World Wide Words -- 03 Jul 10

Fri Jul 2 16:08:46 UTC 2010

WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 693           Saturday 3 July 2010
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS
Editor: Michael Quinion             US advisory editor: Julane Marx
Website: http://www.worldwidewords.org               ISSN 1470-1448     
-------------------------------------------------------------------

      A formatted version of this e-magazine is available 
      online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/ncod.htm

     This e-magazine is best viewed in a fixed-pitch font.
   For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON

Contents
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Gallivant.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Boot camp.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.

1. Feedback, notes and comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ALPHABETICISED NOUNS  Y Tani was one of several readers with good 
knowledge of Japan who responded in mystification to my Wordface 
item last week. This, you may recall, concerned mature Japanese 
students of English who insisted that English nouns should always 
be in alphabetic order. He wrote "I am Japanese and a long-time 
resident of Japan, although I spent my linguistically formative 
years in the US. I'm also 53 years old, putting me in the same age 
group as Mr Daniel's English class. I have never in my life heard 
of such an odd rule. I was so surprised that I called around to 
various acquaintances in their 50s and 60s, plus my father (who is 
81), to ask. All say they have never been taught such a rule." 

Liuzhou e-mailed: "The question about alphabetical nouns in Japan 
amused me greatly. I've been teaching in China for fifteen years 
and have come across equally idiotic claims. My favourite was when 
one professor, the editor of the university's English language 
journal, suddenly banned four letter words, because he had read 
somewhere that they were taboo. But he banned not just obscenities 
but all four letter words, including 'when', 'next', 'time' and 
even his own name! He used a figure 4 to avoid spelling it. I wrote 
him a note composed solely of four letter words congratulating him 
on his wisdom. The edict was withdrawn."

GLOBISH  I confused some readers with an over-abbreviated reference 
to the etymology of the word that Robert McCrum spelled "honkie" 
(which I might have pointed out is almost always spelled "honky"). 
It is correct to write, as I did, that it came into Black English 
from the older "hunky", which was being used at the time for Polish 
immigrants working in the Chicago stockyards. In the interests of 
keeping the explanation short, I didn't explain that "hunky" was 
originally applied to Americans of Eastern European ancestry (it's 
an abbreviated form of "Hungarian"), but came to include any 
immigrant of Slavic origin.

FIDDLESTICKS  Following my recent rewrite of the piece about the 
origin of the term (see http://wwwords.org?FDST), several readers 
commented on a sense that doesn't appear in my dictionaries. Jary 
Stavely wrote: "Old-time dance music in the southern mountains of 
the US featured rhythmic fiddling, sometimes accompanied by a banjo 
or other stringed instrument. Sometimes, though, the rhythm was 
accentuated by a second person actually tapping on the strings with 
'fiddlesticks' which were different from the fiddler's actual bow." 
It's impossible to be sure, but the sense of "fiddlestick" for a 
violin bow is so old that this meaning would seem to be a 
comparatively modern derived sense.

ONLINE UPDATES  I have corrected and updated the piece about the 
diplomatic and military term "AfPak" (http://wwwords.org?AFPAK), 
and updated those on "cello scrotum" (http://wwwords.org?CELSC), 
"stannator" (http://wwwords.org?STNNR) and "Great Recession"
(http://wwwords.org?GRTRN).

2. Weird Words: Gallivant  /galI'vant/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a fine word, which hints of galloping about in frolicsome high 
spirits. The Oxford English Dictionary's definition, written in an 
earlier age, suggests it means "to gad about in a showy fashion". 

I'm not at all sure how often people still describe themselves or 
others as gadding about (it feels very old-fashioned to me) but you 
do it by going from place to place in search of entertainment or 
pleasure, usually with a person of the opposite sex. Its origin in 
an old and obsolete German word "gadling" for a vagabond points to 
its disreputable nature.

Gallivanting is much like gadding about, though ideally you should 
adopt a more ostentatious or indiscreet demeanour. Its antecedents 
are rather less clear: the experts wave vaguely in the direction of 
"gallant", meaning a dashing man of fashion, a fine gentleman, or a 
man who pays special attention to women. That's from the Old French 
"galant", from "galer", to make merry.

3. Wordface
-------------------------------------------------------------------
FULL-BLOWN  Two readers e-mailed to tell me that last week a column 
in the Sydney Morning Herald had a discussion about the origin of 
this term and to ask for my view of it. Published suggestions have 
mentioned flowers, glass manufacture and superchargers on hot-rod 
cars. You have to go back a long way to find the true answer. One 
sense of the verb "blow", dating from the fifteenth century, was to 
inflate or puff up; nowadays we use "blow up" in this sense, as in 
blowing up a balloon, but that's a later formation. Something full-
blown was completely inflated. Originally it was literal (as in 
full-blown sails on a ship) but changed into our modern figurative 
term for something fully developed. Later, it was confused with a 
different ancient verb, also spelled "blow", meaning to blossom (as 
in a line of Dryden's, "The Blossoms blow; the Birds on Bushes 
sing"), so that "full-blown" took on the specific sense of a flower 
in full bloom.

INFLATIONS  We know about inflation in the financial sense, as well 
as other words in "-flation", such as deflation and stagflation. A 
newish example blew into the vocabulary of economics in an article 
by Jeremy Warner in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. He introduced 
his readers to NEGFLATION. He suggested that Western nations may be 
facing this new type of financial crisis, which be described as 
"static or gently declining real levels of output in combination 
with higher-than-desirable inflation." The word isn't new - the US 
blogger MaxedOutMama used it in May 2009 - but its appearance in a 
national newspaper has given it wider exposure. It's unlikely to 
stick around long enough to enter the standard vocabulary.

4. Q and A: Boot camp
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Do you have any clues as to where the odd American term "boot 
camp" comes from? The meaning seems to have spread to correctional 
"short sharp shock" facilities, but I'd imagine it is from the 
military originally. Is it because new recruits wear boots? They 
wear a lot of other stuff as well. It seems an odd term. [Peter 
Needham]

A. It's definitely a services term. Dictionaries often suggest, 
following the current entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, that 
it dates from the Second World War period, but it's easy to find 
examples dating back to the First World War. The earliest I know 
about is one dated 1916 that's cited by Jonathan Lighter in the 
Historical Dictionary of American Slang. This is a slightly later 
reference:

    The fellows are kind of rusty on this wash the clothes 
    stuff because they haven't done much of it since they 
    came out of the boot camp, which is another name for a 
    training station.
    [Galveston Daily News, 16 May 1918.]

This is in a column headed "Marine Corps Musings". It and other 
examples confirm Professor Lighter's finding that it was at first a 
term of the US Navy and the US Marine Corps (it continued to be 
used solely in those services until after the Second World War, 
I've been told). It derives from a slightly older slang term "boot" 
for a recruit in basic training or an inexperienced enlisted man, 
on record from 1911. 

Why this should have appeared is uncertain. While it's true that 
new recruits were issued boots at the start of basic training and 
seemed to spend much of the rest of their time breaking them in, I 
agree with you that this seems a slim basis for the invention.

There is a persistent legend that it appeared during the Spanish-
American War of 1898, or at least around that period. Two versions 
are told. One has it that sailors' leggings were known as boots and 
that the term was transferred to recruits. Another version turned 
up nearly half a century ago in the Words, Wit and Wisdom column 
written by William Morris; he quoted a letter that he had received 
from C E Reynolds, a retired Navy radio chief:

    "When I entered the Navy in 1911," he writes, "an old-
    timer called me a 'rubber-boot sailor.' When I asked for 
    an explanation, he told me that prior to about 1890 all 
    the men prided themselves on getting out on deck and 
    scrubbing down barefooted in the coldest weather. Then 
    there was an influx of kids from the midwest. They didn't 
    intend to act foolish, so they went ashore and bought 
    boots to wear when it was cold. The older hands sneered 
    and called them 'rubber boot sailors.' By the time I came 
    on the scene, they had shortened the nickname for 
    recruits to 'rubber boots.' That gradually was shortened 
    and by World War I we just said 'boots.'"
    [Reno Evening Gazette, 16 May 1962.]

I've not been able to find a contemporary example of "rubber-boot 
sailor" but Mr Reynolds's recollection is first-hand, is so tightly 
dated, and fits so well with other early examples of "boot" for 
naval recruits, that we must take his suggested origin seriously. 
Certainly, as matters stand, it's the best we can hope for.

5. Sic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A headline Benjamyn Lockwood spotted in the Herald of Bellingham, 
WA, on 22 June came from the Associated Press: "Sound Transit train 
hits teenage girl, survives". Many other news outlets had the same 
headline. Kudos to the Seattle Times, which rewrote it to "Teen 
girl hit by Sound Transit train, survives".

Continuing with confusing headlines, Louis DeFalaise would like to 
put in evidence one from the Washington Times on 25 June: "Police: 
Woman sought to kidnap baby." Proactive policing?

While not wishing to make a joke from death, Janusz Lukasiak found 
this sentence in an obituary of 21 June on the Cosmopolitan Review 
website to be a remarkable enough example of medical malpractice to 
be worth quoting: "All this was cruelly interrupted by illness. The 
first signs came soon after the Chilean earthquake in February, 
wrongly diagnosed as epilepsy." 

Jocelyn Dodd felt that the Malaysian Star might have worded its 
report on 26 June rather better: "Teenage pregnancies are becoming 
a disturbing trend in the country based on the swelling number of 
girls seeking help from the Welfare Department about their 
predicament."

On its website, Bay Realty is advertising a "studio New York style 
apartment" that is apparently designed for an Arab leader, as it is 
"Situated in Sydney's sheik suburb Darlinghurst". The blurb also 
mentioned a useful feature: "This new warehouse conversion offers 
floorboards throughout."

A. Subscription information
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the list, change your subscription address or resubscribe, 
please visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm 

You can also maintain your subscription by e-mail. For a list of 
commands, send this message to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org:

  INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS

This e-magazine is also available as an RSS feed, whose source is 
at http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .

Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ .

B. E-mail contact addresses
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Comments on e-magazine mailings are always welcome. They should 
  be sent to me at wordseditor at worldwidewords.org . I do try to 
  respond, but pressures of time often prevent me from doing so. 
* Items for "Sic!" should go to wordsclangers at worldwidewords.org .
  Submissions will not usually be acknowledged.
* Questions intended to be answered in the Q and A section should 
  be addressed to wordsquestions at worldwidewords.org (please don't 
  use this address to respond to published answers to questions - 
  e-mail the comment address instead).
* Problems with subscriptions that cannot be handled by the list 
  server should be addressed to wordssubs at worldwidewords.org . To
  allow me more time for researching material, please don't e-mail
  me asking for simple subscription changes you can do yourself.

C. Ways to support World Wide Words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Wide Words e-magazine and website are free, but if you 
would like to help with their costs, there are several ways to do 
so. Visit http://www.worldwidewords.org/support.htm for details.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2010. All rights 
reserved. The Words website is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You may reproduce brief extracts from this e-magazine in mailing 
lists, newsletters or newsgroups online, provided that you include 
the copyright notice given above. Reproduction of substantial parts 
of items in printed publications or websites needs permission from 
the editor beforehand (wordseditor at worldwidewords.org). 
-------------------------------------------------------------------