World Wide Words -- 23 Jan 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jan 22 16:01:41 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 674 Saturday 23 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. Weird Words: Hoosegow.
3. What I've learned this week.
4. Q and A: Centre around.
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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DATE ERRORS In the e-mail edition (I changed the RSS and online
ones), there were two typing errors in dates. The drunkard's cloak
could not have been in use in the Cromwellian period in England in
the late 1660s, as that period ended with the restoration of the
monarchy in 1660. It should have read "late 1640s". And a reference
to John F Kennedy making a speech in 1969 was equally impossible:
it should have read "1959".
AVATARD A chorus of disagreement came from readers over this. All
were sure it's from "Avatar" + "retard", as are "celebutard" and a
few other slang terms, using "retard" in its current abusive sense
of a mentally retarded person. Another term of similar origin, I am
told, is "freetard", which was supplied by several correspondents.
Jeremy Ardley described it thus: "it's an epithet used by those who
pay for their software for those who choose to use free open-source
software. The implication is that if you get it for free it ain't
worth diddly-squat and you're mentally challenged if you choose to
use it." Others mentioned politically motivated insults of similar
formation, such as "conservatard" (by coincidence, my newspaper
last Sunday included the related term "Libtard", though the initial
capital letter showed that it referred specifically to the British
Liberal Democrat party). On the other hand, there's a fair level of
agreement that "Twihard" is a pun on "tryhard", a person who works
too hard to gain favour or fit in, and doesn't include the "-tard"
ending.
AFFIXES Various comments on word endings last week and this have
persuaded me to add three entries to my site about the building
blocks of English (http://www.affixes.org): the three are "-tard"
(http://wwwords.org?TARD), "-flation" (http://wwwords.org?FLTN) and
"-naut" (http://wwwords.org?NAUT).
2. Weird Words: Hoosegow /'hu:sgau/
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It's a fine old American slang term for a jail, still widely known
today. Most people would connect it with the nineteenth-century
cowboys of the Wild West. It's very likely that they knew the word,
but it didn't start to be written down until the early twentieth
century. The first known example was penned by Harry Fisher, better
known as Bud, in one of his early Mutt & Jeff cartoons, of 1908:
"Mutt ... may be released from the hooze gow."
The word is from Mexican Spanish "juzgao", a jail, which came from
"juzgado" for a tribunal or courtroom. It shifted to mean a jail
because the two were often in the same building (and the path from
the one to the other was usually swift and certain). In sense and
language origin it's a relative of "calaboose", which is also a
prison (from "calabozo", a dungeon, via the French of Louisiana).
"Hoosegow" is now the standard spelling, though in its early days
it was written half a dozen different ways. We link it in our minds
with cowboys largely because so much of their lingo was taken from
Spanish and then mangled to fit English ideas of the way to say it.
That included "buckaroo" (Spanish "vaquero"), "bronco" (from a word
that meant rough or rude), "lasso" ("lazo"), "lariat" ("la reata"),
"chaps" ("chaparreras"), "hackamore bridles" ("jáquima"), "mustang"
("mesteña"), cinch (cincha), as well as the direct borrowings of
"corral" and "rodeo".
3. What I've learned this week
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BY ANY OTHER NAME In various countries you might be an astronaut,
a cosmonaut or a taikonaut (from Chinese "tai kong", space, though
the official Chinese word is "yuhangyuan"). In 2006, the Indian
Space Research Organisation sought a word from the ancient Sanskrit
language for its own future spacefarers. The suggestions included
"antarikshyatri" ("antariksha" means the firmament or space between
earth and heaven and "yatri" is a traveller) and "gaganaut" (from
"gagan", sky). The first was thought unwieldy and the second made
English speakers think of "gaga". The final choice was VYOMANAUT.
The term attracted attention in the western media when it was used
in the Indian press at the beginning of this month, although I've
traced it back a couple of years. It comes from another Sanskrit
word for sky, "vyoma", said as /vi:@um@/ ("veeohma"). It's the most
recent in a set of words that contain the suffix "-naut", which is
from Greek "nautes", a sailor (as in Jason and the Argonauts). It
appeared first in "aeronaut" in 1784, a balloonist, a term that
came into English from French. "Astronaut" was modelled on it in
speculative writing in the 1920s, long before one actually existed.
SWIFT KICK IN HOLLYWOOD Any one who uses a computer will know the
verb "reboot", to restart its operating system. Hollywood has taken
this up as a jargon term meaning to dust off an old franchise such
as Conan the Barbarian, Star Trek, Spiderman or the Fantastic Four.
Vinegary commentators suggest the main reasons for borrowing it -
apart, of course, from the eternal quest for novelty - is to avoid
the dreaded word "remake", which has all too often meant a third-
rate version of a classic movie.
WINDY WORDS We're familiar with inflation and its relatives, among
them deflation, reflation, hyperinflation, stagflation. You may
know slumpflation (combined economic decline and rising inflation).
In the past two decades, "-flation" has become a combining form. A
writer in the journal American Speech in 1999 listed adflation,
Euroflation, globflation, gradeflation, kidflation, legisflation,
medflation, musicflation, oilflation, and taxflation, to which from
my own searches I can add stickyflation (which has much the same
sense as slumpflation), biflation (simultaneous inflation and
deflation, which feels like a perverse conjuring trick), and the
temporary forms beerflation, coalflation and coinflation. Another
example turned up last Saturday: TRAINFLATION. This is the regular
rise in rail fares beyond inflation we are experiencing in the UK.
INITIAL LINGO Every profession has its jargon, but especially one
so influenced by government bureaucracy as is British teaching. The
education section of the Guardian told me on Tuesday that once they
have finished their ITT, NQTs can go in for an MTL run by the TDA.
That is, following their Initial Teacher Training, Newly Qualified
Teachers can enrol for the Masters Degree in Teaching and Learning,
operated by the Training and Development Agency for Schools. It
would seem that an essential part of ITT needs to be TIT, Teaching
Initialisms to Teachers.
INFLATED LANGUAGE My least favourite word of the week appeared in
the Guardian on Monday: "demetropolitanisation". In this case, it
referred to the move of various BBC departments out of London to
other parts of the UK. More generally, the term has been used by
planners to refer to the movement of people and businesses out of
metropolitan areas, especially to what are sometimes called "urban
villages".
4. Q and A: Centre around
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Q. I found this sentence in Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger:
"Henry appreciated the comparison although he finds that his own
work often centers around a single character." I think it should be
"center on". Am I correct? [Dasu Krishnamoorty]
A. Several respected writers on language have agreed with you, very
firmly in some cases. The form - which has been around since the
1860s but which has become much more common in the latter part of
the twentieth century - has faced criticism from the 1920s onward,
round the time it began to appear often enough to be noticed. One
modern standard work summarises objections to it like this:
Something can "center on" (avoid "upon") or "revolve
around" something else but it cannot "center around", as
the center is technically a single point. The error is
common.
[Garner's Modern American Usage, by Bryan A Garner,
2003.]
However, many other writers down the years have disagreed, as do
several other modern standard works. The problem is that geometric
logic is fighting idiomatic and figurative usage. The other side is
well put in another American work of the same year as Garner's:
"Center around", a standard idiom, has often been
objected to as illogical. The logic on which the
objections are based is irrelevant, since "center around"
is an idiom and idioms have their own logic.
[Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 2003.]
As a famous philosopher used to say on the BBC's Brains Trust back
in the 1940s, it all depends what you mean by "centre". Outside the
mathematical sciences, a centre isn't a Euclidean point that has
position but no extent, but a location with fuzzy boundaries. A
town centre is a place that any speaker of English will understand,
but it isn't a point, it's an area.
However, if we look at real-world examples of the way people employ
the idiom, we find there isn't too large a gap between the opposing
views. Users usually implicitly agree that you can't physically
centre around something. When they use the idiom, it only rarely
refers to real places but commonly to figurative locations:
Both the House and Senate bills center around a cap-
and-trade system that limits carbon emissions.
[Forbes, 7 Oct. 2009.]
Weight-loss plans that center around a diet of below
1,000 calories do not, they say, lead to long-lasting
weight loss.
[New York Times, 22 Oct. 2009.]
"Centre around" feels wrong to me, I have to admit, no doubt a
result of my technical background. But - as the Merriam-Webster
Dictionary points out - the idiom is now standard. That's true not
only of the US but other countries too, though the spelling varies:
Other concerns centre around pricing.
[Daily Telegraph, 3 Oct. 2009. "Round" used to be more
common, but there has been a noticeable shift in the UK
towards "around" in the past decade or so.]
As Bryan Garner's and other style guides note, many other phrases
are available if "centre around" is unacceptable. And it might be
better avoided in any case if you worry about being charged with
illogicality. You have "centre on" and "centre in" and also
"revolve around" as possibilities.
5. Sic!
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An article of 16 January in the Arizona Republic describes a New
Orleans resident as a "lifelong native". This differentiates him,
Bob Kelly guesses, from late-arriving natives.
Gregory Haines was stopped dead by the opening paragraph of a story
in the Sydney Daily Telegraph on 20 January: "A couple were left
red-faced during a late-night dash for a takeaway when they were
pulled up by RBT police wearing nothing but their undies."
Also in Australia, John Straford spotted a notice in a cake shop in
Balwyn, Melbourne: "TODAY ONLY, HALF BAKED CHEESECAKE $4.50."
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