World Wide Words -- 04 Aug 12
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Aug 3 15:53:00 UTC 2012
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 796 Saturday 4 August 2012
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Williwaw.
3. Wordface.
4. Q and A: The cheese gets binding.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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DINT Susan Bradley wrote from Australia to provide an intriguingly
different view of the word: "Brass players routinely refer to a
small indentation on their instrument, usually caused by our own
clumsiness or sometimes that of others, as a dint. You can get your
instrument either "dedented" or "dedinted" by a specialist repairer.
There's a whole hierarchy in size of dents: dint, knock, crease,
dent. None of this is written down anywhere that I know of, but any
brass player in Australia at least, and probably in the English-
speaking world would understand it (I'm a Pom, but Aussie resident
for a long time, to validate my language opinion!)"
Variations on a theme: "Just wanted to add," Ian McLoughlin wrote,
"that my mum - who died last year aged 88 - always referred to any
indentation on a surface as a 'dinge', particularly if it was on a
body part such as a shin or a part of the head. Being born and bred
in Wigan such dinges were quite a common sight as a result of mill-
work and mining." Other readers noted that "dunt" is still used in
Scotland. Bruce Napier pointed out the Scots proverb "Words are but
wind, but dunts are the devil." Or, as we English would say, "Sticks
and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Miles
Irving recalled a memorable moment: "It put me in mind of student
days in Edinburgh. The landlady of my local pub had a stave behind
the bar with which she cheerfully threatened patrons at closing
time; affectionately referring to it as her 'punter dunter'."
Several readers who thoroughly know their Christmas carols pointed
me to the last verse of Good King Wenceslas, in which the lyricist,
John Mason Neale, included the word:
In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed.
CORRECTION A poem last time was attributed to Alaric Attila Watts.
His supposed middle name was a satirical invention in an article in
Fraser's Magazine in June 1835 as the result of a literary feud. He
was baptised Alaric Alexander Watts. Apologies for confusing the
fictive with the real. The piece noted, in the ponderously humorous
style of the times, "We feel bound to add, however, that it is not
very likely, in the usual chances of events, that such names as
Alaric Attila Watts should have met in matrimony with those of
Zillah Madonna Wiffen; an unkind world may suggest a mystification
somewhere, if the scraggiest part of the neck of the world should
trouble itself about such things." Watts had married Priscilla Maden
Wiffen, always known as Zillah. Tony Augarde, author of The Oxford
Guide to Word Games, tells me the abecedarian poem had previously
appeared in The Trifler in May 1817.
2. Weird Words: Williwaw /wIlIwo:/
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Whether Föhn or Santa Anna or Brickfielder, winds with names are
rarely good news. The williwaw, surely the strangest named of them
all, is no exception.
This odd word first appears in early nineteenth-century accounts of
voyages through mountainous seas and evil winds to round Cape Horn.
One was by Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle during his first
voyage in 1829, which preceded the famous one with Charles Darwin:
"The 'williwaws' (I know no better name for the sudden gusts that
come off the high land) gave us some trouble, occasionally laying us
almost on our beam ends."
At the end of the century another intrepid sailor traversed the same
region:
Here I had my first experience with the terrific
squalls, called williwaws, which extended from this point
on through the strait to the Pacific. They were compressed
gales of wind that Boreas handed down over the hills in
chunks. A full-blown williwaw will throw a ship, even
without sail on, over on her beam ends; but, like other
gales, they cease now and then, if only for a short time.
[Sailing Alone Around The World, by Joshua Slocum,
1900.]
The name has since been applied to a similar phenomenon in other
places, in particular the Aleutian Islands (Gore Vidal, who died
this week, wrote his first novel, Williwaw, after serving there as
master of an Army F-S boat during the Second World War). It's now
understood that williwaws come about when air that has been cooled
and made more dense on the upper reaches of a mountain roars down
steep slopes to the sea. In meteorological terminology, such winds
are katabatic (Greek "katabatikos", from "katabainein", to go down).
"Williwaw" is said to have been named by sealers and whalers in the
area of the Straits of Magellan around 1800. Nobody seems to have
the slightest idea where the word came from. The only hint I can
uncover is from a writer in the Gardener's Magazine in December
1839, who commented that "williwaw" was the usual Patagonian term
for it. Presumably it was borrowed from a native language no longer
known to us.
3. Wordface
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WAZZAT? Last week's visit by the US Republican presidential nominee
Mitt Romney to the UK succeeded through some ill-judged remarks in
uniting the country in condemning him, not least through the medium
of British slang. The press borrowed their fashionable term for bad
government, "omnishambles" (http://wwwords.org?OMNSM), and made
ROMNEYSHAMBLES; one commentator described Romney's visit as "a
complete and utter HORLICKS" (see http://wwwords.org?HORL). The Sun
headlined him "Mitt the TWIT". The term that got most attention in
the US was that by Lucy Jones in the Telegraph. She called him a
WAZZOCK. It's a northern English insult, which came to wider public
notice in 1976 following comedian Mike Harding's surreal piece Beaky
Knucklewart. A wazzock is a stupid or annoying person or an idiot;
it can suggest somebody who lacks the native wit to keep from making
a fool of himself. Nobody has the slightest idea where it comes
from, though a rock climb of similar name in the Peak District has
been mentioned. My local paper, the Bristol Evening Post, used it in
April this year about proposals for the city to have an elected
mayor: "The details of the job description aren't perfect, and the
lengthy mandate means we'll be in real trouble if we elect a
wazzock."
A WORD TO AVOID? Andy Larter tells me with mild surprise that he
has been reliably informed that the word "friendlily" really exists.
"Is this correct?", he asks. Yes, but. The word - the adverb formed
from the adjective "friendly" - is most certainly on record ("She
patted him friendlily on the arm" - Flow My Tears, the Policeman
Said, by Philip K Dick, 1974). The OED cites it from as long ago as
1680 and examples appear commonly in older literature. But it's too
awkward to be anybody's favourite; the concept is usually expressed
by a phrase such as "in a friendly way". Significantly, the reviewer
of the book Kate Caterina in the Sunday Telegraph in 2001 commented
of its author, "William Riviere was educated in this country, then
moved abroad. It shows: words such as 'friendlily' and 'ghostlily'
imply a certain rustiness in the use of English."
4. Q and A: The cheese gets binding
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Q. I have used the expression "when the cheese gets binding" for all
those of my 80 years which I can recall. I had thought it referred
to challenging or tight situations. When asked a few years ago, I
could find no reference to the expression in any source. I am left
wondering if the expression was restricted to my maternal roots in
Middle Tennessee. Do you have knowledge of such an expression?
[Alexander Pierce]
A. Colloquial expressions from across the water never cease to amuse
and surprise me, which is only fair because so many Americans find
English expressions quaint. I've not come across this one; its story
has been intriguing to investigate, but also confusing.
I learned first that the idiom isn't restricted to Tennessee, nor
even to the US, since a version with almost exactly the opposite
meaning is known in Canada, though it may be a different expression
with a coincidentally similar form. The form and meaning you give
turn out to be rather rare in the printed record. One example:
So when the cheese got binding on the Council vote,
you, who had been selling so hard for settlement, suddenly
had faint heart.
[San Antonio Light (Texas), 13 Mar 1977.]
My reading of the rather scant evidence and the notes in books on
word history is that "when the cheese gets binding" and "make the
cheese get binding" are known mainly from the US after the Second
World War and mean that something is or has been made worse or that
events have reached a serious or difficult stage.
Eric Partridge and Paul Beale say in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases
that a Canadian version, the exclamation "that makes the cheese more
binding!" was current from 1945-55 and meant "That improves matters;
that's just what we need". Laurence Urdang and colleagues agree in
their Picturesque Expressions, published in 1985, that that version
is Canadian and say it means "To improve matters; to strengthen,
augment, or reinforce." However, I haven't yet unearthed an example
in Canadian sources.
Confusingly, the first example of either form on record is from the
US but is in the Canadian sense. It's rather older than you are, Mr
Pierce:
The boys, we are told, went more for the outing than to
play ball - and we are informed they really had a nice
time and got their expenses paid out of their share of the
receipts of the game, which, as the boys say, "made the
cheese more binding."
[Moberly Evening Democrat (Missouri), 8 Jun. 1920.]
How this expression (or these expressions) arose baffled me until I
found Laurence Urdang's book, which adds a comment:
This expression ... refers to the constipating effect
that cheese often has on the body; consequently, anything
that makes the cheese more binding increases its
efficacy.
We must assume that Americans very reasonably regard constipation as
trouble rather than good news.
5. Sic!
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Royal bigamy? Caryl Hill was surprised to read a story in the Daily
Telegraph of 28 July: "The Duke of Cambridge will cheer on Zara
Phillips as she competes on her horse High Kingdom. He is expected
to be joined by Miss Phillips' mother, Princess Anne, and the
Duchess of Cornwall and her husband, the rugby player Mike Tindall."
The issue of the Kansas City Star for 27 July, Jim Grebe informs us,
reports Google's announcement about high-speed internet service: "It
brings the same electronic engineering and manufacturing know-how
that has increasingly scaled down the cost of building football-
sized data centers around the globe."
Minor typing errors can evoke engaging images. Stephen White found
this in a Daily Telegraph e-mail sports update on 1 August: "Beth
Tweddle will lead the British team in their first Olympic final
since 1984 where they will attempt to stay in the hunt for a medal
against powerhouses China, Russia, Romania and the Untied States."
He commented, "I guess Texas is seceding after all."
On a similar theme, an article in the 20 July issue of The Ledger of
Lakeland, Florida, caused Stefanie Bush to ask, "Is Florida now not
part of the United States?" The item noted that "In 2009, [Lakeland
Regional Cancer Center] was the second program in Florida and the
first in the nation to get NAPBC Accreditation."
Bill Blinn heard this on WOSU radio on 31 July: "Driving along the
state's highways, most of the corn and soybean crops look healthy."
He feels that "the average corn or soybean plant that is able to
drive would, by definition, be pretty darned healthy."
6. Useful information
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