World Wide Words -- 11 Dec 10

Fri Dec 10 17:16:59 UTC 2010

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 716        Saturday 11 December 2010
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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: Opisthograph.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: From soup to nuts.
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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SHEBANG  Several readers, well versed in the colloquialisms of the 
computer business, mentioned its use for the characters "#!" that 
appear at the top of Unix shell scripts. It is clearly based on the 
existing "shebang" but is also a transformation of "hash-bang" or 
"sharp-bang", names for the individual characters, or just possibly 
from "shell-bang". Other names for it include "hash pling", "pound 
bang" and "crunch bang".

COLLYWOBBLES  Garry Davies wrote: "I expect you'll get lots of 
emails from Australia about the word 'collywobbles' [I did - Ed]. 
It's been in regular use over here for many years in reference to 
the Collingwood Football Club, which has played in many losing 
grand finals. The term has become synonymous with stage fright, as 
Collingwood tends to wobble at the final hurdle. We'll keep using 
the term, even though they are the current reigning champions."

2. Weird Words: Opisthograph  /@'pIsT at gra:f/
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It's been a while since I've seen one: do examination papers still 
sternly instruct you to "write on one side of the paper only"? Or 
as Sellar and Yeatman parodied it, "do not on any account attempt 
to write on both sides of the paper at once."

We're used to bound books, in which a blank page is unusual enough 
that the reader may on occasion encounter the reassuring - albeit 
paradoxical - legend, "this page intentionally left blank". It was 
very different when texts were hand-written scrolls on papyrus or 
parchment. To write on both sides would result in handling rapidly 
wearing away the writing on the outer side. To read the back side 
of such a scroll, the reader would have to unroll it and roll it up 
the other way, a time-consuming process made more difficult because 
scrolls, once rolled, took on a permanent bend.

As a result, scrolls written on both sides are rare enough that a 
special term has been created to describe them: "opisthograph". It 
comes via French and Latin from classical Greek "opistho", behind, 
plus "graphos", written. Rather rarely, the word also refers to a 
memorial slab that has been reversed so that a new inscription can 
be made on the blank side.

Books, of course, are for the most part opisthographic, a useful 
property that was a key reason why they superseded scrolls. But 
hand-written documents are still commonly anopisthographic, written 
on one side only.

3. Wordface
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WORD HUNT  Two embarrassing errors on BBC radio programmes last 
Monday and a misspeaking in the House of Commons the same day have 
led to the - possibly temporary - creation of two new slang terms.

It started at 8am, when James Naughtie, a regular presenter of the 
BBC Radio Four flagship breakfast magazine Today, was trailing what 
was to follow after the news. Through a slip of the tongue, he 
changed the surname of the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, into the 
C-word. He was so embarrassed that he could only splutter his way 
through the remainder of his script. (I'm glad to learn that in BBC 
circles the inane giggling sound that erupts in such cases, caused 
by mortification, horror and stress, is still called CORPSING, a 
term that has been borrowed from the theatre.) A colleague, Andrew 
Marr, while mentioning the gaffe 90 minutes later on his own live 
programme, Start The Week, promised listeners he wouldn't use it, 
then accidentally did. Nick Herbert, Labour police spokesman, made 
it a hat trick by saying it in Parliament later in the day when he 
intended to mention cuts. For a moment, it felt like an epidemic.

The Today story went around the world and clips appeared on YouTube 
and elsewhere. A new rhyming slang term appeared: JEREMY, short for 
"Jeremy Hunt". The error began to be referred to as a NAUGHTIE (one 
joker wrote, "Naughtie by name and naughty by nature", a try at 
nominative determinism, in which people take on roles prompted by 
their names). Some newspapers played on his name with headlines 
such as "Radio 4 slips up with Naughtie word", "Naughtie language" 
and "Oh, who's been a Naughtie boy?" These strain at wit: their 
writers surely know James Naughtie (a Scot) says his surname as 
/nQxtI/ (the first bit rhyming with "loch") and not as "naughty". 

The main response to James Naughtie's fluff was sympathy, not least 
among broadcasters, for whom verbal catastrophe is never more than 
a breath away. One infamous train wreck of an announcement was 
perpetrated by the late Jack de Manio. In 1956 a big feature about 
Nigeria was aired on the BBC Home Service to mark a visit by the 
Queen and Prince Philip. Its title was Land of the Niger, but he 
misread his script and added an extra "g" to the last word. That 
one resulted in questions being asked in Parliament.

4. Q and A: From soup to nuts
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Q. On reading your comments on "from cellar to dome", I was struck 
by the resemblance to the phrase (used in the computing industry 
that I write about) of "from soup to nuts", as in a supplier who 
covers the who range of a customer's needs. I'm guessing this 
originates in the US but am curious as to its origins. It clearly 
refers to an ornate meal or banquet, but why the assumption that 
the common listener would have had such a meal? I would welcome 
your insight, as always. [Dave Reeder]

A. The idea that everything, or the beginning to end of a matter, 
can be expressed by the first and last dishes conventionally served 
at a meal goes back a long way. The Romans had a similar idiom, "ab 
ovo usque ad mala", from the egg to the apple, which described the 
typical meal.

You're right to suggest that "from soup to nuts" is American. The 
current entry in the Oxford English Dictionary dates it from 1920 
but with the aid of digital resources that can be taken back some 
way:

    American Dinners. -- The rapidity with which dinner 
    and dessert are eaten by our go-a-head friends is 
    illustrated by the boast of a veteran in the art of 
    speedy mastication, who "could get from soup to nuts in 
    ten minutes."
    [The Working Man's Friend, and Family Instructor, 
    London, 18 Dec. 1852.]

It may not have been an everyday occurrence, but formal or public 
set meals in the USA did commonly start with soup and ended with a 
dessert course in which nuts frequently featured. This is a sample 
dinner menu from a grander establishment than most:

    Oysters on Half Shell, Mock Turtle Soup, Boiled 
    Halibut, Roast Haunch of Venison, Chicken Patties, Baked 
    Lemon Pudding, Jelly Kisses, Raisins, Nuts, Fruit, 
    Coffee.
    [The Whitehouse Cookbook, by Mrs F L Gillette, 
    1887.]

The tradition of such big meals lasted well into the twentieth 
century:

    It was still the heyday of the big summer-resort hotel 
    [in the US] ... with a vast dining room in which were 
    served huge meals on the American plan, with a menu which 
    took one from celery and olives through soup and fish and 
    a roast to ice cream, cake, and nuts and almonds, with 
    sherbet as a cooling encouragement in mid-meal. 
    [The Big Change, by Frederick Lewis Allen, 1952.]

5. Sic!
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Jonathan Warner found a news item dated 29 November on the gambling 
site rgtonline.com about a proposal to outlaw online gambling in 
Cyprus. It was headlined "End neigh for online gambling." 

The San Francisco Chronicle online, Peter Armstrong reports, had a 
caption to a photograph: "After 70-plus years of service, Joy 
Daniels sweeps up debris as construction crews work to demolish the 
Transbay Terminal on Wednesday Dec. 1, 2010 in San Francisco, 
Calif." Unsurprisingly, it has been changed. However, the main 
article suggests the job was slow starting: "After 71 years, 
construction crews work to demolish the Transbay Transit Terminal 
in San Francisco this week."

The New York Times sports section on 3 December featured a photo of 
Brian Cashman, the general manager of the New York Yankees baseball 
team. He was taking part in a "Heights and Lights" holiday event in 
Stamford, Connecticut, in which people climb the outside of office 
buildings. The caption, Judith D Baron tells us, reported that he 
was practicing for "his holiday repelling stunt".

The UK has had some inclement weather recently. John Pearson tells 
us that at one point on Friday 3 December, BBC News online quoted a 
motoring organisation spokesman: "It's busy all over the country 
due to the freezing conditions but the Glasgow area, Leeds and 
north-east England are particular hotspots." Is that good?

On 4 December, the Yahoo! Movie News and Gossip section reported, 
as Eric E noted, that "Winter's Bone, a thriller set in the Ozark 
mountains about a woman trying to protect her family from U.S. 
director Debra Granik, won the main prize at the 28th Torino Film 
Festival." Neat plot twist!

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