World Wide Words -- 17 Jul 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Jul 16 15:07:49 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 695 Saturday 17 July 2010
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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
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For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Swan-upping.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Taxi.
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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More information has come in, so I've had another go at updating my
online piece on "kibosh" (go via http://wwwords.org?KBSH).
2. Weird Words: Swan-upping
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It was reported in the Washington Post this week that the Queen is
considering how to reduce the cost of running the British monarchy,
one suggestion being to lay off her official Swan Marker. (The
British media haven't mentioned this; perhaps the idea of the Queen
having one in the first place to get rid of doesn't seem so strange
to them as it does to Americans.)
Next week will see that official taking part - perhaps for the last
time - in an annual ceremony on a seventy-mile stretch of the River
Thames upstream from London: swan-upping. It's not as rude as it
sounds: it's an annual census in which the mute swans and their
cygnets are "upped" - taken up from the river to be inspected and
marked.
The census - it takes five days - is operated by the Swan Marker
and the Swan Uppers of two of the ancient trade guilds of London,
the Vintners' and Dyers' livery companies. The census is said to
date from the twelfth century, at a time when the sovereign claimed
ownership of all swans (they were valuable birds that were served
up at banquets and feasts).
These days, royal ownership is claimed only on the Thames and some
tributaries and - you may be pleased to learn - the Queen doesn't
actually eat any of her swans. The birds used to be tagged by nicks
on their beaks - which is why the Swan Marker has that name - but
these days are ringed on their legs.
3. Wordface
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NORTHERN EATING Because I'm a southerner and unfamiliar with the
ways of the north of England, I wasn't surprised that PEA-WET came
fresh to me this week. But it transpired that most northerners
don't know it either, as it's a very local term known only around
Wigan in Lancashire. The British national dish of fish and chips is
often accompanied in northern England by a serving of mushy peas, a
kind of thick green pea soup made from dried marrowfat peas. The
water that's strained off mushy peas is pea-wet, the poor man's
version; it's poured over a serving of chips as a gravy. It was at
one time given away to poor children, as part of PEA-WET AND
SCRAPS, the scraps being fragments of batter from the fish fryer.
There's also BABY'S HEAD AND PEA-WET, which is a steak and kidney
pudding served with pea-wet gravy, not wholly dissimilar to the pie
floater of Australian cuisine (the name comes from the dimple in
the top of the pudding, which reminded people of the one in a
baby's head).
BRIEFLY FAMOUS The word CELETOID turned up in my daily newspaper,
which sent me scurrying for enlightenment to my usual sources. It
was invented by the sociologist Chris Rojek in his book of 2001,
Celebrity. He listed three ways a person might get famous: through
being the child of famous parents (Prince Harry or Caroline
Kennedy), through accomplishments in sport or the arts (David
Beckham, Damien Hirst), or through being considered newsworthy by
the mass media (Big Brother contestants, lottery winners). He
invented "celetoid" for this last group, individuals who seem to be
everywhere in the media one day and forgotten the next, who have
their Warholian fifteen minutes of fame and then drop out of sight
again.
4. Q and A: Taxi
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Q. What is the origin of "taxi"? [Ron Witton, Australia]
A. One day in early July 1894, two entrepreneurs from Hamburg named
Bruhn and Westendorf attended a meeting at the Board of Trade in
London concerning their device, called a taxameter-fare indicator.
According to The Illustrated Police News of 7 July, the two men
explained that the instrument showed how many passengers were being
carried, the fare to be paid, the number of trips made by the cab
and the miles traversed in the course of the day. They claimed it
had already been adopted in cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen
and Dresden and that local authorities were making its adoption a
condition of granting licences.
The wheels turned slowly in the Board of Trade and it was not until
March 1899 that the first cabs fitted with them came into regular
use in the capital. The delay was partly the result of opposition
by the London Cab Drivers Union, which was deeply suspicious of the
potentially adverse implications for their members' livelihoods of
accurately recording drivers' takings. Northern cities such as
Liverpool, Bradford, Manchester and Leeds were ahead of London (as
were New York and Buenos Aires). General public satisfaction with
the meters was reported. Passengers preferred the new taxameter-
fitted cabs because they obviated arguments with bullying cabbies
about fares. Cabbies were happy, too, as relations with customers
had improved, their takings had gone up and the level of tips had
remained the same.
The German name of "Taxameter", at first adopted in Britain, was
taken from "Taxe", a charge or levy. After the device became common
in Paris (another city that was well ahead of London), the French
created the term "taximètre" for it, from "taxe", a tariff (why the
"e" should change to an "i" is unrecorded). Partly in consequence
of patriotic feelings, coupled with anti-German sentiment (the
Yorkshire Post commented sourly in June 1894 that it trusted that a
system for charging fares might be introduced "without it being
found necessary to resort to a German arrangement"), the French
term proved popular. In the Anglicised spelling "taximeter" it was
used in a London newspaper in 1898 even before the metropolitan
meters, of the German type, had gone into operation. "Taximeter"
soon permanently replaced the German name.
These early devices were, of course, fitted to horse-drawn hansom
cabs or growlers (so called because of the noise their iron-hooped
wheels made on London cobbles). There was some argument over what
to call these new metered vehicles. While the official designation
for any vehicle plying for hire was "hackney carriage", everybody
called them "cabs" (a short form of "cabriolet", the French name
for a light horse-drawn two-wheeled vehicle, a term indirectly
borrowed from the Latin word for goat because of its bounding
motion). A metered hire vehicle was clearly enough a "taximeter
cab", but this was too unwieldy for daily use.
Motorised vehicles began to appear in substantial numbers during
the first decade of the new century, all being fitted with meters
from the outset. In March 1907, the Daily Chronicle remarked that
"Every journalist ... has his idea of what the vehicle should be
called" and went on to list motor-cab, taxi-cab, and taximo among
the options touted. ("Motor-cab" had been recorded as early as 1897
in London and soon after in Washington DC, but for an electric hire
vehicle, not the internal combustion one that had almost totally
usurped it by this date.) By November 1907 the Daily Mail had begun
to refer to a "taxi", in inverted commas as befitted a colloquial
term not yet admitted to the standard lexicon. In February 1908,
the Daily Chronicle noted that the issue had been resolved: "Within
the past few months the 'taxi' has been the name given to the
motor-cab." Since then, of course, it has spread greatly, though
never ousting "cab" from the language.
That isn't the whole story. Of the words on the list that the Daily
Chronicle produced in March 1907, one other did well, though not in
the UK. "Taxicab" is on record from as early as December 1907 in
New York and it has survived in the US.
5. Sic!
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Do I detect the influence of a bored subeditor on the headline that
Eamonn Grogan found in the Irish Times last Tuesday? It was over a
report about a union problem with the lift/elevator company Otis:
"Lift dispute set to escalate."
Elisabeth Kauffman noted that CBS News online, and numerous other
news outlets, managed to make the fatalities in Afghanistan this
week sound ridiculous: "Rouge Afghan soldier Kills U.K. Troops".
The Delta Airlines SkyMiles Cruises website is promoting a European
river cruise, with "plush, comfortable accommodations", "a graceful
and inviting vessel", "fine dining", and "tentative staff". Better
tentative staff than the pushy over-attentive sort, but an
untentative proofreader would be even better.
A. Subscription information
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