World Wide Words -- 11 May 13
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Thu May 9 22:02:00 UTC 2013
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 831 Saturday 11 May 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Banausic.
3. Austerian.
4. Earl Grey tea.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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PIGGY BANK Many readers wondered why I hadn't mentioned "pug", a
mixture of clay and water, thoroughly mixed to exclude air, which is
used to make bricks and pottery. "Pug" and "pig" are close enough in
sound that a connection might seem to exist. But it's unlikely, as
"pig" for items of earthenware is 400 years older than "pug", which
is first recorded as Sussex dialect in 1853.
"Any possible connection to pig iron?" Elena Bashir asked. There's
no direct link but it's another figurative use of "pig". In the old
days, when a furnace was tapped, the molten iron was directed down a
main channel into a number of moulds set at an angle. These reminded
furnace men of piglets suckling from a sow.
HOYDEN Several readers noted that John Vanbrugh's comedy of 1696,
The Relapse or Virtue in Danger, includes a female character named
Hoyden, the daughter of Sir Tunbelly Clumsey. Edward Pixley is sure
that this was a key step in the transition of "hoyden" from male to
female: "The word was given added attention by Jeremy Collier's
Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage
(1698), in which he singled out The Relapse as one of the principal
offenders of morality and the character of Hoyden, especially, as
dangerous to the proper moral training of the nation's youth." The
transition began a little earlier: William Wycherley's play Plain-
Dealer, 20 years earlier, had already included a character named Mrs
Hoyden.
UMPTY My notes on "umpty" and its derivatives led to a number of
comments. James Bovard noted, "I first encountered 'umpteen' in the
USAF in 1955 or so, as 'umpteen-skiddy-eight', with the implication
of 'too much'. 'Airman, I've told you umpteen-skiddy-eight times not
to do that!'" Joe Lomax wrote, "The phrase I most recall from my
youth was that of 'umpty-squat' used by my father. I suspect that he
picked it up from the Army in WWII. He used it in 'I do not give
umpty-squat about that' for a decided lack of interest, or 'That is
not worth umpty-squat' for something that is perhaps not completely
worthless, but not enough to pay for." Chips Mackinolty commented,
"My mother (in Australia in the 1950s) would use the term to my
recalcitrant self, in the manner of an indefinite number, along the
lines of 'I've told you umpty umpth times'. It was in a tone of
complete exasperation, and my maternal grandparents used the same
phrase, so it was alive and well then."
I have expanded my notes and posted them on the website (go via the
short link http://wwwords.org?UMPTY to see them).
Keith McCartney wrote about the illness sense: "I was born in 1937.
As long as I can remember, my father (born 1898), when asked how he
was, often replied 'I'm feeling a bit umpty'. He may have been too
old to adopt 'modern' slang expressions; could it have an earlier
origin?" It's very probable: it may have been around for years, or
even decades, before it began to appear in print just after the end
of the Second World War.
THERANOSTICS Two readers told me that I should not have included
"translational medicine" as a synonym of theranostics. Correctly, it
refers to transferring the results of research or clinical trials
into clinical practice.
2. Banausic /b@'nO:sik/
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It's not a word you're likely to overhear in your local pub or read
in your daily newspaper. The source is classical Greek "banausikos",
relating to artisans (from "baunos", a forge), though in English its
meaning has been influenced by classical Greek attitudes as much as
its etymology. Something banausic is mundane or functional. It might
seem to be a relative of "banal", but that's from an Old French word
of Germanic origin relating to compulsory feudal service.
Greeks of the ancient world lived in a stratified society, with a
relatively small population of male citizens being supported by the
labour of women, slaves and foreigners. For citizens, intellectual
pursuits - including logic, rhetoric and philosophy - were key to an
active part in public life as well as being satisfying in their own
right. Activities that involved physical labour, such as making
things to earn a living, were looked on as degrading banausic
necessities. Even learning to play a musical instrument was thought
by Aristotle to be a banausic occupation.
The English word was coined by George Smythe in an article about the
second Earl Grey (see below), who had just died:
After 1812, and when the worse portion of the Tories
got enthroned in the supremacy, when the Banausic
principle (we must coin a word from the most expressive of
languages to express all its intense vulgarity) began to
obtain.
[Oxford and Cambridge Review, Aug. 1845.]
Mr Smythe's snobbish comment on the banausic principle (basically
non-intellectual pursuits such as manufacturing and earning money)
would have delighted the citizenry of ancient Greece. His view was
shared by others: in 1901, John Churton Collins described teaching
as a banausic occupation, "the one instinct in [teachers] which is
not quite banausic being the conscientious thoroughness with which
they impart what they have been taught."
It has never quite lost its snobbish undertones, but it has shifted
sense slightly to refer to the utilitarian or materialistic aspects
of everyday life.
Aristocratic disdain for "trade" is a commonplace of
literature, the latter regarded as tainted by the low and
banausic nature of what it involves.
[Ideas That Matter, by A C Grayling, 2009.]
3. Austerian
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The austerians - those economists and politicians who believe the
only way out of the financial crisis is through painful spending
cuts - are in the news at the moment. In Britain it's because of the
visit this week by the International Monetary Fund, which declared
in April that the austerian policies of the coalition are damaging
recovery. More widely it's because numerical errors have been found
in research by the noted economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart
on the relationship between high ratios of debt and GDP, research
that is the basis of much of the policies of austerity worldwide.
An isolated example is on record from 1996 but it seems to have been
reinvented around June 2010. Its popularity has risen sharply in
recent months - in the UK, it has appeared in print more often this
year than in the previous three years combined. The word has been
given greater visibility through the writings of the Nobel prize-
winning economist Paul Krugman, who opposes austerian policies,
calling them "delusional".
It has been claimed that "austerian" was coined as an insiders'
joke, a pun on "Austrian", a reference to the school of economic
thought typified by Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
Recent examples from newspapers:
At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not
only have its predictions about the real world failed
completely, but the academic research invoked to support
that position has turned out to be riddled with errors,
omissions and dubious statistics.
[Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, 25 Apr. 2013.]
Although Mr Osborne's team argue that his fiscal plan
was never as rigid as critics claimed, the chancellor has
plainly decided that the time has come to argue that he is
not the hard-nosed austerian of popular image.
[Financial Times, 27 Apr. 2013.]
"Austerian", often with an initial capital letter, dates from the
1990s as an independent creation which refers to the style of the
American novelist Paul Auster.
4. Earl Grey tea
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For the most part, etymology isn't a flashy subject. It needs care
and patience rather than academic brilliance and is rarely rewarded
by moments of breathtaking insight. But at times a search for the
provenance of a term turns into an intriguing detective story with
an unexpected dénouement.
In October 2012, the Oxford English Dictionary issued an appeal for
information about the term "Earl Grey tea".
This is a blend of black China teas flavoured with bergamot, an oil
derived from a citrus fruit native to the Far East but widely grown
in Italy. Various stories link it to the second Earl Grey, who was
British prime minister between 1830 and 1834 and largely responsible
for the Great Reform Act of 1832 as well as removing the monopoly of
the East India Company on importing tea from China. One legend says
that the tea was a reward for his (or an envoy of his) rescuing the
son of a Chinese mandarin; another, that a Chinese diplomat gave him
a gift of it while he was prime minister. The website of the family
home, Howick Hall, says that it was specially blended by a Chinese
mandarin to offset the lime taste of the water from the local well
and that Lady Grey used it when she was entertaining in London. (A
version of Earl Grey tea called Lady Grey tea, with a less pungent
flavour, created in the early 1990s by the tea merchants Twinings,
is named after her.)
The etymological problem for the OED was that the first example of
the term "Earl Grey tea" it had on record was dated 1929, though
they knew of "Earl Grey's mixture" from 1891.
Various contributors progressively took the story back. An advert
from about 1928 by Jacksons of Piccadilly claimed to have introduced
it at the request of Earl Grey in 1836. A tale appeared in several
versions in the decade after 1891 claiming that Earl Grey's mixture
was so named because the earl had introduced it to Her Majesty. But
he had retired to Howick after leaving office, aged 70, and may not
even have met Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837. A
further advertisement for Earl Grey's mixture, in the Morning Post
in 1884, announced that "this choice Tea can only be obtained of the
Introducers and Sole Proprietors, Charlton and Co" of Piccadilly.
The story took a surprising twist when researchers on the Foods of
England site found that Charlton and Co had advertised a tea in 1867
as the rather expensive "celebrated Grey mixture", with no reference
to any aristocratic connection, though it did boast of its "most
distinguished patronage". Might the business have added a noble
association later on as a marketing ploy, one that was to be copied
by others? It could well have done. Victorian advertisers weren't
renowned for their strict adherence to truth.
The search for the name runs into the sand at this point. But it's
not the end of the story. The use of bergamot as a flavouring and
scent long predates any connection with Earl Grey - for example, it
was added to snuff early in the eighteenth century. But its early
associations with tea are disreputable. A newspaper report in 1824
was ominously headed, "To render Tea at 5s a Pound equal to Tea at
12s". It explained:
If we can discover any fine-flavoured substance, and
add it to the tea in a proper manner, so as to make it
agree and harmonize with the original flavour, we shall be
able to improve low-priced and flavourless teas, into a
high-priced article of fine flavour. The flavouring
substance found to agree best with the original flavour of
tea, is the oil of bergamot, by the proper management of
which you may produce from the cheapest teas the finest
flavoured Bloom, Hyson, Gunpowder, and Cowslip.
[Lancaster Gazette, 22 May 1824.]
While this would better be described as adulteration, it has to be
viewed against the background of the shocking "improvements" that
were made to many foodstuffs at the time, such as adding alum to
bread to make it more fashionably white and colouring sweets with
poisonous compounds of copper and arsenic. Tea, being expensive, was
subject more than most to adulteration, including adding Prussian
blue to green tea or graphite to black to make them look better
("facing them" was the trade term) or variously adding black lead,
copper carbonate, lead chromate and turmeric to used tea leaves to
tart them up and sell them as fresh. In this context, flavouring
cheap tea with bergamot was a trivial offence, though in 1837 an
injunction was awarded against a London grocer to prevent it selling
its tea:
Brocksopp and Co.'s Mowqua's small-leaf gunpowder was
so inferior a tea, that deponents could not set any price
upon it ... it was artificially scented, and appeared to
have been drugged with bergamot in this country.
[The Bristol Mercury, 13 May 1837.]
It's hardly likely that an aristocrat such as Earl Grey would have
lent his name to a mixture that had such unsavoury undertones. The
absence of any contemporary evidence of a link means that we have to
look elsewhere for the origin of the name. Perhaps the Grey mixture
sold by Charlton and Co later in the century was named after some
other Grey? The Foods of England site identified a candidate in
William Grey & Co of Morpeth, which advertised in 1852 (it may be
merely a coincidence that its shop was only about 25 miles from
Howick Hall).
As always, there are loose ends. But the stories that connect Earl
Grey tea to a nineteenth-century aristocrat have been debunked. Earl
Grey never drank Earl Grey.
5. Sic!
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Ben Burenstein contributed a headline from the Philadelphia Metro on
1 May: "Man Shot in Society Hill over phone". It's amazing what one
can do with apps these days.
A story dated 27 April on the BBC News site mentioned a job that
Margaret Joachim felt we could well do without: "The borough's
dangerous structural engineer was called in to assess the roof."
Some are born great ... Joan Butler sent this extract from a profile
on iTunes: "With a multi-octave voice similar to Betty Carter's,
incredible scatting ability, and ease of transition from a throaty
whisper to high-pitched trills, Cleo Laine was born in 1927 in the
Southall section of London."
Joe Jordan reports that the Australian tabloid Sunday Telegraph is
running an online petition: "Support our campaign to stop the spread
of disease by vaccination."
Tom Peck submitted this from an AP Today in History column he came
across in the Indianapolis Star on 9 May: "1951: The U.S. conducts
its first thermonuclear experiment as part of Operation Greenhouse
by detonating a 225-kiloton device on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific
nicknamed 'George'."
6. Useful information
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