World Wide Words -- 01 Nov 08
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 31 13:30:18 UTC 2008
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 611 Saturday 1 November 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
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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. Turns of Phrase: Carborexia.
3. Weird Words: Mansuetude.
4. Vote for World Wide Words.
5. Q&A: A flea in one's ear.
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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PHTHISICK Several readers queried this word, which appeared in the
quotation from John Evelyn in the piece on "Fuliginous" in the last
issue. Gavin Deane put it like this: "Do I sense a new game coming
on? Is it a coincidence that the Weird Words item on 'Fuliginous'
contained a particularly fine example of weirdness, 'Phthisicks'? I
wonder if you've challenged yourself to include in each Weird Words
piece a word more weird than the one being discussed?" Hardly so,
though it would ensure a perpetual ever-renewing discussion. The
old term "phthisick" has appeared in many spellings; it refers to
conditions or diseases of the lungs, such as asthma, bronchitis and
tuberculosis. It could also refer to a sufferer from any of these.
It looks as though it might be linked to "physic", medicinal drugs
or the art of healing, but that has a different origin. "Phthisic",
as dictionaries now spell it (said as /Tizik/ - "thizick"), is a
close relative of "phthisis" (said as /Taisis/ - "thysis"), an old
term for tuberculosis and similar conditions; it comes via the
classical Latin "phthisicus", consumptive, from an even older Greek
verb, "phthinein", to decay.
IN-LAWS Cheryl Caesar noted that "In French, your 'belle-mère'
could be either your father's wife (step-mother) or your husband's
mother (mother-in-law). Giving these people the special prefix of
'beautiful' always seemed to me to show a welcome diplomacy,
missing from the distancing idea of 'step' and the forced-sounding
acceptance of 'in-law'."
SICCED! The Sic! item last time about killing people dead brought
a response from Arnold Zwicky, Visiting Professor of Linguistics at
Stanford University: "We had a discussion of the construction on
the American Dialect Society's mailing list in April; , in which it
was pointed out that the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for
'kill' has a subentry for 'kill to death' and 'kill dead' with
citations from 1362, c1400, 1614, 1670, 1700, and 1882, so it's not
a recent development. A Google search will get you a huge pile of
examples, including the famous slogan for the bug spray Raid:
'kills bugs dead!' Professor Laurence Horn noted that in some
languages causative verbs such as 'kill' require an explicit adverb
or secondary verb that indicates the result, such as 'to death'. He
hadn't thought English could work like that, but conceded it
obviously can. As a special bonus, a posting of 20 March 2005
included 'which would kill the theory dead'. It is from one Michael
Quinion."
2. Turns of Phrase: Carborexia
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To exhibit "carborexia" is to have an extreme "dark green" attitude
to environmental issues. This can show itself in several ways, such
as excessive recycling, but in particular it refers to an obsessive
desire to reduce one's personal carbon footprint. The term first
appeared in an article in the New York Times on 17 October. The
adjective is "carborexic".
It's the newest addition to the group of words based on "anorexia",
in full "anorexia nervosa", the medical term for obsessive desire
to lose weight. Other examples are "bigorexia", a slang term for
muscle dysmorphia (see http://wwwords.org?MUSC), in which a false
body image leads bodybuilders to work out too much; "orthorexia",
in which sufferers are obsessed with eating the right diet, in
particular avoiding foods thought to be harmful to health; and
"tanorexia", a obsessive desire for a suntan. Others of lesser
staying power that have appeared in recent years are "yogarexia",
excessive practice of yoga to lose weight, and "drunkorexia" (see
http://wwwords.org?DRUN), consuming alcohol in place of food as a
way to keep thin.
The implication of these various forms is that "-orexia" is turning
into a suffix that refers to an obsessive-compulsive attitude often
related to body image. The chances are that "carborexia" will not
survive, unlike "bigorexia" and "orthorexia", which are already in
major dictionaries. But who knows?
* New York Times, 17 Oct. 2008: Certainly there is no recognized
syndrome in mental health related to the compulsion toward living a
green life. But Dr. Jack Hirschowitz, a psychiatrist in private
practice in Manhattan and a professor at the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine, said that certain carborexic behaviors might raise a red
flag.
* US News & World Report, 21 Oct. 2008: What do you think: Is
carborexia a mental condition or a noble way of living?
3. Weird Words: Mansuetude /'manswItju:d/
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Gentleness, mildness.
The word comes from Latin "mansuetus", tamed or made gentle. This
contains "manus", hand (from which we get "manual", "manufacture"
"manicure", "command", and other words), and "suetus", accustomed
(from the verb "suescere", the source of very few words, of which
the best known is "desuetude"). The idea behind "mansuetus" is that
if an animal has become accustomed to the hand, it has been tamed.
An example of the English word appears in The Letter of Marque by
Patrick O'Brian, in which Dr Stephen Maturin is extolling the
virtues of laudanum: "Presently, with the blessing, you will see
Padeen's face return to its usual benevolent mansuetude; and a few
minutes later you will see him glide insensibly to the verge of an
opiate coma."
The word is not entirely obsolete, though it is rare to the point
of being marked as archaic in most dictionaries and is definitely
literary even when it does appear. To use it may be to gratify the
ego of the writer rather than communicate with the reader.
4. Vote for World Wide Words
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The World Wide Words nomination for the 2008-09 Choice Awards is
going well, as of the time of writing. This is the contest run by
L-Soft, creators of the LISTSERV mailing list software on which the
World Wide Words newsletter is distributed. A brisk turnaround of
fortune occurred last weekend: early voters quickly moved us from
lying a poor second to being first by a substantial margin. Thanks
to everybody who voted. The closing date is April 1 next year and
more nominations are likely. If you can stand the tedium, you can
vote every day until then! Vote via http://wwwords.org?LCAS.
5. Q&A: A flea in one's ear
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Q. Why does sending someone away with a flea in their ear mean they
have been given a rebuke? [Ron Witton, Australia]
A. This expression goes back a long way. It appeared in English for
the first time about 1430 in a devotional work with the title (in
modernised spelling) The Pilgrimage of the Life of the Manhood, in
which the last word meant the state or condition of being human. It
was a translation of a work in French of about a century earlier by
the Cistercian monk Guillaume de Deguileville.
Intriguingly, the French expression then had a different sense, of
provoking or having amorous desire, though de Deguileville used it
figuratively for a spiritual emotion evoked by the contemplation of
great wonders. The amorous sense was still in the French language
when Jean de la Fontaine wrote in the seventeenth century:
A longing girl
With thoughts of sweetheart in her head,
In bed all night will sleepless twirl.
A flea is in her ear, 'tis said.
In modern French, having a flea in your ear can mean you have some
fixed idea or notion. A better translation of the title of
Feydeau's farce A Flea in Her Ear (in French La puce à l'oreille)
might be A Bee in Her Bonnet. The same expression occurs with
varying meanings in other European languages. In modern German it
refers to putting a weird or fancy idea into somebody's head; in
Italian and Greek it means introducing mistrust or doubt or to
insinuate; in Dutch, it's a way to say you're fidgety or restless.
In English it principally refers - as you say - to a stinging
reproof, though to send a person away with a flea in their ear can
mean to snub them or angrily refuse a request.
The root association must surely be the result of getting a literal
flea in one's ear, something that wasn't so rare in earlier times
when hygiene was poor and houses - and their occupants - were often
infected with fleas. A flea accidentally entering one's ear would
jump about in its attempts to get out and bite in frustration. It's
hard to imagine anything more vexatious or frustrating - it's known
to have driven some people almost mad (the old remedy was to pour
oil into the ear, which drowned the flea).
It's not easy to understand why so many different implications have
been drawn from one simple circumstance. A flea moves fast, so it
may have suggested something desirable but unattainable, or a thing
that's excitable and uncontrollable like a sudden passion. A flea
may have been thought to be an external influence that whispered
messages of distrust or ardour into the ear. English speakers may
have judged that the physical and emotional discomfort aroused by a
flea in the ear resembled severe criticism or rebuke. It may be
that several of these ideas fused in various language versions of
the expression.
6. Sic!
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The mention of fractured translations last time prompted Bronwyn
Cozens to comment from Australia that "In my hotel room in Taiwan,
I found this sign - 'In order not to metamorphose please don't dry
your clothes on lamp shade'. It would be so tempting to try life as
a butterfly!" Still in Australia, Chris Bell remembered, "We had a
pack of chop sticks which included (on the packet) 'Fearless of
boiling water. Fearlessnes of acid. If putting in hot soapy water,
coming all clean and good like a new one'." Robert Bendesky was
given a gnomic fortune cookie about a year ago: "Now is the time to
make circles with mints, do not haste any longer."
A missing comma in a report about the arrest in North Carolina of a
man on a charge of first-degree murder surprised both Brian Mason,
who heard about it on CBC, and Susan Fitzgerald, who found it on
the ABC Web site. The reports said that the man could receive "life
imprisonment without parole or death." Brian Mason quipped, "The
secret of eternal life has at last been uncovered, in the most
unlikely of locations." (A comma should appear after "parole" but
an online search finds lots of other examples without it.)
Colin Burt reports from Australia that Thursday's BBC e-mail to
subscribers read in part, "A man dies after being shot dead in a
confrontation with police in a street in east London."
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