World Wide Words -- 16 Apr 11
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Apr 15 16:38:29 UTC 2011
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 732 Saturday 16 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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A formatted version of this e-magazine is available
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For a key to phonetic symbols, see http://wwwords.org?PRON
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Cotton on.
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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HEDERA AND FLEURON From David Nissen Kahn: "In the for-what-it's-
worth vein, 'fleuron' is also a professional kitchen term, with a
meaning akin to the typographic one: 'a tiny, crescent-shaped piece
of puff pastry used as a garnish, usually atop hot food'.
Tim Nau felt that I'd left a lot out of my brief description of
punctuation before printing arrived. I agree that there was a long
hiatus in my description that omitted the developments that came
out of post-classical scribal practices, including the full stop
(period) and the slash or virgule, used to mark brief pauses in
reading and which evolved into the comma (in fact, "virgule" is
from the French word for a comma, but it derives from the Latin
"virga" for a rod).
BURKE Michael Templeton pointed me to a once-famous Edinburgh
skipping rhyme that commemorates the activities of Burke and Hare:
Up the close and down the stair,
But and ben with Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox, the boy who buys the beef.
"But and ben" variously means "backwards and forwards", "to and
fro" and "everywhere". These days, it's more often the name of a
traditional two-room cottage, an "in and out", sometimes used as a
holiday home.
NEW RSS FEED Though numerous readers looked at the experimental
new RSS feed - The Word File - after my note last week, comments
came in from just 15 people, mostly favourable. It seems worth
continuing, but following a suggestion from Randall Bart I've
modified it so that each day's feed includes not only the current
day's item but the previous four as well. The address of the feed
again: http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/wordfile.xml . Further
comments welcome.
2. Weird Words: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
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Having come across it the other day in a popular science book, it
seemed time to recognise this notorious weird word, the longest to
appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, beating out such horrors
as honorificabilitudinitatibus (see http://wwwords.org?HNFCS). It's
supposed to be a lung disease that's caused by the inhalation of
the very fine sand and ash dust found around volcanoes.
This 45-letter monstrosity (word lovers prefer, with good reason,
to refer to it as p45) primarily exists as an example of a very
long word, a trophy to be exhibited as evidence of the superior
knowledge and intellect of the person presenting it. Hardly anyone
who does so realises that they're perpetuating a joke.
The story starts in New York in 1935. The famous National Puzzlers'
League of the US, the longest-surviving puzzle organisation in the
world, was holding its 103rd semi-annual meeting at the Hotel New
Yorker. The then president of the NPL was Everett M Smith, whose
day job was news editor of the Christian Science Monitor, but who
in these circles was known as Puzzlesmith. Mr Smith introduced p45
to the meeting to illustrate the ever-increasing length of medical
terms. But doctors knew nothing of it, because it was the creation
of Mr Smith's nimble mind.
The word was reported in the issue of The New York Herald-Tribune
for 23 February 1935, spelled "-koniosis". Frank Scully included it
in Bedside Manna, the Third Fun in Bed Book the next year, though
he spelled it wrongly. It gained a semi-official stamp of approval
when in 1939 Merriam-Webster added it to the supplement of its New
International Dictionary (it has been claimed that this was the
result of a campaign by members of the NPL). Subsequently, p45 has
so often been recorded that many publishers have felt obliged to
include it in their larger dictionaries, though usually with
disclaimers.
If you need to refer to the disease, pneumoconiosis is shorter and
means much the same. Or you could use the popular terms silicosis
or black lung.
3. Wordface
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GOOSE-STEP Tony McCoy O'Grady asked me why the stiff-legged army
ceremonial march has this name. The Prussians, who invented it in
the eighteenth century, called it the "stechschritt" or stabbing
step. The English name was clearly mockingly pejorative, though in
a curious lexical twist it has since been widely adopted in other
armies. One suggestion is that it made a soldier performing it look
as silly as a goose (in the sense of a simpleton, "goose" is from
the 1500s). Another notes the application of the term, around 1800,
to a bit of basic army drill in which a recruit stood on each leg
alternately, so similarly being compared to a goose. This is a
description of the drill:
Imagine him standing on the right leg, the other being
raised so that the foot just clears the ground. Upon the
word "Front" from the instructor of the drill, he
advanced the raised foot to the front to an extent rather
short of a pace, and there keeps it suspended till he
hears the word "Forward." He then places the suspended
foot on the ground, and raises the other, keeping it off
the ground in the rear, till at the further word "Tow,"
he brings it up to the standing foot, though still
keeping it off the ground. He is then in the position
from which he started; and at the successive words,
"Front," "Forward," "Tow," each leg goes through the
alternate standing and suspension required: and so on for
as many hours as the drill is ordered to last.
[Memoirs of Dr Blenkinsop, by Adam Blenkinsop,
1852.]
4. Q and A: Cotton on
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Q. In composing an email to a friend, I used the phrase "cottoned
on", meaning I'd understood. It suddenly struck me that it's an odd
way to describe taking a liking to, or taking advantage of, or
becoming a fan of, or coming to understand something. Where and how
did the expression originate? [Evan Parry, New Zealand]
A. It's complicated, but I'll try to unravel it for you.
We're sure that the verb comes from the noun "cotton" for the plant
and the fibre. This derives from Arabic "qutn", because the plant's
homeland is the Middle East.
The very first sense of the verb was to raise the nap on cloth such
as wool to draw out the loose ends of the fibres before shearing it
to give it a smooth finish. It may have been because freshly woven
cotton has a natural fuzzy nap that means it can be sheared without
first having to artificially raise it. To call a fibre "cotton" at
that time meant it had the finish of cotton, but was actually wool
or linen or a mixture of linen and cotton. Confusingly for people
who know Manchester as the traditional centre of the cotton trade
(to the extent that in Australia and New Zealand "Manchester" means
cotton goods such as household linen; it's short for "Manchester
wares"), in the sixteenth century "Manchester cotton" could be a
type of woollen cloth.
By the middle of the sixteenth century the verb sense of "cotton"
had become a figurative expression meaning to prosper or succeed. A
writer in 1822 tried to explain it: "a metaphor, probably, from the
finishing of cloth, which when it cottons, or rises to a regular
nap, is nearly or quite complete."
By about 1600, to "cotton together" or "cotton with" a person meant
you got on well together. It has plausibly been suggested it came
from the use of mixtures of cotton and other fibres in clothing. A
little later, "cotton up" meant to strike up a friendship. In the
early 1800s, to "cotton to" somebody implied that you were drawn or
attached to that person. It may be that the idea here is how well a
thread of cotton sticks to the surface of cloth. "Cotton to" was
taken to Australia and became common there:
"My word! Dick," Jim says, "it's a murder he and
Aileen didn't cotton to one another in the old days.
She'd have been just the girl to have fancied all this
sort of swell racket, with a silk gown and dressed up a
bit."
[Robbery Under Arms, by Rolf Boldrewood, 1888.]
Around 1900 this became "cotton on to" and then "cotton on", still
in the same sense. Within a decade it was known both in Britain and
the US and remains so in the latter country, though it is rather
regional and feels old-fashioned or homely.
By the 1920s, "cotton on" had developed the last of the meanings
that you mention, of coming to understand some matter. It's not too
surprising - if you can cotton on to a person, you can equally
cotton on to an idea. The best clue I've found to its origin is in
a glossary of English army slang used in World War One, published
in Notes and Queries in December 1921. This included "cotton on
(to)" in the sense "to understand". We may guess that it evolved in
Australia and was communicated to British and American soldiers
during that war.
6. Sic!
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Gordon Drukier noted that new signs have appeared In the past few
months on the approaches to State Route 3 from Interstate 91 in
Connecticut. These warn: "ROUTE 3 NO PERMITTED LOADS ALLOWED".
A BBC News story on 14 April began: "The NHS in England could save
money by carrying out fewer, less effective procedures" was spotted
by Martin Wynne, who noted, "An operation to remove a harmful comma
would be a start!" By the time I got to see it, that had happened.
"The disclaimer on the back page of the Ford Accessories Pocket
Guide booklet from my local Ford Garage," reports David Jackson,
"optimistically rephrases the usual E&OE [Errors and Omissions
Excepted] to become 'Errors and Omissions Expected'."
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