World Wide Words -- 02 Jan 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 1 17:11:29 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 671 Saturday 2 January 2010
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Climate velocity.
3. Weird Words: Manticore.
4. What I've learned over the holiday.
5. Q and A: Pearls of wisdom.
6. 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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L-SOFT CONTEST You may recall that in October World Wide Words won
a special prize in the L-Soft Choice Awards for 2008-09. The
commemorative certificate arrived in the post before Christmas
(together with a couple of T-shirts) and if you'd like to take a
look at it, you will find it on the Web-page version of this issue.
Thanks again for your support in the voting. The award is really
yours!
FACEBOOK World Wide Words is well represented on Facebook. I have
a personal page (go via http://wwwords.org?FBMQ) and there's also a
discussion group about topics of interest to language lovers (go
via http://wwwords.org?FBDG). All Facebook members are welcome.
2. Turns of Phrase: Climate velocity
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This technical term suddenly started to appear in non-specialist
publications as a direct result of a paper by a group of US
scientists that appeared in Nature on 24 December.
As the world warms, plants and animals unable to cope with rises in
average temperature will have to migrate towards the poles if they
are to remain in a climate belt to which they are adapted. This
happened after the last Ice Age, when the northern edge of forests
in Europe is thought to have moved north by about a kilometre a
year. This rate of movement is the climate velocity, also called
the temperature velocity. The research group calculates that a rate
of about 0.4 kilometres a year will be needed to keep pace with the
predicted change in our current climate.
One big worry is that there may be no suitable habitat for species
to move into, as a result of human activity. Another is that many
plants will not be able to migrate that fast. The research group
suggested that human intervention may be needed if vulnerable
species are not to die out.
* Time, 24 Dec. 2009: Nevertheless, while the climate-velocity
concept is still crude, it's promising enough that Ackerly is
collaborating with an organization called the Bay Area Open Space
Council on habitat conservation strategies in central California.
* Guardian, 24 Dec. 2009: The scientists say that global warming
will cause temperatures to change so rapidly that almost a third of
the globe could see climate velocities higher than even the most
optimistic estimates of plant migration speeds.
2. Weird Words: Manticore /'mantIkO:/
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This mythical beast is a favourite villain in fantasy stories and
games, so much so that it is surely more widely known today than it
has ever been. As one example, Harry Potter fans will know that
Hagrid bred those nasty blast-ended skrewts from manticores.
The manticore was first mentioned in classical Greek writings 2,500
years ago, which reported rumours from the east. This is the way it
was described in a famous medieval work by an English writer, which
he based on Greek sources:
It is said, that in India is a beast wonderly shapen,
and is like to the bear in body and in hair, and to a man
in face. And hath a right red head, and a full great
mouth, and an horrible, and in either jaw three rows of
teeth distinguished atween. The outer limbs thereof be as
it were the outer limbs of a lion, and his tail is like
to a wild scorpion, with a sting, and smiteth with hard
bristle pricks as a wild swine, and hath an horrible
voice, as the voice of a trumpet, and he runneth full
swiftly, and eateth men.
[De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Order of Things), by
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, written about 1240. It was an
encyclopaedia of science and theology that was compiled
for Franciscan student friars in Magdeburg. The first
English translation of the Latin original, from which
this extract comes, was made by John Trevisa in 1398.]
Despite this detailed and authoritative-sounding description, other
writers and illustrators say the manticore had wings, or that his
body was that of a tiger (which led to his name occasionally being
rendered through folk etymology as "mantiger"); he has been said to
come from Africa as well as India. In heraldry, he has been drawn
as a beast of prey, sometimes with spiral or curved horns or the
feet of a dragon.
But everyone agreed the beast ate people, ate them up so thoroughly
in fact that nothing was left behind. If a person vanished from a
village without a trace, it was assumed that a manticore was to
blame (a splendid cover for murderous villainy, you may think). The
name can be traced back to an Old Persian word meaning a man-eater,
and first appeared in English in John Trevisa's text.
[See the online version for a medieval illustration of the beast.]
3. What I've learned over the holiday
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SUPERMARKET SLANG In a couple of articles about Christmas at
supermarkets in the UK, I learned that a SEND-OUT refers to
despatching items for home delivery, but that a PUSH-OUT is the
removal of a trolley of high-value goods such as alcohol from the
store without bothering to go through a check-out. It came up in a
report about a security man who was congratulated for thwarting a
DOUBLE PUSH-OUT by two athletic thieves.
MORE WORDS OF THE YEAR The WOTY season continued this week with a
list of words from the Oxford University Press that summed up 2009.
They were chosen by Susie Dent, dictionary expert of the Channel 4
television programme Countdown and author of several annual volumes
about word change from Oxford. Some have been mentioned here
already, such as UNFRIEND (though she also includes DEFRIEND as an
alternative), STAYCATION, BOSSNAPPING, EPIGENOME and
GEOENGINEERING. Others in her list are ZOMBIE BANK (a financial
institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but
which continues to operate because of government support), JEGGINGS
(close-fitting leggings of a fabric that resembles denim; from
"jeans" plus "leggings"), and FREEMIUM (a business model in which
some basic services are provided free, with the aim of enticing
users to pay for additional, premium features or content; from
"free" plus "premium").
Susie Dent also mentions SNOLLYGOSTER, a wonderful US political
insult, never much known in the UK, which everybody had thought had
virtually disappeared from the language until it was used in May by
Richard Graham, Conservative parliamentary candidate in Gloucester,
in a letter to The Times demanding that the sitting Labour MP,
Parmjit Dhanda, publish his expenses so that voters could see he
wasn't one. This led to a brief flurry of press articles explaining
that a snollygoster was a shrewd, unprincipled politician. (See
http://wwwords.org?SNOL for my note on the word.)
GERMAN WORDS OF THE YEAR One feature of 2009 was various schemes
to persuade people to dump their expensive and polluting old cars
and buy new ones, in the process passing a lifeline to the auto
industry. In the US it was called Cash for Clunkers; the UK had the
closely similar Scrappage Scheme (though the American term became
popular later in the year). Germans have several names for their
version of the scheme, all based on "Prämie", which means a bonus,
reward or premium: Verschrottungsprämie (scrappage), Umweltprämie
(environment) or Abwrackprämie (wrecking). The last of these was
selected as Word of the Year 2009 by the Gesellschaft für deutsche
Sprache (Association for the German language). Runners-up included
Wachstumsbeschleunigungsgesetz (Growth Acceleration Act), a package
of financial measures which came into force on 1 January.
SCARY GAMES Nightmares I know about, even DAYMARES, nightmarish
fantasies you might experience while awake. But KITEMARES? It's a
common term, I have learned, for those frightening moments when
something goes wrong while kiteboarding, such as getting your lines
tangled with those of another kiteboarder. One Web site compiled a
list of 13 common kitemares, the reading of which reinforced my
enduring New Year's resolution to keep my feet on the ground.
4. Q and A: Pearls of wisdom
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Q. I looked up the word wisdom on your site, and I noticed you did
not have the phrase "pearls of wisdom". I do not know where it came
from or any other information about the saying. I have used it when
talking about a person's advice or qualities. [Tonnie LaRue]
A. It usually refers to advice or to some sage saying, these being
compared to precious pearls dropping from the lips. These days, it
has to be classed as a cliché, a hackneyed phrase whose shine has
been worn off through constant repetition.
It has had plenty of time to become shopworn. The first example I
can find in the standard form is this:
"Oh, how beautiful you will be!" said Osborne, looking
in at the door. "My! my! all gold and feathers and
precious stones and pearls of wisdom! A perfect aide-de-
camp!"
[The Conspirators, by Robert William Chambers, 1807.
The narrator is being measured for his new uniform.]
There are enough other examples around at roughly the same time to
show that it was already becoming a fixed phrase. The origin is
almost certainly this well-known couplet:
But wisdom is a pearl with most success
Sought in still water, and beneath clear skies.
[The Task, by William Cowper, 1781.]
The reference here is undoubtedly to the pearl fishermen of various
parts of the tropics.
The saying is decidedly modern compared with the other well-known
expression involving precious concretions: "pearls before swine",
giving valuable things to people who won't appreciate them. This
has appeared in many forms since it was first written down:
That we ne thrauwe naght our preciouse stones touore
the zuyn.
[Ayenbite of Inwit, by Dan Michelis of Canterbury,
1340. The title means "Remorse of Conscience" (see my
piece via http://wwwords.org?INWT for more details). We
might today render the line as "That we do not throw our
precious stones towards the swine."]
The pearls first appear in John Langland's poem Piers Plowman in
1362 and we've since had versions such as "cast not your pearls
before hogs" and the much more recent admonition "do not throw
pearls to swine". The reference is Biblical, to the Gospel of
Matthew, which in the King James version is "Give not that which is
holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."
6. Sic!
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If you read them casually, many news reports over Christmas might
have evoked incongruous images. The headline I found on the Harlow
Herald's site on Christmas Day might have been read as an anti-
environmental message: "Recycle your wrapping paper and waste this
Christmas." Ron Hann noted that Yahoo! 7 News of Australia reported
the same day on transformational floods: "The system has already
dumped torrential rain on Central Australia, turning Uluru [Ayers
Rock] into a waterfall as it heads east."
A headline over a widely reproduced Associated Press item of 19
December struck several readers as slightly weird: "Man sought in
deadly shooting over iPod shot by police". Another headline that
turned up in many places first appeared on LiveScience.com on 18
December; it caused Randal Bart to worry about the young men of
today: "Boys Explore Cell Phone Features More Than Girls".
Bill Seymour found this headline on The Speaker's Lobby blog on Fox
News on 16 December: "President Signs Bill That Allows Gun-Slinging
AMTRAK Passengers to be Locked in Boxes". It's not a mistake, at
least not by the headline writer. The bill actually specified that
passengers were to be allowed to carry guns on to trains, provided
that the guns were locked away in safes during journeys. A typing
error during the printing of the bill led to the change in meaning.
As the President has now signed the bill into law, another law is
going to have to be passed to amend the wording.
The snowstorms in the US before Christmas led to unconventional
outdoor attire, according to the Associated Press on 19 December:
"White, dressed in a toboggan, scarf and flannel-like jacket, said
she works long hours at the law firm she owns and doesn't get much
time to shop." Thanks to John Gillespie for that.
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