World Wide Words -- 16 Feb 13
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Feb 15 16:07:23 UTC 2013
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 819 Saturday 16 February 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Nidicolous.
3. Not on your tintype.
4. Internet of things.
5. Sic!
6. Subscriptions and other information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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Following up "First World problem" in the Macquarie Dictionary words
of the year, David Shapiro commented, "When I read that to my wife,
she immediately countered with the one she had read online earlier
today: 'I have to write a check to my maid, but I can't remember her
last name.'" Bill Duncan commented on "wine flu" as a synonym for
"hangover": "I've never heard 'wine flu', but I have many friends
who have suffered from severe cases of 'Napa Valley flu'. Somewhat
more elegant."
My rather arcane piece about the origin of the technical term "sipe"
for slits in vehicle tyres produced several replies that argue John
F Sipe's invention was better known than I had thought. Peter Rugg
pointed me to a Wikipedia article on the Sperry Top-Sider shoe which
says that its inventor, Paul Sperry, used the ideas behind Sipe's
patent to create it in 1935 (This may be the origin of the story
about Sipe having been a warehouseman or sailor who cut slits in the
soles of his shoes to improve their grip in wet conditions.) Judy
Swink pointed me to a number of later patents which cited Sipe's,
the earliest being filed in 1936, though none before 1951 included
"sipe" as a generic term. Peter Morris of the Science Museum in
London found a 1937 work, Inventions and their Management, which
deals with Sipe's patent in some detail. All this suggests that the
technical term may indeed be an eponym, though direct evidence is
still lacking. I've substantially rewritten my piece on "sipe",
which you will find at http://wwwords.org?SIPE.
2. Nidicolous /nI'dIk at l@s/
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If your offspring are proving recalcitrant or obstreperous you may
like to hurl the epithet "nidicolous" at them. It will be accurate
and tantalisingly unclear; it might even provoke them to crack open
a dictionary to discover whether you're insulting them.
It will need to be a big dictionary, because this term is unlikely
to be encountered outside a specialist and rather formal book on
zoology or ornithology. I found it in the article on birds in the
1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia.
Latin scholars will recognise the first part: it derives from the
classical "nidus", a relative of our "nest", the source of "niche"
and a component of a number of other specialist words. The second
part is from the Latin verb "colere" to inhabit.
However, it's more specialist than just "nest-living". It refers
specifically to a bird or other animal that's hatched or born in an
undeveloped state and that requires its parents to feed and care for
it until it reaches maturity.
Some young birds are the reverse of nidicolous - they leave the egg
at least partially able to fend for themselves. They are said to be
"nidifugous", nest-fleeing. You may be reminded of newly-hatched
ducklings waddling after mum from their nest to reach water.
3. Not on your tintype
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Q. The other day I was reading a book to a young neighbour and came
across "Not on your tintype!" The book was The Long Winter by Laura
Ingalls Wilder, who was born in the 1880s. Do you know anything
about the origin of this oddity, which seems to mean "Not on your
life!" or in contemporary terms, "No way!"? [Lucie Singh]
A. It's certainly an odd saying. It was common around the end of the
nineteenth century but is now almost as rarely encountered as the
photographic process to which it refers. The author you quote would
have heard it in childhood.
Tintypes were positive photographs taken on a thin light-sensitive
collodion layer on a black japanned metal base, which wasn't tin but
iron, thus giving rise to its alternative early name of ferrotype.
They were quick and cheap to produce by the standards of the time.
Tintype photographers were frequently itinerant, setting up in busy
places such as beaches or fairs or travelling from town to town in
search of business. They came to be called tintypes in part as a
disparaging reference to their ubiquity, cheapness and often
indifferent quality, on the model of tinny terms like "tinpot" and
"tinhorn". "Tintype" begins to appear around 1864; the American
Civil War created a opportunity for photographers in military camps
to take tintypes of soldiers to be sent home to family.
An example from the heyday of the idiom:
"Git into some Overhauls an' come an' he'p me this
afternoon," said Lyford. "Oh, rats! Not on your Tintype!
I'm too strong to work," replied Jethro, who had learned
oodles of slang up in Chicago, don't you forget it.
[Fables in Slang, by George Ade, 1899.]
The standard authorities either don't mention "not on your tintype!"
or express bafflement. Nobody seems to have the slightest notion of
its origin. Lacking evidence, people speculate wildly. Did anyone
really swear an oath on a tintype? Not likely on such a cheap and
disposable thing. Was it a comedian's catchphrase which became
popular? Possible, except that we know of no such source. Did it
refer to the low repute of the tintype, so a speaker valued a
suggestion or proposition about as much as he did a cheap photo?
That's a bit more probable.
I wonder if this might be a pointer to its origin:
"By the way, Brown, did I ever show you this?" said
Jinks, as he fumbled in the inner breast-pocket of his
coat for something or other. "I don't know," replied
Brown, turning a shade paler; "but if it's your tintype,
taken at Bar Harbor, with a tennis racquet in your hand,
please don't! Nine fellows have shown me theirs already
this morning, and I can't stand seeing another!"
[Daily Los Angeles Herald, 9 Nov. 1883. Disliking other
people's holiday snaps goes back a long way.]
But perhaps we seek meaning where none exists. William and Mary
Morris wrote in the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins,
"Just remember that every generation has its widely popular but
utterly nonsensical catch phrases. The 1920s had 'So's your old
man'; the 1930s, 'Wanna buy a duck?' and so on."
4. Internet of things
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It's curious how a term can sometimes slide into the language with
little notice. Though I've traced it back a decade to the title of
an article by Chana R Schoenberger in Forbes Magazine on 18 March
2002, "internet of things" only struck me as a fixed term worth
commenting on after it turned up in my reading three times in the
past month.
The second theme is personalisation, linked to what
technologists call the "internet of things". This refers
to the way in which increasing numbers of ordinarily
mundane objects are becoming wi-fi enabled. Already, for
instance, there exist lightbulbs whose colour can be
controlled by smartphone.
[The Times, 2 Feb. 2013.]
The reference is to the way that equipment of many kinds is now
fitted with embedded computing technology, not only the obvious
items like telephones and video recorders but also your car, your
washing machine and your refrigerator as well as your lightbulbs. It
is no longer futuristic fiction to suggest that your refrigerator
might be able to report you're low on bacon or eggs and order up
fresh supplies. Or that a bathroom cabinet might monitor your pill
consumption to remind you to take the next dose, organise refills
and allow your doctor to supervise your case.
An associated idea is called M2M, machine-to-machine communication:
Often, it means fixing sensors on devices, such as an
electricity meter that can relay information on power
consumption to a utility. Or attaching sensors in
electrical equipment at home which can help you remotely
switch on the lights and even lock doors. Sometimes, M2M
is also interchangeably used with the 'Internet of Things'
or the 'Internet of Everything' - the next phase of the
Internet where everything, including people and objects,
will be connected to the web.
[Business Today, 20 Jan. 2013.]
The concept started with RFID (radio-frequency identity) tags, now
widely used to track items during delivery and in stock control, a
passive system in which the tags respond to an external wireless
command by returning their identity numbers.
5. Sic!
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The Fox News website has an article dated 7 February which surprised
Leah Hertz: "An easy way to identify symptoms of a heart attack in
women is by remembering the pneumonic, PULSE."
Joe Pallas found a story in the San Jose Mercury News on 10 February
about a man arrested in an FBI terrorism sting who had an unusual
set of symptoms: "[He] likely suffered from mental illness that
included bouts of paranoia, suicidal tendencies, hallucinations and
voices in his head in addition to a vast working knowledge of
weaponry."
Lin Jenkins reports that her local grocery chain sent an email to
her that referred to her husband, Fred. She says, "Presumably the
blackmail angle was unintentional". It began "Join the Kroger
community and save Fred."
The Denver Post's website has an article about an arrest for driving
while drunk on 7 February, which Jim Crozier sent in because of this
sentence: "The officer first made contact with Helton, 39, when he
walked out of the gas station holding his wallet, chewing tobacco
and lottery tickets."
Sharon Busch found an article on Alternet which appeared widely,
including in Salon magazine. It was based on a study in the December
2012 issue of Urology about emergency-room visits due to pubic hair
grooming mishaps. The article said, "The study also revealed that
below-the-belt grooming isn't just for adult ladies anymore - men
accounted for 43.3 percent of the injuries, and almost 30 percent of
them were girls under the age of 18."
A Guardian article on 9 February about plans to re-enact the famous
football match during the 1914 Christmas truce in the trenches of
the First World War included a quote from a government minister,
Andrew Murrison, who said that the event "is going to reach part of
the community that perhaps might not get terribly entrenched into
this."
6. Useful information
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