World Wide Words -- 10 Dec 11
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Dec 9 14:38:16 UTC 2011
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 766 Saturday 10 December 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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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Myrmidon.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: Toodle-pip.
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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GREMIAL Dan Perlman commented, "It was a surprise to see 'gremial'
referred to as a rare word. Here in South America, I see it every
day. But that's in Spanish, where historically it refers to a guild:
professional, trade, academic or wizardly. Today both words are used
to refer primarily to trade unions and professional associations."
Erik Midelfort noted that "Gremium" exists in German in the sense of
a board, panel, or committee. Both languages have acquired their
terms from the same Latin sources as our "gremial". Patrick Martin
added, "I seem to remember from my Oxford days 50 years ago that a
'gremial member of the House' meant a Student (Fellow) of Christ
Church who had also been an undergraduate there. Since then I have
always referred to any cat we owned whose mother we had also owned
as a gremial cat or kitten."
Mike Brian commented that the Latin root of "gremial" is especially
associated with this time of year through a traditional Christmas
carol, In Dulci Jubilo (In Sweet Rejoicing). This was originally a
macaronic composition in German and Latin, still widely known in an
English rendering of the German by Robert Lucas de Pearsall: "In
dulci jubilo / Let us our homage shew; / Our heart's joy reclineth /
In praesepio / And like a bright star shineth, / Matris in gremio. /
Alpha es et O." "Matris in gremio" may be translated as "in the
mother's lap".
[For "macaronic" see http:/wwwords.org?MCRNC]
NEW WORDS IN FRENCH Several readers felt I had strained too hard to
find an origin for the neologism "bête seller" in the phrase "bête
noire". It would have been simpler, they felt, to seek it in the
common slang sense of "bête" for a person who is stupid, like a dumb
animal.
WEIGHT The Reverend Carl Bowers wrote, "I doubt that the opinion
sense of 'weigh in' derives from boxers weighing in before a fight,
since that procedure is to meet an objective standard; a boxer who
is overweight for a weight classification is disqualified from
competing. More likely it derives from adding one's weight to one
side of a contest, either as opinion or argument added to one side
of the scales of debate, or physically as for example adding one's
weight to one team in a tug-of-war."
2. Weird Words: Myrmidon /m@:mId(@)n/
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It is not good to be called a myrmidon. It is not a term of respect.
Officious and aggressive police officers sometimes have it thrown at
them by more literate commentators, as do holders of public office
who are carrying out unpopular policies:
Their concern is that an unprecedented spending spree
by our 535 noble members of Congress, supported by the
myrmidons at the Fed, will force interest rates higher and
bond values to fall.
[The Herald News (Joliet, Illinois), 13 May 2011.]
It is less effective than it might be as a term of abuse because it
requires the addressee to have at least a smattering of classical
knowledge. According to the classical Greek storyteller Homer, in
the Iliad, the Myrmidons were a warlike people of Thessaly; they
were renowned for their mindless loyalty to Achilles, their king,
who led them in the Trojan War. Greek legends about where they came
from played on a fanciful link of their name with Greek "myrmekes",
ants. One suggested that Zeus created them from a nest of ants.
The word has existed in English since medieval times but over time
has become progressively less reputable. For Shakespeare, myrmidons
were faithful followers, the members of a bodyguard or retinue. A
century later they had become hired ruffians or mercenaries. By the
nineteenth century they had sunk somewhat lower to be opportunistic
supporters of some person or organisation. Today a myrmidon is often
an unscrupulous subordinate:
But not even the police will forever be able to ignore
the question of whether or not Rupert Murdoch, always a
keen reader of his own newspapers, knew from the first day
they did it that his myrmidons were lifting illicit stuff
for their piddling stories.
[Daily Telegraph, 16 Jul. 2011.]
3. Wordface
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Megan Phelps and Anthea Fleming of Australia were listening to an
ABC broadcast of the cricket test match between their country and
New Zealand last weekend and heard the commentator use "marmalised",
which roughly means "utterly destroyed" or "totally demolished".
They asked me for more information. "Marmalise" is still known in
Britain, though less than it was when the Liverpudlian comedian Ken
Dodd popularised it in the 1960s. It's long-established Liverpool-
Irish slang, said to be from marmalade plus pulverise, and often
occurs in phrases such as "I'll marmalise yer", meaning "I shall
chastise you severely", or words to that effect. Roy Hattersley, a
former deputy leader of the Labour Party, once told how Harold
Wilson, Labour prime minister in the 1960s, replied to a query over
lunch by Dom Mintoff, the then PM of Malta. Asked how he proposed to
respond to an attack by his Conservative opponents at Question Time
in the House of Commons that day, "Wilson paused before he gave his
carefully considered answer. 'In the words of Ken Dodd, our great
national comedian, I shall marmalise 'em.' And he did."
4. Q and A: Toodle-pip
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Q. I've just looked up the origin of "toodily pip". I found only
"toodle-oo", which is said to be derived from the French "tout a
l'heure", which is not convincing. The French term is incomplete
since I'd expect there to be an "à" before "tout". Otherwise it
simply means "soon", whereas "toodle-oo" means goodbye. Furthermore
the French phrase doesn't sound much like the English expression.
And where did the "pip" come from? [Roger White]
A. Dictionaries often do cautiously suggest "à tout a l'heure" as
the origin of "toodle-oo", a terribly dated item of British slang
that most people will have only come across in the works of P G
Wodehouse. He didn't know "toodily pip", which is a very recent
form, almost solely found in discussion forums online. It seems to
be a mistaken or corrupted version of "toodle-pip", contemporary
with "toodle-oo".
Do not disregard a French connection too quickly. British English
speakers are renowned for their ability to mangle foreign tongues,
French in particular. Any nation that can turn "ça ne fait rien"
into "san fairy ann", as British soldiers did in France in the First
World War, is quite capable of transmogrifying "à tout a l'heure"
into "toodle-oo". But it isn't the only possibility: another
potential source that the experts mention is "toot", the sound of a
coach's horn signalling its departure. This may not be so daft as
you might think, as we'll see in a minute.
There are other late nineteenth-century British slang terms of
similar kind, such as "pip-pip". This is an example from the master:
"Well, it's worth trying," said Reggie. "I'll give it a
whirl. Toodleoo!" "Good-bye." "Pip-pip!" Reggie
withdrew.
[A Damsel in Distress, by P G Wodehouse, 1920.]
We may reasonably assume that the "pip" in "toodle-pip" is the same
as in "pip-pip"; "toodle-pip" might even be a blend of "toodle-oo"
and "pip-pip", though it's impossible to tell from the recorded
evidence.
"Pip-pip" arose as an imitation of the sound of the air horn fitted
to early bicycles - the sort with a trumpet and a rubber bulb. They
were around during the cycling craze near the end of the nineteenth
century alongside the modern bell. This will give you the idea:
Pip-pip. Hue and cry after any one, but generally a
youth in striking bicycle costumery. Onomatope of the horn
warning which sometimes replaces the bell of the bike.
[Passing English of the Victorian Era, by J Redding
Ware, 1909. You may gather from "bicycle costumery" that
Mr Ware wasn't a fan of cyclists, or perhaps just of their
style of clothing.]
This entry was somewhat behind the times, as "pip-pip" had by then
already begun to be recorded as a slangy alternative to "goodbye",
presumably from shouting it after a retreating cyclist. Some of the
usages, such as the Wodehouse one, suggest that it might also be an
acknowledgement to a goodbye from somebody else or a general cry of
encouragement. A precursor, "pip-pop", was known from a century
earlier as an imitation (an onomatope in Mr Ware's vocabulary) of
small-arms gunfire. It hints that "toodle-oo" could indeed be from
"toot", as a similar imitative.
However, it's sadly the truth that nobody knows now exactly what was
in the minds of the inventors of these curious exclamations.
5. Sic!
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A report on ABC News on 30 November about a lawsuit contained a typo
(since corrected): "It was filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common
please." Robert Wake wondered if there might be a counterbalancing
Court of Thank You.
"Duh!" was roughly Richard Newall's view of a headline in the Sydney
Morning Herald's news e-mail on 5 December: "Teen Dies After Fatal
Stabbing".
Another curious headline appeared the same day in the Mail Online,
John Neave and Doc Taylor tell us: "Woman put voodoo curse on ex-
boyfriend before battering him to death with new lover."
Anita Cohen writes: "I recently received one of those crazy e-mails
telling me that I'm the beneficiary of the will of some person I've
never heard of. This one informed me that I qualified because 'you
bear the same surname as the diseased'. I hope it's not contagious."
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