World Wide Words -- 09 Apr 11

Fri Apr 8 16:27:04 UTC 2011

WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 731          Saturday 9 April 2011
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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: Hedera.
3. Q and A: Burke.
4. 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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BOUNTY HUNTER  Michael Templeton suggests that I hadn't found early 
examples of the term being used for a hunter of humans because my 
sources didn't include libraries of western pulp fiction. He found 
an example in The Crimson Horseshoe by Peter Dawson, dated 1941. As 
it happens, I've now taken the phrase back a bit further (Justin 
Beam also found it, in another source):

    The first four chapters deal with noted western 
    characters: Charles Goodnight, the trail-blazer, John 
    Chisum, the cattle king, Clay Allison, the man-killer, 
    and Tom Horn, scout and human bounty-hunter.
    [A review of Fighting Men of the West by Dane 
    Coolidge, in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly of 
    Texas, July 1932.]

As the writer felt it necessary to specify that the bounty hunter 
was after human beings and not animals, that sense of the term must 
have then been new. Justin Beam confirms that Dane Coolidge didn't 
use the term himself, describing the protagonist as a "man-hunter".

BROSIERING  As a further comment on the linguistic peculiarities of 
Eton College in the nineteenth century, Kirk Mattoon quoted from 
Boys Together by John Chandos, about British public schools in that 
period. Chandos wrote, "Everyone, male or female, except classics 
tutors, who kept a boarding house to accommodate Eton boys was a 
'Dame'." What was so different about classics tutors?

EXPERIMENT  Following a suggestion from a reader, I've set up a new 
RSS feed - The Word File - as a trial. It will run from Monday to 
Friday of next week, though last Friday's test will be available 
over this weekend if you want a sneak preview. Each day a new 
random link will be presented to a page on the World Wide Words 
site. The URL is 

  http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/wordfile.xml

Try it and let me know what you think. Worth having? A waste of 
effort? Needs modifying? Send your comments to the usual address, 
wordseditor at worldwidewords.org, but include "Word File" in the 
subject line.

2. Weird Words: Hedera
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Gardeners will prick up their ears in the expectation that they are 
about to hear something interesting about ivy, as "Hedera" is its 
genus name (Hedera helix is the common English ivy, where "helix" 
refers to the spiraling growth of the ivy stems). Ivy is closely 
involved, but I'm actually writing about punctuation.

Most of the dots, marks, slashes and dashes that separate our words 
are relatively modern inventions that followed the introduction of 
printing in the fifteenth century. Commas date from the sixteenth 
century, while exclamation and question marks didn't appear until a 
century later, around the time that semicolons came in.

Classical Latin writers didn't have any of these and didn't feel 
the lack, but then because written texts were intended to be read 
aloud rather than silently. They did have the capitulum, or chapter 
marker, which turned into the symbol we now call a pilcrow (see 
http://wwwords.org?PLCRW). Romans indicated the ends of texts with 
an ivy leaf, which they naturally called a hedera. Why they chose 
ivy is unknown. It was a symbol of Bacchus, the Greek and Roman god 
of wine, but that hardly seems to fit; perhaps it was just common 
and easy to draw.

The mark was carried over into English printing but by then it had 
become an ornament, one of a group that became known as "fleurons" 
(from Old French "floron", a flower). You may still sometimes come 
across the hedera as a graphic symbol for a section break or as a 
decorative marker at the beginning of a paragraph.

3. Q and A: Burke
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Q. In one of C P Snow's Strangers & Brothers series, Time of Hope, 
I came across a verb that I'd not seen before: "I did not burke the 
certain truths". What did Snow mean by "burke"? [John Boaler]

A. It's an intriguing verb. 

It takes us back to the 1820s and that notorious pair, Burke and 
Hare. Medical schools were finding it difficult to get enough 
cadavers for the anatomic dissection essential to train students. 
The only official source was executed criminals but their numbers 
had been decreasing because fewer were being condemned to death, 
while the number of students needing corpses was increasing. One 
source was grave-robbing, carried out by low-life scavengers who 
were given the ironic name of resurrectionists.

Brendan Burke and William Hare, two Irish immigrants to Edinburgh, 
started their grisly trade by selling the body of a recently 
deceased tenant of their boarding house to Dr Robert Knox, a local 
anatomist. Having learned that bodies could be profitable, they 
began to murder individuals, usually by getting them drunk and then 
smothering them, to leave no marks on the bodies that would reduce 
their value as specimens.

Burke was convicted of 16 murders and executed in January 1829; in 
a fitting end, his body was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh 
Medical College. Hare had turned King's Evidence and had been given 
immunity from prosecution. The case caused a huge sensation, as did 
the imitative but much more widespread activities of a gang in the 
English capital which became known as the London Burkers. With the 
public outcry over grave-robbing, these led to the passing of the 
Anatomy Act 1832, which legitimised the donation of bodies for 
medical science.

The Times report on 2 February 1829 of his public hanging recorded 
of those attending that "every countenance wore the lively aspect 
of a gala-day" and that Burke's name had already become an eponymic 
verb: the spectators shouted "Burke Hare too!" By the time Charles 
Dickens was writing his first novel less than a decade later, the 
term was known to everybody:

    "Why, sir, bless your innocent eyebrows, that's where 
    the mysterious disappearance of a 'spectable tradesman 
    took place four years ago." "You don't mean to say he was 
    burked, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick, looking hastily 
    round.
    [The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens, 1837.]

By this time, too, the verb had become figurative. To burke is to 
suppress, hush up, or avoid discussing something. It comes from the 
idea of metaphorically smothering an issue. This is the sense in 
which Snow used it. Though it's hardly common, it's still around:

    In the case of the BNP [the British National Party], 
    both Government and Opposition need to be compelled to 
    confront the issue they have for so long burked; for it 
    is the mishandling of this which has allowed the BNP to 
    raise its ugly head.
    [Belfast Telegraph, 20 Oct. 2009.]

By the way, "burke" has no connection with the British slang term 
"berk" for a stupid person. That's rhyming slang, known from the 
1920s if not earlier, short for Berkeley (or Berkshire) Hunt, even 
though in British English the first parts of both are pronounced 
"bark".

4. Sic!
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Ella Poindexter spotted a headline on the Sky News website over a 
story dated 3 April: "Police Name Severed Arms In Lake Victim".

Once you know "decedent" is a formal term for a deceased person, a 
summary of an article in Zaritsky's Estate Planning Update for 1 
April contains - as Kathleen Magone points out - an unfortunate 
error. It ends "... despite the fact the decedent lived there for 
six months after her death."

After last week's instance, further higher mathematics in a news 
item came courtesy of Andrew Hawke: "The four candidates on the 
list ahead of Ms Wall (Judith Tizard, Mark Burton, Mahara Okeroa, 
Martin Gallagher and Dave Hereora) all turned down the role." This 
was in the New Zealand Herald on 6 April.

Aoife Bairead saw a headline in the Sunday Business Post of Ireland 
dated 3 April: "Bishops agree sex abuse rules".

Cecelia Poole found a job posting by Sutter Health for a secretary 
in a medical centre in northern California. Qualifications required 
included, "Type 75wpm. Excellent grammar, speloing, editing and 
composition skills." Suggestion: first hire a proofreader.

The Daily Maverick of South Africa (masthead boast: "Not entirely 
omniscient") had an article on 5 April, Kristina Davidson tells us, 
about changes at a government agency: "The position of CEO became 
vacant after all four full-time members, Smunda Mokoena, Thembani 
Bukula, Ethel Teljeur and Rod Crompton, expired on 31 March."

A. Subscription information
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B. E-mail contact addresses
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* Comments on e-magazine mailings are always welcome. They should 
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C. Ways to support World Wide Words
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