World Wide Words -- 19 Dec 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 18 13:36:33 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 670 Saturday 19 December 2009
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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. Weird Words: Rannygazoo.
3. What I've learned this week.
4. Article: Colour Me Environmental.
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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CHRISTMAS BREAK There will be no issue of World Wide Words next
Saturday, 26 December. The next issue will be on 2 January 2010.
The compliments of the festive season and every good wish for the
new year to you all.
SHOESTRING Several readers thought that there were other cultural
associations to this term which needed teasing out. Barrie Wright
wrote: "You didn't mention the most likely American source to my
mind - poor people selling shoestrings and matches on the streets,
in places like old New York. It's appropriate both to their own
poverty and the small coin needed to buy from them." Randall Bart
elaborated: "The story I heard is that 'starting a business on a
shoestring' referred to a poor immigrant in New York. Supposedly he
sold one pair of laces on the street for a nickel, used this nickel
to buy several more pairs, then returned to the street to sell
them, and thus a business empire was built." John Friesen wrote,
"Surely a shoestring budget is one on which you can afford the
shoestrings, but not the shoes. In other words, paltry. Which is
pretty much implied by what you said, but more succinct."
Other readers pointed out that the essence of the idea is Biblical:
And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up
mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor
of heaven and earth, That I will not take from a thread
even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing
that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram
rich.
[Genesis 14:22-23, King James Bible, 1611. At the time
of the translation, a lachet was a thong, in particular a
shoelace or shoestring, which makes "shoelatchet" a
tautology. It was once thought that the similar "latch"
for a door fastening (which was commonly operated from
outside by a leather string) was the same word, but it is
now believed to be from Old English "laeccan", to take
hold of or grasp.]
REDD Lots of comments came in about this word, many of them noting
the use of "redd up" to mean clear up, associated by Americans in
particular with the dialect of Pittsburgh (Pittsburghese, also
known as Yinzer from the local second-person plural pronoun "yinz",
which is otherwise unknown in American speech). Peter Jones
recalls, "My wife's mother used to speak of 'redding up the house'
when guests were due. That usually meant an intense bustle of
energy for about 30 minutes, picking up newspapers, putting out
clean towels in the bath, and shooing out the dogs."
This form continues to be used in Scotland, as Graham Legge noted:
"To 'redd up' is to tidy, but it is also used to describe a mess -
as in 'The hoose wis in a richt redd up!' - meaning that the house
was in a state of disarray." Chris Smith gave another example: "'Da
Voar Redd-up' (The Spring Clean-up) is an annual event in Shetland:
it's an effort by volunteers, with support in the way of sacks,
gloves and suchlike from the Shetland Amenity Trust, to remove
bruck, which is Shetlandic for litter or rubbish, from public
spaces - roadsides, beaches, and so forth. (Admonitory signs in
Shetland say 'Dunna chuck bruck,' which my late father, on his
first visit here, read with some puzzlement, as 'Don't chuck a
brick'.)"
Several readers pointed to a possible link through Old Norse, which
is suggested by terms in its modern descendents. Henri Day wrote:
"The Swedish verb 'reda', with similar forms in other Scandinavian
languages, means 'to put in order', 'to make ready', 'to untangle',
precisely the sense of 'redding' in 'redding the line'."
2. Weird Words: Rannygazoo /,ranIg@'zu:/
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It's a century-old term, now rare, for a deceptive story or scheme,
pranks, tricks or other irritating or foolish carryings-on. If it's
familiar to you, especially if you're not native to its former US
heartland, it may be because you are widely read in the works of P
G Wodehouse. He used it a lot, and is credited with being the first
person to commit it to print:
I'll hang around for a while just in case friend
Pilbeam starts any rannygazoo.
[Bill the Conqueror, by P G Wodehouse, 1924.]
Early in its existence, in the 1890s, it became a word of the
moment, especially among Washington newspapermen, though it was
then spelled "rannikaboo" or "reinikaboo". A syndicated article
that appeared in many American newspapers in early 1898 explained
its allure for journalists:
"Reinikaboo" is entitled to a place in the next
revision of the dictionaries. It has grown into the
degree of usage which warrants formal recognition in the
language. A reinikaboo is ... a statement of news out of
all proportion and almost out of relation to the facts,
and yet having a certain origin and shadowy foundation.
... In the classification of the Washington newspaper men
there are fakes, reinikaboos, and real news.
[Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 Jan. 1898.]
As there's more reinikaboo around today than there has ever been,
you may feel the word deserves to be revived.
As to where it comes from, we have to admit almost total defeat.
Jonathon Green suggests the first part may be from the dialect
"ranny", rash or giddy. We might guess that the second part of the
"rannikaboo" form could be from "kaboom", but that imitative term
became popular only in the 1940s. A connection to "peekaboo" seems
unlikely. Its various forms may have developed out of whole cloth
through a need to create an expressive epithet.
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3. What I've learned this week
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REDD AGAIN It turned up in reports about the UN climate-change
conference in Copenhagen. It's among the many jargonistic acronyms
created by negotiators; according to my newspaper it stands for
"Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in
Developing Countries". Surely that makes REDFDDC? But a look online
shows that REDD is based on a mercifully shortened form of that
unwieldy phrase - "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Degradation". That ought to save a few trees by itself.
Swarming around the delegates in Copenhagen were large numbers of
observers, mostly members of non-governmental organisations, NGOs.
UN bureaucrats grouped them acronymically. There were BINGOs
(business and industrial NGOs), ENGOs (environmental NGOs), RINGOs
(research-oriented and independent NGOs) and TUNGOs (trade union
NGOs). To be complete, we should add the IPOs (indigenous peoples'
groups) and the LGMAs (local government and municipal authorities).
There were also youth organisations, who came to call themselves
YOUNGOs, presumably in satirical commentary rather than slavish
imitation.
4. Article: Colour Me Environmental
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It's been gradually creeping up on me for some weeks now, but the
association of colours with environmental matters is reaching
epidemic proportions.
"Green", meaning something that's kind to the environment or a
commitment to protecting it, has been around for decades. We are
unsurprised by figurative terms using the word, even if it isn't
immediately clear what they mean - such as "green accounting", in
which environmental assets and costs are included in national and
corporate accounts, and "green budget", which adds such costs into
estimates of income and expenditure. Any business providing
environmentally acceptable alternatives to traditional products is
part of the "green sector" and contributes "green collar jobs" to
the "green economy" (as opposed to the "black economy", which isn't
about people avoiding paying taxes but the old-fashioned sort that
doesn't consider the environment). The "green premium" is a payment
to cover the extra cost of sustainably grown fruit and vegetables;
we may one day be charged a "green tax" to persuade us to reduce
carbon emissions. "Green chemistry" is the search for alternatives
to industrial solvents to help reduce toxic waste, and "green gas"
is another name for biogas, generated from renewable biological
sources. A doubly colourful term for biofuels in general is "green
gold", which has also been appropriated for tea, forests and as a
general term for growing plants.
With such a powerful link between good environmental practice and
the colour green, it's not surprising that other colours have been
added to the palette for old-style or unpalatable equivalents.
Generally, any fuel created by green methods is "green energy" and
so the traditional sorts are naturally enough "brown energy" (the
alternative to green gas is "brown gas", the fossil fuel that comes
out of the ground). Quite different is "blue energy", also called
"osmotic power" or "salinity gradient power", which is electricity
that's generated in river estuaries through the interaction of salt
and fresh water. Some people have used "yellow energy" for the sort
that's gathered directly from the sun using photovoltaic systems.
"Grey energy" or "embodied energy" is the energy that's hidden in a
product; it might be what was needed to extract it from nature or
cultivate, manufacture, package and transport it.
Scientists have begun to study "brown carbon", tiny particles of
soot given off by burning matter and which both warm the atmosphere
and cool the ground. The "brown agenda" has nothing to do with the
policies of the current British prime minister but refers to the
environmental problems of big cities in developing countries, which
struggle with traditional environmental health issues at the same
time as new ones. The "green agenda", on the other hand, is a set
of proposals for mitigating environmental ills.
Environmentalists refer to "green water", which is the stuff that
falls from the sky or is taken up by plants from the soil; there's
also "blue water", which flows in rivers and streams. Many of us
know of "grey water", the outflow from household sinks and baths
that is increasingly used to irrigate our gardens. Experts in the
sewage business, I have learned, talk of "black water", otherwise
known politely as solid wastes, as opposed to "yellow water", which
is urine. The last of these has also been called "liquid gold", a
term which is confusingly and unfortunately also used for water
(and sometimes even wine).
Almost certainly, we haven't seen the last of these invented colour
terms. Equally certainly, most of them are destined sooner or later
to end up in the recycle bin of language. But while they last, they
do add an extra hue to our speech.
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