World Wide Words -- 15 Feb 14

[Michael Quinion]

--------------------------------------------------------------------
WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 869         Saturday 15 February 2014
--------------------------------------------------------------------
       This mailing also contains an HTML-formatted version.
          A formatted version is also available online at
             http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/qcrm.htm


Contents
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Turdiform.
3. Wordface.
4. Nummits and crummits.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
--------------------------------------------------------------------
GIBBOUS  "Gimme a break!" Clark Stevens wrote, voicing the views of 
many other readers, "Were you giddy or loaded to the gills when you 
declared it a rule that 'g followed by i is soft'?" Mea culpa. I 
must have had some rule in my mind: it may have been the one that 
reader Bron Forman was taught, that "g" followed by "e", "i" or "y" 
*may* be soft. That one small word makes all the difference since - 
as Mr Stevens's examples show - my version of the rule is more 
honoured in the breach than in the observance. It's true that "g" 
before "e" and "i" is often soft, but that's so only for words from 
Romance languages; those from Germanic sources are almost always 
hard. This makes it useless as guidance unless you know the 
etymology of every word you use, in which case your pronunciation is 
probably expert anyway. (Incidentally, and for the avoidance of 
further queries, "Germanic" isn't a Germanic word; it comes from 
Latin.)

Vireya Jacquard wrote from Australia: "Until now I had assumed that 
gibbous was the adjectival form of 'gibber', a stone, because once 
the moon was past half-way, it looked like a stone." You have to be 
Australian, I think, to know that word (which, by the way, is said 
with a hard "g", like "gibbous" but unlike the other meaning of 
"gibber", as in "gibbering idiot", which is soft). It most often 
appears in "gibber plain", a phrase describing extensive stony 
areas, and is from the Dharuk Aboriginal language of the area around 
Sydney.

Roger Clark wrote, "Just a stickling comment. 'Gibbous' is used to 
refer to both waxing and waning phases of the moon, not just moving 
towards full." 

"I tell the people in my parish," Fr Noel Burke wrote from Glasgow, 
"about the gibbous moon they'll see on Palm Sunday. Easter is set by 
the first full moon occurring after the Spring equinox. So on the 
Sunday before Easter the moon will always be gibbous. They also 
learn a new word!"

GIVING THE MITTEN  Following up my piece two weeks ago, Antero Ranne 
emailed: "'To get mittens' is a common Finnish expression for having 
a marriage proposal rejected. The Institute for the Languages of 
Finland says: 'Many Germanic nations had a custom of giving gloves 
as a present when an agreement, for example a marriage contract, was 
made. If the gloves were returned, it meant that the proposal was 
rejected. The custom had its origin in the Middle Ages.'" This 
greatly strengthens the view that the expression was borrowed from 
continental European custom, as several sources assert.

SHIPPER  Debi Smolinske emailed, "I love how well you research your 
subjects. But I just had to write to let you know that you got it 
horribly wrong in your usage of the term 'slash fiction'. Slash 
fiction is always of the homosexual variety. Slash fiction is never 
heterosexual. That is the whole point of it. It is the frequent on-
screen bromances that lead fan writers (nearly always female) to 
create slash fiction. You are correct that the term slash fiction 
comes from the written Kirk/Spock, because they were the first pair 
to become the subject of this type of fan fiction."

Lee Billings added: "The term 'slash' is still very much in use to 
describe fanfic [fan fiction] involving same-sex relationships; the 
corresponding term for male-female relationships is 'het'. Both of 
these imply a sexual component is involved; if not, it's described 
as 'gen' (from 'for general audiences'). The Kirk/Spock pairing has 
been written as sexually explicit from the very beginning; those 
stories probably predate the 'bromance' versions."

"My recollection of shippers," John Bradford wrote, "though I didn't 
know it had a name until now, was in the late sixties (probably) 
when I saw a newspaper headline "Will Perry Marry Della?". Those 
born in the final part of the last century or later won't have a 
clue what that's about. I've no idea when the X-Files began, but 
it's surely later than Perry Mason."

WAITLISTING  Jeremy Weatherford pointed out that there is another 
term used in the email field that's close in sense: "greylisting", 
which is the automatic temporary rejection of incoming email from 
unknown senders with instructions to the originating server to send 
the message again after a delay. Spammers' systems don't usually 
bother to re-queue messages, so it's a simple way of ensuring it's 
genuine.

WHET AND WET  The piece on this last week made the assumption that 
"wet" and "whet" are pronounced alike, as they are in most English 
varieties. But some speakers, for example in Ireland and in parts of 
the US, maintain the historical difference in sound in which "wh" is 
a breathy sound said as though it's written "hw". Such speakers also 
distinguish many other pairs, including which-witch and wine-whine 
(hence "wine–whine merger" for the loss of the distinction).

"You didn't mention one of the major reasons for the confusion 
between whet and wet," wrote Charlotte Riggle. "If you are using a 
whetstone to sharpen a knife, you have to wet it. It's natural, 
then, for folks who no longer use the word 'whet' as a synonym for 
sharpen to call it a 'wetstone'. Even some manufacturers of 
whetstones call them wetstones!" 

David Rosen recalled an etymological story that "whistle" was an old 
term for a scythe. He thinks he may have heard it in a broadcast by 
the late American poet John Ciardi. Steve Shervais found a reference 
to the same idea in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle: farmers, it is 
said, would whet their whistles with a whetstone. Thus "whet one's 
whistle". But there's no example known of "whistle" being used as a 
term for a scythe and the idiom is certainly "wet one's whistle". 
This story is surely fanciful and muddies the etymological waters.

Paul Hatt wrote: "One use of 'whet' is to be found in Shakespeare's 
King John, at the end of Act 3; but the line with it in has been cut 
on the two occasions I have seen the play. Cardinal Pandulph urges 
the Dauphin to join him in trying to get the French king to take 
action against wicked King John with the words 'I will whet on the 
king.' [He means he would sharpen the king's resolve.] You can see 
why the line has to be cut, as even the best actor emphasising the 
'h' in the word would, I think, be greeted with laughter at a solemn 
moment."


2. Turdiform
--------------------------------------------------------------------
It's one of a select class of English words, including crapulent and 
formicate, that are guaranteed to mislead readers and raise a giggle 
among children of all ages. 

I'm reminded of a wonderful monologue that the British comedy actor 
Ronnie Barker gave many years ago on a television show called The 
Two Ronnies. In a sketch peppered with real and fictional Cockney 
rhyming slang he claimed to have encountered a small brown Richard 
the Third on the ground, which he picked up and put on a wall out of 
the way. The story ends with it flying off.

There's a good reason for my bringing that up, apart from wanting to 
share a memory, because "turdiform" is an adjective that refers to 
birds of the thrush family. It comes from Latin "turdus" for one of 
the European thrushes, probably the song thrush or mistle thrush 
(the latter having been given that name because it was noted for 
eating berries, particularly those of the mistletoe).

"Turdiform" is found exclusively in old-time ornithological works. 
It has always been specialist and technical; its appearances lie 
mainly in the period from 1870 to 1910 and it is obsolete. We may 
guess that a certain fastidiousness on the part of writers has led 
to their expelling it from their vocabulary. 


3. Wordface
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUCKING OFF  The British snowboarder Billy Morgan could finish only 
tenth in his slopestyle final at the Sochi Winter Olympics. While 
being interviewed live for the BBC he said "I knew that maybe if I 
landed my run it'd put me up there on the podium, so I just thought, 
I'll just huck it." The presenter heard a very different four-letter 
word and apologised for it. I'm not acquainted with the terminology 
of skateboarding, but I have learned that "huck" is a verb used as a 
macho cry meaning to go all out or to hurl oneself into the air with 
great force. The first known example in print was in the Washington 
Post in 1989. Despite the similarity, "huck it" isn't a euphemism, 
although we might guess there's an element of faux innocence in it. 


4. Nummits and crummits
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I have been reading a book on Devon customs published in 1900 
with the odd title of Nummits and Crummits. Even after reading this 
I still don't know what these words mean! [Chris Sheldon]

A. Yes, it's a nuisance that Sarah Hewett doesn't define these two 
crucial words in her book, though she gives hints. She writes in the 
introduction, "Apologies are offered to any one whose 'Crummits' 
have been appropriated without permission or acknowledgment" and in 
the chapter headed "Nummits and Crummits" she quotes an old Devon 
verse about mealtimes:

    A wee-bit and breakfast,
    A stay-bit and dinner,
    A nummit and a crummit,
    And a bit arter supper.

The place to get the answers is the English Dialect Dictionary, a 
huge compilation in six volumes published between 1898 and 1905. It 
was based on submissions by a large number of local dialect field 
workers, of whom Mrs Hewett was one.

The EDD defines "crummit" as a small bit or a crumb. A "nummit" is a 
meal eaten in the field by farm labourers, either in the middle of 
the morning or in the afternoon, at nummit-time. The phrase "nummit 
and crummit" meant a snack, a bit of something taken between meals. 
You might translate the title of Mrs Hewett's book as "bits and 
pieces" or "miscellany". 

As to the other words in the rhyme: a "wee-bit" is a snack taken 
early in the morning before the regular breakfast; "stay-bit" means 
likewise a snack, something to stay your hunger before a main meal. 
"Arter" is a local form of "after". If you take the "bit after 
supper" to be another snack, the rhyme lists three main meals a day 
plus five snacks. We might assume Devon agricultural labourers were 
notably well-fed, but a description in a little book of sketches of 
Devon life shows that the verse applied particularly to one type of 
work (note the different version of the rhyme):

    "Haymakers are the hungriest folks out - 'Fore-bit and 
    Breakfast, Rear-bit and Dinner; Nummit and Crummit, And a 
    Bit after Supper' - that's what they had when my mother 
    was a maid, and that's what they want to-day and for 
    ever." ... Perhaps, if Aunt Charity were alive now, she 
    would lament for the good old times when haymakers 
    expected their eight meals a day, and earned them.
    [Devonshire Idyls, by Miss H C O'Neill, 1892.]

"Nummit" is widely known in English dialect and has other many other 
spellings. The Oxford English Dictionary has it under that spelling 
and says it's a variant of "noonmeat". It would seem that mealtimes 
and their names have changed somewhat since "noonmeat" was current 
(it died out in the eighteenth century). Nobody seems to know the 
origin of "crummit" but it might be from "crumb".


5. Sic!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
An advertisement for an ethnic grocery store in the Mississauga News 
of 6 February seen by Dave Tracey: "Free butter running chicken". We 
may guess that "free range" was meant.

The 2013 issue of the Journal of the Ceredigion Historical Society 
of Wales contains this sentence, Rhys Jones tells us: "Evan is 
described as the vicar of the parish, the church being dedicated to 
St Michael, aged thirty-one and unmarried".

We know what they mean. Richard Mellish found this in a BBC report 
online on 10 February: "Trains between Exeter St Davids and Waterloo 
are now able to run normally following a landslip near Crewkerne."

A good example of a classic error appeared in the Edinburgh Evening 
News of 5 February, courtesy of Nicholas Radcliffe: "A once forlorn 
and deserted area of Edinburgh, Iain Mercer finds new life at the 
West End..."

No news in the headline Victor Steinbok found over a Reuters report 
dated 10 February: "Sexually active midlife women continue to have 
sex."


6. Useful information
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER: World Wide Words is researched, written and 
published by Michael Quinion in the UK. ISSN 1470-1448. Copyediting 
and advice are provided by Julane Marx, Robert Waterhouse, John 
Bagnall and Peter Morris. Any residual errors are the fault of the 
author. The linked website is http://www.worldwidewords.org.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: The website provides all the tools you need to manage 
your own subscription. Please don't contact me asking for changes 
you can make yourself, though if problems occur you can e-mail me at 
wordssubs at worldwidewords.org. To change your subscribed address, 
leave the list or re-subscribe, go to http://wwwords.org/sb. This 
newsletter is also available on RSS (http://wwwords.org/rs) and on 
Twitter (http://wwwords.org/tw). Back issues are available via 
http://wwwords.org/bk.

E-MAIL CONTACT ADDRESSES: Comments on newsletter mailings are always 
welcome. They should be sent to michael.quinion at worldwidewords.org. 
I do try to respond, but pressures of time often stop me from doing 
so. Items for Sic! should go to sic at worldwidewords.org. Questions 
intended to be answered in the Q and A section should be sent to 
questions at worldwidewords.org, not to me directly.

SUPPORT WORLD WIDE WORDS: If you have enjoyed this newsletter and 
would like to help defray its costs and those of the linked Web 
site, please visit the support page via http://wwwords.org/st.

COPYRIGHT: World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion 2014. All 
rights reserved. You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part 
in free newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists or as educational 
resources provided that you include the copyright notice above and 
give the web address of http://www.worldwidewords.org. Reproduction 
of items in printed publications or commercial websites requires 
permission from the author beforehand.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/worldwidewords/attachments/20140214/008d1251/attachment.htm>