World Wide Words -- 24 Mar 12

Michael Quinion wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Mar 23 17:10:39 UTC 2012


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WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 779          Saturday 24 March 2012
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      A formatted version of this e-magazine is available 
      online at http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/akph.htm



Feedback, Notes and Comments
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FESTUCINE  Nick Humez pointed out that the poem I quoted from wasn't 
the epic of Gilgamesh as we know it today but a romantic Victorian 
attempt by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton in 1884 to reconstruct part of 
the story from a fragment of a later poem, Ishtar and Izdubar (the 
latter name is a nineteenth-century misreading of Gilgamesh, due to 
confusion between Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform).

INSURANCE  Last week, I wondered about the term "before-the-event" 
insurance. Numerous readers pointed out that, like the majority of 
people in the UK, I was unaware that it is in fact possible to get 
after-the-event insurance, particularly for legal expenses. If you 
suffer some accident and don't have before-the-event cover, you can 
take out after-the-event insurance, at a price, to reimburse your 
costs if you lose the case.

NERD  Joyce Melton responded to last week's article. "Cartoonists, 
illustrators and other artists have used 'nerds' to mean eraser 
crumbs for more than sixty years. When I worked at newspapers in the 
sixties, we had a special brush (called a broom) for getting rid of 
nerds before inking a drawing because the tiny pieces of rubber 
would cause blots and blobs on the art. When the movie Revenge of 
the Nerds came out, I imagined eraser crumbs with giant art brooms 
pursuing people. That wasn't what the movie was about but it still 
makes me laugh to think of it." 


2. Weird Words: Roscid  /rQsId/
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Though Latin "ros", meaning dew or light rain, has formed a number 
of English words, almost all of them have become either obsolete or 
so rare that you will seek them in vain in dictionaries.

"Roscid", for example, means "dewy":

    The incense of thy stuffing fills the air,
    And holds the senses in its fragrant snare;
    Rich ichor from thy roscid body flows,
    That e'en would tempt one in dyspepsia's throes.
    [From The Chant Royal of the Turkey, in the New York 
    Times, 22 Nov. 1903.]

"Rorid" also means dewy, deriving from "ror-", the inflected form of 
"ros". So does "rore" (with its adjective "roral"). "Rore" is even 
rarer than the others, now known solely because Shakespeare used it 
in Timon of Athens ("My words neither aspersed or inspersed with the 
flore or rore of eloquence.") Others from the same source include 
"roriferous", bringing or bearing dew, and "rorigenous", produced by 
dew. This last word seems to have appeared nowhere else but Nathan 
Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum of 1730. The final item in this 
dusty exhibit of unloved lexicography is "irrorate", to bedew or 
sprinkle with dew.

Another descendent of "ros" that's still in use is "rosolio", a 
sweet cordial of Italy which is sold commercially under brand names 
such as Cinzano and Martini. That name is an alteration of "ros 
solis", the dew of the sun, not as a highfalutin romantic name but 
because in its early days one ingredient was the juice of the sundew 
plant. Later it became "rosa solis", rose of the sun, because rose 
petals were substituted for sundew. 

Confusion between "ros" and "rosa" has been endemic: "rosa solis" 
was also at one time the name of some species of sundew. And, though 
few know it, the plant called rosemary derives its name not from the 
rose but from the dew; its Latin name was "ros marinus", sea dew, 
because its natural habitat is sea cliffs.


Wordface
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MORE AMBULANCES  Dave McCombs followed up earlier comments by asking 
about the provenance of "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff", a 
term that he mentioned is much used in his native New Zealand. The 
evidence shows that it's used to some extent in North America and 
the UK, though I've no memory of having encountered it. This is the 
earliest example that I've found anywhere: "The politician is like 
the person who would build an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, 
instead of constructing a good fence at the top." (Maoriland Worker, 
25 February 1920.) The phrase suggests that somebody is expensively 
providing the wrong solution to a problem. Note the phrase "build an 
ambulance"; it seems that for this writer an ambulance was a fixed 
structure, which wasn't even then the standard sense in New Zealand.

DON'T JUST TALK: DO SOMETHING!  In SF, an over-extensive explanation 
of the background to a story is derisively called a data dump. Even 
more crucially, actors hate having to stop the action to explain 
some vital bit of the plot. Writers have come up with all sorts of 
ways to keep the action going while a vital bit of back story is 
communicated. Last May, the US critic Miles McNutt commented on the 
way that sex was being used in the Game of Thrones TV series to keep 
the attention of the audience while the characters deliver chunks of 
exposition. He coined "sexposition" for it, a term that has gained a 
minor niche in the glossary of American criticism. In a letter to 
the Guardian last week, Charles Harris of Euroscript produced - 
tongue in cheek I presume - "walksposition" for the trick of 
speaking plot lines while walking very fast, a technique best known 
from Aaron Sorkin's West Wing.


Q and A: Jack
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Q. When I filled in "every last jack" in a crossword puzzle today, I 
started wondering about the origin of the term. A Wikipedia entry 
for "last man Jack" claims the term originates from a cricketing 
pun. The poorest batsman, who goes in to bat last at No 11, is 
supposedly known as Jack because the jack is the 11th card in a 
playing card suit. This etymology seems ridiculously contrived. But 
do you have a better explanation? My guess would be a nautical 
derivation. [Andrew Haynes]

A. I agree there's little merit in the Wikipedia suggestion, though 
there is a very slight connection between the playing card and the 
expression. But to explain that requires us to look more deeply into 
the background of "Jack".

Its first sense was as a pet form of "John". Its early history is 
complicated. It began as "Jehan", a form of John, and successively 
became "Jan" and then "Jankin" ("Jan" + the pet or diminutive ending 
"-kin"). This shifted to "Jackin" and then lost the ending again to 
make "Jack".

This all happened in the 1200s. Not long after, it became a general 
way to refer to any ordinary man or a man of the people. There's a 
parallel here with French "Jacques", which was a familiar name for a 
peasant or a man of low social status, though the two names aren't 
directly connected. 

Later, "Jack" became a slightly dismissive term for a labourer or 
working man, which is why we have compounds like "steeplejack" and 
"lumberjack", the one-time "Jack tar" for a common sailor (which I 
guess is why you thought of a naval origin), as well as phrases like 
"Jack of all trades" and "Jack's as good as his master". "Jack" was 
also applied to numerous machines that took the place of a man or 
lad doing some menial job - the device that helps you change a car 
tyre is a specific example that we still often use, but there are 
many, many others, whose specific origins are often hard to 
establish. 

By the 1500s, Jack had gone further down in the world to mean not 
only a low-bred or ill-mannered person but an unscrupulous or 
dishonest man, a knave. This explains why "knave" and "jack" are 
used interchangeably for the playing card. 

The phrases "every man jack", "every last man jack" and "last man 
jack" (and less directly your "every last jack") are all based on 
"man jack", an early nineteenth-century elaboration of the idea of 
Jack as the average or common man. Some examples:

    They begged hard a bunch of hot-house grapes; but he 
    said that Sir Pitt had numbered every "Man Jack" of them, 
    and it would be as much as his place was worth to give any 
    away. 
    [Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848.]

    "Gather up every one in camp," directed Stimbol. "Have 
    them up here in five minutes for a palaver - every last 
    man-jack of them."  
    [Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 
    1928.]

    It seemed rather visionary to expect that a crowd of 
    store workers would enjoy getting out earlier than usual 
    of a morning to sing a song. But they did, every last jack 
    of them, and they sang right at the start. 
    [Trenton Evening Times (New Jersey), 12 Oct. 1920.]


Sic!
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An Associated Press article of 17 March on the Falkland Islands was 
widely reproduced. Paul Brady came across it in the Herald Tribune 
of Sarasota. It said, "Many still heat their homes with peat stoves, 
grow their own vegetables, repair their Land Rovers themselves and 
raise chickens for their soft-boiled eggs." 

A Press Association piece of 14 March, which also appeared widely, 
reported on a newly discovered fossil species of human beings and 
said of the researchers: "They remain cautious about how to classify 
the 'red deer people' - so called because they hunted extinct red 
deer." Lucy Banks said she wasn't surprised they died out.

Someone I know only as Gemma submitted this muddled first sentence 
from an item in the Stirling Observer dated 16 March: "Thanks to 
electronic diaries, a group of patients in the Falkirk area who have 
a chronic lung condition are managing to avoid being admitted to 
hospital less often."


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