World Wide Words -- 14 May 11
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri May 13 17:10:25 UTC 2011
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 736 Saturday 14 May 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: Carwhichet.
3. Q and A: Upper crust.
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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ARAB SPRING Several readers argued that the roots of the phrase
lie much further back than the Prague Spring. Ken Kirkland wrote:
"I have routinely used the phrase (borrowed from other historians)
'Springtime of the Peoples' to describe the wave of revolutions
that swept over Europe in 1848. And indeed a web search turns up
dozens, if not hundreds, of analysts discussing the similarity
between the 1848 revolutions and the Arab Spring, so it's no
surprise to see that the 'Springtime of the Peoples' phrase was
extended on to the current uprisings, which indeed have much in
common with the 1848 revolutions."
PIKER In Australia and New Zealand "piker" has yet another sense,
as a number of readers pointed out. John Park noted that it refers
to "a person who initially enthusiastically agrees to attend a
party or other similar social occasion, but eventually decides not
to attend - often at the last minute and causing some irritation."
I had thought of mentioning this Antipodean sense in my piece, but
decided to omit it in the belief it would confuse a complicated
story still further. The meaning would seem to have independently
grown out of the old sense of a person who runs away.
2. Weird Words: Carwhichet /kA:hwItSIt/
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Let me riddle you a riddle: "How far is it from the first of July
to London Bridge?" Stumped for an answer? Then try this one: "If a
bushel of apples cost ten shillings, how long will it take for an
oyster to eat its way through a barrel of soap?"
These two perplexing queries were provided by John Camden Hotten,
in his Slang Dictionary of 1865, as examples to illustrate the word
"carwhichet", or rather "carriwitchet", as he preferred to spell
it. His version was as good as anybody's, since the term has never
been used enough to settle to an agreed form and everybody who has
used it has made their own guess about the spelling.
A carwhichet (let's stick with that version) is a hoaxing question
or conundrum, sometimes a mere pun or bit of verbal byplay. Here is
one of its more ancient appearances:
A Quibbler is a Jugler of Words, that shows Tricks
with them, to make them appear what they were not meant
for, and serve two Senses at once. ... He dances on a
Rope of Sand, does the Somerset, Strapado, and half-
strapado with Words, plays at all manner of Games with
Clinches, Carwickets and Quibbles, and talks under-
Leg.
[The Character of a Quibbler, from the Genuine Remains
in Verse and Prose of Mr Samuel Butler, Volume 2. Though
published in 1759, this was actually written about 1680.
A "clinch" (or "clench") and a "quibble" were other names
for the games with words that Butler's quibbler was so
expert at. "Quibble" only later took on its modern sense
of a petty or legalistic objection. "Under-leg" remains
mysterious.]
Nobody knows where the word comes from, however you spell it. A
link with French "colifichet" has been cautiously suggested. In
that language, it refers to a small object without much value, a
bauble, knick-knack or trinket, which had developed from an old
word for a hair accessory.
3. Q and A: Upper crust
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Q. Although well known here in the US, I have no clue about the
origins of the phrase "upper crust". I went to the World Wide Words
site to search for it but struck out. Our collective guess is it
has something to do with baked goods. Can you share the origin of
this phrase? [Bill Brown]
A. In trying to get to the root of this dismissive way to describe
the upper classes, aristocracy or social elite, we have to start by
clearing away the obscuring undergrowth of supposition.
Many sources say that it's from the US. That's because the Oxford
English Dictionary currently says it is and cites as its first two
examples the works of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, dated 1836 and
1843, with a third from John Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms
of 1848. However, Haliburton wasn't American but Canadian, from
Nova Scotia. And as we shall see, the earliest example isn't from
North America, but Britain.
Another source of disinformation are the guides who herd tourists
around the ancient buildings of Britain. In the kitchens, they
explain the old method of baking bread in an oven. This was heated
by burning dry twigs in it and after raking out the ashes, the
bread dough was put in to bake. The bottom of the resulting loaf
was over-baked because it was sitting on the hot oven floor; ashes
also stuck to it. The upper crust was properly baked, however, and
was obviously more desirable. A poet of the eighteenth century put
it into verse:
Two Crusts are to be met with in a Loaf,
Who knows it not must be an errant Oaf;
Clean, crisp, and pleasant is the upper Crust,
The under full of Ashes, brown, a-dust.
[Grobianus: or, The Compleat Booby, an Ironical Poem,
by Friedrich Dedekind. Translated from Latin into English
by Roger Bull, 1739.]
Tourist guides will explain that the upper crust was reserved for
the master and mistress of the household and that the term "upper
crust" was transferred to its consumers. The first part is probably
true but the second isn't. There's no evidence for the term having
evolved as a reference to the better bits of bread being reserved
for the highest-ranking members of a household, apart from a much-
quoted oblique reference in John Russell's Book of Nurture of 1460,
which reads, in modern English: "Cut the upper crust [of the loaf]
for your sovereign".
There have been other senses of "upper crust". The most common in
the eighteenth century was of the upper surface of the earth and by
analogy the crust that forms on the surface of partially melted and
refrozen snow or on the mud of a partially dried-out pond. In the
early nineteenth century, it became slang for a hat or the head:
To hear it from the _chaffer_ of a rough and ready
costard-monger, _ogling_ his Poll from her _walker_ to
her _upper crust_.
[Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,
revised by Pierce Egan, 1823. "Chaffer": banter;
"costard-monger": costermonger, a street seller of fruit
and vegetables; "poll": girlfriend; "walker": foot.]
This is the first known use of "upper crust" in the people sense:
One who lords it over others, is Mister Upper-
Crust.
[Slang: a Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase,
the Pit, etc, by John Badcock, published in London in
1823.]
As this shows, "upper crust" was initially low slang, an insulting
reference to people who considered themselves a cut above the rest.
By this time, "upper crust" was so fixed a phrase in various senses
that it's doubtful whether a direct mental link with bread was in
its coiners' minds. The stress here was on "upper", as a symbol of
supposed superiority.
Even though it was originally British, it rapidly spread to North
America and later to the rest of the English-speaking world; in the
process it shifted sense to refer to those who were actually at the
top of the social pyramid, the "quality", though never quite losing
its derogatory implications. Haliburton used it in the modern sense
in one of his Sam Slick stories in 1843; it may be significant that
it was in The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England.
4. Sic!
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Gerry Gould wrote "you surely won't want to publish this" and then
told me of his encounter with an illustrated handbill from Kohl's
Department Store that advertised the "perfect bra": "Buy 1, get 1
half off!"
In Australia, Jim Hart read the transcript of an ABC television
programme on bowel cancer. It was stated that "It's still an
uncomfortable topic to talk about but the fact is, 30 people will
be diagnosed with bowel cancer every day, and 12 of them will
ultimately die." While the other 18 presumably never will.
"The downside of anthropomorphizing our cars," notes Lin Jenkins,
"is that they become subject to the thousand natural shocks that
flesh is heir to." She put in evidence a headline from the Dayton
Daily News of Ohio on 6 May: "Medical condition may have caused car
to crash into building."
Harvey Wachtel contributes an advertisement in the New York Metro
issue for 11 May. It was for Water's Edge condos on the Rockaway
peninsula of Long Island: "Each residence has a private sodden
backyard."
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