World Wide Words -- 12 Nov 11

Michael Quinion wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 11 16:28:07 UTC 2011


WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 762         Saturday 12 November 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. Weird Words: Siccity.
2. Wordface.
3. Q and A: Wrack or rack?
4. Sic!
A. Subscription information.
B. E-mail contact addresses.
C. Ways to support World Wide Words.


1. Weird Words: Siccity  /'sIkItI/
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If a weather forecaster were to predict a period of siccity, his 
audience would be unlikely to understand that he meant a drought was 
on its way. This ancient word for a state of extreme dryness has 
long ago been abandoned by English speakers.

That might be because it's odd-looking, made odder by its being said 
with a "k" in the middle (not as "sissity") and that people have 
preferred the native English "dryness". A century ago, it was 
already marked as "probably obsolete" in the first edition of the 
Oxford English Dictionary. But it has never been popular. Eighteen-
century chemists might have referred to evaporating a liquid to 
siccity, to dryness, geographers might have described an area as 
characterised by extreme siccity when they meant it was a desert, 
learned men might make a little joke about the siccity of a sermon, 
but otherwise it had small use and limited circulation. When this 
item appeared in Scotland a century and a half ago it must even then 
have seemed curiously old-fashioned and obscure:

    The siccity of the weather is already so marked that a 
    scarcity of water is beginning to be felt.
    [The Dundee Courier & Argus, 27 May 1865.]

"Siccity" comes from Latin "siccus", dry. A browse through the OED 
shows that we've lost more than one word from this source. Who now 
speaks or writes of something being "siccaneous", or of "siccating" 
something, that is, making it dry? In a specialist arena, the noun 
"siccative" remains in use for a substance that's added to a liquid 
such as paint to promote its drying. However, we do retain 
"desiccate" and its relatives from the same source. 

By the way, the mainly American verb "sic", to attack or provoke 
into attacking ("He sicced his dog on them") is quite separate in 
origin, being a variation on "seek". And "sic", in the sense in 
which I use it in the title of one of these sections, is the Latin 
word "thus".


2. Wordface 
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NAY!  I was intrigued to come across NEIGHSAYER in a book review 
recently. There are lots of examples in newspapers but they're 
almost always dreadful sub-editorial headline puns on some horse-
related controversy. Not in every case, however. A minority - like 
the one I spotted - show their writers have lost the etymological 
plot. "Naysayer", for a person who denies or opposes some matter or 
who is often negative in his views, comes from the ancient "nay", 
one of two words of negation, the other being "no". Which you used 
depended on the way in which the question was put to you. If it was 
framed affirmatively but you wanted to deny its truth, you used 
"nay", much as we might today respond with "definitely not" or "on 
the contrary". If it was framed in the negative and you agreed with 
it, you used "no". This agrees with its origin from "ne aye", not 
yes. The reverse used "yea" and "yes". Confusingly, "yea" was the 
simple term of agreement, while "yes" was the equivalent of "nay", 
meaning "it is so". So somebody who asked you "Is he an honest man?" 
needed the reply "nay" if you thought that, on the contrary, he was 
a crook but "yea" if you agreed that he was indeed trustworthy. If 
the query was framed in reverse, "Is he a dishonest man?", the 
answers would be either "no" or "yes". We have long ago lost this 
extended system, though it survives in other languages, such as the 
French "si", which like "oui" means "yes", but emphatically 
contradicts a question posed in negative form. "Nay" survives in 
Scotland and northern England as an alternative to "no". (The adverb 
"nay" in the sense of "moreover" - "He grips my hand in public, nay 
brandishes it" - is archaic or humorous.) But the verb "naysay" 
(similar in sense to "gainsay", which was discussed here last month 
- see http://wwwords.org?GNSY) and noun "naysayer" have survived. We 
must hope they continue to be spelled like that and avoid those 
equine implications.


3. Q and A: Wrack or rack?
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Q. Recently I had a discussion about "rack your brains" and "wrack 
your brains". The spelling seems to depend on whether one thinks the 
phrase derives from the rack, the medieval torture device, or from a 
variant of "wreak" or "wreck", to destroy. I side with the former, 
though I realize I have no evidence. And it seems "wrack and ruin" 
has a similar confusion. I've been painfully stretching my brains 
over this question. Help! [Scott Underwood]

A. These expressions certainly cause confusion. Some style guides, 
such as Garner's Modern American Usage, argue that the correct forms 
are "rack one's brains" and "wrack and ruin". The current edition of 
Fowler says equally positively that, at least in British English, 
"rack" is correct in both cases. Etymologists know that the various 
forms of "rack" and "wrack" (and "wreak" and "wreck") have become 
inextricably confused down the centuries and have identified so many 
historical examples of "wrack one's brains" and "rack and ruin" that 
to insist on one over the other is etymologically insupportable. Dr 
Robert Burchfield, editor of the current Fowler, comments that "nine 
homonymous nouns and seven homonymous verbs" exist and despairingly 
adds "All the complexities of this exceedingly complicated word 
cannot be set down here; spare an hour (at least) to consult a large 
dictionary, especially the OED". I can tell you from experience that 
doing so can leave you even more confused.

Let's start by finding you the evidence that you lack for "rack your 
brains", an idiom that has been known with "wit" and "memory" 
instead of "brains". The earliest example known is in this poem:

    Care for the world to do thy bodie right;
    Racke not thy wit to winne by wicked waies.
    [Care For Thy Soule, by William Byrd, in his Medius, 
    published in 1583 and republished in Select poetry ... of 
    the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Farr, 1845.]

"Rack" as a verb derives from the Middle English noun for a frame on 
which materials were stretched for drying, so similar in sense and 
application to a tenter (see http://wwwords.org?TNTRH). The modern 
sense of rack retains this spelling. A century before William Byrd 
was writing, the noun had shifted to mean the torture frame and more 
generally something that causes physical or mental suffering. The 
verb appeared about the same time, initially in senses that were 
associated with the stretching of cloth. By the middle of the next 
century it had extended to mean being racked with the pain of an 
illness, to twisting the meaning of words, and extorting money by 
outrageously increasing the amount demanded.

These historical sources might lead us to argue for "rack one's 
brain". However, by the seventeenth century, "wrack" was already 
being used; indeed, my non-scientific investigations suggest that it 
was more common than "rack". Both are used today, with "wrack" more 
usual in the US and "rack" in Britain.

In your other expression, often spelled "wrack and ruin", "wrack" is 
from a different source, Old English "wrecan", to drive. In early 
usage, it meant vengeance or revenge; by the fifteenth century, it 
had taken on the idea of damage, disaster, or severe injury caused 
by violence. It is linked to "wreak", as in "to wreak havoc", and 
"wreck", in the ship sense. ("Wrack" for seaweed is also a member of 
the set, as is the sense of high, fast-moving cloud, thought to be 
torn by the wind.)

The earliest example of "wrack and ruin" in the OED is dated 1659, 
but confusion between the spellings "wrack" and "rack" had already 
begun, because the form "rack and ruin" is known from a document of 
1599 quoted in Thomas Fowler's History of Corpus Christi College.

If you're not totally confused by now, you surely should be. The 
best that I can do is to quote from another guide, which gives the 
standard US advice:

    Probably the most sensible attitude would be to ignore 
    the etymologies of rack and wrack (which, of course, is 
    exactly what most people do) and regard them simply as 
    spelling variants of one word. If you choose to toe the 
    line drawn by the commentators, however, you will want to 
    write nerve-racking, rack one's brains, storm-wracked, and 
    for good measure wrack and ruin. Then you will have 
    nothing to worry about being criticized for - except, of 
    course, for using too many clichés.
    [Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, 
    1994.]


4. Sic!
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An award in the MTV Europe Music Awards reported in the Guardian 
last Monday might be disputed by many. "While Lady Gaga won the most 
awards, it was Justin Bieber who caused the biggest commotion. The 
17-year-old won best pop act and best male."

"I'd like to see them take it away!" Colin Hall remarked, having 
read the What's News section of the Wall Street Journal dated 2 
November: "The president-elect of Kyrgyzstan said the U.S. should 
leave its air base there when the lease expires in 2014".

"Not the best way to get more customers," commented Len Blomstrand 
about a news report on BBC News Wales on 7 November, "A climbing 
wall is built in a swimming pool that was recently threatened with 
closure to try to attract more visitors."

"Headline of the week!" announced Howard Sinberg, in reference to 
one over a story dated 9 November on the website of WDSU in New 
Orleans: "Unmarried Couples Find Divorce Difficult."

A caption to a photo of Elton John on the Telegraph website was sent 
in by Frank Trumper: "Unfortunately, his efforts to make it on 
Australian TV have not been particularly unsuccessful."


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