World Wide Words -- 22 Feb 14

[Michael Quinion]

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WORLD WIDE WORDS         ISSUE 870         Saturday 22 February 2014
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       This mailing also contains an HTML-formatted version.
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Fawn.
3. Wordface.
4. Haymaker.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.


1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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HUCK  My piece last week on the use of this word in snowboarding led 
to comments about its earlier use in parts of the US and Canada as a 
colloquial term meaning to throw. This might have been a blend of 
"hurl" and "chuck" or be from a dialect use of "hike" or "hoick" in 
the same sense.

Doug Hickey noted, "In the competitive frisbee and disc golf scene 
in the Washington DC area, I heard 'huck' for a particularly strong 
and powerful long-distance throw. I don't know if this was ever in 
print but it was most definitely an oral expression prior to 1989. 
Given the 'big air' meaning used by snowboarders, it seems to 
correlate nicely with the flying disc usage. I also believe that, at 
least in the US, there is an overlap in the social cultures of disc 
golf and snowboarding."

NUMMITS AND CRUMMITS  The term "rear-bit" that turned up in the 
piece provoked a number of readers to ask whether this could be the 
true source of "rarebit", as in cheese rarebit. Peggy Mayfield 
commented, "I wonder if this, and not the more common explanation 
that the word is derived from rabbit, doesn't make better sense? 
Rarebit doesn't resemble a rabbit, nor would cheese really make 
sense as a substitute - but as a rear-bit, a snack, it would be 
perfect." The usual story is that "Welsh rabbit" was a derogatory 
and mildly racist term of the early eighteenth century for cheese on 
toast, this being all the impoverished Welsh could afford. Later in 
the century, "rabbit" was changed to "rarebit", more probably as a 
misunderstanding rather than an attempt to remove the opprobrium 
from the term.

John de Figueiredo followed up my piece: "Having recently spent six 
weeks as a volunteer tutor on a North Queensland cattle station I 
can report that the Australian outback version of 'nummit' is smoko, 
even though it rarely involved any actual smoking, least of all for 
the primary-school children of the family. Smoko normally refers to 
a mid-morning meal and the afternoon event was referred to as 
'afternoon smoko'."

John Whythe had a great-aunt who called used tea-leaves 'grummits': 
"She was born in rural Surrey in the late nineteenth century. I 
discovered that the related 'grummels' is an archaic word for used 
tea-leaves."

HARD AND SOFT G  Len Levin wrote, "The discussion about whether 'g' 
is hard or soft before 'i' cast a new light on an anecdote I heard 
many years ago: When Cardinal Gibbons, the famous archbishop of 
Baltimore, was asked if he thought the current pope was infallible, 
he replied: 'I'm not sure. He always pronounces my name Jibbons.' 
Now I understand why."

GREYLISTING  Following up my mention of this word last week, Alan 
Harrison wrote from the UK, "I have only previously encountered this 
word as an activist in the former Association of University 
Teachers, since merged into the University and College Union. The 
new union has retained this term, rather than the more 
comprehensible 'academic boycott', for the same sanction against a 
recalcitrant employer. It is used in order to avoid pejorative use 
of the word 'black', replacing 'blacklisting'. I found that black 
colleagues believed the squeamishness silly and patronising. Similar 
motives lay behind the official discouragement in some unions of the 
long established term 'blackleg' for a strike-breaker."

GIVING SOMEBODY THE MITTEN  Several readers pointed me to a website 
which includes examples of nineteenth-century American acquaintance 
cards: http://wwwords.org/rflcds. The fourth one down includes a 
graphical reference to the custom.

TURDIFORM  A subscriber named Ewan emailed to point out that the 
magazine This Week published an article (http://wwwords.org/rdsn) 
about rude scientific names almost simultaneously with my piece. One 
listed is Turdus maximus, the Tibetan blackbird (not to be confused 
with Turdus migratorius, the American robin). My favourite of the 
set is the rufous-sided warbling finch, which suffers from having 
been given the scientific name Poospiza hypochondria. 


2. Fawn
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The verb "fawn" is not complimentary. Dictionaries define it as 
making a servile display of flattery or affection.

    The Dublin singer-songwriter [James Vincent McMorrow] 
    had critics fawning over him when he released his debut 
    album in 2011. 
    [Daily Mirror, 3 Jan. 2014.]

It didn't start out like that. A thousand years ago it was applied 
only to dogs, who showed their delight by whining or wagging their 
tails. The word is Old English, from "fægen", to rejoice or be glad. 
It was a special case of "fain", to be glad or pleased, which went 
out of use in the sixteenth century, leaving the adjective, which 
itself is now obsolete. My earliest memory of adjective "fain" is 
from the ballad of Lord Randal: "For I am weary with hunting and 
fain would lie down", meaning that he would very much like to rest.

"Fawn" stayed in the active language, though the idea of a fawning 
dog was long ago applied with greater force of insult to a human who 
acted like one.

    Spoken like a true dog. A fawning, slavishly 
    affectionate, drool-dripping dog who'll cut off his left 
    ear in return for a pat on the head.
    [Kingdoms of Light, by Alan Dean Foster, 2001.]

Incidentally, "fawn" for a young animal, particularly a young fallow 
deer, derives ultimately from Latin "foetus", offspring. The colour 
comes from that of the animal's coat.


3. Wordface
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POO, PIES, CATS, FISH AND GOD  The Diagram Prize shortlist for the 
oddest book title of 2013 has been announced. As usual, it's an 
eclectic mixture of the weird and wonderful. The six titles are, in 
no particular order: How to Poo on a Date (invaluable advice on 
toilet etiquette and love, and what to do when the twain meet); Pie-
ography: Where Pie Meets Biography (women tell their life stories 
through the traditional narrative technique of pie-making); How to 
Pray When You're Pissed at God (practical tips on communicating with 
an omniscient deity when you are feeling peeved at it); Working 
Class Cats: The Bodega Cats of New York City (a celebration of the 
cats working - often illegally, it has to be said - in delis and 
bodegas in NYC); Are Trout South African? (South African identity 
explored through an animal with a brain proportionally one-fifteenth 
the size of a mammal's); and The Origin of Feces (an examination of 
how important the stuff is to the survival of the human species).

FATAL CONTESTS  Two deaths of young men this month in Britain have 
focused attention on a crazy drinking game called "neknomination".  
Participants film themselves consuming alcohol, post the results on 
social networking sites and nominate friends to outdo them. It began 
with relatively innocuous drinks such as bottles of beer but has 
rapidly escalated to dares involving dangerous amounts of spirits, 
often mixed, frequently while doing crazy stunts. British newspapers 
this week claimed the source of the game was a former professional 
rugby player named Ross Samson, who videoed himself consuming a 
bottle of beer and posted it on Facebook at Christmas. This origin 
is contested by others who hold that it started in Australia. The 
name is said to be an abbreviation of "neck and nominate", where 
"neck" is British slang dating from the nineteenth century meaning 
to drink or eat greedily.


4. Haymaker
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Q. Following up your mention of haymakers last week, a haymaker is, 
of course, also the wild swing that some would say follows the arc 
of the scythe to the jaw of the recipient and which is scorned by 
the professional pugilist. But when, where, and who coined this 
visually apt expression? [Michael Templeton]

A. As to when, the Oxford English Dictionary's first example is from 
1912. You found two from 1907. I can do slightly better, having 
found a couple of examples in American newspaper reports in 1904. 

    The next bout was the funniest ever. A little midget of 
    a colored lad named "The Rat" was put against a big black 
    burly named Harvey Wilson. "The Rat" was swifter than 
    greased lightning and only his foot work saved him from 
    being sent through the roof from some of the hard 
    haymakers sent at him by Harvey
    [The Spokane Press, 5 Apr. 1904.]

This one is from the following year:

    Corbett then landed left and right short arm jabs to 
    the jaw. He tried his right hay maker but ran into a stiff 
    right to the jaw.
    [Nevada State Journal, 1 Mar. 1905.]

This is not Gentleman Jim Corbett, the American professional boxer 
and former world heavyweight champion, who had retired from the ring 
in 1903. This was Young Corbett II, real name William Rothwell, who 
took the ring name of Corbett in honour of the older man. He became 
the world featherweight champion but lost to Battling Nelson in this 
bout. Reports of his fights in the years immediately afterwards 
often refer to his haymaker swing as his signature blow. This seems 
to have done much to popularise the term outside the boxing 
fraternity itself.

Who actually named the blow remains unknown.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is some disagreement about the precise 
imagery behind the expression. Yours is the one that usually 
appears, with the blow being a swing of the arm mimicking that of 
the haymaker's scythe.

That's clearly the right idea but one or two British writers instead 
mention the hayrake or two-pronged hayfork. That's because in 
British usage the men with the scythes were mowers (as in "One man 
went to mow, went to mow a meadow") and it's the men behind them who 
were the haymakers, who used these implements to drag the cut hay 
into windrows and turn it from time to time to help it dry. 

However, among people not connected with agriculture, "haymaker" has 
usually been the generic term for anyone involved in haymaking, no 
matter his job (the Collins Dictionary defines it comprehensively as 
"a person who helps to cut, turn, toss, spread or carry hay") and US 
users were surely thinking of a haymaker as a man with a scythe.

Another shift is that some dictionaries define a haymaker as a heavy 
or forceful blow, without the implication of its being a swing of 
the arm. Haymakers were brawny men and any blow from one of them 
would undoubtedly have been powerful. But that wasn't the original 
idea. Now haymakers with scythes are extinct, that characteristic 
swing seems to be slowly dying from our collective memories.


5. Sic!
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A headline from the E! Entertainment website, though over a story of 
3 January, was picked up by several columnists and bloggers this 
week: "Cameron Diaz Encourages Women to Keep Their Pubic Hair in Her 
New Book."

A Guardian interview on 17 February with Chris Smith, head of the UK 
Environment Agency, suggested that the government might need to 
reconsider budget cuts blamed by the Agency for its much-criticised 
response to the recent floods. According to the paper: "The views of 
floating voters might well force a change of heart".

A feature in The Atlantic on 13 February headlined "How to Save 
Marriage in America" included this sentence, Eugene Cassidy reports: 
"Half of the parents unmarried at the birth of their child are in a 
new relationship by the time they start kindergarten."

On 13 February Harry Lake was looking for the BBC report on a Dutch 
murder and was slightly embarrassed to have reached the Daily Mail 
site instead. Its story had the subheading, "Police said today that 
they now suspect foul play due to forensics."

Mark Worden tells us that Eva Emerson, editor of Science News, wrote 
on 24 January: "As a native of drought-ridden Southern California, 
the Colorado River has always loomed large to me." Surely the river 
is native to the eponymous state?


6. Useful information
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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.

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