World Wide Words -- 18 Apr 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 17 19:26:58 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 635 Saturday 18 April 2009
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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: Passive drinking.
3. Weird Words: Calenture.
4. 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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L-SOFT LISTSERV CHOICE AWARDS The total voting counts were posted
on Thursday. World Wide Words came in first by a substantial margin
(33,683 to 26,373 votes). Very many thanks to everybody who
contributed to this splendid figure. However, this does *not* mean
we have won. The next stage is for the L-Soft Jury to judge the
three finalists and select a winner based on what it thinks is the
most successful and beneficial email list or campaign. The winner
will not be known until "the summer/fall time frame". To see the
voting figures in full, visit http://wwwords.org?LSOFT.
BLOW ME! Paul Fitzgerald commented, "This strikes me as one of
those expressions based on such a universal metaphor that there's
probably any number of correct, parallel etymologies dating back as
far as we can look. Aesop's fables is credited with the origin of
the obliquely related expression, 'to blow hot and cold'. I'm sure
the ancient Phoenicians had their own version. I was also just
reading one theory that 'blow me down' comes from the sea shanty
Blow the Man Down, which in turn comes from an older African-
American song, Knock a Man Down. I hope that helps to muddy the
waters."
Nicely, thank you, Mr Fitzgerald, though others have made similar
points, particularly a nautical origin for "blow me down", a link
that was reinforced for many readers by being a favourite saying of
Popeye the sailor man. The limited evidence available suggests it
is quite ancient, not least eighteenth-century references to an old
sailors' name for a place in Nova Scotia they called Cape Blow-me-
down (now modified to Cape Blomidon). Others noted a parallel in
the phrase "knock me down with a feather" (now known also in a
nonsensical form, "blow me down with a feather", that amalgamates
"knock me down with a feather" with "blow me down"). Ron Wheeler
reminded me of the variation "Blow you, Jack, I'm all right", which
was popularised by the film I'm All Right Jack of 1959.
I may have confused people by saying that these various expressions
convey vexation or annoyance. They can, especially the older ones
and the very mild oath "blow!", but most communicate surprise. In a
message from Azerbaijan, Alison Melville enlarged on this: "In my
experience I would say that the form 'Blow me!' occurs mainly in a
personal narrative, introducing a surprising or annoying element
('I replaced two light bulbs then, blow me! if a third one didn't
go') It is far more common as an exclamation to say 'well, I'm
blowed!' or 'well, I'll be blowed!'. As such, it's not a ladylike
expression, but only one degree more earthy than the over-genteel
'well, I'm blessed!' and slightly more refined than 'well, I'm
damned!' Note, in relation to the thread of discussion on weak and
strong verbs, that the past participle is definitely 'blowed', not
'blown'."
PIG LATIN "Thibanks fibor yibour wibondiberfibul wibork," wrote
Kim Braithwaite in her message about a variation that she recalls
having the name Double Dutch. "In it, you insert an extra syllable
in front of the vowel sound of every syllable in a word, in our
case '-ib-'." Graham Kelsey remembers using "-ayg-" in much the
same way, while Terry Davidson recalls "-arp-", which for him turns
"explained on World Wide Words" into "arpexplarplainarped arpon
warporld warpide warpords". Mark Peel pointed me to a book of 1934,
Jerry Todd and the Flying Flapdoodle by Leo Edwards, which contains
the line "'Where-gly you-gly go-gly?' Red inquired in hog Latin."
The lingo clearly had many dialectal variations.
The quote from The Lion King, "ixnay on the upidstay", didn't mean
what I said, as several readers pointed out. Little Simba and Nala
are talking loudly about the "stupid hyenas". Zazu can see that the
hyenas are approaching; using Pig Latin he warns the cubs not to
say they're stupid. Several readers told me about a similar usage
in the film Young Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein complains in
the hearing of the monster about the monster's rotten brain; Igor
hisses, "Ixnay on the ottenray!"
KETTLING Many readers disputed my suggested origin for this item
of British police slang. Tony Sharp wonders if I wasn't being too
clever, a subtext of other writers. Several suggested that "kettle"
was just a large container for demonstrators, who were therefore
bottled up in a big way. Others mentioned "steaming", London slang
for a group mugging of a captive group; this would imply kettling
is not so much to contain demonstrators as to engage in violence on
them or provoke them to violence. Police tactics at the G20 summit
might suggest this is the real origin.
Christine Rupp and Catherine Lodge noted that German curiously has
the closely similar term "einkesseln": to surround or "enkettle".
My Kluge dictionary says it derives from the seventeenth-century
"Kesseltreiben", a hunting term meaning to encircle an area in
order to trap game, which later became a military verb. Anja Jessen
explained further: "The word has some military connotations, but
can be found in wildlife or anywhere items are being gathered by a
circular motion. As in water contained in a kettle - it can bubble
all it wants, but it cannot escape. The word is neither positive
nor negative, it just describes the motion. Which means that in an
informal setting you would even be able to subject your thoughts to
'einkesseln', for example, if you're rambling or can't get to the
gist of something."
POLLACK David Wright e-mailed, "Alan Davidson, the author of North
Atlantic Seafood, who can do no wrong in the fish department in my
eyes, says that while pollack is listed as having the French form
'lieu jaune' as you say, 'colin' is indeed given as an alternative
in northern France. Davidson remarks there are a lot of Irish and
Scottish names. Why couldn't Sainsbury's have used one of these?"
WEB SITE UPDATES I've been beavering away for the past couple of
weeks, updating and reformatting the Web site. Most of the changes
are invisible, as they relate to better coding for outputting the
2,200+ pages from the source database whenever I need to refresh
the site. But you may spot some small changes, such as improved
linking to social networking sites and to the site RSS feeds.
2. Turns of Phrase: Passive drinking
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It started as a humorous comment in the 1980s satirising the older
term passive smoking. Fortune magazine in 1988 sarcastically wrote,
"Can we doubt that ingenious researchers will ultimately calculate
the toxic effects of passive drinking - errant molecules of alcohol
from highballs in the box seats statistically killing innocents in
the bleachers?"
Be careful what you laugh at, sometimes your jokes will come back
to bite you. The idea of passive drinking has been put forward in
all seriousness, at first by reports from the European Commission
from 2003 onwards that worked towards creating a European Union
alcohol strategy. These discussed the criminal, social and health
harm caused by alcohol, in particular the effects on third parties
- partners and children of people with alcohol-related problems,
people injured by drunk drivers, accidental victims of drunken
street fights - whose plight could be most simply summarised as the
result of "passive drinking".
The term began to appear in newspapers with serious intent from
2004 on. It became more widely known in the UK following a proposal
in mid-March from the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson,
that a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol should be imposed
on the sale of drinks to reduce alcohol consumption, a proposal
that was instantly dismissed by the Prime Minister.
* Health Insurance and Protection Magazine, 2 Apr. 2009: In his
2008 annual report Professor Liam Donaldson describes "passive
drinking" as "a concept whose time has come", noting that alcohol
consumption has increased by 40% since 1970, the figure by which it
has fallen in France and Italy.
* Daily Mail, 17 Mar. 2009: "Passive drinking", the effects that
alcohol has on innocent people, should also be acknowledged, he
said, likening the issue to passive smoking. And he called for a
national consensus, prompted by the Government, that alcohol
consumption should be substantially reduced.
Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary
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This, my most recent book, is now out in paperback in the US.
Gallimaufry is about words that are vanishing from everyday life
because we don't need them any more. Sometimes one is lost when the
thing it describes becomes obsolete: would you wear a billycock? It
may survive in a figurative sense though the original meaning is
lost: what was the first paraphernalia? Sometimes it gives way to a
more popular alternative: who still goes to the picture house to
watch the talkies? More than 1,200 vanishing and vanished words are
neatly packaged into 31 themes that range from cooking through card
games to unfashionable fashions and obscure occupations.
BUY THE BOOK FROM AMAZON:
Amazon US: US$11.53 http://wwwords.org?G12Y
Amazon UK: GBP6.74 http://wwwords.org?G93Y
Amazon Canada: CDN$14.56 http://wwwords.org?G36Y
Amazon Germany: EUR10,99 http://wwwords.org?G48Y
Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary is published
by Oxford University Press. Hardcover: ISBN 0198610629; paperback:
ISBN 0199551022; pp272, including index.
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3. Weird Words: Calenture /'kal at ntjU@(r)/
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It was the heat, the awful heat. Sailors from temperate climes who
were transported into the tropics sometimes suffered a heatstroke,
called a calenture, that resulted in temporary insanity. The tale
used to be told that weeks of being becalmed in the Doldrums led
afflicted sailors to imagine the sea to be the cool green fields of
home and that they would try to reach it by jumping overboard.
So, by a calenture misled,
The mariner with rapture sees,
On the smooth ocean's azure bed,
Enamelled fields and verdant trees:
With eager haste he longs to rove
In that fantastic scene, and thinks
It must be some enchanted grove;
And in he leaps, and down he sinks.
[The Bubble, by Jonathan Swift, 1721, a satirical poem
about the infamous speculative South Sea Bubble of that
year.]
The word comes from Spanish "calentura", a fever or sunstroke,
based on the Latin verb "calere", to be warm. A less fanciful
description comes from two decades after Swift's poem:
Having heard so often of a Calenture, I expected to meet
with some instances of it, even before I arrived in the
West-Indies; but they are now grown very scarce, for I
never saw above one person labouring under it: He was
continuously laughing, and if I may be indulged in the
term, merrily mad: One day in the height of his frenzy,
he jumped over-board in Charles-Town Bay, but was luckily
saved from drowning by one of his Sailors, or from being
devoured by same ravenous Shark.
[A Natural History of Nevis, by William Smith, 1745.]
The word may well be familiar from two famous eighteenth-century
seafaring works: Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe. Later, a calenture became any kind of raging fever linked
to delirium and it also took on a figurative sense of some burning
passion, the feverish ardour of a man afflicted with love, or the
emotions of a spurned lover:
That the man who had promised to marry her, had exhausted
the vocabulary of love for her, should thus cast her off,
struck her into a frantic calenture which, for a season,
threatened her existence.
[The Spinners, by Eden Phillpotts, 1918.]
4. Sic!
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A commercial for a local restaurant, reports Beth Taylor, claimed
that "every meal is better than the next." She wonders how long it
will be before the meals are really terrible?
Addeane Caelleigh read an article in the Washington Post's Sunday
magazine for April 5 about pandas in the National Zoo. According to
the article, a zoo laboratory technician was "waiting for a vile of
panda urine." In error we may speak truth.
The Web site of Channel 10 television in Tampa Bay, Florida, had a
report last Saturday on an attack on a man returning home: "49-
year-old Jose Cisncros was walking into the Southern Air Mobile
Home Park at 5600 14th S. West. That's where he lives around 10:20
pm Thursday night." R G Schmidt noted that there was no word about
where he lives the rest of the time.
Adam Sims, who works for a gas transporter firm in the UK, was both
professionally and personally amused by the headline from the Times
of India: "Careless digging leaves gas pipeline raptured." Ah, that
first fine careless rapture.
Many periodicals reporting on the publication of Charles Darwin's
undergraduate bills at Christ's College, Cambridge, quoted a press
release from the university, dated 23 March: "Darwin famously spent
little of his time at Cambridge studying or in lectures, preferring
to shoot, ride and collect beetles." Gary Moore, who read this in
MacLean's Magazine, wonders how big were these beetles, or how
small was Darwin?
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