World Wide Words -- 10 Mar 12

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 777          Saturday 10 March 2012
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      A formatted version of this e-magazine is available 
      online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/kreh.htm


Feedback, Notes and Comments
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NEW FORMAT  Your comments were overwhelmingly positive. So I shall 
continue sending both formats each week. It's particularly good to 
learn that older subscribers report that the formatted version is 
easier to read and that it works well on smartphones and tablets.

Many readers noted exclamation marks in the middle of a couple of 
words. These weren't typing errors but were inserted by e-mail 
software because some paragraphs were too long. I've changed the 
coding method to prevent this happening again.

Some readers complained that lines were too long in some readers or 
that the fonts were too small. Lines can usually be shortened by 
reducing the width of the viewing window - the text will reformat to 
fit it. Font sizes can often be changed through a local setting. 
However, I've amended the code to set a maximum length for lines and 
also changed the font specification slightly. In response to other 
requests, I've added links to key pages on the website, including 
the online version of each issue.

ERRORS  Apart from the intrusive exclamation marks, subscribers also 
noted that I'd referred to the forward of a book when of course I 
meant its foreword and that I'd misspelled Sebastian Junger's name 
in one place. The phrase "when it's at home", in the question about 
"perfect storm", lost its apostrophe in one appearance (more about 
the expression below). Apologies.


Weird Words: Froward
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It's not a mistake for "forward", though a typing error in an e-mail 
brought it to mind.

The first part of this archaic word could at one time stand alone. 
"Fro" is based on Old Norse "frá", from which we also get "from". We 
now know it only in "to and fro", which is a scaled-down form of the 
Middle English "come toward and go froward".
 
"Froward" means leading away. Old English also had "fromward" in the 
same sense, though they later diverged. "Fromward" retained its 
literal sense of direction - until it died out in the eighteenth 
century - whilst "froward" moved to the metaphorical.

By the fourteenth century, "froward" was attached in particular to a 
person who figuratively moved away from others by doing the opposite 
of what was asked of them or what other people thought reasonable. A 
froward person was hard to deal with - obstinate, peevish, perverse 
or childish. Indeed, a difficult child was often said to be froward: 

    Human Life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a 
    froward Child, that must be play'd with and humour'd a 
    little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep.
    [An Essay on Poetry by Sir William Temple, 1690.]

That sense remained until "froward" slipped out of daily use in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century. If you read it today in a 
newspaper it's either in a quotation from an old work or - to return 
to my starting point - a misprint for "forward".


Wordface
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STARSTRUCK  An informal astronomical term swam into my ken the other 
day: MILKOMEDA. The experts who know our galactic neighbourhood are 
predicting that shortly - in about five billion years, give or take 
the odd billion - the Andromeda Galaxy may collide with our own, the 
Milky Way. After some churning and stirring, the two may coalesce 
into a new single galaxy, which has been named Milkomeda. Though we 
need not lose any sleep about its coming, it's good to know that we 
already have a name for it.

WALKING WOUNDED  Following my piece two weeks ago on "somniloquent"  
several readers asked about the Latin verb "ambulare", to walk. John 
Sieger put it this way: "I would be curious to know when 'ambulare' 
acquired wheels to become 'ambulance'." It's an odd story. The 
original was the late-eighteenth-century French "hôpital ambulant", 
literally "walking hospital", a horse-drawn vehicle that we would 
now call a mobile field hospital, taken to a battle to give rapid 
help to the wounded. This gave rise to "chariot d'ambulance" and 
"voiture d'ambulance" and at the end of the nineteenth century to 
the French "ambulance" in its modern sense of a civil emergency 
vehicle. The English word, initially meaning a vehicle with which to 
transport wounded away from the battlefield, was borrowed from 
"voiture d'ambulance" by the British army fighting alongside the 
French in the Crimean War.

AT HOME?  In last week's issue, Thomas O'Dwyer wrote in his query 
about "perfect storm", "What, I thought idly, is a perfect storm 
when it's at home". Lots of readers were clearly unfamiliar with 
this colloquial phrasing. It expresses surprise, incomprehension or 
scorn on encountering a reference to an unfamiliar person or thing: 
"Who's he when he's at home?"; "What on earth is an Immigration 
Appeals Tribunal when it's at home?"; "What are banister finials 
when they're at home?". As so often with such formulations, the 
origin is lost in history, but it's been in use in Britain for 150 
years. The earliest on record is in St Patrick's Eve, by Charles 
Lever, published in 1845: "'And who is Mr. Lucas when he's at home?' 
said Owen, half-sneeringly."

IN HOT WATER  Perhaps, being officially retired, I'm now out of the 
loop, workplace-wise, but I was surprised when a catalogue of office 
supplies that I was glancing through offered me "hot and cold water 
coolers". The models listed do indeed dispense hot water as well as 
cold. Though the English language is flexible, using "water cooler" 
to mean "water heater" bends it so far it might snap.


Q and A: Etiquette
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Q. I have noticed that the word for a label in several languages 
(French, Dutch, German and Spanish at least) is "etiquette", or a 
variant of it. How did we come to have such different meanings, and 
what do these other languages use when they want to talk about the 
prescribed way of behaving? [Sarah Ingram]

A. Both senses have the same source, as does "etiquette" in English.  
Something similar happened in English, too, though in a disguised 
way. 

The extension of sense first happened in French. It derives from the 
ancient French "estiquette" that meant to press, pierce, insert or 
attach and which may be linked to the Latin "stilus", a stylus. It 
meant a post stuck in the ground that served some purpose or other 
not fully understood in games, perhaps as a goal. Because the posts 
often had a sign attached to them, it extended its sense to a label, 
in a later usage one in a lawyer's book bag or valise that detailed 
the papers relating to a trial, including a list of witnesses. This 
moved further over time to refer to any sort of ticket, such as a 
price tag, which is one of its meanings in modern French.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the word was used in the 
court of Philippe the Good, the Duke of Bourgogne, for the schedule 
of the Duke and his court. By the end of the century, it had come to 
mean the court ceremonial, particularly at Versailles, and hence a 
code of polite behaviour in formal situations.

Because French was for so long the formal language of courts and 
diplomacy throughout Europe, "etiquette" in this sense spread into 
other languages. Confusingly, several of them adopted the label 
sense as well, though the two may be spelled slightly differently.

Like other languages, English borrowed "etiquette" in the behaviour 
sense in the eighteenth century. But two centuries earlier we had 
acquired a word close in sense to "label" by dropping the initial 
"es" from "estiquette" to make "ticket".


Sic!
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Pete Jones was watching the snooker on Sky Sports recently when a 
commentator said: "If he can stay ahead, he's going to win". 

Several cases of unfortunate headline constructions appeared this 
week. "Woman hit by triathlon cyclist in coma" was seen by Rosemary 
Zammarelli on the Fox Sports site on 6 March. MSN News had the sad 
news, found by Michael Daily, that "Toddler found after twister dies 
in hospital". On 7 March the Washington Times site had the headline 
"Dead inmate killed up to 20"; thanks go to Norman Cooper for the 
zombie alert.

Sharyn Turney sent a report from Yahoo News Australia: "Nearly 3500 
have been evacuated in NSW as a Sydney dam overflew." The Canberra 
Times wrote in similar mode two days earlier: "Floods have overflown 
other Canberra dams during construction with no ill effect."


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