World Wide Words -- 24 Nov 12
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 23 18:35:31 UTC 2012
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 811 Saturday 24 November 2012
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Weird Words: Succedaneum.
3. Miscellany.
4. Q and A: Up the spout.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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BIG FELLA Following last week's piece about "gigantic", numerous
readers asked about "gargantuan". The source is the stories by the
sixteenth-century French writer François Rabelais about Gargantua, a
giant with a prodigious appetite. It's not obvious where Rabelais
took the name from: the online Wikidictionary suggests it is a much
modified version of "Egyptian", while a French etymological work
argues a connection with "gorge", throat, and "gargariser", to
gargle.
BLACK STUFF On reading my whimsical aside last week in the item on
"treeconomics", several British readers wrote to assert that treacle
mines really do exist in Torbay. Gary Mason commented, "I come from
the East Midlands (UK) and 'treacle mines' was (and may still be) a
euphemism for sewage works."
More seriously, Professor James Jensen of the University at Buffalo
e-mailed: "I teach a course to fourth-year environmental and civil
engineers on sustainability. We stodgy academicians (is 'leather-
elbow-patched' an adjective?) refer to the concept as 'ecosystem
services'. The idea, as you stated, is that, for example, trees
provide more services than just lumber, including sequestration of
carbon dioxide. Once again, the media have popularized a flashy name
for a scientific concept - see also 'God particle' versus 'Higgs
boson'."
CROSSING THE RUBICON The Sic! item about the Rubicon restaurant in
Australia last week was right to point up its mistake in requesting
a booking should be for a "minimum of eight parsons" but I shouldn't
have criticised their use of "cakeage". Peter Thoeming was among
others who explained: "Cakeage is in fact a regrettable but common
charge in Australian restaurants, applied if you have the temerity
to bring a birthday cake or something similar, to be served to you
and your guests." The word is, as you will have gathered, new to me.
Out of error comes knowledge ...
2. Weird Words: Succedaneum /suksI'deInI at m/
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If you are in need of an obscure Latinate 11-letter word, this may
suit you to a T. Even better still, it may be employed as a high-
flown alternative for the everyday "substitute". Imagine how much a
sports commentary would be improved by hearing of the arrival on the
pitch of a succedaneum. However, we would first have to train
commentators in its pronunciation, which is rather like "suck-see-
DANE-e-um".
It derives from the neuter singular of the Latin "succedaneus", an
adjective taken from the verb "succedere", to succeed. The verb is
in fact the source of our "succeed", which originally adopted one
sense of its Latin precursor - to come after, replace or follow -
but which evolved in parallel the sense of reaching some outcome,
more recently a fortunate or desired one. When its noun "success"
first came into the language, it meant any result, bad or good. "Ill
success" was misfortune or failure and "good success" was a
favourable conclusion. By the late sixteenth century, "success" by
itself came to mean a good success, though "ill success" stayed in
the language almost to modern times.
Both "succedaneum" and its adjective "succedaneous" started to be
used in writing around the 1630s. We have lost the adjective along
the way, but the noun just survives, clinging to the language by its
finger tips, though in 2011 Collins tore it from the pages of its
dictionary as part of a house-clearing exercise.
This is a famous description from literature of a sailor coming up
from below decks:
The head was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and
by a shirt-collar and neckerchief, and by a dreadnought
pilot-coat, and by a pair of dreadnought pilot-trousers,
whereof the waistband was so very broad and high, that it
became a succedaneum for a waistcoat: being ornamented
near the wearer's breastbone with some massive wooden
buttons, like backgammon men.
[Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens, 1848. The
character being described is Captain Jack Bunsby.]
A more recent appearance was in the introduction to a book with the
expansive title of The New York Times Everyday Reader's Dictionary
of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words, the work of the
famous American lexicographer Laurence Urdang: "This is not a
succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians", which
being roughly translated may be rendered as "This is not a
substitute for satisfying the frenzied enthusiasm of the sceptic."
3. Miscellany
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HEAT EXCHANGES I found my wife studying a big dictionary. She told
me what she was looking for, but my ancient inadequate ears heard it
as "horrify", leading to one of those increasingly common moments of
mutual incomprehension. The word was "torrify", not one in either of
our vocabularies. She had encountered it when reading the list of
ingredients on the packaging of the sausages she was cooking, which
announced that they contained Melton Red Ale made from "torrified
wheat". It was easy to work out that the word was a close relative
of "torrid", very hot and dry (they derive from Latin "torrere", to
dry with heat). It turns up often as "torrefy", though our sausage
spelling occurs by analogy with "terrify" (and "horrify").
4. Q and A: Up the spout
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Q. What is the history behind the expression "up the spout"? For
example in my mother's autobiography she wrote that when her thesis
advisor lost her thesis in 1930, her hopes for a university position
went "up the spout". [Isabel Henniger]
A. "Up the spout", gone wrong, ruined, failed or lost, is a slang
expression from the British Isles of considerable age, being first
recorded early in the nineteenth century. It's still common:
When your economic sovereignty is up the spout, the
smallest negative comment from a foreign leader can create
panic among investors and send consumer confidence through
the floor.
[The Evening Herald (Dublin), 22 Oct. 2012.]
To find its origin we must in imagination travel to the low-life
world of pre-Dickensian England. Pawnbrokers commonly stored goods
that were in hock on an upper floor of their premises, but this
required a method by which such items could be moved from their shop
counters to storage and back again. This is the way such a device
was described in a famous work of in the nineteenth century:
[The chute] reaches from the top of the house of the
Pawnbroker (where the goods are deposited for safety till
redeemed or sold) to the shop, where they are first
received; through which a small bag is dropped upon the
ringing of a bell, which conveys the tickets or duplicates
to a person above stairs, who, upon finding them, (unless
too bulky) saves himself the trouble and loss of time of
coming down stairs, by more readily conveying them
down.
[Real Life in London, by Pierce Egan, 1821.]
It was the shape and function of this device, in later years nearer
in form to the kitchen lift or dumbwaiter, that caused it to become
known to customers and pawnbrokers as the "spout". The action of
pawning goods was "spouting" them.
Behold him walking into a pawnbroker's shop with half-
a-dozen pieces of figured waistcoatings on his arm, and a
tailor's thimble on his finger. "Here," says he, "I've got
six waistcoats to make, and I must spout one to buy the
trimmings; let's have three shillings."
[Curiosities of London Life, or Phases, Physiological
and Social, of the Great Metropolis, by Charles Manby
Smith, 1853.]
Something that had been pawned was said to have gone "up the spout".
It was so common for the item not to be redeemed because the owner
hadn't the money to do so that to put something up the spout implied
a likely permanent loss.
Much more recently, as a separate development but with implications
related to those of the original, "up the spout" came to mean being
pregnant, sometimes an unwelcome development among unmarried women.
Like the original, it's still around:
Euan, Kathryn and Nicholas Blair, the children of the
ex-PM, 58, had to endure the horror of knowing that their
parents still Did It even though they're old, when Cherie,
57, got up the spout with Leo at 45.
[Daily Mirror, 15 Nov. 2011.]
5. Sic!
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The November issue of the newsletter of the Turlock Gospel Mission
(TGM) of California has arrived here, courtesy of Michael Fuller. It
says: "Since the opening of TGM to now, we have served 58,214 hot
meals every single night through the Meal Ministry." A miracle!
Finding the right words can be a problem. John Douglas learned that
the British recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark are advertising a
vacancy on their website: "Our client is seeking a Project Officer
to join their thieving housing and regeneration team within there
North London Local Authority." Ann Jones supplied a sentence from
the newsletter of her local hair salon in Auckland, New Zealand,
which advertises its new private room, which is "ideal for the
disconcerting professional that wants to work while having their
hair done." Ira Rimson reports that the Albuquerque Journal of New
Mexico reviewed a Chinese restaurant on 15 November: "Chinshan can
serve indecisive families for dinner, offering group meals with a
variety of dishes." And S Barton tells us that a restaurant menu in
Edmonton, Canada, offered "tenderlion".
Dan Perlman found this blurb about The Kiso Diet on Amazon: "Reading
this book will give you the knowledge you need to guard yourself
against cancer, joint degeneration, heart disease and brain health."
The Daily Telegraph of 20 November, notes Neil Marr, "reported on
the new Celebrate how-to book for well-heeled party-throwers by
Pippa Middleton [sister of Kate, now Duchess of Cambridge]: 'She
[Pippa] has been in twice now to sign books and it appeals very well
to our customers. They have flown off the shelves.'"
6. Useful information
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