World Wide Words -- 30 Nov 13

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 860         Saturday 30 November 2013
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Larrikin.
3. Wordface.
4. Thirteen and the odd.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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SELFIE  Colin Houlden commented, "As long ago as the mid fifties, 
whilst serving in the Royal Navy, a self-photo was referred to as a 
'me-graph'. It would appear 'selfie' is but a step away!"

DROWNING, NOT WAVING?  Several readers denied there was anything 
wrong with the headline in last week's Sic! section: "Where someone 
drowns determines their chance of survival." They held that drowning 
isn't necessarily fatal because victims can be resuscitated. I was 
so surprised that I checked the verb in numerous dictionaries. All 
the definitions include the word "die", which reflects the everyday 
sense of the verb. "Drowning" may indicate a process but "drown" is 
surely final. I wonder if a shift in meaning is developing under the 
lexicographical radar?

FEGHOOTS  My piece on these mini shaggy dog stories gave readers a 
wonderful opportunity to quote their favourite elaborate puns, such 
as "Great auks from lid allay cairn's groan", "People who live in 
grass houses shouldn't stow thrones" and "Honour's tea is the best, 
Polly, see!" Jeff Lewis's favourite tag line was a list of things 
Frank Muir had to attend to before his wife returned from holiday 
"Soup, a cauli, fridge, elastic, eggs, peas, halitosis". Malcolm 
Ross-Macdonald remembered one with the punchline, "One Tooth Free 
For Fife, Sick Sven Ate Nine Tench." No more, please!

It was a delight to discover that nobody wrote for an explanation of 
"male pheasants in orifice"; should you still be wondering, it's an 
obfuscated reference to "malfeasance in office".


2. Larrikin
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"Larrikin" is a quintessentially Australian term. It appeared in the 
1860s for a street rowdy or urban tough. The writer Archibald Forbes 
described the larrikin as "a cross between the Street Arab and the 
Hoodlum, with a dash of the Rough thrown in to improve the mixture." 
Vicious fights between larrikin gangs were common. In the late 
nineteenth century some gangs formed formed a subculture with a 
dress style that included broad-brimmed hats, gaudy waistcoats, 
strapped moleskin trousers and high-heeled boots. 

Early suggestions of its origins were fanciful. The obituary in the 
Melbourne Argus in 1888 of a police officer named James Dalton said 
that he had accidentally invented it in a court hearing through a 
misunderstanding of his saying "larking" in his broad Irish accent. 
This was countered by a letter in a subsequent edition, which argued 
that it was from "leery"; the writer said it had became a catchword 
of Melbourne youths in the 1860s from its appearance in a popular 
London song, The Leery Cove. Locals started to call the boys "leery 
kids", which was transmuted over time into "larrikin". A related 
story of the same period was that criminals in local jails described 
themselves as "leery kin", which was similarly amended through the 
Irish brogue of their jailers. "Kin" was also invoked in "Larry's 
kin", the supposed relatives of some unknown Australian. This has 
been linked to "happy as Larry" (http://wwwords.org/hply), another 
Australianism recorded first around the same time as larrikin. The 
supposed connection with Irishmen in two of the tales has led to 
some writers on language declaring "larrikin" to be an Irish word. 

We can dispose of all of these stories at a stroke by looking across 
the Tasman Sea. "Larrikin" is recorded in New Zealand in 1866, two 
years before Australia. There can be little doubt that the word had 
a common origin in the old country. The English Dialect Dictionary 
has "larrikin" as a dialect term of Warwickshire and Worcestershire 
for a mischievous or frolicsome youth. It would seem to have become 
significantly modified in sense during its journey to the Antipodes.

In modern Australian English, larrikin has been inverted into a term 
almost of respect. The old sense of a tearaway or hooligan has been 
replaced by that of a non-conformist and irreverent person with a 
careless disregard for social or political conventions, someone who 
may be thought truly Australian.


3. Wordface
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DOGGY BLENDS  Dog breeders who create crosses delight in inventing 
cutesy names for them, particularly if a poodle is part of the mix. 
The cockapoo is a poodle crossed with a cocker spaniel; a maltipoo 
is a poodle and Maltese terrier cross; the peekaboo is the offspring 
of a poodle and a pekinese. The Daily Mail recently reported on the 
newest: the cava-poo-chon is "a cavalier King Charles spaniel and 
bichon frise mix bred with a miniature poodle."

STANFORDENE  The technical press has been excited this week at the 
implications of an announcement by researchers at the SLAC National 
Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, who predict that a 
material as yet unmade has high promise for the next generation of 
computer chips. It's a two-dimensional single layer of tin atoms, 
which theory suggests will conduct electricity with 100% efficiency 
at room temperature. Adding fluorine atoms could keep it working at 
the temperature of boiling water. It may not have been made yet but 
it already has a name, "stanene", from the Latin for tin, "stannum", 
plus the "-ene" ending from "graphene".

MAXWELL'S HAMMER  I came across an odd British jargon term the other 
day: "Maxwellisation process". This is lawyer-speak for a procedure 
by which individuals who are to be criticised in an official report 
are warned so they can respond before publication. The process is in 
the news at the moment in connection with the long-delayed report of 
the Chilcot inquiry into the causes of the war in Iraq. The term can 
be found at least as far back as the early 1990s but its origin lies 
in a court case of the early 1970s brought by the media mogul Robert 
Maxwell. He had been severely criticised in a government report and 
argued that it was against natural justice not to have been given an 
opportunity to respond before the report was published.


4. Thirteen and the odd
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Q. In Melancholy Dane, Damon Runyon describes folks waiting to enter 
a performance of Hamlet dressed "in the old thirteen and odd." What 
a curious construction! Where does it come from? [Robert Visconti]

A. This is the full quote from the short story:

    Well, I finally go to the theater with Ambrose and it 
    is quite a high-toned occasion with nearly everybody in 
    the old thirteen-and-odd because Mansfield Sothern has a 
    big following in musical comedy and it seems that his 
    determination to play Hamlet produces quite a 
    sensation.
    [The Melancholy Dane, by Damon Runyon, in Collier's 
    Weekly, 18 Mar. 1944.]

I mentioned this in a piece back in 2006 about "soup and fish" (see 
http://wwwords.org/spfsh), the Wodehousian slang term for evening 
dress, because I had come across it in the same context. I couldn't 
make head nor tail of it then and time was too short to enquire. 
Having now done so, I'm not much further forward.

It's slang of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in 
the USA. The first instance I've come across was in the New York 
Herald in September 1898 and the last - apart from Damon Runyon's - 
was in a short story by George Ade, The Fable of Mr. Whipple's Dress 
Suit, syndicated in newspapers in 1933. The dating suggests that the 
expression had already fallen out of fashion by the time Runyon used 
it; Jean Wagner's assertion in a 1966 book about his slang that he 
had invented it is clearly mistaken.

An early example makes clear that the two slang terms refer to 
different things:

    "Ain't you dining out? What'll I git you - the 'soup-
    and-fish' or the 'thirteen-and-the-odd?'" Stephen 
    disclaimed any desire for the dinner coat first mentioned, 
    declaring his preference for the more formal tailed 
    garment.
    [An Enemy to Society, by G Bronson-Howard, 1911.]

Here, the "thirteen-and-the-odd" is clearly what we know as "white 
tie" or "top hat and tails", a full formal evening dress of a black 
tail coat, white waistcoat, white bow tie and top hat. "Soup and 
fish" is a tuxedo or the equivalent called "black tie" because it is 
normally worn with a black bow tie. But an earlier example (found 
for me by Christopher Philippo) contradicts this:

    "Tod" was as graceful and courteous as it is possible 
    to be. He shook hands with this man and that woman, then 
    went to his room and came down in half an hour dressed in 
    his "thirteens and the odd," as the boys around Saratoga 
    call a Tuxedo and low cut vest.
    [New York Evening Telegram, 11 Aug. 1899.]

After I mentioned it for the first time, several readers pointed out 
that the crackerjack uniform of junior enlisted men in the US Navy 
(http://wwwords.org/crack) is fastened by a thirteen-button flap. 
This may be relevant, but probably not. 

A card game of the same name is mentioned by a witness in a case 
before the supreme court of Alabama in 1855, who claimed that it 
could also be played with dominoes. Nobody else mentions the domino 
version but the card game is described in a number of American 
compendia, such as The Modern Pocket Hoyle of 1868. It was a version 
of whist for two people, who were each dealt 13 cards, with another 
turned up on the pack to indicate trumps. Hence, I suppose, thirteen 
and the odd. 

It's possible that the black-and-white of the cards (or dominoes if 
the game was more common than the references imply) was transferred 
by analogy to formal dress. The written evidence hints that it was 
first used for the tuxedo, which was introduced at Tuxedo Park in 
New York State in the middle 1880s, but was later transferred to the 
formal white tie, with "soup-and-fish" taking over for the tuxedo.

The phrase is so curious and unusual that there surely must be some 
connection between the game and the dress styles. But the evidence 
is so sparse that as matters stand it's impossible to be sure what 
was in people's minds to link them.


5. Sic!
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Robert Kernish found this on the website of the Iron Hill Brewery: 
"We took Paul's love of big west coast IPAs and Chris' pension for 
dry, yeast-driven Belgians and came up with this American-Belgo."

Jeff Gale was reading the Wall Street Journal for 20 November and 
came across this mystifying headline: "Kiwi Up on China Baby Talk". 
It turns out that the New Zealand dollar has gained value against 
the American dollar on news that China is relaxing its one-child 
policy. It seems that New Zealand supplies much of China's milk.

One of the editor's picks on the site of ABC News in Australia on 27 
November read: "Captive-bred Tasmanian devils are thriving on their 
new island home, breeding and interacting with tourists." Thanks to 
Rob Young for sending that in.

"Beware of abusive rights groups," was Frank Steele's comment on an 
Associated Press headline on 25 November: "Zimbabwe Urged to End 
Abuses by Rights Group." 

From the Vermont Eagle of Middlebury, Vermont, dated 30 November, 
spotted by Spence Putnam: "The complainant, Robert Evegan, reported 
he discovered two males breaking into a building on his property 
which fled once they were discovered."  


6. Useful information
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ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER: World Wide Words is written and published by 
Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting and advice 
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