World Wide Words -- 02 Oct 10

Fri Oct 1 17:02:21 UTC 2010

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 706          Saturday 2 October 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. Weird Words: Garboil.
2. Wordface.
3. Q and A: Keep it under your hat.
4. Review: The First English Dictionary of Slang.
5. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.

1. Weird Words: Garboil  /'gA:bOIl/
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In origin, this archaic word is linked to the heating water sense 
of "boil" rather than the bodily excrescence one. But the link is 
puzzling in one way because etymologists are still unsure what the 
"gar-" bit means or where it came from.

It's ancient but according to the records it died out in British 
English dialect about a century ago. When it was around it meant a 
brawl, hubbub, hurly-burly or similar confused and noisy situation. 
It has been used by modern writers seeking a period flavour:

    Then in '82 there had been the Egyptian garboil I 
    mentioned a moment ago.
    [Flashman and the Tiger, by George MacDonald Fraser, 
    1999. As the story is set in the nineteenth century, 
    Harry Flashman means 1882, of course, the year of the 
    Second Anglo-Egyptian War.]

Once you know the origin, the idea of a confrontation that boils 
into a tumult or fracas is easy enough to understand. Its etymology 
confirms that that's where the word comes from. It has been traced 
back through the Old French "garbouille" to Italian "garbuglio", 
which in turn is from Latin "bullire", to boil.

2. Wordface
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KEEP ON TRUCKIN'  The ability of research firms to create new words 
to help spice up a report never ceases to amaze. A fresh one turned 
up on 27 September: NEVERTIREE. It's a person who never retires. It 
appeared in a report published by the British firm Barclays Wealth. 
This claimed that more British people, some 60% of them, are likely 
to carry on working after retirement age than any other nation. The 
report notes that the number of those over retirement age who are 
still working has risen by 15% in the past year, almost certainly 
the result of the current economic situation.

SUPPRESS THAT P!  An article in the New York Times last Tuesday 
discussed the difficulty that many Americans have with pronouncing 
COMPTROLLER, an otherwise archaic word that's still the formal 
title of the chief financial officers of many states and cities. 
Strictly, the "p" is silent, but the speak-as-you-spell movement 
means it's often heard. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't deign 
even to give a proper entry for it, merely supplying some examples 
and pointing out that the word is a sixteenth-century error for 
"controller" - the word was originally "counteroller", a person who 
kept a counter-roll (a duplicate scroll) as a check on financial 
transactions. The first part was confused with "count" and was 
changed by people who ought to have known better to its French 
equivalent, "compte". The piece reproduced an item from the New 
York Times of 1 November 1896, which pleaded "the official title 
Controller, in all laws, public records and documents, be spelled 
Controller, that being the true and right spelling, and that the 
false and offensive form 'Comptroller,' born of ignorance and 
continued in darkness, to be discarded." Americans are still 
waiting.

3. Q and A: Keep it under your hat
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Q. I was listening to a history programme on BBC Radio 4 a couple 
of days ago and the presenter was talking about the English longbow 
and how the archers were able to quickly detach their bow strings 
in the event of rain and would keep them dry under their hats. He 
suggested that it is from this that we get the expression "to keep 
it under your hat". I checked this out on your website but can find 
no reference to this expression. Just curious. [Andrew Lewis]

A. Thank you for another splendid example of popular etymology to 
add to my substantial collection. English archers would seem to 
have accumulated more than their share of such stories, such as 
their popular taunt "pluck yew" combined with a particular obscene 
gesture, supposedly to show the enemy that they still possessed the 
fingers with which to pull their bowstrings.

The development of meaning in the story is hardly obvious. How 
could the supposed practice of keeping an essential part of one's 
military equipment dry by putting it under one's hat lead to the 
figurative sense of keeping something secret? The essence of the 
metaphor, of course, is that information or ideas that are "under 
the hat" are in the brain and so are secure from any interception. 
Apart from the logical gap, the story can also be refuted on both 
historical and geographical grounds.

The evidence shows that "keep something under one's hat", meaning 
to keep it secret, is relatively modern, centuries later than 
medieval archers. It's also American. These are the earliest 
examples I've so far found:

    Nuttie ... was taking in all these revelations with an 
    open-eyed, silent horror. ... It was all under her hat, 
    however, and the elder ladies never thought of her. 
    [Nuttie's Father, by Charlotte M Yonge, 1885.]

    If you do not wish to have your name as informant 
    mentioned in connection with the matter, nor any thing 
    done about it at all, say so; at any rate, tell us where 
    you know of a producer who is engaged in the mixing 
    business, and we will keep it "under our hat" if you say 
    so.
    [Gleanings in Bee Culture, 15 Oct. 1892, 761/1]

4. Review: The First English Dictionary of Slang
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This is a republication by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, of a work 
of 1699 whose full title was _A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient 
and Modern of the Canting Crew, in its several Tribes of Gypsies, 
Beggars, Thieves, Cheats Etc_. You might argue that the title of 
this work is an error, since the word "slang" was unknown to its 
anonymous compiler (it was first recorded half a century later, in 
1756).

John Simpson, Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, notes 
in his introduction that the canting crews of the title were semi-
organised bands of rogues who preyed on people; though gypsies were 
included in the list, these were almost certainly fake Romanies who 
adopted the characteristics of true gypsies as a cover. Though the 
work was promoted as a glossary of the secret language ("cant") of 
marginalised and disparaged groups who lived outside the law, its 
author built on a small core of such words by adding a lot of more 
general non-standard English. It included military and naval slang 
and colloquialisms that we would now class as slang but which often 
had some connection with artifice, sham and deceit.

Because it's in the nature of slang to be evanescent, little of the 
vocabulary the author listed is still current, though delight comes 
from learning of "dandyprat" (a puny fellow); "cackling-fart" (an 
egg); "peeper" (a mirror, a "looking-glass" in the author's words); 
"Grumbletonians" ("Malcontents, out of Humour with the Government, 
for want of a Place, or having lost one); and "owlers" ("those who 
privately in the Night carry Wool to the sea-coasts, near Rumney 
Marsh in Kent and some creeks in Sussex &c. and Ship it off for 
France against Law"); the risks of walking unlit city streets after 
dark are illuminated by "moon-curser" ("a Link-boy, or one that 
under Colour of lighting Men, Robs them, or leads them to a gang of 
Rogues, that will do it for him". But recognition is sparked by 
other entries: "haggle" is defined disparagingly as "to run from 
Shop to Shop, to stand hard to save a Penny"; "humptey-dumptey" 
reminds us instantly of Lewis Carroll, but before it became the 
short and dumpy person of the nursery rhyme it was slang for ale 
boiled with brandy; red-haired people were even then being called 
"carrots"; "carouse" was clearly then non-standard; and a "mawdlin" 
was a weeping drunk, from references to images of Mary Magdalene 
crying and which much later led to "maudlin" in the sense of weak 
or mawkish sentiment.

The continuing value of his compilation is not just its historical 
interest, but the insight that it gives into the urban life of the 
period, which would seem to have been insecure or even dangerous. 
Indeed, the author remarks that by understanding the vocabulary he 
has collected, readers might "secure their Money and preserve their 
Lives". Words have power, indeed.

[The First English Dictionary of Slang 1699, with an Introduction 
by John Simpson; published in the UK by Bodleian Library Publishing 
on 15 September 2010 and in North America on 15 October 2010; ISBN: 
978-1-85124-348-8; pp224; publisher's UK price £12.99.]

AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK 
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[Please use these links to buy. They get World Wide Words a small 
commission at no extra cost to you.] 

5. Sic!
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There's room for misunderstanding in the headline that Michael in 
Los Angeles found on Excite News on 24 September: "Mexican mayor 
slain in drug-plagued state."

There is likewise a potential double meaning in a headline in last 
Monday's e-mail news highlights from the New York Times: "Efforts 
Meant to Help Workers Batter South Africa's Poor."

Robert Greaves found this headline in the issue of the Brighton 
Argus of 17 September: "Many musicians find it impossible to write 
on the road."

Jonathan Warner told us that a report on the Christian Post website 
claims that, "Of those who said they were homosexual, 1.3 percent 
were men and 0.6 percent were women." He asks if it's politically 
incorrect to wonder about the gender of the remaining 98.1%?

Homophone corner: Chris Smith found an article about oysters in the 
Independent magazine section on 18 September: "Oyster farming is 
good for the environment, not destructive or exploitative of it. 
... In the United States, President Obama has the navy sewing 
oyster beds back."

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