World Wide Words -- 27 Mar 10

Fri Mar 26 17:53:02 UTC 2010

WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 683          Saturday 27 March 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: 3D fatigue.
3. Weird Words: Guddling.
4. What I've Learned This Week.
5. Q and A: Wild West.
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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HYETAL  After my item about this word last time, several readers, 
well versed in classical Greek mythology, mentioned the Hyades, a 
star group named after the five daughters of Atlas, who were half-
sisters to the Pleiades. After the death of their brother, the 
weeping sisters were changed into a cluster of stars which became 
associated with rain because their heliacal rising coincided with 
the spring rains. Unromantically, Oxford dictionaries argue that 
"Hyades" might instead derive from "hus", a pig, since the Latin 
name of the group is Suculae, "little pigs".

FIPPLE  Having written last week about the fipple, an essential 
component of instruments such as whistles and recorders, Mike Nease 
pointed me to CHIFF. This turns up in several places online in 
partnership with "fipple". Oxford Music online explains that it's 
the little noise that occurs at the beginning of notes played on 
various wind instruments, caused by a transient distortion that's 
sometimes called articulation. The term is most often used in 
reference to pipe organs. Where the word comes from is unrecorded, 
though it may be significant that a small British bird is called 
the chiff-chaff, from an imitation of its call.

2. Turns of Phrase: 3D fatigue
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Films in 3D are the latest wheeze to get bums on seats in cinemas 
and 3D-TV is now technically available if you can afford the set 
and can find something to watch on it. However, a problem has 
surfaced: eyestrain. Some filmgoers say that viewing movies using 
special glasses is causing them eye problems, headaches and nausea.

The issue is common to any medium that attempts to create the 
illusion of depth using stereoscopic images, which require users to 
distinguish the images in a way that isn't natural to the brain. 
Similar symptoms, Slate magazine points out, plague flight 
simulators, head-mounted virtual-reality displays, and many other 
applications of 3-D technology. The technical term is asthenopia.

The term "3D fatigue" (also "3-D fatigue") is new: it started to be 
used in blogs and reviews in the autumn of 2009, after the 3D films 
Coraline and Up were released but before Avatar. The trouble is far 
from new, however, since it was one reason why the last try at 
producing 3D films, back in the 1950s, failed to catch on.

Following the recent spate of 3D films, with many more to come, 
some moviegoers have borrowed "3D fatigue" to refer to boredom with 
the technique, which they argue adds technical spectacle without 
enhancing storylines.

    It appears entertainment can be bad for our health. A 
    UC Berkeley vision scientist is calling attention to what 
    he calls "3D fatigue." His research shows [that] if 3D 
    movies or television is done badly, it strains the 
    viewer's eyes. 
    [ABC News, 24 Feb. 2010.]

    Viewers are also likely to be concerned about health 
    problems, particularly the so-called "3D fatigue" caused 
    by viewers' eyes becoming tired. Manufacturers claim new 
    technology has eliminated such problems.
    [Daily Mail, 11 Mar. 2010.]

3. Weird Words: Guddling  /'gVd(@)lIN/
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Guddlers live in difficult times, since the activity that goes by 
the name of guddling is illegal in many places, including the UK 
and most US states.

It's a method of fishing that requires only the bare hands, hence 
rather too convenient for poachers who find rods and tackle both 
cumbersome and revealing. It's also called tickling and is linked 
in particular with fishing for trout. In parts of North America its 
practitioners call it noodling, though they usually reserve it for 
hunting catfish, a beast so well equipped to fight back that to do 
so is to engage in an extreme sport.

Trout guddling requires patience and skill:

    There had been a swift and noiseless rush underneath 
    the stone; a few grains of sand rose up where the white 
    under part of the trout had touched it as it glided 
    beneath. Slowly and imperceptibly Winsome's hand worked 
    its way beneath the stone. With the fingers of one hand 
    she made that slight swirl of the water which is supposed 
    by expert "guddlers" to fascinate the trout, and to 
    render them incapable of resisting the beckoning fingers. 

    [The Lilac Sunbonnet, by S R Crockett, 1894.]

The verb "guddle" has been most associated with Scotland, and may 
be derived from Gaelic, though its antecedents are obscure.

4. What I've Learned This Week
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MATHEMATICAL CROCHETERS TRIUMPH  In the issue of 27 February (see 
http://wwwords.org?I679N4), you may have read about the shortlisted 
entrants for the Diagram prize run by The Bookseller, which rewards 
the oddest book title of the year. Following an online poll, the 
2009 winner was announced yesterday (Friday): Crocheting Adventures 
with Hyperbolic Planes by Dr Daina Taimina. The prize's organiser, 
Harold Bent, commented that, even in these credit-crunched times, 
oddly-titled books are proving highly recession-resistant. "This 
book is a worthy champion to stand alongside the likes of Greek 
Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers and Living with Crazy 
Buttocks as winners." Philip Stone of The Bookseller said, "What 
won it for Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes is that, 
very simply, the title is completely bonkers. One hopes that Dr 
Taimina's win prompts other enlightened crocheters, knitters and 
embroiderers to produce similar works, so I look forward to seeing 
books such as Cross-stitching String Theory and Felting Feats with 
Phenomenology adorning bookshop shelves in the near future." 

MEN WHO EAT VEG  Slate Magazine called it "a ridiculous new term". 
The comment was provoked by a piece in the Boston Globe on 24 March 
about American men who have decided to eschew the traditional diet 
of pizzas, burgers and fried food and go vegan. The Globe article 
says they are "the new face of veganism: men in their 40s and 50s 
embracing a restrictive lifestyle to look better, rectify a 
gluttonous past, or cheat death." Newser.com comments, "They don't 
match the cultural mainstream of veganism - they're disinclined to 
proselytize, and espouse little of vegetarianism's new-age vibe or 
veganism's crust-punk ethos." The term the Boston Globe created? 
HEGAN. The piece implies that it's a blend of "he" plus "vegan".

5. Q and A: Wild West
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Q. On a recent episode of a BBC panel quiz programme (apologies for 
my not being able to remember which one) we learned that the term 
"Wild West" was coined, not by Frederic Remington, not by Zane 
Grey, but by Charlotte Brontë. Can this possibly be right? [Robert 
Englund]

A. This sounds very much like the smart-aleck QI, hosted by Stephen 
Fry. The initials stand for "Quite Interesting", a mild misnomer.

In one sense, the answer is correct, since at the moment the first 
citation for "Wild West" in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 
1849 and is from Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley: "What suggested 
the wild West to your mind?" In another sense, it's utterly 
inaccurate.

That's because the entry for "Wild West" appeared in the "Whisky-
Wilfulness" fascicle of the OED published in November 1924. At that 
time, access to early American sources was nowhere near as good as 
it is now and, of course, digital databases hadn't been thought of. 
When the entry is revised, not too far in the future, I'm certain 
that it will take the term back at least a couple of decades.

My own research finds this, for example:

    He was the first white man in Old Kentucky, and the 
    wide wild west is full of his licks.
    [The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review, 19 Jul. 
    1823. The article is an extract from Memorable days in 
    America by William Faux and this comment is about Daniel 
    Boone.]

By the 1830s, "Wild West" had become moderately well known in the 
US and was becoming so in the UK. For Charlotte Brontë to employ it 
in 1849 is unsurprising - the term by then was well established on 
both sides of the Atlantic.

6. Sic!
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"My local supermarket," e-mailed Eric Marsh from Queensland, "was 
recently selling 'profita rolls'. Well, they were round and they 
presumably don't sell at a loss."

Sometimes a writer's professional vocabulary can appear where it's 
inappropriate. Teresa Goodell found this in some meeting minutes at 
the school of nursing where she works: "Students will communicate 
relevant committee actions to other students and act as lesions 
between the faculty and student body."

Robert Nathan e-mailed, "These fatal slayings are the very worst 
kind." He had seen a sad story in the Daily News Wire Services over 
a headline which appeared in numerous American newspapers: "Police 
search for gunman in fatal South Park slaying".

"Don't let your children get anywhere near these Romeo champions," 
Ken Afton warns us. He was responding to another headline, this 
time in the Romeo Observer of Michigan: "Romeo champions cause of 
childhood cancer in big way."

I was browsing the developer pages for the Mozilla Firefox browser 
the other day and encountered a heading in a list of new features: 
"Web workers can now self-terminate." Thankfully, it was referring 
to software agents, not human ones.

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