World Wide Words -- 09 Oct 10
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Oct 8 16:23:24 UTC 2010
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 707 Saturday 9 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. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Peristeronic.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Fatootsed.
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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KEEP IT UNDER YOUR HAT Randall Bart told me about another story of
the origin of the expression, which links it to President Abraham
Lincoln, who famously wore a stove-pipe hat. He had the habit of
keeping important papers in it, to the extent that he called it his
"office". The expression is said to have grown out of that. A story
about Lincoln's hat appeared shortly after his death, linked to a
period when Lincoln was postmaster at New Salem, though it doesn't
mention the idiom:
Not wishing to be tied to the office, as it yielded
him no revenue that would reward him for the confinement,
he made a post-office of his hat. Whenever he went out,
the letters were placed in his hat. When an anxious
looker for a letter found the postmaster, he had found
his office; and the public officer, taking off his hat,
looked over his mail wherever the public might find
him.
[The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by J G Holland,
1865.]
Tony Sharp presented yet a third origin: "In the City of London the
popular etymology is that when the new Lord Mayor is admitted to
office, he is presented with the symbols - the mace, sword, and
seals of office - in the Silent Ceremony. The swordbearer wears a
Muscovy fur hat which has a small pocket in which he keeps the
seals safe." Richard Martin, the current swordbearer to the Lord
Mayor, a post introduced in 1420, confirms the basic facts: "I keep
the Lord Mayor's key to the Christ's Hospital Seal in a pocket
inside my hat, a traditional medieval design which implies the
wearer is a man of importance (times change). The one I wear was
created in 1975 and is of sable. Following the Silent Ceremony I
pass the key to the outgoing Lord Mayor, who passes it to the
incoming Lord Mayor, who returns it to me with the instruction
'keep it under your hat'."
Responding to one of my citations for the phrase last time, Julia
Clarke e-mailed, "Keep it under your hat, but Charlotte M Yonge was
thoroughly English and not American." Oh, what a blunder. That
might cast doubt on my assertion that the expression is American,
but further research suggests that's not so. I've since found this
further early British example of "under the hat":
But Adam was proof against this and several similar
temptations, and when his neighbours asked how soon he
was going to be wed, he would laugh and make some joking
reply - say that he could not afford to keep a wife, that
he preferred to keep his family under his hat, or that he
could not find a lass to suit him.
[The Old Factory, A Lancashire Story, by W B Westall,
1881.]
Neither this nor the Yonge one have the form or the meaning of the
idiom as we know it today. The OED has others, including this,
written by Thomas Trollope (the brother of Anthony), in What I
Remember, published in 1887: "The man whose estate lies under his
hat need never tremble before the frowns of fortune." That refers
to a person's brain, the Westall one to the imagination. However,
the earliest examples of the modern idiom, "keep it under your hat"
(keep it secret) are indeed American, the first I've found being
the one I quoted last time, dated 1892.
GARBOIL In an attempt to explain the prefix to this word, many
readers noted the German "gar", from the verb "garen", to cook.
Edvard Nichtburger commented, "A cooked meal is 'gar', when it is
done just right." Alas, I suspect that the similarity of form is
accidental, not least because it doesn't contribute to the usual
meaning of "garboil".
Kirk Mattoon pointed out that the compound "disgarboil" (a word
that is long defunct - the Oxford English Dictionary has examples
only from the sixteenth century) which means to disembowel. The
meaning seems to be the result of a confusion with "disgarbage",
because the original sense of "garbage" was animal offal, often
discarded as rubbish.
Incidentally, I note that the OED's entry for "disgarboil", written
a century ago, has the obsolete "disbowel" instead of "disembowel".
That's logically better, as "disembowel" might imply you first put
the bowels in and then take them out again. But "embowel" exists,
with the same meaning as "disbowel" (the "em-" is an alteration of
the old French "es-", with the sense of "remove"). "Disembowel" is
an intensified version of "embowel", or perhaps a blend of it with
"disbowel".
2. Weird Words: Peristeronic /p@,rIst@'rQnIk/
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Pigeon-fancying was especially strong in England in the nineteenth
century, with great skill expended in breeding new varieties for
show. Charles Darwin became a fancier in 1855 to study variation
within species as part of his research which became On the Origin
of Species.
Like other bodies of the period, pigeon-fanciers' societies looked
to the classical languages for suitably distinguished titles. At
the time Darwin became involved, a London one was grandly called
the Philoperisteron Society. "Philo-" means a lover of something,
from Greek "philos", loving; "peristeron" was invented by a learned
founder, which he took from Greek "peristera" for a wild pigeon or
dove. The organisation changed its name in 1867 to the National
Peristeronic Society (which still exists), in which "peristeronic"
was another invented word, an adjective with the sense "relating to
or concerned with pigeons". The change of name should not be taken
as meaning that the members of the society had ceased loving their
pigeons.
Another organisation of the time was the Columbarian Society, whose
name is from Latin "columbarius", a keeper of doves. The related
"columbarium" could mean a dovecote or pigeon loft, but it now
refers to a place in a crematorium where urns holding a deceased's
cremated remains are stored; the connection is that the niches for
the urns in a columbarium reminded people of roosting holes in a
dovecote. Several societies retain "columbarian" in their names,
including the National Columbarian Society in the USA.
[Thanks to Richard Thomas for telling me about "peristeronic".]
3. Wordface
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TWO'S COMPANY? A couple of recent press reports have noted the
newish word BUDDYMOON. It has been on record for several years in
the sense of a holiday taken by a couple of friends to a romantic
destination that would otherwise be considered suitable for a
honeymoon. It seems that a new sense is appearing, to identify a
growing trend of newly marrieds taking friends along on the
honeymoon. The concept, and the word, is said to be Australian.
4. Q and A: Fatootsed
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Q. The word "fatootsed" seems exactly right when I'm feeling vexed,
exasperated, driven to distraction or colossally frustrated. A
Google search suggests the origin is Yiddish and the first time I
heard it was around 1992, on one of the final episodes of Johnny
Carson's Tonight Show when the Jewish singer and comedienne Bette
Midler used it. Is the word actually ancient and truly of Yiddish
origin? [Linda Garris, California]
A. This one caused me some difficulty. I'd never come across the
word before and it isn't recorded in any dictionary I've been able
to consult. That might be because even in the US, where it appears
most often, it's not widely distributed. Curiously, its most recent
appearance in the media is from a British publication, though the
story is about an unsuccessful attempt by Joan Collins at giving
the weather forecast on an American breakfast show:
Rushing back to rescue the floundering actress, [Early
Show weather anchor Dave] Price said: "No, no, I think
you're a little fatootsed, as we say in Yiddish."
[Daily Mail, 21 Nov. 2008.]
Here's an older one:
Leroy, before you see it and get all fatootsed, I
thought I'd explain about our garage being out in the
street ...
[In a Lockhorns cartoon published in The Pharos-
Tribune, Logansport, Indiana, 11 Jun. 1986.]
Working on the presumption that it is indeed Yiddish, I took down
from my shelves Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish. The book almost
fell open at the entry for "fartootst", which he defines as "the
state of being bewildered, disorientated, discombobulated". Aha!
"Fatootsed" must be merely a minor variation on "fartootst".
The "fartootst" spelling is less common in English and doesn't seem
to be very old. Leo Rosten's book of 1968 is the earliest example
I've found. The next oldest in my files is one in which a Jewish
academic, Gordon Bernstein, is talking to his mother:
An argument followed. It reminded him far too much of
the debates over when he had to be home from dates, and
what he wore, and all the other small things that finally
drove him to an apartment of his own. It ended with the
same sad shaking of the head, the "You are _fartootst_,
Gordon, _fartootst_ ..."
[Timescape, by Gregory Benford, 1980.]
Leo Rosten gives the origin as German "verdutzt", nonplussed,
confused or baffled. That seems reasonable.
5. Sic!
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Margie van Handel was startled by the health implications of an
obituary notice in the Sheboygan Press on 2 October relating to an
elderly lady who passed away "at Sheboygan Senior Community, where
she had been living with her late husband since September 2005."
"What will they think of next?" emailed Jack Meyer. The New York
Daily News on 28 September had an article about a shooting on the
University of Texas campus: "SWAT officers and explosive-sniffing
bombs were dispersed on campus."
The ABC News online of 6 October, Jane Greenwood tells us, had an
item headed "Remand prisoner found dead in cell". The article ends:
"The department says the coroner will investigate the man's death,
as well as the chief Inspector of prisons."
The headline "I was never drunk on air" aroused the curiosity of
Alan Clayton when he saw it in the Daily Telegraph of 21 September.
It turned out to be a radio presenter denying rumours.
Richard Lowndes encountered this headline over a Reuters report
that appeared in the Natal Witness of 7 October as well as other
newspapers: "Briton killed by drone tied to Times Square bomber."
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