World Wide Words -- 21 Jul 12

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 794           Saturday 21 July 2012
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Abecedarian.
3. Turns of Phrase: Self-quantifying.
4. Q and A: Tit for tat.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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ACES LOW  Krister Rollins and Jim Hart asked about the expression 
"within an ace of ruin" which turned up twice within quotations in 
the piece last week on "touch and go". "Ruin" doesn't seem to fit 
with "ace" because we often think of the latter as meaning highly 
skilled or exceptional (tennis players scoring aces, fighter pilot 
aces and so on). However, the word derives from the Latin "as" for a 
single thing or unit, hence the playing card, which nominally has a 
value of one (the shift in most games to its being the most valuable 
card led to "ace" taking on its mantle of excellence). In a separate 
development, the low value of "ace" led for a while to associations 
with the smallest possible amount or a tiny portion, and hence to 
worthlessness or misfortune; there may perhaps have been a nod to 
"as" also being a Roman copper coin of small value. "Within an ace 
of" meant "within a hair's breadth" with connotations of disaster 
only just averted.

DOUBLED DUTCH  Following the notes here last week about expressions 
that include the word "Dutch", Bart Wijnberg told me about Total 
Dutch, a book by Ton Spruijt subtitled "Meer dan duizend woorden en 
uitdrukkingen met Dutch vertaald, verklaard en toegelicht", which he 
translated as "More than a thousand words and expressions containing 
the word Dutch translated, explained and elucidated". We're a long 
way from that total, but readers have provided more examples. Jary 
Stavely wrote, "When I was a child in the US, one way to physically 
torment a smaller person was to give him a 'dutch rub'. To do this, 
you wrapped one arm around his neck and then forcefully rubbed your 
knuckles over the top of his head." Several readers told me that 
"Dutch wife" is now slang for a sex doll. "Dutch door" was mentioned 
by Mary Louise Lyman (I'd call it a stable door). And "Dutchman" has 
other repair senses than in wood or stone: one reader mentioned that 
it can be a partial repair of the sole of a shoe while Carl Bowers 
and Megan Zurawicz explained that the canvas strips used to cover 
the joins between scenery flats in theatres have the same name and 
that putting them on is "dutchmanning". Gilda Blackmore e-mailed, 
"It just occurred to me that no one has mentioned 'double Dutch 
skipping'. I've no idea why it's called that. It was very popular 
when I was a child many years ago. I understand it has made a 
comeback."

Richard Bos commented that one of the set last week, the Dutch angle 
in film, isn't actually Dutch: "I was surprised by this when I first 
came across it (there aren't many good Dutch contributions to the 
world of cinema), so I looked it up, and found that it's nothing to 
do with us. It's another 'Deutsch' misappellation, and was called so 
because it was first developed in German Expressionist films." I've 
since learned that it's also sometimes known as "canted camera".

And finally, I am told that in Dutch, an American party ("Amerikaans 
feestje") is one in which everyone is expected to bring their own 
food and drink. While Americans go Dutch, the Dutch go American. 

[I'm grateful to Harry Lake and Richard Bos for helping me with the 
various Dutch terms. Enough "Dutch" for now, thanks.]

THEIR THEIR  Numerous readers criticised my use of "their" last week 
in "a person who is formally defending their doctoral thesis in 
public". As a unisex possessive determiner, "their" is now widely 
accepted in all but the most formal circumstances and avoids clunky 
formulations such as "his or her".


2. Weird Words: Abecedarian  /,eIbi:si:'de:rI at an/
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The strangest aspect of this unusual word is the way it's said. It 
looks as though it ought to be /@,bes@'de:rI at n/ (roughly "a-bes-a-
DAIR-ee-un") but it's actually pronounced as though the first part 
is an abbreviation: "ay-bee-see-DAIR-ee-un". That explains why it 
has at times been written "abcedarian". The source is the post-
classical Latin of the fifth century AD - it appears first in the 
works of St Augustine. English imported the word from French in the 
1500s.

An early sense was of a person who taught or learned the alphabet. 
From the latter sense, it also came to mean more generally a novice 
or beginner. Paradoxically, it was also a member of a sixteenth-
century German sect which opposed all forms of learning, including 
knowledge of the alphabet. It can be a primer for teaching reading 
and spelling and more loosely any listing in alphabetical order.

    Naming your firm Acme was once an easy way to get 
    placed at the top of the telephone listings, though more 
    adept abecedarians - like AAA Cesspool & Rooter Service - 
    have trumped that positioning.
    [Long Island Business News, 21 Dec 2007.]

We may also come across it in reference to a poem in which the first 
letters of each verse or line are in alphabetical order, a special 
class of acrostic. Some early instances were hymns or psalms: the 
Hebrew original of Psalm 119 is abecedarian; around 1375 Chaucer 
translated a French prayer so that verses began with the letters of 
the alphabet in order (missing J, U and W, not then used).


3. Turns of Phrase: Self-quantifying
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The wired world of electronics and the net is beginning to affect us 
in ways that would have been regarded as SF only a few years ago. A 
rapidly developing area is variously called self-quantifying, self-
tracking, body-hacking or life-logging. 

The idea behind it is to record data from your everyday activities 
and use it to improve your life by changing your behaviour. Athletes 
have long been familiar with tracking variables such as the foods 
they eat, how much they sleep, the content of training sessions and 
other matters to help them achieve peak fitness. The difference 
today is that the widespread availability of smartphones with 
features like accelerometers and GPS plus a big variety of apps 
means that everybody can join in.

People are monitoring their sleep rhythms to learn what combination 
of food and exercise gives them a really good night's sleep. Others 
are continually checking life signs to control medical conditions, 
including asthma and Parkinson's disease. Some are going further, 
sharing their data with groups of users to provide mutual support; 
these databases are becoming useful for researchers who are looking 
to identify behavioural factors that affect people's health.

    Self-quantifying is being taken seriously by start-ups, 
    in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, which are launching new 
    devices and software aimed at self-trackers. It may even 
    provide a glimpse of the future of health care, in which a 
    greater emphasis is placed on monitoring, using a variety 
    of gizmos, to prevent disease, prolong lives and reduce 
    medical costs.
    [The Economist, 3 Mar. 2012.]
    
    
    With "life-loggers" and "quantified-selfers" now 
    tracking all aspects of their own lives online, Little 
    expects that freely available data of potential use to 
    healthcare will become increasingly available.
    [New Scientist, 7 Jul. 2012.]


4. Q and A: Tit for tat
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Q. Where did "tit for tat" come from? [Peter Rugg]

A. It's the littlest words that often give us the most trouble in 
sorting out their origins. They're likely to be the ones that have 
proved to be the most mutable in the spoken language. This curious 
phrase is a classic example.

In the sixteenth century, it was "tip for tat". Another form, used 
by Shakespeare and almost certainly from fencing, was "tap for tap", 
which makes plain the underlying idea of a reprisal or retaliation 
that's roughly proportionate to its cause.

"Tat" in "tit for tat" isn't a distinct word at all but an instance 
of a type of reduplication in which the internal vowel changes from 
"i" to "a", as in "chit-chat", "flimflam" and "knick-knack". "Tip" 
here is the same as "tap", a light blow. "Tit" is not in the mammary 
sense but comes from an old verb that likewise could mean to strike 
a light blow. 

All these words have an idea of smallness about them: a "tit" can 
also be a small bird (originally "titmouse" but it was the "tit" 
part that communicated small size, since "mouse" isn't the rodent 
but a version of "mose", an Old English name for the same bird); at 
one time "tit" could be a small or part-grown horse or a girl or 
young woman. "Tip" can also be an extremity or small point. The 
ultimate origins of most of these are uncertain but some may be 
imitative.

I am suspicious of two common statements about the origin of the 
phrase which appear in some reference works. It has been suggested 
that it's related to the French "tant pour tant", which chefs will 
know as a mixture of equal parts of fine sugar and ground almonds. 
It seems to have once meant "like for like" and is ancient enough 
that a bashed-about version is in Love's Labour's Lost: "So 
pertaunt-like would I o'ersway his state". But if it was ever common 
it is improbable as the source of "tit for tat", as the links to the 
other short English words I've listed are too strong. Most works 
that mention that source also suggest that it could be from a Dutch 
phrase, "dit vor dat", in the same sense, though my Dutch contacts 
say it doesn't exist in the language today nor in old texts. I 
suspect uncritical borrowing of erroneous material from earlier 
sources, the curse of third-rate reference books.


5. Sic!
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Jenn winced on reading a Scientific American blog dated 13 July: 
"Previous work at the Paisley Caves had turned up preserved human 
feces (coprolites) containing DNA and some stone projectile points."

Jenny Brown read this review on the Trip Advisor website on 18 June: 
"It was the first time away for my boyfriend and me and we picked 
the right place! The only complaint that I have is that the mistress 
in our room was old & uncomfortable." And wearing a Freudian slip.

A health report of 18 July on the BBC site about the risks of not 
taking physical exercise was spotted by Martin Wynne: "The public 
needed to be warned about the dangers of inactivity rather than just 
reminded of the benefits of it."

Len Levine found this unfortunate sentence in the Personal Tech blog 
of The New York Times of 12 July: "Crossword puzzle apps allow you 
download a puzzles from all over the world, correct mistakes without 
using an eraser and check your answers."

I was browsing the Dell site on Wednesday and found this: "With a 
Core(tm) i3 processor, discreet graphics and large hard drive this PC 
is a talented all rounder". Designed for porn watchers?


6. Useful information
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Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice 
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