World Wide Words -- 19 Nov 11

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 763         Saturday 19 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. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Weird Words: Thrasonical.
3. Topical Words: Reverse ferret.
4. Q and A: Beat.
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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SICCITY  Several readers noted the survival in medical terminology 
of the Latin original of this word, "sicca". Eric Hoy wrote, "There 
is sicca syndrome, in which patients have dry eyes and a dry mouth, 
due to an autoimmune response that attacks the tear glands and the 
salivary glands." There's also rhinitis sicca in which the mucous 
membranes of the nose are abnormally dry. Beth Ayers added, "We also 
occasionally see 'siccolabile' (altered or destroyed by drying) and 
'siccostabile' (unaffected by drying). For those of us who speak the 
esoteric version of English sometimes called Medicalese, 'sicca' 
still rings a bell."

YEA AND NAY Jean Carpenter and others added to my French connection 
of "si" as a contradiction of a negative by mentioning the German 
"doch", used similarly. Remy Rosenbaum noted a formal survival of 
both English words: "at least in American English, as a response to 
a vote in Congress, the request for a roll call vote is known as the 
'Yeas and Nays'." (In the British Parliament, it's ayes and noes.)


2. Weird Words: Thrasonical  /Tr@'sQnIk at l/
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This should be put in the category of educated insults, since only 
those who have swallowed the dictionary or know Latin literature 
understand what it means. A thrasonical person is a braggart. The 
original was a former soldier named Thraso, a character in the play 
Eunuchus (The Eunuch), written in 161 BC and became the most popular 
of the six by the writer whom we know as Terence.

"Thrasonical" began to appear in English in the sixteenth century, 
in time for Shakespeare to put it into the mouth of Rosalind in As 
you Like It. In it she describes Julius Caesar's famous assertion 
"veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered") as a thrasonical 
brag. 

These days, its most frequent appearances are in a widely-reproduced 
bit of advice to aspiring authors or public speakers. In an idle 
moment, I set out to trace it to its origin. It turns out to be a 
hardy perennial, which became popular on both sides of the Atlantic 
from the 1880s on, appearing regularly in magazines and newspapers. 
The earliest unearthed so far is in The Pennsylvania School Journal 
of 1874. It is surely older still. This version is from early in its 
life:

    Let your conversation possess a clarified conciseness, 
    compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and 
    a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of 
    flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine 
    affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and 
    unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility, without 
    rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all 
    polysyllabical profundity, pompous prolixity, and 
    ventriloquial vapidity. Shun double-entendre and prurient 
    jocosity, whether obscure or apparent. In other words, 
    speak truthfully, naturally, clearly, purely, but do not 
    use large words.
    [Notes and Queries, 11 Feb. 1893.]


3. Topical Words: Reverse ferret
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It was good to see this item of British journalists' slang turn up 
recently. When the Bishop of London executed a volte face by 
suspending legal action against the protesters camped outside St 
Paul's Cathedral, a couple of the more upmarket British newspapers 
referred to his decision as a reverse ferret.

Journalists, more even than the populace at large, are sceptical of 
public figures who have the strength of character to decide that 
they were wrong about something. Politicians run scared of changing 
policy and so being thought to be indecisive. Margaret Thatcher, at 
her party conference in Brighton in 1980, gave her view of policy U-
turns, "You can turn if you like: the lady's not for turning", a 
witty bit of scriptwriting that, lacking a sense of humour (and 
possibly knowledge of the play by Christopher Fry), she had to be 
convinced was worth including. Tony Blair famously told his party 
conference in 2003 that he had "not got a reverse gear" over his 
decision to invade Iraq. George Osborne, the current Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, says he has no Plan B.

The term was applied, in the first three months of 2011, by the 
Telegraph to an insurance company's decision not to proceed with a 
takeover; by the radio critic of the Independent to his decision not 
to listen any more to The Archers (the longest-surviving soap in the 
world) and by the Financial Times to PM David Cameron's reversal of 
foreign policy by acting in support of the rebels in Libya. 

It is agreed that the term was created by Kelvin MacKenzie, the 
notorious former editor of Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid, The Sun 
(known to journalists by the rhyming slang phrase The Current Bun or 
The Bun). He's known for headlines such as "Freddie Starr Ate My 
Hamster" (later proved untrue), "Gotcha!" (jingoistically 
celebrating the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands 
War), and "If Kinnock Wins Today, Will The Last Person To Leave 
Britain Please Turn Out The Lights" (on general election day in 
1992).

He based the term on the Yorkshire extreme sport of ferret legging. 
It consists of tying string around the ankles of a contestant's 
trousers, popping a couple of ferrets down them and tightening the 
belt. No underwear is permitted. The little beasts are domesticated 
versions of the polecat, traditionally used to hunt rabbits by 
sending them down burrows to flush the animals out (hence "to ferret 
out"). They have viciously sharp teeth. The winner is the one who 
can stand the agony longest; the world record, I am told, is an 
astonishing five hours and thirty minutes. Kelvin MacKenzie's view 
was that his newspaper's job was to provoke public figures - as he 
put it, to "stick a ferret down their trousers". Whenever he felt 
that public opinion had turned against the policy of The Sun, he 
would announce a change with the mysterious shout "reverse ferret!".


4. Q and A: Beat
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Q. I have exhausted my not inconsiderable collection of reference 
books in a search to find the origin, and explanation for the use, 
of the noun "beat" in the expressions police officer's beat and news 
reporter's beat. I would be grateful for any help you can give. 
[Horace Krever]

A. It seems, from my own searches, that lexicographers are as much 
in doubt about its source as are you. There are so many senses of 
"beat", both noun and verb (the Oxford English Dictionary lists 33 
separate senses for the verb and its compound phrases and 17 more 
for the noun) that establishing an unequivocal connection isn't 
easy.

There's no doubt that the origin lies in the verb, meaning to strike 
with repeated blows, which was already in existence in Old English. 
Two possible origins are suggested in particular and both are 
plausible. One derives from the idea of the feet hitting the ground, 
either in walking or running. Compounds such as "to beat a path" and 
"beaten track" come from this. The OED also suggests "to beat the 
streets" as an example, a rare phrasing which appears here:

    A time of need followed, during which Hall Caine beat 
    the streets of London in search of work.
    [McClure's Magazine, Dec. 1895.]

You might argue that that is using "beat" in the other likely sense, 
that of beating the ground to drive game towards hunters, which is 
known in several set phrases of various ages - "beating the bushes", 
"to beat the town for recruits", "beat over old ground", or "to beat 
about the bush". Both reporters and police might reasonably be said 
to beat the urban landscape in the hope of flushing out stories or 
criminals.

However, there's another aspect which I think enables us to choose 
between these two possibilities. A beat for a constable refers to a 
regular route which he traverses on foot ("walking the beat" is the 
usual way to describe the activity). It appears in the regulations 
of Sir Robert Peel's new Metropolitan Police Force of London at the 
time of their establishment in September 1829:

    Each Sergeant's party, when on duty, will have charge 
    of its respective section of the division, each Police 
    Constable having a beat appropriated to him within the 
    section. 
    [Reproduced in The Morning Post, 25 Sep. 1829.]

That surely links his route to the "beating a path" sense. Though a 
journalist's beat usually implies a subject area - politics, courts, 
labour issues - rather than a physical circuit, I strongly suspect 
from the dating of the latter usage (the late 1890s in the US) that 
it derives from the police sense, not least because a reporter at 
that time would gather stories largely on foot.


5. Sic!
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Marie-Louise Edwards wrote, "Gosh, that's a bit dressy for giving 
birth!" having seen a headline on the Daily Mail website: "Miranda 
Kerr returns to the Victoria's Secret catwalk after giving birth in 
a $2.5 million diamond studded bra".


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