World Wide Words -- 06 Sep 08

Michael Quinion wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 5 08:41:28 UTC 2008


WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 603        Saturday 6 September 2008
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK      ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Virosphere.
3. Weird Words: Esurience.
4. Q&A: Bespoke.
5. 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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GOSSYPIBOMA  David Hocken has found a much earlier example, in the 
title of an article that appeared in the journal Radiography in 
November 1978: "Gossypiboma: The problem of the retained surgical 
sponge." 

"On receipt of your newsletter," wrote Tony Chabot, "I found an 
immediate use for the wonderful 'gossypiboma', but wished to use 
the plural. I was tempted to try to use a Swahili plural. I ended 
up adding an 's'." As the Swahili plural of "boma" is "maboma", you 
would get either "gossypimaboma" or "magossypiboma", which would 
confuse your readers totally. Standard English "s" is definitely 
the way to go here.

The supposed Swahili derivation of the second part of the word may 
in any case be an invention. Douglas Fleming tells me, quoting his 
trusty Swahili dictionary, that the word does not mean a place of 
concealment, as the online dictionaries say, but a raised enclosure 
of some sort, especially for protective or defensive purposes (it 
comes from a Persian or Farsi word for a garrison or a place of 
safety). "Gossypiboma" may just be from the Latin word for cotton 
with a "b" added before the "-oma" ending to make it easier to say.

INDEXES  My apologies for including "miasmata" in my list of Latin 
plurals; "miasma" is, of course, Greek (my thanks to several 
readers for putting me right).


2. Turns of Phrase: Virosphere
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The "virosphere" is all those places where viruses are found or in 
which they interact with their hosts. It has also been spelled as 
"viriosphere", though this is less common and seems to have been 
supplanted by the other form.

Its appearance shows how scientists are coming to realise that the 
viruses are not mere causes of disease and parasitic nuisances on 
the fringes of life but a key part of the living world. Vastly more 
virus species exist than previously thought (100 million or more, 
outnumbering any other type of organism) and they are to be found 
in pretty much every environment on the planet. They contain more 
genetic material than the rest of life, so much of it unique that 
it's no longer possible to dismiss them as irrelevant aside but a 
separate class of biological existence that may be even older than 
bacteria. A significant part of the human genome turns out to 
consist of viral genes and it is beginning to look as though the 
ability of viruses to transfer genes to and from their hosts and 
each other - so spreading genes throughout the biological world - 
may have been an important factor in the evolution of species.

The term appeared no later than 1997 in a poster produced by the 
International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, in the slightly 
different sense of the diversity of virus types. Professor Curtis 
Suttle of the University of British Columbia used it in the current 
sense (but spelled "viriosphere") in Environmental Microbiology in 
2005 and its current usage dates from that. It remains uncommon, 
even in scientific literature, but a few straws in the wind suggest 
it is becoming a standard term.

* Animal Viruses, by Thomas C Mettenleiter and Francisco Sobrino, 
2008: The need to periodically update the classification schemes 
testifies to the dynamic nature of the "virosphere".

* New Scientist, 30 Aug. 2008: Only three of these systems survive 
to this day in the form of the three domains of cellular life; much 
of the rest lives on the virosphere.


3. Weird Words: Esurience  /i:sjU at ri@ns/
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Hunger, appetite.

This turned up in The Masks of Time, a 1968 SF novel by Robert 
Silverberg that I was re-reading recently: "I had seen his colossal 
esurience, his imperial self-indulgence, his gargantuan appetite 
for sensual pleasure of all sorts."

It comes from Latin "esurire", to be hungry, a relative of "edere", 
to eat. It's rare. However, its linked adjective "esurient" is more 
common, though hardly an everyday word. Both can be used literally, 
though when they are they're often intended humorously or to imply 
excessive indulgence, as in this Independent on Sunday piece from 
June 2007: "She is proportioned like a well-upholstered Hottentot 
in consequence of her perpetual esurience".

However, they're much more likely to refer to figurative hunger, 
perhaps for power or riches, hence greed: "As a world leader in 
greenhouse-gas emissions, the United States is woefully behind in 
curbing its esurient fuel-consumption habits. -- The Deseret News, 
Salt Lake City, Utah, 29 July 2007.


4. Q&A: Bespoke
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Q. In a book on the breaking of the German Enigma codes during 
World War Two, written by a man whose family once owned Bletchley 
Park (where most of the codebreaking was done), I came across this 
sentence: 'By 1941 he was swanning around in a bespoke Burberry 
suit'. I'm virtually positive that this usage of 'bespoke' is 
unknown on this side of the pond, and I wonder exactly what it 
means on your side? [Edward Shaw, Michigan]

A. It's widely used in Britain and Commonwealth countries.

Something that is bespoke has been specially ordered and made. It 
can apply to any goods - a quick look though newspapers in August 
2008 found it attached to jewellery, cars, beer, banking services, 
specially recorded music in films, guided tours, wedding cakes and 
furniture ("The kitchen/breakfast room is equipped with a good 
range of matching bespoke units with soft close drawers" - The 
Herald Express, Torquay, 19 August 2008).

However, it has in the past mainly referred to clothes and is in 
everyday speech the opposite of "off-the-peg", "off-the-rack" or 
"ready-made". (Guardian, 10 February 2008: "If I were a man, I'd 
happily remortgage myself senseless to wear bespoke.") British 
readers with long memories may recall a play and film of 1955, The 
Bespoke Overcoat, starring Alfie Bass and David Kossoff, based on a 
short story by Gogol. However, tailors make a distinction between 
"bespoke" and "made-to-measure": Ozwald Boateng, described in the 
Independent on 16 August 2008 as a "bespoke couturier", explained, 
"With bespoke you have a pattern made for you whereas with made-to-
measure it's based on an engineered pattern." 

"Bespoke" looks rather strange, because it's an adjective formed 
from the past tense of the verb "bespeak". Though rare, that verb 
is still in the language, though these days it means "suggest the 
presence of or be evidence of" (as in the Roanoke Times, Virginia, 
for 22 March 2008: "Their utterly convincing performances bespeak 
deep familiarity with their characters.")

"Bespeak" can be traced right back to Old English, well before the 
Norman Conquest. It meant not merely to speak, but to speak up or 
speak out, call out or exclaim. Later it had a sense of discussing 
or deciding on some matter; by the end of the sixteenth century it 
had come to mean arranging something to be done, engaging a person 
to do a job, or ordering goods. The adjective "bespoke" came out of 
that sense in the middle of the eighteenth century.


5. Sic!
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Rich Sturchio notes: "I was wandering through a convention center, 
when I noticed a sign announcing an Underage Drinking Enforcement 
Conference. It's good to know here in the US we have places where 
people can go to learn how to enforce underage drinking."

A story in Monday's New York Times, Doug Harris reports, contains 
this sentence: "Anyone could show up at one of 17 pickup stops 
throughout New Orleans, get a ride to the Union Passenger Terminal 
and then stand in line for a bus, plane or train to shelters 
scattered throughout the region." Planes departing from downtown 
New Orleans? That's a first.

A sign at Bell's Sports Centre, North Inch, near Perth in Scotland, 
surprised Martha Higgins: "We offer a wide range of hot and cold 
snacks, speciality coffees, soft drinks, home-baking, ice-cream and 
confectionary [sic] to sit in or take away." It sounds messy.


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