World Wide Words -- 21 Aug 10

Fri Aug 20 16:44:09 UTC 2010

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 700          Saturday 21 August 2010
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Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS
Editor: Michael Quinion             US advisory editor: Julane Marx
Website: http://www.worldwidewords.org               ISSN 1470-1448     
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Ugsome.
3. Wordface.
4. Turns of Phrase: NDM-1.
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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SILLY SEASON  "In Germany," noted Werner Eppinger, "we have two 
really silly equivalents to the comparatively boring term 'silly 
season': 'Sauregurkenzeit' (pickled gherkins time) and 'Sommerloch' 
(summer hole)." Martin Cleaver e-mailed, "You reminded me of the 
Dutch translation, 'komkommertijd'. The term - literally 'cucumber 
time' - was apparently borrowed from English." James Campbell noted 
that "agurktid" in Norwegian also means "cucumber time" and is 
likewise said to be from English.

"Cucumber time" appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, with the 
first example from the Dictionary of the Canting Crew of 1700; the 
entry is prefaced by the mystified comment, "used with some obscure 
reference to a tailor". A correspondent to Notes and Queries in 
November 1853 gave an explanation that I hope isn't a popular 
etymology: "Cucumber Time. - This term, which the working-tailors 
of England use to denote that which their masters call 'the flat 
season,' has been imported from a country which periodically sends 
many hundreds of its tailors to seek employment in our metropolis. 
The German phrase is 'Die saure Gurken Zeit,' or pickled gherkin 
time." So it would seem that the Dutch and Norwegian expressions 
were borrowed from English, which got it from German. Who said 
etymology was simple?

NINE DAYS' WONDER  J B Segal, Leslie Klinger and Nicholas Willmott 
all pointed out that Shakespeare probably wasn't the first to use 
the phrase. For a bet, William Kemp (or Kempe), a famous clown of 
the Elizabethan stage, Morris-danced the 130 miles (200 km) from 
London to Norwich over a period of nine days during February and 
March 1600. He published his account of it later that year under 
the title Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder. His play on words suggests that 
the idiom was already known in that form. 

I referred to Shakespeare's use of the idiom in his play As You 
Like It. There is some doubt about when that was written. The date 
of 1616 that I gave is wrong, not least because Shakespeare died in 
April 1616 after some years' retirement. It is the date included, 
very cautiously, in the OED's rather elderly entry, but modern 
scholarship suggests that the play was recorded at the Stationers' 
Company in 1600 and was probably first performed in 1603; it was 
published in the First Folio of 1623. 

SITE UPDATES  I've added pieces to the website on "cucumber time" 
and another term from last time, "gastro-diplomacy". Both can be 
read via the home page, http://www.worldwidewords.org .

NUMERICAL NOTE  Since this issue is number 700, I've now reached 
another milestone along the way to wherever I'm going (at least I 
don't have to Morris-dance the route). Following a whimsical fancy 
I wrote a little computer program to count the number of words in 
every issue since the first, dated 12 June 1996. It came to 1.42 
million. My last book, Why Is Q Always Followed by U? (of which the 
paperback is coming out worldwide on 28 October: reserve your copy 
now) has about 100,000 words, so 14 years of World Wide Words is 
equivalent to another 14 such books. No wonder I occasionally feel 
a bit tired.

2. Weird Words: Ugsome  /'Vgs at m/
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If this reminds you of the inarticulate cry of disgust that's most 
often spelled "ugh!" then you're on the mark. "Ugh" comes from the 
much less familiar "ugsome", something loathsome or horrible. In a 
case of linguistic turn-and-turn-about, "ugsome" derives from the 
ancient and long defunct word "ug", which about a millennium ago 
came into English from the Old Norse "ugga", to dread. That Old 
Norse word is also the source of "ugly" (which meant frightful or 
horrible before it weakened to refer to something merely unpleasing 
in appearance). You could argue that "ugsome" is the opposite of 
"handsome".

In the centuries before Shakespeare, "ugsome" was common enough, 
mostly in Scotland and northern England, but then almost completely 
died out except in dialect. It was resurrected in the eighteenth 
century by writers seeking an archaic word to help set a historical 
scene. The following century, popular authors such as Sir Walter 
Scott ("Like an auld dog that trails its useless ugsome carcass 
into some bush or bracken"), Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton ("''Tis an 
ugsome bit of road!' said the Corporal, looking round him") and 
Charles Dickens ("One very ugsome devil with goggling eyes, seems 
to hold up frightful claws, to bar the traveller's way") regained 
it some small exposure, though it was never very popular.

Today, "ugsome" is unknown to most English-speaking people. This is 
a rare modern example:

    The link between motorists and rats may not be 
    immediately obvious - except to that tiny proportion of 
    the population for which car-users are pests and their 
    vehicles ugsome - but drivers and rats both react badly 
    to the stress brought on by crowded conditions. 
    [Yorkshire Post, 6 Sep. 2004.]

3. Wordface
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NEW DICTIONARY WORDS  Thursday saw the publication of a new edition 
of the single-volume Oxford Dictionary of English. Since the last 
update was in 2005, the 2,000 new entries present an interesting 
snapshot of changes to our vocabulary since. The editors are able 
to react quickly to new terms, as you can tell by the inclusion of 
"vuvuzela", the football fan's trumpet which noisily blasted into 
the public consciousness at this summer's World Cup.

Climate change has brought several terms into the new edition, 
including "carbon capture and storage" (trapping and storing carbon 
dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels) and "geo-engineering" 
(manipulation of the global environment to counteract the effects 
of global warming). The internet has generated "paywall" (which 
restricts website access to subscribers), "microblogging" (posting 
short entries on a blog or on Twitter), "netbook" (a small laptop 
computer mainly used to access the internet), "tweetup" (a meeting 
arranged through Twitter), "viral" (of information or advertising 
that's transmitted person-to-person online) and "interweb" (a 
humorous term for the internet). Politics and business have 
contributed several new words and phrases including "exit strategy" 
(a way out of a situation, especially military), "surge" (of 
troops), "toxic debt", debt which has a high risk of default, and 
"deleveraging" (the process or practice of reducing the level of 
one's debt by rapidly selling one's assets). On a personal level, 
new entries include "overthink" (think or analyse too much), 
"catastrophise" (view or present a situation as much worse than it 
actually is), and "soft skills" (personal attributes that enable 
someone to interact effectively with other people).

Not every freshly included term is new. Many appear for the first 
time because they are now used enough that the editors feel people 
will want to turn to the dictionary for enlightenment. Among these 
are "turducken" (a roast dish consisting of a small chicken inside 
a duck inside a turkey) and "LBD" (short for Little Black Dress), 
together with the phrases "on the naughty step" (a way to punish a 
toddler for misbehaviour) and "national treasure" (a person or 
thing deemed to be of value to a nation, particularly culturally).

[I plan to write a fuller review in the next few days, which I hope 
to put on the website next Saturday.]

4. Turns of Phrase: NDM-1
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Press reports in the past week have been predicting the end of the 
antibiotic era if bacteria that generate an enzyme known as NDM-1 
("New Delhi metallo-ß-lactamase-1") spread widely. The enzyme is 
able to counter all known antibiotics. Bacteria containing it are 
potentially a more serious threat to public health than the most 
resistant kind that's currently known, MRSA (methicillin-resistant 
staphylococcus aureus).

As its full name suggests, NDM-1 is linked to India, first being 
identified in a Swedish patient who received medical treatment in 
New Delhi in December 2009. It is spreading to other countries as a 
result of medical tourism, in which people travel to the Indian 
subcontinent to get less expensive medical treatment. The gene that 
generates NDM-1 is at the moment known to exist in two species of 
bacteria, which can respectively cause fatal pneumonia and urinary 
tract infections. However, in common with other bacterial genes it 
can transfer to other species, so potentially widening its impact.

The threat was reported in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases 
on 11 August, which concluded NDM-1 is "potentially a major global 
health problem" and that "co-ordinated international surveillance 
is needed". The Indian government responded angrily to the claim 
that it originated in India and in particular to its name.

    NDM-1-producing bacteria are resistant to many 
    existing antibiotics including carbapenems - a class of 
    drugs often reserved for emergency use and 'last resort' 
    treatment.
    [Daily Mail, 12 Aug. 2010.]

    A team of researchers from a leading private hospital 
    in Mumbai came to similar conclusions as the British 
    study, which warned that foreigners coming to India for 
    cut-price treatment could pick up NDM-1 and spread it 
    worldwide.
    [Vancouver Sun, 13 Aug. 2010.]

5. Sic!
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A classic misplaced modifier appeared in a CBC News headline on 14 
August: "Days from death, Fla. wildlife officials free plastic jar 
that was stuck on bear cub's head". Thanks to Yin Liu, Mike DiCola 
and Didi Pollock for sending that in.

Ian Price tells us about a headline from UK broadcaster Sky News on 
Tuesday: "Travel operator Kiss Flights has ceased trading, leaving 
thousands of holidaymakers abroad and future bookings up in the 
air." Or perhaps not.

Another headline, this time in the Cincinnati Enquirer of Ohio last 
Sunday (sent in by Brian Halsall), could be taken two ways: "Camp 
helps burn survivors".

A front-page headline in the Buffalo News last Monday was noted by 
Glor: "Four fatally shot outside downtown City Grill as part of 
anniversary celebration". So it happens every year, then?

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