World Wide Words -- 07 Feb 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Feb 6 17:36:17 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 625 Saturday 7 February 2009
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A formatted version of this newsletter is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/gzfz.htm
For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. It's a new month, votewise ...
2. Weird Words: Bejuggle.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Card.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ON THE FOURTH HAND ... Oh, dear. SF aficionados rapped my knuckles
regarding my attribution of "on the third hand" to Larry Niven. His
version of the expression was "on the gripping hand", in reference
to a three-handed race of aliens that had one particularly powerful
arm. A 1983 book by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle has the title
The Gripping Hand. "On the third hand" is much older: the earliest
example I can find is in A Book of Prefaces by H L Mencken, dated
1917, but no doubt the incongruous image was well known even then.
BOILERS I was also chastised through my translation of the British
"central-heating boiler" to the American "furnace". Several readers
commented that "boiler" is indeed a US term. Bill Lauriston wrote
that in American English boilers heat water and furnaces heat air.
Dodi Schulz said, "The gas-fired device down-cellar that circulates
hot water through pipes and radiators in our building is expressly
referred to by its manufacturer as a boiler (and was accompanied by
a boiler manual); the city requires that annual boiler inspection
reports be filed attesting to its safe condition; the certification
is provided by a boiler inspection company." OK, I hear you. This
newsletter is very educational, at least for its editor.
BOARDS WITH HOLES IN Following up Gwyn Headley's request to learn
the name for a photographer's painted board with a cut-out for the
head, Michael Hocken tells me that the Web site of a British seller
of the things calls them "head through the hole photo booths", a
term that hardly trips off the tongue. Peter Casey discovered many
examples of "carnival cutouts", which seems to be a common US term.
Jack Hartfield e-mailed from Sydney to say that he had rented three
of these things and that the invoices had called them "photo cutout
boards", which meant nothing to him. Scott Langill commented from
Washington DC that "The traditional [American] carnival term for
these props is 'mugboard', the classic images being the muscle man
and bikini girl. The contemporary term used by vendors is 'photo
stand-ins' and less often 'standees' or 'standups'. However, the
latter two terms also refer to the celebrity photo figures without
face cut-outs that subjects pose next to, like the Barack Obama
standees proliferating since January 20." He sent me to Wayne
Keyser's online Dictionary of Carny, Circus, Sideshow & Vaudeville
Lingo, in which the devices are also called "mugboards", no doubt
with a double meaning for "mug". In lieu of a name that will be
understood everywhere, a couple of readers suggested that they be
called Headleys in honour of the questioner.
ABANDONED APOSTROPHES My little item last time about the decision
of the Birmingham City Council in the UK to ban the apostrophe from
street and neighbourhood signs mentioned that the US experience had
been taken as a precedent. A message came from Roger Payne who, as
the emeritus Executive Secretary of the US Board on Geographic
Names, knows whereof he speaks. The Board has discouraged the use
of apostrophes since its formation in 1890 (though five exceptions
have been allowed, the most recent being Clark's Mountain in Oregon
in 2002), but its remit is in practice limited to natural features,
so perhaps ought not to be claimed in support. In 2000, he gave the
reasons for losing the possessive apostrophe in the Journal of the
American Name Society: "Words when forming geographic names have
lost their connotative aspects; the name is merely a label, and
therefore ownership or association is no longer relevant."
Those who oppose losing the apostrophe may argue that the final "s"
should then go, too, since you need both to mark possessives. This
is happening in medical practice, which - as two examples - often
refers to Down syndrome and Alzheimer disease, since they're named
after the medical men who identified the conditions but who didn't
suffer from them (I assume that Lou Gehrig's disease will keep its
apostrophe, as it's named after a famous man who contracted it.)
Terry Davidson noted that Australia has similar rules to those in
the US and pointed me to Section 4.12 of the Guidelines for the
Consistent Use of Place Names, a publication of the Committee for
Geographical Names in Australia, which says in full: "In all cases
of place names containing an element that has historically been
written with a final -'s or -s', the apostrophe is to be deleted,
e.g. Howes Valley, Rushcutters Bay, Ladys Pass. This is to
facilitate the consistent matching and retrieval of placenames in
database systems such as those used by the emergency services."
I've updated my piece about apostrophes, which you can read via
http://wwwords.org?APST.
2. It's a new month, votewise ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words has achieved an absolute majority of votes each
month in the LISTSERV Choice Awards 2009 competition since it was
nominated at the very beginning of the contest last Autumn. We're
currently second following the reset of the counts at the beginning
of February, but a sustained push by all subscribers will ensure we
top the poll this month as well. May I urge you to continue your
support of World Wide Words? You can vote once a day, every day.
Follow this link: http://wwwords.org?LCAS.
3. Weird Words: Bejuggle /bI'dZVg(@)l/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To outwit by trickery or deception; to cheat.
Outrageous impostor! fool, dotard, oaf! Did he think to
bejuggle me with his preposterous gibberish!
[Mardi, by Herman Melville, 1849.]
Since we moderns know "juggle" only to mean expertly tossing a
number of things in the air and catching them, this antique word
will puzzle us. That's because down the centuries jugglers have
become more specialised.
When the word came into English, getting on for nine centuries ago,
it had the same sense as its French, Italian and Latin forebears: a
jester, one who amuses through stories, songs, tricks and clowning.
The Latin source was "joculator", from "joculari", to jest or joke.
The first of these gave us the now-obsolete "joculator", a jester
or minstrel; from the same source are the better-known "jocular"
and "jocund" and their relatives.
Over time jugglers became less and less general entertainers. They
set aside their music and stories and became exclusively conjurors,
in particular that sort who deceives his audience by legerdemain or
sleight of hand. It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth
century that they came to practice exclusively the specific type of
manual dexterity we now associate them with (as an historical note,
later in the same century the first edition of the Oxford English
Dictionary didn't include this sense of the verb "juggle" because
the word hadn't yet acquired it).
By the sixteenth century, the verb had developed the negative ideas
of a man who deceived in earnest, not just for entertainment, who
tricked or cheated another. The "be-" prefix was added to it in the
seventeenth century to suggest that the process was happening
thoroughly or excessively.
>From the Spanish school of comedy came these three-ply
intrigues, intricate plots, and continual disguises that
weary and bejuggle the modern reader.
[Portraits and Backgrounds, by Evangeline Wilbour
Blashfield, 1917. The sense has here softened towards
mere confusion rather than outright deception.]
[Thanks to Daniel Matranga of the Adriance Memorial Library in
Poughkeepsie, NY, for introducing me to this word.]
4. Recently noted
-------------------------------------------------------------------
WORD UP! Martin Turner pointed me to a BBC opinion piece dated 30
January by Harold Evans that suggested now would be a good time to
revive an Americanism from the 1930s, "bankster", a blend of "bank"
and "gangster". Mr Evans is a little behind the curve: it has been
brought out from the rest home of retired words, dusted down and
put back to work. Way back in 1991, the Washington Post commented
of it that it was "A term whose revival is long overdue, coined by
Time in the 1930s for the agents whose scheming precipitated a
string of bank collapses at the dawn of the Depression." (Mr Evans
suggests it was really invented by Ferdinand Pecora, chief counsel
to the US Senate Committee on Banking that was investigating the
causes of the 1929 crash.) Eleven years ago, in January 1998, the
same paper wrote, "With all the high risk and the fast money being
made on Wall Street, it is not surprising that the word bankster
has begun to creep into the language." Archives show a few examples
from 1998, some from 2002 and more from 2006 on. The most recent
appearance on record is in the Black Agenda Report of New Jersey,
dated 4 February: "In the process of attempting to breathe life
into the bankster zombies, Obama and his bipartisan buddies will
exhaust the capacity of the federal government to make money out of
nothing." On its present limited showing, it's unlikely to feature
in any list of words of the year, but it's out there all right.
AND NOW, THE LAST OF 2008 ... Lagging all the other announcements
of the Word of the Year 2008 is the one from Australia's Macquarie
Dictionary. This choice is straightforward: "toxic debt", which I
suspect few readers will fail to recognise immediately. Sue Butler,
publisher of the Dictionary, said "as a lexical creation it has a
visceral impact." She also noted "GFC" (Global Financial Crisis),
which she said had now also been added to the lexicon. Among the
runners-up were "bromance" (a non-sexual but intense friendship
between two males) and "lawfare" (the use of international law by a
country to attack or criticise another country on moral grounds).
The winner of the popular vote - chosen in an online poll - was
"flashpacker" (a backpacker who travels in relative luxury).
5. Q&A: Card
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I have just finished reading Arnold Bennett's The Card. The
meaning of "card" in this context - a "character" - is so very
different from the other meanings of "card" that I wonder how this
meaning came to be. [Thomas Burton, Mandurang, Australia]
A. A card is certainly a very individual person, one who stands out
from the crowd because he is odd or amusing, because of a clever or
audacious nature or because he is one of a kind.
Though it doesn't seem to have any connection with real card, a
direct association does exist, through playing cards. There have
long been figurative expressions based on a playing card as a token
of action or manoeuvre, a stratagem or gambit. In modern usage, we
have "playing the [something] card", to obtain political advantage
through raising a particular contentious issue. We might have a
card up our sleeves, meaning we have a plan or resource in reserve.
In some situation, we might play our best card or our trump card.
A long way back in history, around 1560, the phrase "sure card"
appeared, for some expedient that was certain to work. Another of
similar meaning was "sound card". People were often referred to as
good cards, meaning that they were reliable or had abilities or
qualities that made them effective in some situation.
Arnold Bennett's sense grew out of these references to individuals
as types of card. It's relatively new - it's not recorded before
Charles Dickens used it in Sketches By Boz in 1836: "Mr. Thomas
Potter whose great aim it was to be considered as a 'knowing
card'". He used it again in Bleak House in 1852: "Such an old card
has this; so deep, so sly, and secret."
By the time that Arnold Bennett used it in his story of the Five
Towns, in 1911, it was well-established as a colloquial term. It
has dropped away markedly since, though it's still around:
He's a card, isn't he, that Phil Tufnell? Bit lairy, bit
of a geezer, a whiff of the bad egg about him. But bright
with it.
[Independent on Sunday, 13 Nov. 2005. "Lairy": flashy;
vulgar; socially unacceptable.]
6. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"As an ex-pat living in Sweden," e-mailed Antony Ryan, "I've been
following the recent news stories about the United Kingdom's plunge
into the icy grip of the first real winter in years. I have been
concerned for my friends and relatives during all the snow-induced
chaos. Now it seems I should be concerned for the mental well-being
of the highways, too, according to the BBC at least: "Roads worry
as temperatures fall".
Thanks to Julane Marx I learned that the Health Section of the Los
Angeles Times on Monday included this headline: "Fasting cuts down
on calories". Who would have known?
Norman Simons noted a report in the Sunday Telegraph on 1 February:
"TV's Emma Crosby chased burglars dressed only in pyjamas". Surely,
he commented, this is carrying dressing down too far.
Jerry Miller received a cheque recently whose top edge contained a
warning: "This document contains security mark & invisible fibers.
Do not accept if features are not present." He is understandably
puzzled how to proceed.
Wednesday's Toronto Star discussed the safety of eating cheese made
from raw milk and mentioned a Cheesy Soirée at which a number will
be on offer. Denise Altschul considered attending until she read
that "Attendees will be able to taste and buy the raw-milk cheeses.
Experts debating the risks and benefits are also on the menu."
A. Subscription information
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address or resubscribe,
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm .
You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a list of
commands, send this message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org:
INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS
This newsletter is also available as an RSS feed. For the details,
visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .
Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ .
B. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Comments on newsletter mailings are always welcome. They should
be sent to me at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org . I do try to
respond, but pressures of time often prevent me from doing so.
* Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers at worldwidewords.org .
Submissions will not usually be acknowledged.
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q&A section should be
addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't
use this address to respond to published answers to questions -
e-mail the comment address instead).
* Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list
server should be addressed to wordssubs at worldwidewords.org . To
allow me more time for researching material, please don't e-mail
me asking for simple subscription changes you can do yourself.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Wide Words newsletter and Web site are free, but if you
would like to help with their costs, there are several ways to do
so. Visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/support.htm for details.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2009. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce brief extracts from this newsletter in mailing
lists, newsletters or newsgroups online, provided that you include
the copyright notice given above. Reproduction of items in printed
publications or Web sites, including blogs, needs prior permission
from the editor (wordseditor at worldwidewords.org).
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list