World Wide Words -- 09 Feb 13

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 818         Saturday 9 February 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Plug-ugly.
3. Australia's Words of 2012.
4. Sipe.
5. Sic!
6. Subscriptions and other information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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Following up my piece on "sneap", David Jackson wrote, "I lived in 
South Derbyshire until 2004, and it was not at all uncommon to hear 
somebody say that they had been sneaped by some comment or action of 
somebody else. It's more alive and kicking than you might think!" 

Alan Harrison also knows it: "'Sneap' remains in use in the Black 
Country [part of the West Midlands of England, named for the smoke 
and dust produced by its coal and iron industries in the nineteenth 
century], at least among older people, such as my mother (born 1924, 
Walsall). It means to speak sharply to someone, in a tone indicating 
displeasure." 

Russ Willey concurs: "Not that long ago I met a young woman from 
Stoke-on-Trent. She liked me but suspected I was a bit of a know-it-
all, with a tendency to put people down - and she didn't want to be 
on the receiving end of any such discourtesy. When I suggested we 
might date each other, she agreed on one condition: 'As long as you 
don't sneap me'." 

Charles Freeman added: "The quotation from Alison Uttley reminded me 
that I used to know who she was, but had forgotten. A quick trip to 
Wikipedia remedied that, which contained the following: 'She had 
little time for one of her competitors, Enid Blyton, describing her 
as a boastful and a "vulgar, curled woman".' A sneap if ever there 
was one."


2. Plug-ugly
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This chiefly North American slang term for a ruffian or thug has a 
claim to fame in that it's the only word in the English language 
that contains the letter string "ugug" (apart, that is, from "pug-
ugly", which was an attempt at turning "plug-ugly" into a word that 
made more sense). It may also be one of the more obscure of slang 
terms, though this is perhaps too large a claim to withstand much 
enquiry. But its obscure origins and odd form have generated more 
tries at explaining it than almost any other.

What we do know is that the word was first applied to one of the 
notorious gangs that terrorised the big cities of the eastern US in 
the years before the Civil War. The infamous Fourth of July riot in 
New York in 1857 is said to have been between the Bowery Boys, 
joined by the American Guards, and an alliance of the Plug-Uglies 
and the Dead Rabbits.

The Plug-Uglies originated in Baltimore and - like other gangs of 
the time - were politically aware and active. An early reference to 
them was in a report from Washington just a month before the New 
York riot:

    A gang of organized desperate rowdies, some fifty in 
    number, called the "Plug Uglies", arrived here this 
    morning from Baltimore, for the purpose of defeating the 
    Democratic ticket.
    [New York Daily Times, 2 Jun. 1857. They were supported 
    by two local gangs, the Rip-Raps and the Clunkers. The 
    Plug-Uglies managed to acquire a cannon from the Navy 
    Yard, but were unable to fire it. They were eventually 
    dispersed by the US Marines.]

Various attempts have been made to explain "plug" from its various 
senses. One tale is that gang members were ugly because they had 
been "plugged" - punched in the face. "Plug" is recorded at the time 
for a homely person, which might make "plug-ugly" a reduplicated 
compound. It has been argued that the name derives from competing 
Baltimore fire-fighter companies who became combative around fire-
plugs. In his Oxford Etymologist blog, Anatoly Liberman suggests 
that as "plug" in its various senses is of Dutch origin and as it 
means a subordinate or servant in the current dialect of Groningen, 
it might have had the meaning of a wicked underling. An early report 
claimed that the Plug-Uglies got their name because of the "plug" 
hats they wore, stuffed with paper and forced down over their ears 
as improvised protective headgear. Yet another story reads like a 
tale told to a naive foreigner:

    "Plug-Uglies" ... Several years ago I was in Baltimore, 
    where the class of rowdies who originated this euphonious 
    name abounded, and was told it was derived from a short 
    spike fastened in the toe of their boots, with which they 
    kicked their opponents in a dense crowd, or, as they 
    elegantly expressed it, "plugged them ugly". 
    [The Times, 4 Nov. 1876.]

Whichever story is correct (I favour the one about the plug hats), 
the name had reached Belfast by 1856 and the events of 1857 were 
widely reported in the British press, though "plug-ugly" didn't 
enter the local vocabulary. By the middle 1860s, the term had lost 
its capital letters in North America and had become generic for a 
ruffianly and rowdy gang member. I suspect that the works of one 
writer in particular made it more familiar to British readers:

    "Why, say, suppose a plug-ugly sasshays [sic] up to you 
    on the street to take a crack at your pearl stick-pin, do 
    you reckon he's going to drop you a postal card first?
    [The Coming of Bill, by P G Wodehouse, 1920.]


3. Australia's Words of 2012
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"Phantom vibration syndrome" is the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the 
Year 2012. This is a form of technological anxiety, sometimes called 
"ringxiety" ("ring" + "anxiety") in which mobile phone users with an 
obsessional fear of missing incoming calls become convinced that the 
phone has vibrated to indicate a call when it hasn't. 

It was selected from the results of public voting in 15 categories 
by the committee overseeing the 2012 awards, chaired by the Vice-
Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Dr Michael Spence.

"Phantom vibration syndrome" reminds us that technology has 
disadvantages as well as value. The reverse view was marked by the 
committee's honourable mention of "crowdfunding", a technique by 
which projects and causes gain funding through small donations sent 
in through social media networks and websites. Whether you consider 
that "technomite" is positive or negative depends on your worldview; 
it was another honourable mention, a humorous term for a young child 
adept in using digital media.

All these, of course, are found throughout the online world and know 
no national boundaries. An honourable mention of the committee 
that's rooted in Australian culture is "marngrook", although it's 
not a word that's specifically linked to 2012. It was a game played 
by Aboriginal people in south-east Australia before European 
settlement (the name means "game ball" in aboriginal languages of 
the state of Victoria). Large numbers of players took part over an 
extended area using a ball made from various local materials, such 
as stuffed possum skin. The game reads like a cross between soccer 
and basketball - a player dropped the ball on his instep to kick it 
high in the air and other players leaped to catch it. Contemporary 
reports suggest it was more like an extended kick-about, with no 
real rules, scoring or winner. It has been cited as an influence on 
Australian Rules football.

The other honourable mention was "First World problem", explained by 
the Macquarie Dictionary as "a problem that relates to the affluent 
lifestyle associated with the First World, and that would never 
arise in the poverty-stricken circumstances of the Third World, as 
having to settle for plunger coffee when one's espresso machine is 
not functioning."

Among the other terms selected by visitors to the Dictionary's 
website as winners in individual sections were "peachcot", a stone 
fruit with a smooth skin, a cross between a peach and an apricot in 
appearance and flavour; "green tape", bureaucratic regulations and 
associated paperwork deriving from environmental legislation; and 
"wine flu", a colloquial term for a hangover.

Macquarie Dictionary announcement: http://wwwords.org?MCQ13.


4. Sipe
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This turned up in my newspaper during our recent snowy weather in an 
article discussing the value of winter tyres. These grip better, it 
was said, because of the increased number of sipes in the tread. It 
not being a word in my vocabulary, some investigation seemed to be 
in order. This led me to an intriguing etymological puzzle.

It was easy enough to discover that, for tyre manufacturers, sipes 
are small transverse slits in the tyre surface that help water 
disperse. My dictionaries say that the word started to be used in 
the 1950s. A search seemed to confirm this, as the earliest I could 
uncover was the following advertisement:

    For your driving safety this winter have your tires 
    trued and siped by one of our specialists. Siping provides 
    you with better stops without skids and fosters starts on 
    wet or icy roads.
    [Pampa Daily News (Texas) 20 Nov. 1953.]

As I dug deeper into the history of tyre making, I repeatedly found 
a story online (see Wikipedia in particular) that attached "sipe" to 
a rather shadowy individual who is known almost solely for patenting 
a way of making tyres with slits in the tread (United States Patent 
1452099 of 1923, if you'd like to look it up). The man was John F 
Sipe. The references that mention him assume "sipe" is an eponym.

Hardly anything seems to be known about Mr Sipe, though the patent 
says he was from New York. There are various individuals of that 
name in the historical record, but none can be him. Some of the 
stories say that he was a slaughterman who slit his rubber-soled 
shoes to increase traction on slippery floors. However, in the 
decade before 1923 seven other patents - for vehicle wheels, springs 
and tyres - were awarded jointly with Harry E Sipe, presumably a 
relative. These point instead to the Messrs Sipe being actively 
involved in the motor vehicle business. 

My feeling is that the word cannot be a eponym. The patent seems to 
have attracted no attention at the time. If it had been taken up, a 
term for it would have appeared much earlier. Would those who named 
the tyre technique in the 1950s remember him, thirty years later?

Those dictionaries that include "sipe" all say it derives from the 
Old English "sipian", for water that slowly oozed or soaked into the 
ground. We might say it means "seep" but that would be the error of 
defining a word in terms of itself, since "seep" is no more than an 
eighteenth-century respelling of "sipe". There might seem to be a 
link with "sip", but that's Middle English and probably comes from a 
Germanic source allied to "sup".

In the nineteenth century, "sipe" (or "sype", "cype" or other forms) 
was mainly a dialect word of Scotland and northern England. The 
English Dialect Dictionary defined it expansively at the end of the 
nineteenth century as "to percolate slowly; to ooze, trickle, leak, 
drip". It could also mean to extract the last drops from a container 
or drain a vessel to the dregs, so a siper could be a heavy drinker 
or a drunkard. In some parts of Scotland even today, to sipe clothes 
is to let them drip dry.

"Sipe" was taken to the US and is known in some places, though to 
confuse unwary researchers it has been usually been said as "seep" 
(this may have been an English dialect pronunciation of the 
eighteenth century that led to the change in spelling in standard 
British English). The laws of Illinois and Mississippi, for example, 
still include it, referring in one place to "the unsanitary 
accumulation of sipe water or surface water".

It's much more likely that the technologists who developed sipes 
named them from that word rather than from an obscure inventor of 30 
years before. It's a coincidence, though an odd one. That makes the 
stories about Mr Sipe just another example of folk etymology.


5. Sic!
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"A bit harsh on the archaeologist," commented Bernard Robertson-Dunn 
on a New Yorker report on 4 February (also submitted by Jonathan 
Goldberg), which has since been changed: "'Beyond reasonable doubt, 
the individual exhumed at Greyfriars in September, 2012, is indeed 
Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England,' Richard Buckley, 
the lead archaeologist, said at the press conference. (He will be 
reburied in the cathedral in Leicester.)"

This sentence comes, via Rob Young, from the online edition of The 
Geelong Advertiser (Victoria, Australia), dated 2 February: "Police 
said they would investigate whether another car was involved in the 
collision before fleeing the scene."

A sign outside a church in Friendswood, Texas, Bob McGill tells us, 
advertises that their Sunday School has "Three-year-old openings".

Clara McIver found the perfect item for her dream kitchen on Amazon: 
"For more than twenty years ClickClack has been the leading name in 
aesthetically pleasing and highly fictional kitchen storageware."


6. Useful information
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ABOUT THIS E-MAGAZINE: World Wide Words is written and published by 
Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice 
are provided by Julane Marx in the US and by Robert Waterhouse in 
Europe. Any residual errors are the fault of the author. The linked 
website is http://www.worldwidewords.org.

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