World Wide Words -- 03 Oct 09
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 2 18:19:06 UTC 2009
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 659 Saturday 3 October 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: Abditory.
3. Q and A: Collapse of stout party.
4. Q and A: Hard lines.
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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AGRESTIC Mark Hyman wrote, "Many years ago when studying Botany I
learnt that there are two types of weeds - agrestal, which grow on
agricultural land and ruderal, which grow on waste land. Too useful
a pair to discard, I would have thought, and another obscure word
to think about."
HERF David Warnick suggested a possible origin for this term. He
said that "herf" was a fairly common slang term during the Vietnam
War, meaning to carry a heavy load for a long way. It's possible
that a term for straining under a heavy weight could have become
softened in time to the difficulty of drawing on a densely rolled
cigarette.
VARIOUS FOLLOW-UPS Two readers whose alma mater is Christ Church,
Oxford, pointed out that its name doesn't include "college". Many
others noted that the term "excellence creep" is a reformulation
of, or an error of memory for, either "feature creep" or "creeping
featuritis", both long known in product development. Some asked if
"pishing" had any connection with the Yiddish "pisher" for a young
inexperienced person or a person of no consequence, which literally
means a urinator; I was sure that it didn't, so didn't mention the
Yiddish word. Two Chinese speakers commented that Andrew Robinson's
assertion in his Writing and Script, to the effect that Chinese
script isn't readable by all Chinese, is incorrect. Two readers
noted that a cement overcoat (mentioned in this section last time
in a quote about "jorum") would have the tensile strength of a
blancmange and that "concrete overcoat" would be the more correct
term. True, of course, but language frequently takes no account of
practicalities and "cement" is common in "cement overcoat", "cement
overshoes" and related formulations.
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2. Weird Words: Abditory /'abdIt at rI/
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In Stout Fellow: A Guide Through Nero Wolfe's World, published in
2003, O E McBride lists 60 words Rex Stout uses that "fall outside
the average vocabulary". Readers of this e-magazine mostly have
vocabularies that also fit this description and so will be easy
with words such as "egregious", "fatuous", "mendacity", "sapient"
and "tyro".
However, few will ever have come across "abditory", which leads the
alphabetical listing. It's a hiding place, from Latin "abditorium",
a hiding place, whose source is "abdere", to put away or hide. It
appears in the story Instead of Evidence, in which explosive
devices were found in an abditory in a factory.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes its first example from 1658,
but it has never been in common use. Oddly, it is now more often
employed than at any time in its history, not only because of Rex
Stout but also by SF and fantasy authors, who have occasionally
found it useful to help build a sense of otherness:
That abditory, the one in the buffet at home,
contained a set of spare passports and other papers that
might be useful under extraordinary circumstances. Other
abditories, like the compartment under the front hall
stairway, contained survival kits, or weapons, or money,
or things as prosaic as the emergency roll of toilet
paper.
[The Crimson Sky, by Joel Rosenberg, 1998.]
[Thanks to Art Scott for telling me about this word.]
3. Q and A: Collapse of stout party
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Q. I was engaging in cruciverbals the other day when I came across
a clue in a puzzle by Logodaedalus in one of The Guardian Cryptic
Crosswords books: "Breakdown of beer celebration (punch line!)", to
which the solution is "collapse of stout party". Having managed to
solve the clue, I was still somewhat puzzled, as this particular
juxtaposition of words means diddly-squat to me. I am still in the
dark whether "punch" refers to the magazine, or to Judy's bitter
half, and whether "stout" is the ale exemplified by Guinness, or
just a dysphemism for ventrally challenged. Could you possibly
expound this recondite matter? [Charlotte George, Germany]
A. I suspect your question may be more linguistically entertaining
than my answer, but let's give it a go.
The expression "collapse of stout party" is British. It is said to
be the punchline of a certain kind of ponderous and verbose joke
characteristic of the nineteenth century. It signals that the
victim has realised that he has been bested and is wilting in
embarrassment and chagrin.
"Party" means a person, a sense also of the nineteenth century. It
was borrowed from the term for one side of a legal argument but
here means merely the individual in question; "stout" certainly
does mean "fat" (it's not the figurative sense of determined and
brave in idioms such as "stout fellow"). The two put together, as
"stout party", could be a humorous reference to a fat person in the
nineteenth century. Having a pompous fat man as the butt of a joke
increases the humour and provokes the mental image of his being
deflated like a balloon being pricked. Hence "collapse".
It has been widely assumed by observers and even by editors of the
magazine Punch that the term appeared in some of the long-winded
and lumbering jokes that captioned cartoons in that magazine during
its heyday (incidentally, this sense of "cartoon", for a humorously
exaggerated drawing, was invented by Punch in 1843 as an extension
to the older idea of a preparatory design for a painting). This is
a fairly typical example:
PUTTING THE OTHER FOOT IN IT
Mother: "Ethel is the very image of what I was at her
age."
He: "Really! I shouldn't have thought it possible!"
Mother (coldly): "May I ask why?"
He (seeing his error, and striving to rectify it): "Oh
- er - I was forgetting what a long time ago that must
have been!"
[Punch, 11 Sep. 1901. The online version of this issue
has the original cartoon, too.]
You quoted this in your original question:
To many people Victorian wit and humour is summed up
by Punch, when every joke is supposed to end with
"Collapse of Stout Party", though this phrase tends to be
as elusive as "Elementary, my dear Watson" in the
Sherlock Holmes sagas.
[Collapse of Stout Party, by Ronald Pearsall, 1975. He
investigated many types of nineteenth-century humour and
wrote of Punch that "it was strong on weak puns".]
Like Mr Pearsall, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (who
include an entry for the phrase) have not been able to find it in
any nineteenth-century issue of Punch magazine, nor indeed from the
nineteenth century at all. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, in
similar vein, notes, "the phrase is supposed to come from Punch, as
the characteristic finishing line of a joke, but no actual example
has been traced, although the character Stout Party appeared in a
cartoon of 1855". The consensus ruins that crossword clue.
My own enquiries suggest that it became a catchphrase only in the
1950s. The earliest example that I can find is in Denis Johnston's
account of his experiences as a BBC war correspondent, Nine Rivers
>From Jordan, published in 1953. A stage play by Trevor Peacock with
the title Collapse of Stout Party appeared in 1966 and a book of
the same title by Sir Julian Critchley, detailing the near-demise
of the Conservative Party following the 1997 election, came out in
1998. The expression is still sometimes encountered.
Why it should have become popular so long after the period to which
it nominally refers is a bit of a puzzle. I can only assume that
some wit invented it and attributed it to Punch to give it a patina
of historical verisimilitude, perhaps with memories of having seen
"stout party". The first explicit link with Punch that I can find
is in an account in the New York Times in 1955 of a London meeting
chaired by Malcolm Muggeridge, then the editor of Punch.
All in all, an unsatisfactory state of affairs, etymology-wise.
4. Q and A: Hard lines
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Q. While recently re-reading an Anthony Trollope novel, I twice saw
the phrase "hard lines", which I understood in context but do not
know why it has that meaning. A little research confirmed that it
meant misfortune or bad luck but not why. Can you help? [Addeane
Caelleigh, USA]
A. You would have to read a book of something like the antiquity of
a Trollope novel to find this phrase used unselfconsciously and
seriously in the sense of ill luck or bad fortune. More recently,
it has become an interjection sympathising with a friend's bad luck
("Hard lines, old chap!") but it's dated and tends to be humorous
in intent when it does appear, often in those graveyards of antique
clichés, newspaper headlines and the sports pages.
Because it is opaque, a couple of intriguing suggestions have been
made about where it comes from. (We're certain, by the way, that it
has nothing to do with phrases like "taking a hard line", taking an
uncompromising or unyielding stand.)
It was suggested in John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary in 1869
that it was a soldier's term for hard duty in the lines in front of
the enemy. The Oxford English Dictionary argues, on the basis of
its early citations and perhaps also the fact that it was common
among seafarers, that it may originally have been a nautical term.
It is easy to imagine its being linked to working the ropes on
board ship in icy weather.
It is now accepted that "lines" is a figurative term based on this
Biblical appearance:
The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea,
I have a goodly heritage.
[Psalms 16:5, from the King James Bible, 1611. The OED
argues that "lines" here refers to the marking out of
land for a dwelling-place.]
As a result of this verse, "lines" came to mean one's lot, one's
condition in life, in particular as it has been determined by fate
or destiny. It's easy to see how "hard lines" could have developed
from it to mean ill fortune.
The OED's first example is from our old friend Sir Walter Scott, in
Redgauntlet, 1824. A further pointer to its not being nautical is a
number of land-based earlier examples that electronic searches are
now able to provide. The earliest I've found is this:
In its direful Circumstances, lies the greatest
Hardship of Poverty. It sometimes afflicts like a
judicial Fatality, a Famine or a Plague; having no Corn
in Egypt perhaps; no Money in the Land of the Living; no
Sustenance in a poor Family; nothing to provide for an
ordinary Livelihood, nor to procure a common Maintenance
of a Meal's Meat or the meanest Necessaries of Life, it
may be, to stop the Mouths of a Wife and Children a-
starving at Home, for Want of due Succour and their daily
Bread. These are very hard Lines in Truth!
[The Royal Marriage, by Oswald Dykes, 1722.]
5. Sic!
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Gillian Christie e-mailed from New Zealand. "On our journey home
from a recent holiday we stopped for a break in Taihape, a town in
central North Island. One shop we visited displayed their policy
for returned items and refunds, with the condition being that "a
receipt must be visualised". I desperately wanted to take something
into the shop with an imaginary receipt and test it out..."
Across the Tasman Sea, Julie Egan reports: "In a recent episode of
the Australian television documentary series The Force: Behind the
Line on police operations, I heard that police were investigating
the 'inextricable disappearance' of a doctor and his secretary.
There turned out to be a more innocent explanation than the
unfortunate adjective suggests."
Still in Australia, Aileen Kelly, Susan Korrel and Peter Banks all
separately read a report on ABC Online News on Wednesday about a
chance for tourists in Darwin to have a hands-on experience with
crocodiles: "But before the inexperienced croc handlers could get
close to the beasts, which ranged in size from 1.2 to 2 metres,
they were temporarily stunned with an electric shock and subdued
with tape by experts."
Moving north: "Apparently we in Canada," grumbled Marc Slingerland,
"will soon be indistinguishable from one another; a recent mailing
from our MP, on the topic of identity theft, included the following
promise: 'We are making the possession of personal identity a crime
punishable by a five-year maximum sentence behind bars.'"
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