World Wide Words -- 16 Jan 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 15 17:36:44 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 673 Saturday 16 January 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: Drunkard's cloak.
3. What I've learned this week.
4. Q and A: Sundae.
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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TWENTY-THREE SKIDOO Jonathon Green, the editor of Chambers Slang
Dictionary, pointed me to Will Irwin's Confessions of a Con Man of
1909. Irwin describes a dice game using eight dice which he calls
"cloth", the name coming from a sheet of green felt marked off into
squares numbered eight to forty-eight, each giving the result of a
throw. The key point is that square 23 is marked "lose". Will Irwin
comments that "I don't need to say that 'twenty-three', as slang,
comes from this game. The circus used it for years before it was
ever heard on Broadway." To be strict about it, it's not proof of
anything as it stands, because we have only this one reference to
the game and to the meaning of the number, but on the face of it,
it's a plausible origin for the first half of the expression.
A FAR, FAR BETTER THING for me to have done would have been to get
the name of Dickens's hero right: it's Sydney Carton, not Carlton.
JOLLOP Many readers wondered if there might be a link between the
older "jalap" form of this word and either "julep" or "jalopy". A
"julep", before it was that minty drink I associate with Scarlett
O'Hara, was a sweetened liquid medication, so in that sense there's
certainly a connection. However, there's no doubt about its origin
(via French and Latin from Persian words meaning "rose water") and
the two words are etymologically unconnected. As to "jalopy", the
origin of this US slang term for a dilapidated old car is unknown,
though one of the many stories attempting to explain it does link
it with Jalopa in Mexico, the known origin of "jalap".
In the piece, I quoted John Walker, from his Critical Pronouncing
Dictionary of 1791: "The pronunciation of this word, as if written
'Jollop', which Mr. Sheridan has adopted, is, in my opinion, now
confined to the illiterate and vulgar." Kirk Mattoon points out
that this wasn't the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but his
father, Thomas Sheridan, who published A General Dictionary of the
English Language in 1780. In it he did indeed suggest that way of
saying the word ("dzhol-lup"). As the subtitle of his dictionary
indicates ("One main object of which, is, to establish a plain and
permanent standard of pronunciation"), Thomas Sheridan, an Irishman
who was an actor as well as an elocutionist, intended by his work
to teach the English how to speak. It is clear that John Walker was
not amused (neither was Noah Webster, when Sheridan's book became
popular in North America at the end of the century).
2. Weird Words: Drunkard's cloak
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We are in the northern English city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the
late 1660s, during the Cromwellian Commonwealth following the Civil
War. The city fathers became unhappy, as many municipal authorities
had before and many since, with the levels of drunkenness among the
local men.
Their punishment for the offence was novel. If putting the offender
in the pillory or stocks failed to induce sobriety, they had their
law officers take a cask, remove one end, cut a hole in the other
end for the head and two in the sides for the hands and force the
convicted drunk to parade around town wearing this heavy garment
for a set period. This was the drunkard's cloak.
References to it appeared in many works in the nineteenth century,
often as a moralistic warning of the dangers of intemperance:
We may safely affirm that it would be better for them
to be put inside of barrels in that way, than to allow
them to put the contents of rum and whisky barrels inside
themselves, as they are too fond of doing.
[The Friend, a Religious and Literary Journal, 10 June
1854. It was published in Philadelphia by the Society of
Friends.]
It was sometimes implied it was a common punishment in medieval
times. However, that was debunked by William Andrews in his book of
1899, Bygone Punishments. He pointed out that it, and the term, had
never been applied in any other place or at any other period. He
argued that it's uncertain if the punishment was ever even exacted
in Newcastle. There's no reference to it in the city's records and
the sole evidence for it, he said, is this:
He hath seen men drove up and down the streets, with a
great tub or barrel opened in the sides, with a hole in
one end to put through their heads, and so cover their
shoulders and bodies, down to the small of their legs,
and then close the same, called the new-fashioned cloak,
and so make them march to the view of all beholders; and
this is their punishment for drunkards and the like.
[England's Grievance Discovered in Relation to the
Coal Trade, by Ralph Gardner, 1666.]
However, there are a number of references, including one by Samuel
Pepys in his diary in 1660, to its having been a punishment used in
continental Europe for various offences.
Much the same image turns up in cartoons of people who have lost
everything, even their clothes, though usually the barrel is worn
off the shoulder on straps. I suspect this may be an independent
invention and not a reference to this rather rare punishment, as a
shift in sense from drunkenness to bankruptcy, while not utterly
impossible, would be a stretch.
[The online version of this piece - see the link at the top of this
message - contains a nineteenth-century drawing of what the device
looked like.]
3. What I've learned this week
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NOT A PROBLEM BUT AN OPPORTUNITY Susan Dominus, writing in the New
York Times on 8 January (see http://wwwords.org?CSTY), introduced
me to CRISITUNITY, a blend of "crisis" and "opportunity" (though
she spells it "crisatunity", a less common version). It's used by
political activists for a problem that provides an opportunity to
communicate their views and mobilise support. It derives from an
episode of The Simpsons dated 1994, in which Homer's daughter Lisa
tells him that the Chinese use the same word both for "crisis" and
"opportunity". Homer replies, "Yes! Cris-atunity!" Lisa is wrong,
by the way: the story about the Chinese word is folk etymology. Ben
Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus has found it as long ago as 1938 in
a journal for missionaries in China (though there it was said that
the Chinese word for "crisis" is made up of the signs for "danger"
and "opportunity"; Lisa's version is a more recent streamlining of
the tale) and President John F Kennedy gave the story a boost when
he mentioned it in a speech in 1969. See Ben Zimmer's piece about
the story on the Language Log (http://wwwords.org?CCDO).
NA'VI FANS The financial and popular success of James Cameron's
film Avatar, about a classic colonial encounter between exploiters
of mineral wealth and noble savage indigenes on a distant world,
has led to the press and bloggers sarcastically naming its loyal
supporters AVATARDS, even the ones who don't paint their faces
blue. This has been borrowed from the name given to the fans of
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga, who are called TWIHARDS or TWI-
HARDS, which I'm fairly sure is a reversed blend of "diehard
Twilight".
GREY POWER In a speech to an Age UK conference on Tuesday, the
equality minister Harriet Harman seems to have introduced a word to
the British press and public: WELLDERLY. This collective term for
healthy elderly people was noted by Nature in August 2008 as being
"a term likely to irritate linguistic purists", though we regularly
see many that are worse. All early examples are American; from 2002
on they are often associated with a Minneapolis physician, Dr Dale
Anderson. He attempted to promote the health benefits of happiness,
humour and laughter by creating National Act Happy Day and National
Wellderly Day. But he didn't invent the word. It appeared first in
Time magazine in December 1981 in an article reporting on the third
White House Conference on Aging: "In contrast to what the White
House claims is a stereotypic view that the elderly are destitute,
enfeebled, neglected and unfed, the Reaganauts have been promoting
the image of the 'wellderly'." ["Reaganauts": devoted followers of
the policies of President Ronald Reagan, a term supposedly formed
by sarcastic analogy with "argonaut", one of the legendary ancient
Greek heroes who accompanied Jason in the ship Argo in the quest
for the Golden Fleece.]
4. Q and A: Sundae
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Q. Hi, Great site! Any idea where the word "sundae" comes from? As
in "ice-cream sundae"? [David Burry, Montreal]
A. Answering this one seemed easy, since the straightforward answer
is that "sundae" is no more than a respelling of "Sunday".
But what I didn't realise is that providing a fuller answer with
some context to it was going to drop me into the middle of a minor
culinary and etymological battle between US communities empassioned
with civic pride. The early history of this classic American dish
is befogged by claims and counter-claims and bedevilled by a lack
of firm evidence. (What is it with foodstuffs, by the way? Whether
it's hot dogs or hamburgers, cocktails or ice cream, controversy
and disagreement abound.)
Anyhow. Let's get some facts sorted out. The first known appearance
of the word "sundae" is this:
Peach Sundae. Ice cream, vanilla or peach .. 5 ounces.
Crushed or sliced peaches .... 2 ounces. Serve with a
spoon. Pear, orange, raspberry and other fruit sundaes
are made by adding the syrup or fruit to the ice
cream.
[Modern Guide for Soda Dispensers, by Wesley A Bonham,
1897.]
But the same or a similar dish is certainly known earlier. This is
where matters get contentious in a gentlemanly sort of way. The
cities of Ithaca in New York State, Evanston in Illinois, and Two
Rivers in Wisconsin have all competed to be its originators.
Ithaca has a particularly powerful claim both to inventing the dish
and creating a name for it. A advertisement in the local newspaper
has been widely mentioned and reproduced:
Cherry Sunday. A new 10 cent Ice Cream Speciality,
Served only at Platt & Colt's Famous day and night Soda
Fountain.
[Ithaca Daily Journal, 5 Apr. 1892. The new dish was
described in the paper on 11 April as "ice-cream served
in a champagne glass with cherry juice syrup and candied
French cherries on top"; another ad of 28 May promoted
the firm's strawberry Sunday. A letter of March 1894
survives from a Washington patent attorney, showing that
the firm had tried to trademark "Sunday" for its ice
cream concoctions, but was unsuccessful.]
The story associated with its creation is extraordinarily detailed,
based in large measure on a letter of 1936 that was written for the
record by DeForest Christiance, the soda fountain clerk at Platt &
Colt in 1892. He wrote that on Sunday 3 April 1892 the Reverend
John M Scott visited the store and was served with a bowl of ice
cream. The proprietor, Chester Platt (who was the treasurer of Mr
Scott's church and a friend), topped it with cherry syrup and a
candied cherry in an attempt to provide something a little special.
Scott suggested that this delicious new dish be named for the day
it was created - hence "Cherry Sunday". We must be suspicious of
the details of this anecdotal claim, made nearly four decades after
the event, but the newspaper evidence shows that the name became
known in Ithaca almost immediately.
Whether the competing claims of the other cities to be the creators
of the dish have merit, I'm ill-placed to judge and don't intend to
try. It is often said that the term was invented because the dish
was originally only served on Sundays, as a way to circumvent local
edicts against serving ice-cream sodas on the Sabbath. This story
is particularly associated with the staunchly Methodist Evanston.
But the evidence of these printed sources makes the claim of Ithaca
to be the birthplace of the "sunday" a strong one. What we don't
know for sure is whether it was this word from this community that
became the basis for the later "sundae".
Why the spelling was changed at all is also unclear. It's said it
was out of deference to religious people's feelings about the use
of the word "Sunday" for commercial purposes. Or it might have been
through an attempt by some seller to differentiate his product from
that of the competition, only to sadly see it become generic. The
spelling "Sundi" is also on record, though it is very rare. In a
few places, notably around Fitchburg and North Adams in
Massachusetts, they were advertised in the late 1890s as "college
ices".
5. Sic!
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Your Freudian slip is showing: a medical item on the Times Web site
dated 9 January pleased Pete Jones because of a delightful error in
spelling: "Viagra takes half an hour to work and the effects last
for only four hours. Cialis takes 15 minutes to work and the
effects last thirty-sex hours."
You may argue, as many have following my snarky comment last week,
that we must wait a year to celebrate 2001-2010 as the first decade
of the century, rather than 2000-2009. But it could be worse. Jim
Tang suggests that the Maui News on Hawaii is either calendrically
challenged or is trying too hard to please everyone. A headline on
3 January: "2000 to 2010 decade in review".
In the Trivia section on the Internet Movie Database, Brendan Hale
found the following on 10 January: "Avatars have five fingers and
toes on their hands and feet and eyebrows, whereas the Na'vi only
have four and no eyebrows."
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