World Wide Words -- 20 Jun 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jun 19 12:48:15 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 644 Saturday 20 June 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 e-magazine is available
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/upja.htm
To leave the list or change your subscribed email address, see
Section A below or go to http://wwwords.org?SUBS. Don't e-mail
me with subscription matters unless you are having problems.
This e-magazine is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font.
For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Notes from a tired traveller.
2. Weird Words: Cucking-stool.
3. Q and A: Wine bottle sizes.
4. Book Review: I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears.
5. Sic!
6. Feedback, notes and comments.
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.
1. Notes from a tired traveller
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Holiday over. It went well, thanks for asking, though a coach tour
that covered 3158 miles airport to airport through seven US states
in 16 days was tiring. We visited many fascinating sites including
the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Zion and Grand
Canyon national parks and the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse
monuments. Unforgettable.
Staggering blearily down to breakfast at 7am in a different hotel
every day required our muzzy brains to puzzle out the odd logic of
the current establishment's arrangements (why were the plates for
one's toast so often at the other end of the room from the machine
to make it? why was milk for the cereal rarely anywhere near it?).
As a result, I have become the founding and so far the sole member
of the SSABB, the Society for the Standardisation of American
Breakfast Buffets.
After so long an absence, a number of points have arisen relating
to recent issues. To let you get to the new stuff without having to
read through comments on the old, I've put them at the end.
2. Weird Words: Cucking-stool /'kVkIN-stu:l/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Is the image that comes to mind of a woman in a seat on a pivoted
plank being ducked in the local pond? If so, you're nearly right.
Two punishment devices are known in medieval and post-medieval
England with closely similar names, the one having evolved from the
other. Much confusion among writers has resulted. The one that I've
described is properly called a ducking-stool, a name that needs no
explanation.
The cucking-stool was rather different, as you may judge from the
genteel comment by Robert Chambers in his Book of Days in 1863:
"The cucking-stool was a seat of a kind which delicacy forbids us
particularly to describe." You can appreciate why he said that when
you realise that "cucking" is from "cack", faeces, which is also to
be found in "cack-handed". A cucking-stool was a commode, called at
the time a close-stool - a covered chamber pot in a wooden seat.
The offender was placed on the stool as a punishment designed to
subject her to embarrassment and ignominy. (The device was used for
women only: men had the pillory.) The stool was often fitted with
wheels so that she could be paraded about the town. The stool later
became a chair for ducking the offender in a pond, but the old name
was sometimes preserved.
The main offence punished by both devices was of being a scold, a
woman who nags or grumbles constantly. This was thought to be not
just a problem for her immediate family but for the community at
large and required firm action to quieten her down. The punishment
was also for brewers who sold bad ale or bakers who gave short
measure, because most brewers and bakers in medieval times were
women.
3. Q and A: Wine bottle sizes
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. How did bottles of wine get names such as Jeroboam, Rehoboam,
Methuselah and others? The ancient references of most of the names
are obvious; the "how?" and "why?" are not. How was the hierarchy
by volume and name determined? For how long does wine have to age
for it to be called a Methuselah? [Belinda Hardman]
A. I'm glad to be able to report that the age of the wine has no
connection with these curious names, otherwise a methuselah would
have to be aged for 969 years. It's one of a large set of names for
sizes of wine bottle. It's now illegal to put any of them except
one on a bottle and they've become curiosities that mainly come up
in pub quizzes.
The only term of the set that's still allowed is "magnum", which
refers to a bottle containing two standard bottles or 1.5 litres.
It's also the oldest of all the terms, having appeared in English
in one of the prose works of the Scots poet Robert Burns, back in
1788. It's an abbreviation of Latin "magnum bonum", a large good
thing. It was in Scotland that it acquired the sense of a size of
wine bottle and became abbreviated to "magnum". It has also been
given to a variety of potato, various varieties of cooking plums, a
gun, and even a large-barrelled steel pen.
The remainder of the set, as usually quoted in reference books, are
jeroboam (4 bottles/3 litres), rehoboam (6/4.5), methuselah (8/6),
salmanazar (12/9), balthazar (16/12), nebuchadnezzar (20/15),
melchior (24/18), solomon (28/21), sovereign (33.3/25), and primat
(36/27). Some lists include the melchizedek, holding 40 standard
bottles or 30 litres. The largest sizes refer only to champagne and
are extremely rare, not least because it would be almost impossible
to lift the bottles.
As you say, most of these are ancient, deriving from the names of
kings mentioned in the Bible. Jeroboam, for example, was a king of
Israel. His name was first applied to a size of wine bottle in a
work by Sir Walter Scott (another Scotsman, you will notice) and
seems to have been a joke derived from the description of Jeroboam
in the first book of Kings as "a mighty man of valour" who "made
Israel to sin".
The remainder date from much later. "Rehoboam" (a king of Judah and
son of Solomon, also from the first book of Kings) appears in 1895.
"Nebuchadnezzar" (ruler of the Babylonian empire, the man with the
famous hanging gardens), turns up in a letter written by Aldous
Huxley in 1916. "Methuselah", "salmanazar" and "balthazar" are all
listed for the first time in André Simon's Dictionary of Wine in
1935. Methuselah is the Old Testament patriarch; Salmanazar is more
properly Shalmaneser, a King of Assyria mentioned in the second
book of Kings; and Balthazar is assumed in dictionaries to be the
king of Babylon whom we know better as Belshazzar, the one who saw
the writing on the wall at his feast. However, he might instead be
one of the three wise man who with Melchior and Caspar in medieval
legend attended the birth of Jesus. I prefer the latter, because
Melchior is another in the list.
Apart from magnum and jeroboam, few of these names have ever been
used seriously. (The Oxford English Dictionary's recent revision of
its entry for "melchior" doesn't even include the wine sense.) They
seem to have been fanciful creations, dreamed up by a person or
persons unknown on the basis of the Biblical associations of
"jeroboam". My most diligent search has been unable to find out
anything at all about who named them. We're not even sure in some
cases which language they first appeared in. My French dictionaries
say jeroboam and rehoboam were imported from English into French at
the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth
century respectively. They also say that "methuselah" (as
"mathusalem") is not known in French as a name for a wine bottle
size before the middle of the twentieth century and "salmanazar"
not before 1964, which suggests that these, too, appeared first in
English. But "nebuchadnezzar" is known as a bottle size in French
(as "nabuchodonosor") in 1897, before it appeared in English.
In summary, we know a very little about the "how" and the "why",
and nothing at all about the "who"; just a hint to explain why the
various names were chosen for the different sizes.
4. Book Review: I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears
-------------------------------------------------------------------
With that title, what other adjective could one use to describe the
book than "quirky"? It's a compilation by Jag Bhalla, who describes
himself as an amateur idiologist, or student of idioms. He presents
a thousand or so amusingly odd examples from around the world. Many
have been illustrated by the New Yorker's cartoonist Julia Suits.
An idiom is an expression whose meaning can't be deduced from those
of the individual words. If you say that you've nipped a problem in
the bud, put a spoke in someone's wheel or hauled a worker over the
coals, complain that a relative is the black sheep of the family or
that your ears are burning, you will be understood by other native
English speakers, but run a severe risk of confusing foreigners.
Similarly, Jag Bhalla claims that in Colombia, a Spanish speaker
might say that he has been swallowed like a postman's sock, by
which he means he is hopelessly in love. This might be because the
object of his love has thighs like mango tree trunks, in Hindi a
compliment to an attractive woman. But if the tomatoes have faded,
as a Russian might put it, love has gone; Arabic speakers are said
to express the same idea through commenting that you're getting on
each other's heads. You may indeed be like a dog and a monkey, a
Japanese way of saying you're on bad terms. Trying to comprehend
the reasons for such idiomatic constructions is like climbing a
tree to catch a fish, a Chinese way of voicing the idea that a
thing is impossible, or trying to seize the moon by the teeth, a
French equivalent.
The author is frank in his introduction. He says that he has relied
on the translators of his reference books for all his examples and
accepts that native speakers in some cases might not recognise the
references because the idioms are obsolete or the translator got it
wrong. He also says, "This horde of plundered international idioms
is intended for low-commitment sampling and easy reading." It's
definitely for dipping into, not for reading all the way through at
once.
The title, by the way, is said to be a Russian idiom. Its English
equivalent is "I'm not pulling your leg". Seriously.
[Jag Bhalla, I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears, and Other
Intriguing Idioms from Around the World; National Geographic Books;
published on 16 June; paperback, 256pp; list price $12.95; ISBN 13:
978-1-4262-0552-1; ISBN 10: 1-4262-0458-2.]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
Amazon UK: GBP7.19 http://wwwords.org?INHN0
Amazon US: US$9.52 http://wwwords.org?INHN3
Amazon Canada: CDN$11.32 http://wwwords.org?INHN8
Amazon Germany: EUR9,99 http://wwwords.org?INHN4
[Please use these links to buy. They get World Wide Words a small
commission at no extra cost to you.]
5. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
John R Cray received a catalogue from the US clothing company Eddie
Bauer. The words "Ultimate Sale" were in a red shield on the cover,
under which was written, "Only happens twice a year".
Over on the American Dialect Society list, Michael J Sheehan told
members that on Monday the CNN news anchor introduced a report from
its chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour in Tehran
by announcing, "I'm sure she'll be able to fill in the holes we've
been raising."
Department of Muddled Metaphors, Australian edition: Laurie Malone
heard a commentator point out on ABC radio on 11 June that "bird
flu and swine flu are two different kettles of fish".
An article on the New York Times site dated 9 June includes this
sentence: "Then come ... a grab-bag of performers and media types
whose common threat might simply be that they are interesting to
know." For Peter Strauss this was a threat too far.
An intriguing sidelight on mammalian reproduction appears on the
Web site of the Handmade Scotch Egg Company, which Bonnie Scott
Edwards visited recently: "These are not simply Scotch Eggs, these
are lovingly prepared meals in their own right - made with eggs
from free to roam happy chickens and pigs."
6. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
F--T In last week's issue I professed myself to be baffled by two
decorously omitted letters in the doctor's expletive quoted from
Tobias Smollett's book The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot
Greaves. As dozens of readers pointed out, they must be A and R, a
witty riposte to the apothecary's reference to the patient's
borborygmata, rumblings in the guts. Others noted that at the time
the phrase "a fart for your ..." was a way to rudely dismiss
something as useless or unimportant. Donald Le Messurier responded:
"I must say that your being puzzled by the missing letters has me
wondering if in fact you are puzzled by their meaning or by their
being omitted. On the other hand you might be pulling our chain,
knowing full well what was meant." Quite so.
BALD Also from last week's issue, several readers suggested that
in some of the instances I cited of animals with names that include
the adjective "bald", meaning "white" - especially "bald eagle" -
it is really a shortened form of "piebald". My references don't
agree, and historical databases show that the bird was named "bald
eagle" before the rather rare "piebald eagle" ever appeared; the
latter name is usually introduced to try to explain the origin of
the more usual form.
CAGMAG Alison Hill responded to my piece about this word in the 6
June issue: "It was used by my grandmother (brought up in Bath, in
the 19th century) and handed on to me by my mother (brought up in
Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in the early 20th). They both said it
as 'keg-meg' (both halves rhyming with 'peg'). They would have
recognised your enquirer's association with 'cheap, sugary foods':
my mother associated it with the kind of cheap sweets sold in my
childhood by the local newsagent for (then) a halfpenny, a penny or
(at most) twopence, while I understand that my grandmother used it
of shop-bought cakes (which she regarded with contempt). The word
was definitely pejorative, not to say insulting. They would have
used it of any food not (in their opinion) worth buying, such as we
now use the term 'junk food' for; but I have never heard it used of
any description of meat."
David Bracey e-mailed from Indiana with memories of a different and
non-pejorative use: "In the 1940s and 1950s in Essex (the UK one),
my dear old Auntie Alice used to serve up delicious little items
she called 'cagmags', which she confected out of breakfast cereal
and chocolate. In my 70 years I've never heard or seen it anywhere
else. Years later, after I checked out 'cagmag' in the OED, I asked
her where she got it from. 'Mother used to use it,' was the reply.
So that puts my 'cagmag' in Essex in the mid to late 1800s. I told
her, 'You're probably the last living person to use that word'.
'That's nice, dear,' was the unimpressed reply."
YOGURT In my item on this word in the issue of 30 May, I said that
a letter in the Turkish original was a g with a hacek accent above
it; several readers told me that it's actually the rather similar
breve. Brian Hudson noted, "There are a few Turkish dialects where
the letter is voiced but, for most speakers, it's a silent letter
which stresses the preceding vowel." Alain Gottcheiner pointed out
that this explains why the most common French spelling is "yaourt",
without the consonant.
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 e-magazine is also available as an RSS feed, which you can
read at http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .
Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ .
B. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Comments on e-magazine 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 and 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 e-magazine 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 e-magazine in mailing
lists, newsletters or newsgroups online, provided that you include
the copyright notice given above. Reproduction of substantial parts
of items in printed publications or Web sites needs permission from
the editor beforehand (wordseditor at worldwidewords.org).
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the WorldWideWords
mailing list