World Wide Words -- 02 Nov 13
Michael Quinion
wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Nov 1 16:26:47 UTC 2013
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 856 Saturday 2 November 2013
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A formatted version is also available online at
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Recumbentibus.
3. Snippets.
4. Reuben.
5. Sic!
5. Subscriptions and other information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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OLD BESOM "When I was a child in central Scotland in the 1940s and
1950s," Elisabeth Okasha wrote, "'besom' was a big insult, used by
us primary school children about any woman who was deemed
unpleasant. It also implied old, cross, disagreeable and ugly. The
word was not allowed in my house, which I took to be because it was
associated with 'bosom', another taboo word. Of course it is not,
but in our pronunciation the two words certainly sounded very
similar."
Linda Traylor emailed, "I'm glad to know what that twig-type broom
is called. All this made me need to ask just how the besom pocket
got its name. Strange, but the pocket is the only use of the word I
had ever heard." I have learned (World Wide Words is so educational)
that a besom pocket is one cut into a garment, finished with welting
or stitching but without a flap. The source of "besom" here seems to
be unknown.
Several readers queried my footnote to a quotation from Sir Walter
Scott, in which I commented that "mickle" was a variant form of
"muckle". Graham Thomas emailed, "I recall a Scots proverb: 'Many a
mickle makes a muckle', meaning that many small quantities aggregate
over time into a large quantity. It is hard to see how, in this
context, mickle and muckle can be synonymous." That's because the
proverb is a popular corruption. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs
lists George Washington as its earliest recorded user, in 1793,
though we can't lay the blame on him, as he was surely quoting a
version that had been in circulation earlier. The "correct" form is
usually "many a little makes a mickle", which William Camden put
into his Remains Concerning Britain in 1614, though other versions,
such as "many a little makes a great" are known as early as the 14th
century. It is also written as "many a pickle makes a mickle" (in
which "pickle" is a Scots term for a small amount). The proverb
expresses the value of thrift and economy or, as another proverb
puts it, "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after
themselves". The corrupted form is now so firmly set in people's
minds that it's rare to find an historically accurate one.
2. Recumbentibus /rik at m'bentIb at s/
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This week, a word that is as obscure as any that have featured here.
If you think it looks Latin, you're right. It's the ablative plural
of the verb "recumbere", to recline or rest. As the ablative case in
Latin can suggest an agent, "recumbentibus" may imply that somebody
has caused another to recline.
In medieval Latin and then elevated English, "recumbentibus" came to
mean a powerful blow, one that was strong enough to knock a person
down, to make him involuntarily adopt a recumbent position. In his
Dialogue of Proverbs of 1549, John Haywood wrote, "Had you some
husband, and snapped at him thus, I wise he would give you a
recumbentibus." Thomas Middleton has a character in his play of
1608, The Family of Love, exclaim, "A plague upon him for a Glister!
He has given our loves a suppositor with a recumbentibus." He is
complaining about an unnecessarily violent and embarrassing medical
procedure, since we would now call a suppositor a suppository and
"glister" is another way to write "clyster", a medicine injected
into the rectum to empty or cleanse the bowels.
"Recumbentibus" has never become common in English and has in any
case been obsolete since about 1670, though it has on very rare
occasions been resurrected:
Thor went among them with incalescent eagerness,
smashing their guidance systems with his bare fingers,
delivering one massive recumbentibus after another, making
shards of the casings.
[And Another Thing ..., by Eoin Colfer; part six of
Douglas Adams's trilogy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, 2009. "Incalescent" means with increasing
heat.]
3. Snippets
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ODDER AND ODDER Heribert Beigel wrote from Germany. He was puzzled
by the phrase "interestinger and interestinger" that Donna Leon put
into the mouth of Commissario Brunetti in her most recent novel, The
Golden Egg. I was able to reassure him that English grammar didn't
allow the creation of a comparative in "-er" from such a long word,
other than for humorous effect. I'd not encountered it before, but
found many examples, mostly from recent decades, though the oldest
was from New Outlook, an American magazine of 1909. Online, it has
been attributed to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, though what
Alice actually said, of course, was "curiouser and curiouser". The
"interestinger and interestinger" version was presumably created by
analogy with it.
SMILE, YOU'RE ON CAMERA! The phrase "body-worn video" has appeared
a few times recently in British journals and newspapers because UK
police forces are beginning to equip officers with video cameras in
order to capture evidence. Forces in the USA, the UK and elsewhere
have been testing such equipment for some years (the term dates back
to 2006 at the latest, though it's jargon and they're often called
body cameras or similar terms). It avoids situations in which the
word of a suspect conflicts with that of a police officer and, with
certain provisos, is claimed to have potential to check the abuse of
police power.
MARCEL WAVE This month sees the 100th anniversary of the appearance
of Swann's Way, the first part of Marcel Proust's huge masterpiece,
Remembrance of Things Past, which rates highly on the list of famous
books that few people have finished, or even started. The date is
being marked by readings, discussions and other events in a burst of
what's being called a Proustathon. The word isn't new. Many groups
have organised readings of the epic novel in the past and many have
used the word, together with others that have fared less well, such
as "Proustonaut". It's all Iris Murdoch's fault, as she started
Proustathon's progress when she included it in The Good Apprentice
in 1985: "We had a Proust-reading marathon to raise money for
ecology, it was terribly funny, they called it a Proustathon -."
4. Reuben
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Q. I watched Yankee Doodle Dandy recently. In George M Cohan's song
Forty-five Minutes from Broadway, there is a line, "Oh, what a fine
bunch of reubens". I wondered what it referred to - I doubted that
it meant the sandwich. A friend said that it refers to members of
the Jewish faith, but as I pointed out to her, that doesn't fit the
meaning. Can you help? [David Procter]
A. It's a very old-fashioned extension of the male personal name.
It's from the Hebrew name Reuven in the Old Testament, the firstborn
of Jacob's 12 sons, which is presumably why your friend supposed a
Jewish connection. As you say, there isn't a link in its American
sense, in which it refers in a derogatory way to an unsophisticated
countryman, a yokel or hick.
At one time it was common to adopt personal names from the Bible, in
rural communities in particular (in 1880, one boy in 200 was named
Reuben), and the suggestion is that Reuben somehow became adopted by
metropolitans as a suitable alias for a country bumpkin. We may
guess that the alliteration of "rural" or "rustic" with "Reuben"
helped it along.
When it began is hard to tell. The first examples I can turn up are
from the early 1880s. But these are abbreviations of a term of the
1870s in Indiana, "Ragged Reuben", an insulting term for a rural
member of the Democratic Party who was considered by urban members
to be an ignorant backwoodsman. The term was used in counterpoint to
"swallow-tail", his urban equivalent, which I suspect referred to
the bifurcated tailcoats of professional men in the cities. We might
presume from this that "Reuben" was already in use as a slang term
for a hick. Or perhaps not, and it was this alliteration, not the
others I've mentioned, that brought "reuben" into being.
This is the first example of "Reuben" I've so far found, also from
Indiana, showing the link with politics:
Darke county and Jackson township, where Democrats grow
spontaneously, were called upon to "come over into
Macedonia and help," and the "Reubens" of those localities
were urged to come early, or they might not be able to get
into town at all, the crowd was expected to be so
great.
[Indianapolis Journal, 28 Jun. 1880.]
By the 1890s, "reuben" (by then often without its initial capital
letter) had become abbreviated to "rube" to match the common short
form of the personal name, as in the famous Rube Goldberg. This was
popular for some decades but is now much less common. The personal
name has also declined in popularity, to 1 in 800 today, though it
has shown a slight revival in recent years.
It has survived better in the exclamation "hey rube!", originally a
nineteenth-century cry by circus people to bring help if a fight
started. This is an early explanation:
"Hey! Rube!" [is the] circus-man's shout, which has
been heard from Maine to Oregon and from Hudson's Bay to
Brazil. When the countrymen get too fresh and too full of
fight, they generally get it. The first performer attacked
sends forth the thrilling war cry, and every man and boy
connected with the show arm themselves with some weapon,
and sally to the aid of their brother.
[Cincinnati Enquirer, 7 Sep. 1879.]
The association with fights led "hey rube" to become a noun meaning
a scrap. We don't know where the term comes from. There's a tale
that it began as an actual cry of help from a circus worker to a
friend called Reuben. But that's impossible to substantiate.
As is the source of "Reuben" in Reuben sandwich, American slang for
a hot sandwich of rye bread containing cheese, corned beef and
sauerkraut. The term started to appear in the middle 1920s. Various
stories have been told about its origin. A plausible one was given
in a syndicated newspaper report in 1927, which attributed it to
Arnold Reuben's delicatessen in New York City and remarked:
Reuben's still flourishes. A Reuben sandwich may coat a
dollar and a half, but it's worth it. The relics of a
former generation and that portion of the new element
which still eats has made Reuben rich and famous. Visit
Reuben's after midnight. Rich men, lovely women, movie
actresses in rubies, gamblers, reporters - .
[Kansas City Star, 9 Jun. 1927.]
By the way, the next line in Forty-five Minutes from Broadway to the
one you quoted is "Oh, what a jay atmosphere". "Jay" is an ancient
term for a stupid or silly person or a simpleton. This was applied
in the US to stupid, gullible, ignorant, or provincial people and
led to "jaywalker" (see http://bit.ly/jaywlk) for country cousins
who didn't understand the rules of the road in the big city.
5. Sic!
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Dodi Schultz contributed this from a Time report dated 23 October:
"Adelson, a staunch Israel supporter, gave a whopping $92.8 million,
along with his wife Miriam, to outside political groups during the
2012 election cycle."
In The Tradition is Safe: A History of the Royal Air Force, Paul
Brockman found this: "As the service became smaller Trenchard's Air
Force 'Spirit' remained and the quality and morale of both personnel
and equipment rose despite the tampering of successive governments."
Quality of personnel, perhaps, but morale of equipment?
Pat Schley sent in a review on Amazon.com of The Thief of Time by
John Boyne: "They all died in their twenties after siring a male
offspring due to either insanity or events out of their control."
The Minneapolis Star Tribune had an article on 22 October about a
park restoration project, John Cleveland tells us: "Storms have
taken a toll on the island's trees, and the turf has taken a beating
from heavy grazing by geese and picnickers." Tell them to bring
their own food next time.
The October 26 edition of the Borneo Bulletin, Bernard says, carried
a Reuter's article on Sir Richard Branson. It said the entrepreneur
"tried to circumvent the world in a hot air balloon." No wonder he
failed.
6. Useful information
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