World Wide Words -- 20 Feb 10

Michael Quinion wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Feb 19 17:04:52 UTC 2010


WORLD WIDE WORDS        ISSUE 678         Saturday 20 February 2010
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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: Quinquagenary.
3. What I've learned this week.
4. Q and A: Cock-a-hoop.
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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CHITTING  Following up last's week's note on this word, Candida 
Frith-Macdonald wrote: "There are some vegetable seeds (true 
seeds!) that are notoriously troublesome or unreliable or slow to 
germinate in cold ground (beetroot, carrot and parsnip spring to 
mind). You might chit - or pre-chit - these before planting, or 
even buy them so prepared." She went on, "More fun with potatoes: 
for some reason the end with the most closely clustered 'eyes', the 
one you tend to turn upwards when chitting, is called the rose end. 
Take a good look at a potato and try to imagine why. I can't."

PARSON'S POKE  Meg Ross wrote, "In response to the question about 
the Parson's Poke in the game of crib, I am by no means certain 
about this, but I know that when my family plays crib my mom has 
referred to the Scottish Poke, which is a form of shuffling that is 
supposed to be good luck. You push a section of the cards out of 
the middle of the deck with a finger and then place them on top of 
the pile. Doing it too many times in a row, though, can be bad luck 
and it's generally reserved for use in crucial hands." It's known 
to George Andres as the Chinese Poke. Might all three names refer 
to the same process?


2. Weird Words: Quinquagenary  /kwIN'kwadZIn(@)ri/
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The British Marxist magazine The New Left Review announced recently 
it had reached its fiftieth anniversary. True to its uncompromising 
intellectuality, it referred to its "quinquagenary issue".

Here's another relatively recent sighting of this rare word:

    Having dubbed himself variously as the Man Who Sold 
    the World, the Man Who Fell to Earth, and now, simply, 
    _Earthling_, David Bowie has more than just his 
    quinquagenary to celebrate at Madison Square Garden 
    January 9.
    [The New York Magazine, 13 Jan. 1997.]

The term is from classical Latin "quinquagenarius", consisting of 
fifty, or fifty years old. This has also given the English language 
"quinquagenarian", a slightly better known term, whose adjectival 
senses overlap with those of "quinquagenary", in particular one 
that refers to a person in their fifties.

By the way, if the journal survives a further quarter of a century, 
it will reach its semisesquicentennial. The prefix "sesqui-" is a 
shortened form of a Latin word meaning "a half in addition" or 11/2 
times; it appears in the rather better known "sesquicentennial" 
that refers to a a 150th anniversary. So "semisesquicentennial" 
refers to half of 11/2 of 100 or 75. (If you prefer, you can replace 
"semi-" with either of the other prefixes meaning a half, "demi-" 
or "hemi-". All are extremely rare.)

In a further fifty years, the magazine might be able to celebrate 
its quasquicentennial (125th anniversary, a century plus a quarter, 
created irregularly from Latin roots in the early 1960s). Assuming 
a longevity that's extremely rare in any publication, it might one 
day achieve its demisemiseptcentennial (its 175th anniversary, a 
half of a half of 700) and perhaps even its semiquincentennial (its 
250th, half of 500).


3. What I've learned this week
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THE DIGITAL FINGER WRITES ... Reading about something else over the 
weekend I came across WORD OF FINGER. It's a punning revision of 
"word of mouth" for the digital age and refers to communication by 
e-mail, texts and the like. By its nature it is both recent and to 
be found mainly online. Here's a rare example in print:

    If you were a first-time visitor from Mars and you 
    happened to drop into a marketing meeting somewhere in 
    the United States, you might assume that marketing people 
    do nothing but talk about "TGIF." That's Twitter, Google, 
    the internet and Facebook. There's no question these four 
    revolutionary developments have forever changed the 
    marketing function. Word-of-mouth has now become word of 
    finger.
    [Advertising Age, 9 Nov. 2009. For most people, 
    however, "TGIF" still means "Thank God It's Friday".]

ACRONYMIC COUNTRY COLLECTIONS  There are now so many collective 
abbreviations for international groupings that keeping track isn't 
easy. We have the G7 group of finance ministers, which used to be 
the G6 before Canada joined; it became the G8 with the addition of 
Russia and turns into the G8+5 when Brazil, China, India, Mexico 
and South Africa attend. There are also the G11, the G20, the G24, 
the G33, and the G77; others have probably passed me by. Recently, 
the crisis in Europe has generated PIGS, the group of countries 
with severe economic problems; this includes Portugal, Greece and 
Spain. Commentators disagree whether the I stands for Ireland or 
Italy - sometimes both are included, making PIIGS. If Italy, the 
term "Club Med nations" is sometimes substituted, a term borrowed 
from the holiday company. Last weekend, another unsavoury 
collective term appeared: STUPID, for the countries thought to be 
in big trouble if the Greek economy falls apart. The acronym stands 
for Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy and Dubai. 
So the UK isn't one of the PIGS but it is STUPID. That's us put in 
our place.


4. Q and A: Cock-a-hoop
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Q. I know what "cock-a-hoop" means but not why! Do you have any 
ideas? [David Gullen]

A. You're going to be a little disappointed. Many have speculated 
down the years on the origin of this puzzling expression for being 
very obviously pleased about some success - mainly known in Britain 
and Commonwealth countries - but have failed to arrive at any very 
clear conclusion, or at least to none that can be unequivocally 
substantiated.  

The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary say of "cock-a-hoop" 
that it is a phrase "of doubtful origin, the history of which has 
been further obscured by subsequent attempts, explicit or implicit, 
to analyse it." They then spend 400 words explaining why these 
various attempts are spurious. It's impossible to improve on that 
quality of scholarship, but at least I can give the background.

We may be shaky on its origin, but we can say quite a lot about the 
way in which the expression has evolved. It started out meaning to 
drink and make merry with utter abandon, "to make good cheer with 
reckless prodigality", as the OED's editors wrote with linguistic 
exuberance. Over time - the expression is recorded from the middle 
of the sixteenth century - it evolved into meaning reckless or 
elated and hence arrived at its modern meaning.

The problem for word historians is that they're unsure what the 
"cock" bit refers to. Was it a cockerel? That would make sense of 
the idea of crowing triumphantly but doesn't work for the oldest 
sense (though some writers long ago suggested that "hoop" here is 
actually from French "huppe", a tufted crest, in reference to the 
cockerel's comb).

The first recorded guess (and we really have to call it that, even 
though it was put into print in 1670, more than 300 years nearer 
its origin) was by Thomas Blount, who suggested that the cock was 
referring to a spigot, so it was being used in the same way that it 
now appears in "stopcock". Intriguingly, experts are sure this is 
the same word as the one for the bird, not least because the German 
equivalent, "Hahn", has for much the same period of time had both 
meanings. The link might have come about because early examples 
looked like a cock's head with its comb. If the cock is the tap of 
a cask, then the hoop might be one of those enwrapping the vessel. 
Blount suggests that when people intended to seriously make merry, 
they took the cock out of the cask and laid it on one of its hoops, 
signalling that those present should drink unceasingly. As the 
first form of the expression was "cock-on-hoop", this argument is 
plausible on etymological grounds.

We have to leave it there. There's little chance of finding further 
evidence to make the origin clearer or otherwise of seeing clearly 
through the mists of time. Let's enjoy it as an unsolved puzzle.


5. Sic!
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A headline from the Dayton Daily News of Ohio on 13 February was 
noted by Phil Wolff and John Nabors: "Man shot in chest, leg knocks 
on door for help".

"I waited and waited but she never did sit down," e-mailed Russ 
Lynch. He was referring to a sign at the entrance to a restaurant 
in Hawaii: "Please wait for Hostess to be seated".

The Associated Press's muddled sentence demon strikes again. From a 
widely reproduced AP news story, that was seen by Pete Saussy in 
The State, South Carolina: "Authorities say they have charged two 
South Carolina women with murder after finding them inside a 
trailer with the body of a man trying to clean up after he was shot 
in the head."

"Malapropistically apt ..." was the subject line on a message from 
Ryszard Pusz in which he sent a photo of a sign in Oman: "Telephone 
cards are available hear." And speak, presumably.

The online Hastings and St Leonards Observer of East Sussex had a 
headline over a story dated 12 February that intrigued Rob Coates 
(who read it in Perth, Western Australia): "Hastings councillor 
wants dog mess kept on agenda".


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