World Wide Words -- 08 May 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri May 7 16:31:29 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 689 Saturday 8 May 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: Shemozzle.
3. This week.
4. Q and A: Early doors.
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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URTICATION Liam Boyle asked, "Was it just chance that you included
the item on nettles and urtication on May 1st, Nettlemas day?" It
was indeed chance, because I'd never heard of Nettlemas. A search
in the archives found a reference to an old Irish festival, Féile
na Neantóg (Gaelic: the Feast of Nettles); this was cited in one
book as being held on May Day (Beltane). Others references speak of
Nettlemas night, which was the day before, 30 April. This is one
very old description:
May eve, the last day of April, is called "Nettlemas
night;" boys parade the streets with large bunches of
nettles, stinging their playmates, and occasionally
bestowing a sly touch upon strangers who come in their
way. Young and merry maidens, too, not unfrequently avail
themselves of the privilege to "sting" their lovers; and
the laughter in the street is often echoed in the drawing
room.
[Ireland, Its Scenery, Character &c, by Mr and Mrs S C
Hall, 1841.]
2. Weird Words: Shemozzle /SI'mQz(@)l/
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A shemozzle is a state of confusion and chaos. It might simply be a
muddle, or it could be a ruckus, row, quarrel or loud commotion.
"No end of a shemozzle there's been there lately," he
said. "Marina Gregg's been having hysterics most days.
Said some coffee she was given was poisoned."
[The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, by Agatha
Christie, 1962.]
It looks Yiddish, fitting the pattern of a group of terms that came
to light first in American English as a result of the influence of
Yiddish-speaking immigrants: "schlemiel", "schmaltz", "schlepper",
"schmuck", "schlock", "schlimazel". (There's considerable variation
in the way all these are spelled.) Unlike them, "shemozzle" didn't
appear first in America - it was originally part of the slang of
London's East End more than a century ago, a creation of bookmakers
and racecourse touts. It has since spread around the world:
The money is starting to dry up. ... I'm now fighting
to get anything. They are not responding to my emails.
It's been a shemozzle, a complete and utter waste of time
and money.
[Sydney Morning Herald, 15 Feb. 2010.]
It looks Yiddish, but is it in fact Yiddish? No consensus exists.
Leo Rosten denied in The Joys of Yiddish that it had any connection
with that language and others argue similarly that it was invented
in imitation of other Yiddish words but isn't one.
Some references cautiously suggest that it was loosely based on the
Yiddish "slim mazel", which became "schlimazel" in the US. Yiddish
is based on a German dialect that has incorporated lots of Hebrew
words. "Slim mazel" is a good example: "slim" is old German,
meaning "crooked", while "mazel" comes from Hebrew "mazzal", a star
or planet, though its main meaning is "luck". So "slim mazel" may
be translated as "crooked luck", roughly the opposite of the
Yiddish "mazel tov", good luck. But how that changed to mean a
rumpus is far from obvious.
3. This week
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LEARNING TERMS An unfamiliar word, GRADUATISED (GRADUATIZED if
you're American or very formal) appeared in an British article. It
refers to a profession or occupation, the entry to which has been
restricted to university graduates. The article addressed the
problems of school leavers, who are increasingly finding it hard to
get jobs for this reason. Educationalists have used GRADUATISED,
its verb GRADUATISE, and its linked noun GRADUATISATION, at least
since the early 1970s, though it's still a term of art in the
profession and is rarely found outside specialist or scholarly
publications. A rare sighting of the noun was a comment by the
(then) British PM Gordon Brown in the Evening Standard of London on
30 April 2008: "This is one of the wider problems with today, the
graduatisation of the political and media worlds. So many people
are now excluded because they left school at 16 or 18."
WHAT'S IN A WORD? Scientific vocabulary can be so weird. The Large
Hadron Collider at CERN has just recorded an example of a subatomic
particle called the ANTI-BEAUTY QUARK. Could it be that ugly people
now have something tangible to blame?
IT'S ALL IN THE GENES The fast-expanding field of genetics has led
to numerous terms for aspects of its study and application, among
them "psychopharmacogenetics", "immunogenetics", "haemogenetics",
and "archaeogenetics". A relatively new form, said by Wikipedia to
date from 2006, is OPTOGENETICS, which turned up in an article in
New Scientist recently. It refers to a technique by which neurons
in the brain are individually observed or controlled with pulses of
light, so allowing researchers to look at how neural circuits work
and thereby greatly improve our knowledge of brain function.
4. Q and A: Early doors
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Q. There has been a discussion of the phrase "early doors" in the
Daily Telegraph recently. One reader took it for granted that it
originally referred to a drink at the pub as soon as it opened.
Another said it referred to the selected few allowed in a theatre
before the scrum at opening time. Neither explanation sounds right
to me. Can you bring your knowledge to bear on this one? [Peter
Morris]
A. Some background for non-Brits who haven't encountered this odd
phrase would seem appropriate before we get into discussing where
it came from. "Early doors" is a phrase particularly linked with
football (soccer, that is). It means "early on":
We've got to make sure we don't concede, especially
early doors, but I think it's definitely game on if we
score first.
[Sporting Life, 3 Jan. 2010.]
Why footballers, commentators and fans say "early doors", when
"early" or "early on" would work just as well is probably due to
Big Ron, otherwise Ron Atkinson, a well-known television football
commentator, a former player and manager now regarded as one of the
characters of the sport. Like another commentator, David Coleman,
he's famous for his accidental sayings in the heat of the moment
("He dribbles a lot and the opposition don't like it - you can see
it all over their faces"). He's so closely associated with "early
doors", almost as a catchphrase, that he's often been credited with
inventing it. However, my memories of the phrase go back to Brian
Clough, a rather more famous football manager, who is on record as
using it in 1979.
The pub origin you mention is widely believed. In the days before
liberalisation of hours, pubs would reopen for the evening at 5.30,
just in time for a quick drink after work and before going home. An
early-doors beer would be one grabbed as soon as possible after
opening time. It's a neat idea, but it isn't true.
We've actually got to go back well over a century to find the true
origin, to the other suggestion you've heard, about theatres. Then
as now, a last-minute crush usually developed at the entrances just
before the performance started, with the street outside crammed
with vehicles. Show bills and advertisements commonly urged patrons
to arrive early. Around the 1870s, the idea grew up of charging a
small premium to members of the audience who were willing to arrive
well ahead of the crowd and avoid the crush; in return, they were
allowed to choose their own seats in unreserved areas - the pit and
the gallery in particular. This could be a considerable advantage,
as sightlines in those areas were often poor or interrupted by
pillars. The earliest comment on the practice I've found is this:
It was with some degree of satisfaction that I
welcomed a movement in the right direction adopted at
most of our local theatres during the pantomime season -
namely that of providing special entrances or early doors
for the convenience of those who, wishing to avoid the
crush, would willingly pay a small extra amount.
[Liverpool Mercury, 24 Apr. 1877.]
The system continued into the twentieth century and became very
well known:
The park-keeper eyed him; thought better of the bitter
words he had contemplated; contented himself with:
"Funny, ain't yer?" "Screaming," said George. "One long
roar of mirth. Hundreds turned away nightly. Early doors
threepence extra. Bring the wife."
[Once Aboard The Lugger, by Arthur Stuart Menteth
Hutchinson, 1908.]
It was recorded by G K Chesterton as a First World War battle cry
by Tommies going over the top to attack the enemy ("If they had
only heard those boys in France and Flanders who called out 'Early
Doors!' themselves in a theatrical memory, as they went so early in
their youth to break down the doors of death."). Theatres seem to
have stopped the early-doors practice in the early 1920s. When J C
Trewin wrote in the Illustrated London News in February 1956 about
his memories of the practice half a century earlier, he was able to
say that "'Early Doors' is an archaism."
What he couldn't have known was that somebody in the football world
in the UK - identity now lost - later remembered the expression and
reinvented it to refer figuratively to the early part of a game.
5. Sic!
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This is from Bernard Ashby of Australia. They grow up so quickly in
the US, the Sydney Morning News of 30 April communicated: "US media
report that a 24-hour-old man shouted at her that she was 'fat' and
she decided to settle that the Mike Tyson way. She tackled the man
and bit off a chunk of his right ear."
Vehicles in Australia are becoming dangerously sentient, according
to a headline that Dean Ogle and Monica Vardabasso spotted in The
Age of Melbourne: "Man shot and run over by car."
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