World Wide Words -- 06 Jul 13

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 839            Saturday 6 July 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Nosopoetic.
3. Loophole.
4. Fornication.
5. Sic!
6. Subscriptions and other information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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DUCT TAPE  Readers were quick to mention other names for the stuff, 
including "100-mph tape", supposedly so named in the US military 
because it was strong enough to hold together a jeep travelling at 
that speed; an older form is 90-mph tape. Jim Tang mentioned that a 
more recent aircraft version is 500-mph tape, though I wouldn't care 
to fly in one so mended. Another term is "gaffer tape", a version 
used by film electricians, whose boss is the gaffer. A paragraph 
about these was in the piece as first written but I accidentally 
left it out during the revision. Now included again, together with 
the 500-mph variant.

JITNEY  Lots of readers asked about "jeepneys" in the Philippines. 
It is generally agreed by the experts that they get their name from 
combining "jeep" and "jitney", having been so named by US service 
personnel in the country after the Second World War, when many ex-
army jeeps were used as informal transport.

Michael Grosvenor Myer recalled, "When I worked for a canned goods 
importing firm in Eastcheap in the 1950s, a 'jitney', sometimes 
shortened to 'jit', was the smallest size of canned fruit container. 
Do you know anything of this usage?" It isn't in any dictionary I've 
consulted but there's a reference dated May 1927 in a trade journal 
called The Canner: "Examination of 1926 pack statistics show rapid 
progress toward smaller cans that will sell at popular prices. The 
small 8-oz. jitney appeared for the first time." There are other 
contemporary references to the name being applied to the eight-ounce 
can. There are examples also of its being used today for a size of 
sardine can. We may guess that its name derives from the small value 
of the jitney coin.


2. Nosopoetic
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Despite its form, this has nothing to do with poetry (or noses). The 
first part is from Greek "nosos", a disease, while the second is a 
disguised form of "pointikos", creative or productive, which is the 
source of the English adjective "poietic" with the same sense. So 
something nosopoetic causes disease. 

You might think the term would have found favour with doctors, as it 
would be a useful addition to their vocabulary. However, it never 
caught on, despite appearing in a couple of glossaries of medical 
terms in the early nineteenth century and around the middle of the 
century was supplanted by "pathogenic".

"Nosopoetic" was invented by the extraordinary mathematician, 
physician and satirist Dr John Arbuthnot, who also created the 
persona of John Bull who symbolises the English character and 
nation. He introduced "nosopoetic" in his work of 1733, An Essay 
Concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies.

More than a century later, it appeared in a work I've had cause to 
quote from previously, written by a pioneering educationalist in 
Indiana to encourage students to learn new words by putting them in 
context:

    The multifarious cibarious substances engorged into 
    inane and jejune stomachs, during the nuptial festivity, 
    were extremely nosopoetic on the guests. 
    [Letters to Squire Pedant, by Samuel Hoshour, 1856.]

"Cibarious" means relating to food, or edible; "inane" is being used 
here in its ancient sense of void or empty; "jejune" is likewise in 
its earliest meaning of fasting or being hungry. This periphrastic 
conglomeration may be reduced to "The wedding guests became ill from 
overeating on empty stomachs."


3. Loophole
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Q. Where do we get "loophole" from?  [Will Thomas]

A. A typical medieval English castle would have had - in addition to 
barbicans, machicolations, crenellations, a portcullis or two and 
other useful features - a number of loops. 

This loop isn't a "doubling or return into itself of a portion of a 
string, cord, thong, or the like, so as to leave an aperture between 
the parts", as the Oxford English Dictionary explains it. (Defining 
geometric shapes is a good test of a lexicographer's skill. It may 
remind you of the trouble Dr Johnson had with "network": "Any thing 
reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices 
between the intersections.") 

These castle-type loops were small gaps or holes in the fortified 
walls for keeping watch, for archers to shoot through, or to let 
light into a chamber. Later, the word was applied to arrow-slits to 
the exclusion of the other senses.

There's no connection between the two meanings of "loop", though one 
nineteenth-century scholar did attempt to square the semantic circle 
by suggesting that the apertures were in the shape of loops. It's 
likely, the experts suggest, that it comes from the old Dutch verb 
"lûpen", to watch or peer, or "glupen", to spy or lurk, to watch 
with narrowed eyes, whose source is a word for a crack or slit. 

In the sixteenth century, "loop" began to be expanded to "loophole". 
It seem that Englishmen were as puzzled and confused then by the two 
senses of "loop" as we might be today and added the second part to 
make it clear they were talking about openings in walls and not 
doubled-over bits of string.

Around the middle of the following century "loophole" began to be 
used figuratively for a means of escape and by 1700 could have our 
modern sense of an ambiguity or inadequacy in rules or laws that 
allows somebody to evade their provisions.


4. Fornication
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Q. I've just read a suspicious description of the origin of the word 
"fornication". Supposedly, it comes from "fornacis", the Latin for 
furnace, which has to do with prostitutes operating out of bakeries 
and advertising with bread baked in the shape of penises. They would 
wait for the oven to cool, and crawl inside to "heat the ovens back 
up again". Is there any merit to this? [B J Wise]

A. That's an utterly unfounded but delightful story. The writer has 
vaguely recalled the real origin and has built a shaky tower of 
invention on no foundation whatsoever except a misunderstanding of 
Latin vocabulary.

For the Romans a furnace was a "fornax" ("fornacis" is actually the 
adjective, "relating to a furnace", best known in the formal names 
of several stars in the constellation Fornax). The word the teller 
of your tale was searching for is "fornix", an arch or vaulted 
chamber. It's true that furnaces and bread ovens were often built in 
an arched shape, and some writers have consequently sought to derive 
"fornix" from "fornax", but the two words had distinct senses in 
classical Latin.

A fornix might be a triumphal arch marking a successful battle or a 
mundane one supporting the upper floor of a Roman building. Arched 
passages in public buildings such as the Stadium and Colosseum in 
Rome were popular with prostitutes seeking trade. Brothels of the 
poorer sort were often established in vaulted cellars. So "fornix" 
became a slang term for a house of ill repute.

The late Latin verb "fornicari" and the noun "fornicationem" came 
from "fornix". English took over the noun from French around 1300 
but the verb only appeared 250 years later.

It's curious that the noun was recorded a century ago in the English 
Dialect Dictionary as in use in several English dialects for telling 
lies. A fornicator was a liar and a fornicating person was deceitful 
or treacherous. We may guess this evolved because a person who was 
suspected of sex outside marriage was strongly tempted to tell lies 
about it. 


5. Sic!
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Ira Rimson stumbled across this in The Innocent by David Baldacci: 
"An hour later a chubby man in a wrinkled suit with pasty skin 
walked in."

Alan Harrison found this sentence in the Birmingham Mail of 28 June, 
beginning an article on the discovery of the grave of Major Harry 
Gem: "Enthusiasts have rediscovered the long lost grave of the 
Birmingham man who invented tennis in a city cemetery."


6. Useful information
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