World Wide Words -- 20 Nov 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 19 18:09:19 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 713 Saturday 20 November 2010
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Editor: Michael Quinion US advisory editor: Julane Marx
Website: http://www.worldwidewords.org ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Tolfraedic.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Squilgee.
5. Review: Begat.
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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BACKRONYMS Lots of messages came in following the piece, mostly
quoting the writers' favourite examples. Curiously, most concerned
either car manufacturers or airlines - I leave it to the cultural
commentators among us to work out why. A complete list would fill
this issue, but a few will give the flavour: the name of the one-
time Belgian national airline SABENA was said to be an acronym for
"Such A Bad Experience, Never Again"; ALITALIA meant "Always Late
In Taking off, Always Late In Arriving"; DELTA: Don't Ever Leave
The Airport; FIAT: Fix It Again, Tony; FORD: Fix Or Repair Daily.
You may note that Sabena, Alitalia and Fiat were created as
acronyms ("Sabeba" is from "Société Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de
la Navigation Aérienne", bless the guy who shortened it) and so
strictly speaking ought to be classed as reinterpreted acronyms and
not backronyms.
Robert A Rothstein, Professor of Judaic and Slavic Studies at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, tells us that a similar idea
"has a long history in Jewish tradition. The ancient rabbis called
the device 'notarikon' (from Greek for 'stenographer') and used it
to interpret words in the Bible and Talmud."
Tony McCoy O'Grady mentioned that he and a friend created the word
"apronym" for an expansion of a word as though it is an acronym for
a phrase that's linked to the meaning of the word. They created it
from "á propos" plus "acronym". For example, he has expanded "gate"
to "Grants Access To Everyone". Thousands of other examples are on
their website at www.apronyms.com.
CORRECTIONS As several readers pointed out, the example of "NTSC"
that I quoted in the piece on backronyms isn't an acronym but an
abbreviation. In the book review I referred to Finnigan's Wake;
it's actually Finnegans Wake, without an apostrophe. Robert Hooke,
although he died in 1702, would better have been described as a
seventeenth-century scientist.
2. Weird Words: Tolfraedic /t at Ul'fri:dIk/
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In centuries past, merchants selling goods by number often supplied
a larger quantity than the nominal total. The baker's dozen of 13
is well known. Less so is the measure of 120, which was once known
variously as the great hundred, long hundred or small gross.
The number 120 is the result of measuring items by twelves rather
than by tens, a survival of the duodecimal system used by many
civilisations in antiquity and of which relics like the dozen and
the gross still survive. It's known, though very rarely, as the
"tolfraedic" system. In origin the word is Icelandic, from "tólf",
twelve, plus "ráða", to speak. Relatives of the term were used in
Iceland and throughout Scandinavia to distinguish between hundreds
that were ten tens and hundreds that were ten twelves (in Icelandic
called "tolfrátt hundrað").
The long hundred was so widely used at one time in England that a
proverb was created to remind people that:
Five score's a hundred of men, money and pins; six
score's a hundred of all other things.
[Quoted in Curiosities in Proverbs, by Dwight Edwards
Marvin, 1916.]
It was common, as just one example out of many, to sell nails by
this measure (though why pins weren't is a curiosity now lost in
history). The medieval Anglo-Saxon Chronicle even stated that the
year is 305 days long. This wasn't an astronomical error, but the
tolfraedic system in action. Three long hundreds is 360; add in the
extra five and you have the usual year length.
3. Wordface
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SEASONAL WORDS The New Oxford American Dictionary (which ought to
lose the "new", as it was first published ten years ago and is now
on its third edition) is as usual first out of the gate with its
words of 2010. The runners-up included TEA PARTY, VUVUZELA,
WEBISODE, and CROWDSOURCING. The winner is Sarah Palin's error in
July of writing REFUDIATE in a Twitter posting when she meant
"repudiate". The editors say they won't add it to the dictionary,
though they commented that "From a strictly lexical interpretation
of the different contexts in which Palin has used 'refudiate', we
have concluded that neither 'refute' nor 'repudiate' seems
consistently precise, and that 'refudiate' more or less stands on
its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject'." I think that
means they see some merit in it. They also make the point, not
passed on in news reports, that Sarah Palin wasn't the first user -
there are examples in books and newspapers going back decades.
Incidentally, the Huffington Post take on the story was headlined
"Palin Exonerized by New Oxford American Dictionary".
MY WORDS OF THE WEEK These turned up in my reading in the past few
days and may be worth a moment of your time. An ENTOMOPHAGIST is a
person who eats insects. THERMOGEDDON (a thermal Armageddon) is the
point at which, if the earth warms sufficiently, humans will no
longer be able to survive in parts of the tropics. The cultural
background of somebody who is WEIRD, according to New Scientist, is
Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. A CAVOODLE
is a cross between a poodle and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
(also known as a CAVAPOO). PLANEMO is formed from "planetary mass
object" and is a planet-sized mass that doesn't orbit a star. 4D
MAN, according to the new magazine Gaz7etta, is the 21-century
successor to the metrosexual. FASHBASSADOR (a blend of "fashion"
and "ambassador") was invented for the founder of Jimmy Choo,
Tamara Mellon, who with 31 others has been appointed a business
ambassador by the British Prime Minister David Cameron.
WICKED STEPMOTHER Linguistically, this week's royal engagement was
enlivened by the comment by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince
William's stepmother, who said it was WICKED. The word is too well
established in British slang to need comment, though some writers
were surprised to hear it from a 63-year-old granny. Most people
equate it with the 1970s African-American scene, but lexicographer
Jonathon Green has traced its sense of "excellent, wonderful" to
the 1840s. And P G Wodehouse employed it as long ago as 1925 in the
appropriately upper-class milieu of Carry on, Jeeves: "A most
amazing Johnnie who dishes a wicked ragout."
4. Q and A: Squilgee
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Q. A recent game of online scrabble turned up the word "squilgee",
which I had never heard before. The online dictionary says that it
is a variant of "squeegee", but only lists vague perhapses for the
origins of both words. Can you give a more definite response? [Lucy
Banks]
A. I can give more information about it, though - as with so many
words - the ultimate origin is somewhat obscure. Whether this may
reasonably be described as a definite response, I'll leave to you.
You need not chastise yourself for not knowing "squilgee", because
it has never been common and is now very rare. The Oxford English
Dictionary has its first example from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
of 1851, but he described it better in a work of the year before:
Finally, a grand flooding takes place, and the decks
are remorselessly thrashed with dry swabs. After which an
extraordinary implement - a sort of leathern hoe called a
"squilgee" - is used to scrape and squeeze the last
dribblings of water from the planks. Concerning this
"squilgee," I think something [sometimes?] of drawing up
a memoir and reading it before the Academy of Arts and
Sciences. It is a most curious affair.
[White-Jacket, by Herman Melville, 1850. The book was
about Melville's travels on a US Navy ship.]
All the early examples are from seafaring contexts, particularly
the US Navy. Volume 7 of The Century Dictionary, published in the
US in 1895, recorded the sense that Melville describes but added
that a similar instrument, which from the description is in its
essentials the modern squeegee, was used by photographers to clean
the glass plates that were standard at the time.
The Century Dictionary also included the "squeegee" spelling and
implied that by then it was more common - photographic magazines of
the period certainly spelled it that way and it is by far the more
usual form in the decades that follow. "Squeegee" wasn't then new,
however - it's actually recorded a little earlier than "squilgee",
although in its early appearances it refers to the same shipboard
cleaning tool that Melville describes. It seems to have swapped
spelling as soon as it arrived on dry land.
Where the words come from is hard to say. The OED hypothesises that
both are variations on the older "squeege", to compress, which is
almost certainly a strengthened form of "squeeze". Thinking about
it, that probably isn't so much better than the "vague perhapses"
of your online dictionary.
As I can't give you the whole story of "squilgee", you might like
to hear by way of compensation about a couple of things that turned
up while I was looking for examples of it. This tantalising snippet
was one:
Unless the Navy Department should choose to issue an
official communique on the subject, the "squeegee" vs.
"squilgee" controversy may now be considered closed, for
we have received a letter from no less an authority than
the great Elmer Squee himself.
[New York Times, 12 Jul. 1942. Elmer Squee was created
by Richard L Brooks, who produced a book of cartoons in
1942 featuring this timid Naval recruit. I've not been
able so far to track down details of the controversy,
though it seems to have been an argument in Navy circles
about the correct name for the tool, some arguing it was
really a squilgee, not a squeegee. Tradition dies
hard.]
I have also learned that there was at one time a second sense of
"squilgee", which I encountered in this poem:
Then come my guys, the boom to swing, --
Bend on the halliards, outhaul too,
Put on the squilgee, that will do.
[Life in a Man-of-War, or Scenes in "Old Ironsides"
During her Cruise in the Pacific, by a Fore-Top-Man
(Henry James Mercier), 1841.]
Seeking enlightenment, I turned to a manual of seamanship, written
a couple of decades later by Captain Luce of the US Navy. You may
wish to take careful note of the procedure which he describes so
that you will not be caught unready (or even all at sea) the next
time you need to set a lower studding-sail:
Overhaul down the outer and inner halliards, and bend
them on, the former to the yard, and the latter to the
inner head of the sail; overhaul in and bend on the
outerhaul to the clew; pass a stop around the sail, and
secure it by a toggle, having a tripping-line (the whole
called a squilgee,) from it, leading in on deck.
[Seamanship, by Stephen Bleecker Luce, 1863.]
Is this is the same word as the one for the cleaning implement?
Nobody seems to have the slightest idea.
5. Review: Begat
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I once heard somebody on a radio programme describe how a lady had
walked out of a performance of Hamlet. When quizzed for her reason,
she complained, "the writer, whoever he is, should be ashamed -
it's full of quotations."
Much the same might be said of the King James Bible (KJV) of 1611,
one of the great works of literature in the language, whose words
have engrained themselves into the minds of the English-speaking
people. David Crystal has written this pithily titled book in
anticipation of the 400th anniversary of its publication.
Compiled by a group of scholars at the behest of King James I of
England, hence its name, it wasn't a wholly new translation but one
that took the best from its predecessors, including the Bishop's
Bible of 1568 and the work of William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.
Because it became the text read in churches (though it was never
formally authorised for this purpose, despite its being commonly
referred to in the UK as the Authorised Version), members of the
Church of England have been exposed to its cadences for centuries.
Although the language often feels ancient, it benefited from being
created after English had settled down into its modern form and so
remains for the most part comprehensible. Later translations have
never had the same impact.
Whenever you hear phrases such as "the salt of the earth", "a man
after our own heart", "let there be light", "two-edged sword", "how
are the mighty fallen", "rod of iron", "wheels within wheels", "get
thee behind me, Satan", "new wine in old bottles", "a voice crying
in the wilderness", "a fly in the ointment", you are hearing echoes
of the prose of the KJV.
As David Crystal makes clear, however, these are not quotations but
idioms based on allusions. They have entered the language, to the
extent that their biblical origins have become obscured and they
are used as often by non-believers as believers. They have become
so fixed a part of the way we speak that - like "gird your loins" -
they are frequently adapted for humorous effect.
He discusses each allusion in turn, illustrating it with usages old
and new. There is for me too great a whiff of Google in the modern
examples he has found from book titles, song lyrics, comic strips,
newspaper headlines, social networking, even porn. But the results
of his searching illustrate the depth of our familiarity with the
words of the KJV, even if we often don't know it.
But we mustn't make too much of it. David Crystal discusses 257
idioms altogether. Though he notes that this number is greater than
for any other source, including Shakespeare, in only 18 cases is
the exact form found in the KJV; in the rest, the ultimate source
is an earlier translation, or in a few cases the common stock of
English expressions that predates Biblical translations. And he
makes clear that he has restricted himself to discussing idiom, not
direct quotation, stylistic influence or innovative vocabulary.
[David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English
Language, published by Oxford University Press; pp327, including
indexes; ISBN 978-0-19-958585-4; publisher's UK price £14.99, US
price $24.95.]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
Amazon UK GBP8.54 http://wwwords.org?BEGAT9
Amazon US US$16.47 http://wwwords.org?BEGAT5
Amazon Canada CDN$17.52 http://wwwords.org?BEGAT1
Amazon Germany EUR17,99 http://wwwords.org?BEGAT7
6. Sic!
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Terry McManus suggests that the combined headline and byline over a
BBC News story dated 12 November might be misinterpreted: "Maldives
grapples with challenge of protecting majestic mantas FROM OUR OWN
CORRESPONDENT".
Visiting the website No Dig Vegetable Garden, Gill Teicher read, "I
heard if you put an onion in a bowel in each room of your house it
will absorb any flu virus that would be in your home."
Brian Mann bought a screen guard for his camera from a retailer in
Hong Kong. Among its listed features were "2. The film was wearable
maternal cure" and "4. Can take from glisten 90% bright 99% figure
infocus, adhibit film Sans air bubble less can reiteration use".
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