World Wide Words -- 31 Jan 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 30 19:29:13 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 624 Saturday 31 January 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: Virescent.
3. Recently noted.
4. Q&A: Restaurateur.
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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BOMBILATION To judge from the many messages that came in following
last's week's piece on this word, it is best known as a verb in one
work in particular, Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales, in
which he tells of a fire and of a gong bombilating in warning.
BABY FATHER It is always pleasant to antedate the Oxford English
Dictionary, as I did last week with this expression, taking it back
three years to 1975. But several readers told me that The Phrase
Finder, in the person of Gary Martin, had found an example from
1932. Indeed he has: "I heard he was dead. I saw a policeman on my
way from Union Street to Comerton Village. I was returning from my
baby father's house." Edith Sinclair was giving evidence in a
murder trial that was reported in The Gleaner of Kingston, Jamaica,
on 27 June 1932. Oddly, I'd searched The Gleaner's archives before
writing the item, but it didn't turn up, though it did when I knew
what I was looking for. So, alas, my little personal tribute to Sir
John Mortimer will not now happen, as his usage in 1975 will not
stand first in the OED's entry when it is revised.
2. Weird Words: Virescent /vI'res at nt/
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Greenish or becoming green.
When it first appeared in the language, "virescent" was a poetic
way of describing a greenish hue (it was taken directly from the
Latin verb "virescere", to become green, itself from "virere", to
be green).
Past the creamy reef the purple ocean glittered in the
nooning sun, while the motionless waters of the lagoon
were turquoise and bice near by and virescent in the
distance.
[Mystic Isles of the South Seas, by Fredrick O'Brien,
1921. "Bice" is a dated term for a medium blue or blue-
green copper-based pigment. Like so many colour words its
hue has changed over time - when it came into English
nearly seven centuries ago, it meant a dark or brownish
grey, from Old French "bis", dark grey.]
The adjective has been used for a deathly hue:
Between them stood a table covered with green baize,
which, reflecting upwards a band of sunlight shining
across the chamber, flung upon his already white features
the virescent hues of death.
[The Hand of Ethelberta, by Thomas Hardy, 1876.]
"Virescent" has since changed its sense, in particular among plant
scientists. It refers to the normal green of chlorophyll that has
been shifted towards yellow for some reason, often because of
disease. Virescent mutants lack chlorophyll in their young leaves,
which look yellowish in consequence. Conversely and confusingly,
the related noun "virescence" can mean an abnormal development of a
green colour in parts of a plant that normally aren't green.
A few writers have used "virescent" where others would prefer
"verdant", meaning the rich green of flourishing plant life, which
derives from a related Latin word:
County Kilkenny is a beautiful grassy wonderland of
virescent pastures, purling waterways, winding roads and
mossy stone walls.
[Ireland, by Fionn Davenport et al, 2006.]
3. Recently noted
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PEDANTS REVOLT? On Friday, the more literate British newspapers
featured the news that the Birmingham City Council has officially
abolished the apostrophe, at least in road and street signs. Cllr
Martin Mullaney, chairman of the Transportation Scrutiny Committee,
has decreed that notices referring to such local places as Kings
Heath, Acocks Green (named after the Acock family) and Kings Norton
should in future be free of those annoying little flyspecks, about
which another councillor said, "I don't see the point of them."
Cllr Mullaney said the Council had been removing apostrophes since
the 1950s and that the latest ruling formalised existing practice.
The Council was just following the example of the US, which he
claims removed the apostrophe from almost all official placenames
as long ago as 1890 (except for rare exceptions such as Martha's
Vineyard). Grammarians and teachers are reportedly as aghast as you
might expect and the Daily Telegraph (which has pictures showing
two signs in St Paul's Square, Birmingham, one with and one without
an apostrophe), has started a petition to restore the little mark
to its rightful place on the city's signs.
AGRICULTURAL WRITINGS Readers often contact me, in a spirit of
enthusiastic discovery, with a new word they've just come across.
Often I have to gently point out that it has been in the language
for years, sometimes decades. No one person can keep up with the
flood of linguistic invention, especially as the fate of most of it
is at best a temporary popularity followed by oblivion. Though I do
my best to stay abreast of the tide, words often escape me, too. A
prime example appeared in the Guardian last Saturday: agriglyph.
Since it was in an item about crop circles, its sense was obvious,
though I'd never seen it before. Searching around online, however,
found examples dating back as far as one in the Rocky Mountain News
in January 1992, though most date from the early 2000s. Isn't it a
grand uplifting classical-sounding name, though? It almost makes
the things sound important.
OVER TO YOU! On the other hand, sometimes we have objects that are
well-known but for which there's no good name. Gwyn Headley sent me
this query last Sunday: "I work for a picture library, so naming
things correctly in image keywords is crucial for us. But how do
you find something when you don't know what it's called? We had a
request for a photograph of one of those end-of-the-pier painted
boards into which you stick your head to get photographed. But what
are they called? No one seems to know." A Flickr group featuring
pictures of them has the title Things You Stick Your Head In, which
may be a bit verbose. My search online found "face cut-outs", which
was probably made up to identify something hard to describe, as an
alternative to "whatdoyoucallits" or "thingamajigs". Mary O'Neill,
editor-in-chief of Chambers Dictionaries, helped me out by finding
"comic foreground", a name (and a genre) which Wikipedia claims was
invented by the American painter and cartoonist Cassius Marcellus
Coolidge, who early in the twentieth century produced those famous
paintings of dogs playing poker. Vivian Marr of Chambers tells me
that the French call them "passe-têtes", essentially places to put
one's head through (le mot juste, indeed). If any reader knows for
certain what people in the business call the things, I'll pass the
information back to Gwyn Headley.
OUCH! On the third hand (to quote Larry Niven) sometimes names
exist for things that don't exist and never did. The BBC published
an article on its Web site on Wednesday (a nod of appreciation to
Neill Hicks for submitting it) about the nasty-sounding complaint
cello scrotum. A letter about it appeared in the British Medical
Journal on 11 May 1974. It has since been mentioned in several
works as an occupational disease, including Advanced Dermatologic
Diagnosis, The Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine, The Oxford
Companion to Medicine and the Textbook of Performing Arts Medicine.
The problem is that it doesn't exist and - as was pointed out by
one doctor at the time - couldn't possibly exist. It turns out that
it was a spoof by Dr Elaine Murphy, now the highly respected and
respectable Baroness Murphy, formerly a professor at Guy's and St
Thomas's Hospital in London. She created it after reading reports
about guitar nipple, which she thought was a hoax. She has come
clean because the term resurfaced in the 2008 Christmas edition of
the Journal.
4. Q&A: Restaurateur
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Q. One eats in a "restaurant" run by a "restaurateur". Where did
the "n" disappear to, and when? [Peter Hill, Canada]
A. It didn't disappear. It was never there in the first place.
Both words were created in French and later borrowed into English
in their French spelling. They derive from the verb "restaurer", to
restore, which has been recorded in the French language since the
twelfth century. That developed out of the Latin verb "restaurare",
restore, which is also the source of English "restore". In French,
"restaurant" is just the present participle of "restaurer", which
down the centuries has had various senses, such as reconstituting,
repairing, restoring, or fortifying the spirit.
In late medieval times, "restaurant" turned into an adjective and
began to refer in particular to a restorative foodstuff, especially
soup. By the 1660s it had become a noun meaning a particular type
of soup, a bouillon, that was made from concentrated meat juices
and which was considered to be quasi-medicinal. A related invalid
food in Britain was called beef tea, though in France a restaurant
could be made from any meat, indeed usually a mixture of meats. A
dictionary of 1708 broadened it to mean a "food or remedy that has
the property of restoring lost strength to a sickly or tired
individual"; fifty years later Diderot's Encyclopédie confirmed
"restaurant" was a medical term and gave examples that included
brandy and chocolate.
"Restaurateur" is the noun created from the verb "restaurer" by
replacing the "-er" ending of the verb with the "-ateur" ending for
a man (its female equivalent, "restauratrice", only appeared in
1767) who carries out the action. Hence, no "n". At first , he was
an artisan who restored or repaired objects. In the seventeenth
century, he was an assistant who set broken bones for a surgeon. In
the 1770s he became a man skilled in creating this special soup
called a restaurant.
The shift to our modern sense began in Paris, around 1765, when
fashionable establishments began to open in which you could buy and
consume this restorative food. These were at first given the name
of restaurateur's rooms, but "restaurant" was soon adopted as the
name for the place where you consumed the soup as well as the soup
itself. Such establishments also sold other foodstuffs that were
considered healthful.
The change to our modern sense accelerated because of the French
Revolution. Chefs and servants thrown out of work because their
aristocratic employers had fled or lost their heads turned to
running public eating places as a way to make a living. They
introduced a style and quality of cooking to the public that had
been inaccessible or unknown previously (by all accounts, food in
French inns in the eighteenth century had been pretty dire). It's
no coincidence that "gastronomie" (gastronomy, the art and science
of delicate eating) is first recorded in French in 1801. Unlike
inns, restaurants had fixed prices, individual tables and personal
service, and provided alternatives instead of the Hobson's choice
of the table d'hôte of the inns ("menu", meaning a detailed list,
is from French for this reason, first noted in English in our
modern sense in 1830). They also served meals when you wanted them,
not just at set times. No wonder foreigners came to marvel, and to
copy.
"Restaurant" came into English after the Napoleonic Wars ended, to
start with in direct reference to its Parisian origins:
Grand Hotel de Paris. No 52, Rue de Rivoli, opposite the
Tuileries Gardens, Paris. Mme. Damchin has the honour to
inform the Public, that she has just furnished this Hotel
in the most modern and elegant style; it consists of
large and small suits of rooms, with coachhouses,
stables, and every convenience. There is an excellent
Restaurant in the Hotel.
[An advertisement in The Times, 15 Oct. 1822. "Suit" here
is correct: it was the usual spelling of "suite" in this
sense at the time. "Suit" and "suite" are just variations
on the same word.]
It's all too easy to slip an intrusive "n" into "restaurateur". As
a result, and under the influence of "restaurant", it's often
spelled "restauranteur". Examples can be found as far back as the
early 1900s but current informed opinion agrees with the Oxford
English Dictionary that it's "an erroneous form" best avoided.
However, it's becoming more common and may even eventually take
over.
5. Sic!
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Deborah Meldahl e-mailed: "I found this in a daily bulletin sent to
homeroom teachers ["homeroom" is a American term for the room in
which students assemble and the register is taken; one British
equivalent is tutor room] to read to their classes. 'Students are
reminded that the speed limit in the parking lot is 10mph. Be
warned that wreckless driving will not be tolerated.'"
"Today," reported Martin Wynne last Sunday, from somewhere in
Britain, "I noticed a board outside a local pub: 'Buy two adults
and get a child's meal free.'"
Kate Archdeacon found a puzzling heading in Thursday's edition of
The Age of Melbourne: "El Salvador police probe remains in well".
The story concerned a police investigation. Five detectives were
lowered about 30 metres into a well just outside the capital of El
Salvador, in which they found the bodies of 8 to 10 gang victims.
We hope they don't need to remain down there long.
Doug Chinn, also from somewhere in Britain, had a classy printed
brochure stuffed through his letter box, advertising the services
of a firm of registered gas fitters. It offered a big discount on
central-heating boilers (furnaces for Americans) if fitted to the
over-60s.
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