World Wide Words -- 27 Aug 11
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 26 16:46:26 UTC 2011
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 751 Saturday 27 August 2011
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Author/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
online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/jxhn.htm
Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Limitrophe.
3. Q and A: Drug on the market.
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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THE MALADY LINGERS ON My thanks to all of you who sent your good
wishes for my recovery; I'm still not fully fit but am getting
better.
MARMALADE Several readers told me I had misinterpreted European
Union regulations. These are based on an EEC directive of 24 July
1979 entitled "the approximation of the laws of the Member States
relating to fruit jams, jellies and marmalades and chestnut purée".
This states that for a preserve to be called marmalade it must be
made from a citrus fruit, not solely oranges as I stated. The
regulation seems to be widely ignored - Prince Charles's Duchy
Originals brand, for example, includes onion marmalade.
Eric Marsh recalled a different folk tale about its origin. "In
this one, a Scottish lady made a preserve using oranges, and her
guests liked it so much they asked for, 'mair, milady' (more, my
lady)." Morgiana Halley noted that on a maritime history discussion
list some time ago a correspondent had believed marmalade had been
used as a seasick remedy because its name clearly derived from "mer
malade".
Nelsen Spickard wrote, "I am sure you have been inundated with
emails on 'summer apple' being a tautology. It is not. Perhaps with
the importation of fruits from the southern hemisphere, folks have
lost track of the seasonal nature of apples. 'Summer apple' refers
to fruit picked in summer or early fall; winter apples are picked
in late autumn."
2. Weird Words: Limitrophe
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A young guest in the ancient and renowned Lexicophilia Club, who
ought to know better, buttonholes the oldest member in seclusion of
the James Murray Memorial Library.
"Limitrophe. That looks foreign."
"Your perspicacity astounds me. It was introduced from French by
English members of the diplomatic corps in the eighteenth century,
when - as you may know - French was the language of diplomacy."
"So what did French diplomats mean by it?"
"Situated on the frontier; bordering another country. As a noun,
border-land."
"And where did the French get it?"
"From Latin 'limitrophus', lands set apart for the support of
troops on the frontier."
"I don't have any Latin. It's all Greek to me."
"Astonishing. You're actually half right. The second part is indeed
Greek ('trophos', supporting) but the first is from Latin 'limes',
a limit or boundary."
"That's enough etymology, thanks."
"Within these walls, young man, we can never have too much
etymology."
"I've never seen it before."
"Why am I not surprised? But your observation is accidentally
perspicacious. Unlike French, where it's often to be encountered,
it has always been rare in English."
"Examples please."
"Pass me Sir James Rennell Rodd's Social and Diplomatic Memories,
if you'd be so kind. Thank you. Grand man. First-class diplomat.
Got his KCMG for sorting out that nasty Fashoda business in Africa
in 1899. Here we are: 'Countries limitrophe with Germany, such as
Belgium, Holland, and perhaps Denmark'. And I can quote from a work
by another diplomatist, Sir Charles Eliot. In his Hinduism and
Buddhism - it appeared in 1921 in three volumes, absolutely
splendid stuff, his life's work, you know - he wrote: 'In the reign
of Mithridates the Parthian Empire was limitrophe with India and
possibly his authority extended beyond the Indus'."
"These are very old."
"Not as old as all that, young man. But I take your point. It has
always been rather a scarce word and it seems to have fallen even
further out of favour during the past century."
"So nobody uses it these days?"
"It's still to be found if you would take the trouble to look. For
example, 'This belt of sovereign states is the Great Limitrophe: a
kind of buffer zone separating Russia from the true centers of both
European and Asian civilization'. That's from Russia in Search of
Itself, by James H Billington, published in 2004. And here's
another, from 2008: 'This stretch of international boundary, which
the Colorado River forms, is known as the limitrophe'. That's in
Ecosystem-based Management in the Colorado River Delta, whatever
that means, by Karen Hae-Myung Hyun."
"Why don't we just say 'border-land' or 'bordering'?"
"We would then lose an elegant word with which we can illuminate
our discussions of political and economic geography."
"Show off your obscure learning, you mean?"
"Impertinent whippersnapper! Enough! Away with you!"
3. Q and A: Drug on the market
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Q. I wonder if you could explain the origins of the expression
"like a drug on the market". A quick internet search fails to turn
up an explanation of the origin of the phrase. It usually appears
as a somewhat pejorative expression, but it is not clear whether it
originally meant something that sold in large numbers, something
that suppressed the sales of competitive products, or something
that wouldn't sell at any price. [Ross Higson]
A. The usual meaning of the idiom "a drug on the market" (also
often as "a drug in the market") is that it's a commodity no longer
in demand and so is commercially valueless or unsaleable.
The idiom didn't arrive until the 1830s but in that sense "drug" by
itself is known from the seventeenth century. Its first appearance
is this, worth quoting at some length to give a feeling for the
context:
Another Commodity Mineral, namely Copperas, which was sold
heretofore (when there was Letters Patents for the sole making
thereof) for £10 and £12 the Tun, whereof a great Trade might
have been made for other Countries; hath been so ill governed
by Workmen underselling one another, and for want of orderly
carriage, that the same is sold under £3 the Tun, and is become
a mere Drug out of request, by the abundance made, and
indiscreetly vented, bartered or exchanged,
[Consuetudo, vel Lex Mercatoria; or, The Ancient Law-
Merchant, by Gerard de Malynes, London, 1622. Spelling lightly
modernised. De Malynes was a Dutch merchant settled in London,
a writer on economics and a spy for the English government.
"Vented" is from the verb "vent", common at the time, meaning
to sell (it's an old form of "vend").]
That's where the firm facts end. There's long been some doubt where
"drug" comes from in this sense. The problem, of course, is trying
to fit the usual sense of the word to the meaning of the idiom. And
there's no other noun of closely similar spelling in the language
that might be its source.
It is known from a verb, of course, as "drug" is the old strong
past tense of "drag", now dialectal or regional. Before I looked
into the matter, I guessed the idiom might have come from that verb
in the sense of an impediment. In possible support of that theory,
many examples of "drag in/on the market" exist:
The oil and gas sector acted as a drag on the market after
crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange for July delivery
dropped to around $98 a barrel.
[The Herald (Glasgow); 8 Jun. 2011]
However, this form didn't start to appear in the written record
until the 1840s, after the "drug in/on the market" form had become
established, and more than two centuries after "drug" by itself. A
connection may exist the other way around, with "drug" having being
taken to be the past tense of "drug" and being replaced by "drag"
through a hypercorrection. Helping the change would have been the
use of "drag" for a nuisance, bore, or hindrance, though that's
slightly later still, from the 1850s; that comes from "drag" in the
sense of the slow and impeded movement of a heavy object.
The Oxford English Dictionary includes the idiomatic phrase in the
entry for the medicinal compound and considers it to be the same
word. As the OED lays it out, the story behind it is intriguing.
"Drug" first appeared in English in a much wider sense than we use
it now. It meant any substance - animal, vegetable or mineral -
that was employed in various types of manufacturing, not solely
pharmacy. It took several centuries to narrow its sense to the
medical one - as late as 1728, the Chambers Cyclopedia defined the
word thus: "a general Name for all Spices, and other Commodities,
brought from distant Countries, and used in the Business of
Medicine, Dying, and the Mechanic Arts".
The OED suggests that the source of the sense in the idiom may lie
not in English but in French. In that language, from the fifteenth
century on, "drogue" meant an ingredient used in chemistry or
pharmacy - today it means a drug in the restricted sense of an
addictive substance - and is the source of our "drug". But it also
had the sense of something of poor quality or worthless, a person
whom one doesn't value, or poor merchandise; as an adjective it
could mean poorly dressed. The deprecatory uses may have come about
through the perception of medicinal substances as being unpleasant
to take. It seems that this secondary sense later resurfaced in
English as the forebear of the idiom.
4. Sic!
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When visiting Burnby Hall Gardens near York last week Daniel Cutter
noticed a sign attached to a low fence: "ducks keep off".
Andrea Loft was referring to a headline in the Daily Gazette of
Schenectady on 15 August when she e-mailed: "I was sorry to read
about this veteran's war wounds and his untimely death, but glad
that he was not to be buried alive: 'Veteran killed on ride to be
buried'."
"Perhaps not quite what he meant to say?", wrote Ian McIver. He had
seen a sentence in the Brisbane Times of 16 August: "One advocate
of technology's march declared last year to Smithsonian magazine.
'People have been predicting the demise of movie theatres since I
started in the business.'"
"I received an e-mail with the subject line 'Stay accident prone
with the technology of Jupiter Jack'," communicated Gary Sanders.
"It turns out it was an advertisement for a safety device."
A headline from the Expatica Netherlands RSS feed on 20 August,
Alan Buck reports, was "Pope reaches out to abuse victims amid
protests".
One report on this week's earthquake on the US east coast, widely
reproduced, was spotted by Brenda Clough and Roger Bullard: "In
downtown Baltimore, the quake sent office workers into the streets,
where lamp posts swayed slightly as they called family and friends
to check in."
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