsister" coming along much later. However, Dr Johnson noted in
his Dictionary in 1755 that only "stepmother" was in common use.
The position shifted in the early to middle nineteenth century for
unknown reasons, with the "-in-law" endings coming to be reserved
for relationships wholly created by marriage and the "step-" ones
coming into much wider use for those where a relationship existed
beforehand between one's partner and another person. Around the
same time, we start to see new "step-" forms appearing, such as
"stepfamily", "step-parent", "step-nephew" (surprisingly old, in a
novel by Bulwer-Lytton of 1857) and "step-niece" (from about 1890),
showing how deeply the change had penetrated into the language.
5. Review: Chambers Slang Dictionary
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Jonathon Green's name is familiar to every student of slang in the
UK: he has been researching it for 25 years and is an authority on
this most intriguing and intractable aspect of lexicography.
The title makes it seem as though this is an entirely new book but
in essence it is the third edition of the Cassell Dictionary of
Slang. The change of publisher has resulted in subtle changes in
layout and content. Most significantly, entries have been presented
in a different way - derivatives of a word are placed together as
sub-entries of the main word, rather than as individual entries.
This technique, called nesting in the business, may seem a small
change, even a fussy one, but it simplifies entries and highlights
the relationships between terms. The opportunity has been taken to
add items of recent slang, to rewrite definitions and improve the
dating. To my eye - though this is a subjective view - the text is
clearer and easier to read.
Slang being the seamy underside of language, you shouldn't expect a
positive view of life to emerge from its pages. Jonathon Green has
computed (using his huge database of material that will some year
soon form the basis of his magnum opus, an OED of slang) that among
this book's 85,000 words and phrases from throughout the English-
speaking world are 5,012 entries for crime and criminals, 4,589 for
intoxicating liquor and its effects (with 3,976 more on drugs),
3,343 for money, 1,365 for penis, (and 1,131 for vagina), 1,740 for
sexual intercourse, 945 for masturbation, 831 for death and dying
and 219 for vomiting, but "sweet FA" for anything caring, sharing
or compassionate.
[Jonathon Green, Chambers Slang Dictionary, published by Chambers
Harrap on 24 October 2008; hardback, pp1477; ISBN-13:978-0550-
10439-7, ISBN-10:0550104399, publisher's list price GBP30.00.]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
Amazon UK: GBP16.25 http://wwwords.org?CSD1
Amazon Canada: CDN$50.54 http://wwwords.org?CSD5
Amazon Germany: EUR42,99 http://wwwords.org?CSD7
[Please use these links to buy. They get World Wide Words a small
commission at no extra cost to you.]
6. Sic!
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I went to have my flu jab last Saturday at a temporary Clinic C in
my doctor's surgery. The practice operates a computerised check-in,
which confirmed I had an appointment with a "Ms Flu C". The nurse
in charge, I am pleased to report, was utterly unfloozy.
We haven't had an inscrutable translation of Chinese instructions
for a while. Vincent Murphy bought a flashlight, one of the cheap
sort whose handle you squeeze to charge it. The notes on the side
of the box read in part, "Constantly using this health torch, it
can benefit to your palm, arm and shoulder stretching and blood
circulation, so as to let your hands relax and brain clever, hand
and brain coor dinate and promote your brain memory and health
compostion." How true, even today.
Brendan Hale was browsing the BBC News Web site from Taiwan last
Sunday morning when he noticed a ticker headline: "Flash floods
triggered by heavy rains kill at least seven people dead in central
Vietnam". He says he's not sure whether he should be relieved or
scared that there's a non-deadly version of being killed.
The chalked board outside a cafe in Exmouth in Devon, Peter Kay
reports, offers a mega breakfast and a small mega breakfast.
A. Subscription information
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B. E-mail contact addresses
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* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
be sent to me at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org . I do try to
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* Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers at worldwidewords.org .
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C. Ways to support World Wide Words
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