World Wide Words -- 14 Feb 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Feb 13 17:43:47 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 626 Saturday 14 February 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: Maieutic.
3. Recently noted.
4. Voting.
5. Q&A: Carrot and stick.
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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MORE MUGS Following my notes last week on "mugboards", carnival
painted boards with cut-outs for the head, a couple more comments
have come in, showing that the range of names for these obscure
items is greater even than I had suggested. Michael Turniansky
found that another term used by a number of the makers of such
items is "faceless cutouts". Richard Beard, former director of the
California Renaissance Faire, says that back in the 1970s such a
panel was being referred to as a "lookie loo". I know that only as
a US slang term for a rubbernecker, a person who is "just looking",
with no intention of actually buying; the same word has been used
to describe the call of the whippoorwill. Whether either of these
has anything to do with the matter, I have no idea.
I confused a few people by suggesting a double meaning to "mug" in
"mugboard". One meaning, of course, is the face, a term that goes
back to eighteenth-century England and possibly derives from the
drinking mugs in the shape of a grotesque human face that were
common at the time. The other meaning I had in mind was that of a
stupid or gullible person, which is much better known in the UK
than the US.
That would contribute an extra shade of meaning to another American
term, "mug book". Though common in police contexts for a collection
of photographs of the faces of known criminals, Judith Rascoe knows
a different application: "I've encountered it in the writings and
conversations of very correct genealogists. In the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries salesmen travelled the US, persuading the
citizens of small towns and cities that they were compiling
directories of the distinguished men of a locale, large books with
biographical sketches, often illustrated. Contributors were invited
to tell their life stories and this information was turned into
literate prose. Inclusion was free, but contributors were invited
to buy copies of 'Distinguished Men of Hardrock, Wyoming' for their
families and libraries, volumes that were somewhat expensive. These
volumes seem to be have been known as 'mug books' to their
publishers. They later became important sources of information for
genealogists and local historians, and 'mug book' is decorously
used today. I suspect their publishers were aware of their
participating in a racket and that they called them 'mug books' in
the same spirit in which their carnie cousins named those things
'mugboards'."
The updated story of the search for the names is now on the World
Wide Words site: go via http://wwwords.org?PHOT.
2. Weird Words: Maieutic /mI'ju:tIk/
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Bringing a person's latent ideas into clear consciousness.
The maieutic method is Socratic: a person is engaged in a dialogue
by a questioner until frustration caused by challenges to his ideas
leads him to dissatisfaction with his settled convictions and makes
him refine his views. In practice, of course, the questioner knows
the answers already and leads the dialogue by supplying clues to
allow the other person to work them out.
The word is from Greek "maieuesthai", to act as a midwife, from
"maia", a midwife. Socrates compared himself to a philosophical
midwife, who through his questioning could induce the delivery of
superior understanding in the other person, because the knowledge
was already present in that person's mind.
Though the word is first recorded in the seventeenth century, it
has become very much more common in modern times, especially in
discussions of philosophy, education and psychotherapy.
3. Recently noted
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CSI: BIRDLAND You had best skip this item if you're eating or have
a delicate stomach. Scott Langill and Luciano Eduardo Oliveira have
independently told me about a technical term of the aviation
investigation business: "snarge". When a bird strike causes an air
accident - such as the one that forced a plane to ditch in the
Hudson River last month - it's important to determine the species
involved. There are usually bits of mixed-up bird remains on the
aircraft, such as feathers, beaks, blood and flesh. This is snarge.
The standard technique for collecting it involves spraying the area
with water and wiping it with a paper towel. The towel is then sent
to the Feather Identification Lab at the Smithsonian in Washington,
DC (See http://wwwords.org?SFIL). National Public Radio reported in
January that 4,000 samples were sent to the Lab for identification
in 2008. An article in the magazine Flying Safety in 2003 says
"snarge" was invented there. One of its researchers is Carla Dove
(an example, by the way, of what New Scientist magazine used to
call nominative determinism - the tendency of people to do jobs
that match their surnames). She tells me that they didn't invent it
but borrowed it from the experts who prepared bird specimens for
the collections: "Everyone referred to the bird goop, guts, tissue,
etc. as snarge. I think anyone who works in a museum and prepares
bird specimens for research collections is familiar with the word."
TIN A report last week noted that the stannator of Plympton, near
Plymouth in Devon, died in a road accident during our brush with
winter. "Stannator" is a fascinating word with a very long local
history. These days in Plympton, it's the title given to the mayor,
but that's a recent innovation to mark the ancient link of the town
with tin mining. (The word is from Latin "stannum", tin, which also
supplies the metal's chemical symbol, Sn.) Tin mining in medieval
times was so vital an industry that by royal charter the tin miners
of Devon and Cornwall were governed by a stannary parliament, which
had the power to pass laws - administered by stannary courts - and
also veto national legislation from Westminster. Stannators were
the elected representatives to the parliament. From 1307 onwards,
Plympton was one of the stannary towns at which stannary courts
were based. The courts were abolished in 1896 but the parliament
was never formally done away with (although the Cornish stannary
parliament last met in 1752) and attempts have been made from the
1970s on to resurrect its powers. This has not gained favour in the
House of Commons.
4. Voting
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5. Q&A: Carrot and stick
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Q. Your recent item on carrotmobbing makes a slight reference to
"carrot and stick" and its popular usage to describe rewards and
punishments intended to motivate a person. This is a corruption of
the original metaphor which implies an incentive system in which
the prize seems within easy reach but can never be attained. The
source is a trick concocted by men who use asses as beasts of
burden. They suspend a carrot from a stick tied to the back of the
animal's neck in such a way that the carrot hangs a foot or so in
front of the animal's muzzle. The normally stubborn ass, thinking
it is within easy reach of a tasty morsel, moves forward to grasp
it but, of course, never quite does. Do you know how this change in
meaning came about? [Norm Brust]
A. Strangely, few of my reference books discuss this neat little
metaphor in any detail and none of them suggest a source. I can't
give you the full story, since nobody seems to know it, but some
pointers are possible to its age and development. They show that
the trick you mention was only ever a joke.
The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for "carrot" in the
figurative sense of something presented as an inducement to action,
with its earliest example being from 1895. Here's an earlier one:
He never had carrots dangled before his nose, and he
hoped he never would have, but if any one did such a
thing, he would get a very sharp answer.
[In a debate in the House of Representatives in New
Zealand in 1872.]
Though figurative, it must refer to the even older literal idea of
a carrot being flourished as encouragement in front of a draft
animal. I'd guess that the idea is as old as draught animals (the
OED describes it as proverbial). However, the oldest reference to a
donkey I can find is this:
But all nature says, "Lead! don't drive!" from the
experiment of the carrot-persuaded donkey.
[The Eclectic Magazine, New York, Aug. 1851.]
I surmise that the animal was given the reward when it obeyed,
otherwise the carrot would quickly cease to encourage. The trick of
suspending the carrot in front of the animal on a stick that was
attached to it - and so forming a reward that was forever out of
reach - must have come along later as a comic idea.
But that morning, as I rode along, there flashed into my
mind a cartoon I had once seen of a donkey race, in which
the victory had been won by an ingenious jockey who held
a carrot on the end of a stick a foot or two in front of
his ass's nose. In its eagerness to reach the carrot, the
donkey put on such a tremendous burst of speed that it
immediately outstripped its competitors and won the race.
[Through Russia on a Mustang, by Thomas Stevens, 1890.]
Real donkeys, as I say, are too intelligent to be fooled by such a
stratagem for very long, and the idea behind the recorded examples
of a figurative carrot was that it was an actual inducement, not
the false promise of one.
The combination of carrot and stick, with the image of an animal
being offered a tasty encouragement at one end while being thumped
with a stick at the other, is of the nineteenth century:
It was this carrot and stick discipline to which Mr. John
Mill was subjected, and which he accepted dutifully as
flowing from that perfect wisdom of which up to this time
his father had been the representative.
[The Reality of Duty: As Illustrated by the Autobiography
of Mr John Stuart Mill, by Lord Blatchford; Contemporary
Review, August 1876.]
The next example I can find, however, is much more recent, in an
article on the problems of post-war Britain in The Economist in
July 1946, which said that a healthy economic system required both
the carrot (the incentives of reward) and the stick (the threat of
poverty if a man was unwilling to work) and that the trouble with
the country was that in recent years both the carrot and the stick
had been whittled away until there was little of either left. The
editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, which reproduced part of the
article the following month, was struck by its novelty, calling it
"an arresting metaphor".
Had it been lurking in the language for nearly a century, or did
The Economist writer reinvent it? What seems more than probable
from the written evidence is that the modern metaphor of carrot and
stick as encouragement combined with punishment derives from this
article or another in the same journal two years later.
6. Sic!
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Esther Cup Choy reports that a notice in a senior residence library
read: "Book donations accepted from residents in good condition."
It was quickly changed when the librarian was asked, "who's going
to confirm their condition?"
A classified advertisement in the Florida Keys Keynoter listed a
50-foot boat for sale that came equipped with an "Electric anchor
wench". Michael Welber wonders what else she did on the boat.
The Visit Scotland site intrigued Mike Reilly with this enticing
promotional offer: "To find those special heirloom quality things
takes real dedication and lots of time. Thistle & Broom, Ltd. has
brought together the penultimate collection of authentically made-
in-Scotland treasures." Mr Reilly admires the canny Scots who hold
back the ultimate collection from foreign visitors.
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