World Wide Words -- 09 May 09

Fri May 8 14:10:34 UTC 2009

WORLD WIDE WORDS            ISSUE 638           Saturday 9 May 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: Phantasmagoria.
3. Q and A: Cute as a bug's ear.
4. Q and A: By the skin of one's teeth.
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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FIASCO  Many subscribers asked if the curious history of this word 
in English had any connection with the British slang term "bottle", 
meaning courage. Though the story behind "bottle" is a bit obscure, 
we're sure there's no link - for more, see my Topical Words piece 
via http://wwwords.org?BTTL.

Nigel Ross added these footnotes: "Fiasco isn't really the usual 
Italian translation of bottle, the standard word being 'bottiglia'. 
'Fiasco' refers to a specific kind of bottle - the one typically 
used for Chianti, rounded, with a long neck and covered with the 
straw casing to give it a stand. A fiasco may also be its contents, 
the wine. 'Far (un) fiasco' does mean 'to make a bottle', but also 
'to do (a) bottleful'. I think some mention should be made of the 
possible idea that the expression simply comes from having had 'one 
over the eight', a condition in which you are likely to end up 
making a fiasco."

Jane von Maltzahn pointed out that German uses its word for bottle, 
"Flasche", in a related sense. "Er ist eine Flasche", means "he's a 
failure". "Du Flasche!" means "you're useless!"

2. Weird Words: Phantasmagoria  /,fantazm@'gO:rI@/
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In October 1801, a German showman named Paul Philipsthal placed an 
advertisement to publicise an event at the Lyceum Theatre in the 
Strand, London:

    The public are respectfully acquainted, that the 
    PHANTASMAGORIA, or, Grand Cabinet of Optical and 
    Mechanical Curiosities, exhibiting Magical Illusions, and 
    various other wonderful Pieces of Art, will Open in this 
    Place THIS DAY, October 5, and continue every Evening.
    [The Times, London, 5 October 1801.]

By moving a slide projector (then called a magic lantern) backwards 
and forwards on rails, figures were made to increase and decrease 
in size, advance and retreat, dissolve, vanish, and pass into each 
other. Images were projected on a translucent screen between the 
audience and the stage, so that they appeared to hang in the air. 

A month after his spectacle opened Mr Philipsthal elaborated on it 
by proclaiming that it would produce "the Phantoms or Apparitions 
of the dead or absent" and that objects would "freely originate in 
the air, and unfold themselves under various forms and sizes, such 
as imagination alone has hitherto painted them". Much later, a 
fuller description of the performance appeared:

    The head of Dr. Franklin was transformed into a scull; 
    figures which retired with the freshness of life came 
    back in the form of skeletons, and the retiring skeletons 
    returned in the drapery of flesh and blood. The 
    exhibition of these transmutations was followed by 
    spectres, skeletons, and terrific figures; which, instead 
    of receding and vanishing as before, suddenly advanced 
    upon the spectators, becoming larger as they approached 
    them, and finally vanished by appearing to sink into the 
    ground. 
    [Letters on Natural Magic, by David Brewster, 1831.]

Philipsthal's title for his show, Phantasmagoria, was a word he 
borrowed from "fantasmagorie", by then used for some 20 years in 
French-speaking Europe for similar exhibitions. This derived from 
"fantasme", a phantasm, plus possibly the Greek "agora", a place of 
assembly. But as the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary 
said, a little sniffily, promoters may have merely wanted "a mouth-
filling and startling term" and strict etymology be damned.

He was much bothered by imitators who quickly took advantage of his 
success, despite his being granted a patent in February 1802, and 
the popularity of the visual spectacle was so great that the term 
soon became a generic one for this type of exhibition. It also 
entered the language in the modern metaphorical sense of a sequence 
of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream.

[A sketch of Paul Philipsthal's phantasmagoric apparatus is to be 
seen in the online version of this issue, which you will find at 
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/pihq.htm.]

3. Q and A: Cute as a bug's ear
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Q. I recently used the phrase "cute as a bug's ear" in reference to 
my granddaughter. Some of my Chinese friends were confounded by the 
phrase; as one pointed out, there is nothing particularly cute 
about bugs or, presumably, their ears. I have heard this expression 
all my life (I live in the US Midwest) but I have not been able to 
find a satisfactory explanation of its origin. Can you help? [Scott 
Harman]

A. Heavens to Betsy, another quaint American folk expression! It's 
not at all surprising your Chinese friends found it odd.

Presumably working on the principle that the smaller the thing is 
the cuter it will be, the idiom suggests its subject is the epitome 
of cuteness. It means a person, especially a child, who is pretty 
or attractive in a dainty way. Other than that, no good explanation 
exists for the existence of the simile. I'm also reliably informed 
that, entomologically speaking, the idiom is nonsense, since bugs 
don't have ears.

It belongs with a huge set of such expressions, mostly but not all 
American, which no doubt your Chinese friends would be equally 
puzzled by: "cute as a bug in a rug", "cute as a button", "cute as 
a weasel", "cute as a kitten", "cute as a (pet) fox", "cute as a 
bunny", "cute as a speckled puppy", "cute as a kewpie doll", "cute 
as a razor (nick)", "cute as a cupcake", as well as the deeply 
deprecatory "cute as a washtub" (in Raymond Chandler's Farewell My 
Lovely) and "cute as a shithouse rat" (in James Joyce's Ulysses). 
Some of the older ones are using "cute" in its original sense of 
clever, shrewd or quick-witted (the word dates from the eighteenth 
century and is a shortened or aphetic form of "acute"). 

Here's the earliest example I can find of your version:

    "You are very cute, aren't you?" the traveler said 
    sarcastically. "Widder Wheeler says I'm cute as a Bug's 
    ear, and she knows."
    [The News (Frederick, Maryland), 21 Apr. 1900.]

Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary
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This, my most recent book, is now out in paperback in the US.

Gallimaufry is about words that are vanishing from everyday life 
because we don't need them any more. Sometimes one is lost when the 
thing it describes becomes obsolete: would you wear a billycock? It 
may survive in a figurative sense though the original meaning is 
lost: what was the first paraphernalia? Sometimes it gives way to a 
more popular alternative: who still goes to the picture house to 
watch the talkies? More than 1,200 vanishing and vanished words are 
neatly packaged into 31 themes that range from cooking through card 
games to unfashionable fashions and obscure occupations.  

    BUY THE BOOK FROM AMAZON:
    Amazon US:      US$11.53    http://wwwords.org?G12Y
    Amazon UK:      GBP6.74     http://wwwords.org?G93Y
    Amazon Canada:  CDN$14.56   http://wwwords.org?G36Y
    Amazon Germany: EUR10,99    http://wwwords.org?G48Y

Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary is published 
by Oxford University Press. Hardcover: ISBN 0198610629; paperback: 
ISBN 0199551022; pp272, including index.
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4. Q and A: By the skin of one's teeth
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Q. I was born and raised in Maine and still live there. Quite often 
I hear the expression "by the skin of my teeth". We usually say it 
when we have done something just in the nick or time or avoided 
something by a very narrow margin. It doesn't make much sense and 
is rather on the silly side. Does this have any special origin? 
[Cindy Bean]

A. It does indeed: it's Biblical. It appeared first in the Geneva 
Bible of 1560 and was copied in the King James Bible of 1611:

    Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake 
    against me. All my inward friends abhorred me: and they 
    whom I loved are turned against me. My bone cleaveth to 
    my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin 
    of my teeth.
    [Job, Chapter 19, verses 18-20, part of the lamentations 
    of Job to God about his dreadful situation.]

The English phrase was a direct translation of the original Hebrew, 
so it is very ancient indeed.

Since teeth don't have skin, the phrase is hard to make sense of; 
Bible translators and commentators have struggled with it down the 
centuries. The Douay-Rheims Bible has instead "My bone hath cleaved 
to my skin, and nothing but lips are left about my teeth." Other 
writers have suggested that the reference is to the gums. Modern 
versions often imply that Job meant the same by it as we do today 
by adopting our modern standard form with "by" in place of "with". 
The World English Bible, for example, has "I have escaped by the 
skin of my teeth".

Job's misfortunes at the hands of God and Satan were so great that 
he could hardly have believed he had had much of an escape at all. 
Was he saying that the only part of his body that hadn't suffered 
the boils and sores inflicted by Satan was the skin of his lips or 
gums? Was he instead saying allusively that his bodily afflictions 
were so great that he had had a narrow escape from death? One 
modern writer has concluded:

    The explanations for the last metaphor are multiple and 
    unconvincing. Its meaning eludes us.
    [The Book of Job, by John Hartley, 1988.] 

With such scholarly incomprehension, we can hardly blame English 
speakers for possibly having misunderstood it. As usual with 
idioms, we just have to accept that people mean by it what they 
mean by it.

5. Sic!
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We know pigs are intelligent animals, but a headline in Tuesday's 
Garden City Telegram of Kansas made Peter Casey wonder if too much 
reliance was not being placed on this during the flu outbreak: 
"Critics question self-inspection of pigs".

Ray Neinstein was surprised by a sentence he read on msn.com news 
on Tuesday: "Proving the title of her new memoir, 'Resilience,' to 
be accurate, Elizabeth Edwards sheds some highly personal insights 
into her life, her health and her husband's infidelity with Oprah 
Winfrey, in a TV interview to air on The Oprah Winfrey Show 
Thursday." 

A wanted ad from last week's Cleveland Plain Dealer came in from 
Albert Paolino: "Rapidly expanding Steel Service Center wants an 
assertive, bright flat-rolled salesperson to earn $50-$120K, 
experience preferred."

Terry Karney found a headline in the Huffington Post on Wednesday, 
over an article by Jane Fonda: "Adolescent Pregnancy Must Become a 
Priority for All Americans." Form an orderly queue, chaps.

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