World Wide Words -- 10 May 14
Michael Quinion
michael.quinion at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Thu May 8 22:02:00 UTC 2014
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 881 Saturday 10 May 2014
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Kith.
3. Wordface.
4. Busman's holiday.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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INFLAMMABLE Peter Watts followed up last week's remarks in this
section about the confusion "inflammable" causes: "When checking a
tenancy agreement, I found reference was made to the property not
being available for occupation due to fire. In such circumstances
the property was described as inhabitable. I amended the word to
uninhabitable."
Was this somebody making the same mistake as others have done with
"inflammable"? Or is it a survivor of obsolete language used only in
legal English? The latter seems very unlikely, but once upon a time
"inhabitable" did mean "uninhabitable", the exact opposite of what
it means now. It's in Shakespeare's Richard II of 1597: "Even to the
frozen ridges of the Alps, / Or any other ground inhabitable." The
word comes from Latin "inhabitabilis", in which the "in-" prefix has
the sense of "not". This was taken into French "inhabitable" with
the same meaning (it's a well-known "faux ami" or false friend for
learners of French). It was borrowed into English in the same sense
but fell out of use in the 1740s. On the other hand, English
"inhabit" has always meant to live in, from Old French "enhabiter",
now "habiter"; this is from Latin "inhabitare", to live in or dwell,
in which the "in-" prefix is like the English "in". Around 1600,
English "inhabitable" began to be reanalysed as "inhabit" + "-able"
and within a century this sense had displaced the older one
(presumably after a period of confusion for users).
MARTHAMBLES Anthea Fleming emailed, "One item in Dr Tufts' list of
afflictions deserves comment. I think 'moon-pall' can be identified
as the belief that the full moon shining on your face when you're
asleep leads to lunacy and probably other afflictions. Eric Newby
reported that his fellow sailors on board the Moshulu in The Last
Grain Race (1956) wrapped their heads when sleeping on deck on hot
nights because they thought the moon sent you crazy. (Certainly it
can be very difficult to sleep under a full moon, as I know from
camping experiences.)"
2. Kith
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We meet this most often now in the set phrase "kith and kin". What
that means isn't always obvious. Some use it as no more than a wordy
way of describing one's relatives; for others, it refers also to a
wider group of friends and acquaintances. It can also have the sense
of a group of people with the same ethnic origin, usually one under
a threat of some kind.
As a phrase, "kith and kin" has been in the language for more than
600 years, the first known user being William Langland in his poem
Piers Plowman of 1362. "Kith" is Old English, "cýðð", which meant
knowledge or information. It's closely related to "couth", which
meant something or somebody known to the speaker. ("Uncouth" then
meant an unknown or unfamiliar person or place but in the fourteenth
century came to mean something distasteful and shortly afterwards an
odd, awkward, or clumsy individual; our modern sense of someone ill-
mannered or lacking in refinement and grace, came along in the
eighteenth century.)
"Kith" has gone through several stages. Starting with knowledge, it
took on the idea of country that's known or familiar, one's native
land or home. A small further step shifted it from the land to its
people, one's countrymen and women, and one more shift limited it to
the group a person knows or knows of, his or her friends, neighbours
and acquaintances.
This last sense is still in use, which makes "kith and kin" a wider
group than just kinfolk or relatives but includes a penumbral group
shading from close friends to distant acquaintances.
3. Wordface
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VAPEROLOGY British newspapers have belatedly begun to note the
specialised vocabulary that has grown up in the US around "e-cigs"
(more formally "e-cigarettes" or "electronic cigarettes"). Smokers
of e-cigarettes are "vapers" (from "vapour") and the process is
"vaping". Many vapers are taking them up as an alternative to the
traditional sort, for which the retronym "tobacco cigarette" has
been coined. The first generation were disposable items, designed to
look like the tobacco sort, and have been nicknamed "cig-a-likes".
They're being replaced by second-generation pipes, "vape pens", sold
in "vape shops" or "vaporiums" by specialists called "vapologists".
These pipes are more expensive to buy but are refillable with a
cartridge (a "vape tank", "clearomizer" or "cartomizer" according to
type) which contains a flavoured solution of nicotine called "e-
juice" or "e-liquid". That's turned into vapour by a heating
element, the atomiser (shortened to "atty"). Enthusiasts - called
"flavour junkies" and "cloud chasers" - like to customise their
pipes, all the better to blow "killer clouds" of pungent vapour
while vaping.
4. Busman's holiday
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A recent report in a Bristol newspaper featured a singer who took
time out from recording albums to write songs for children. She
called this her busman's holiday.
You are unlikely to have "busman" in your personal vocabulary, as
it's mostly journalistic headline shorthand. It dates from the 1840s
for the driver or conductor of a horse-drawn London omnibus (the
conductor was the second man of the crew, who rode inside to collect
the fares, a post now almost unknown in Britain).
A "busman's holiday" is free time a person spends in an activity
that's much like what he or she does for a living. So a carpenter
who spends a weekend repairing a friend's house or a teacher who
works at summer school during the holidays is taking a busman's
holiday.
Having been at the heart of Obama's two successful bids
for the US presidency, Axelrod is probably the most
accomplished American political operator enticed to take a
busman's holiday in Britain, but he is by no means the
first.
[Sunday Times, 20 Apr. 2014. David Axelrod had taken up
a post as the Labour Party's senor political
strategist.]
"Busman's holiday" is originally British, dating from the end of the
nineteenth century. It initially spread to other countries through
reports of London affairs and then caught on locally. It appeared in
the Sunday Times of Sydney, Australia, in May 1896 and the Auckland
Star of New Zealand in October 1902. It reached North America in
1909. It's now known throughout the English-speaking world.
Some writers on etymology have got into a mess trying to explain it.
A typical story appeared in John Ciardi's A Browser's Dictionary in
1981: "British drivers of horse-drawn omnibuses, becoming attached
to their teams, were uneasy about turning them over to relief
drivers who might abuse them. On their days off, therefore, the
drivers regularly went to the stables to see that the horses were
properly harnessed, and returned at night to see that they had not
been abused". A similar tale is told by William and Mary Morris in
The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, except that they
assert that the most caring drivers, should they have any reason to
fear abuse would occur, would sit among the passengers to observe
the relief driver's behaviour. A related explanation was given in
the Brownsville Daily Herald of Texas on 2 September 1909: "When a
London omnibus driver takes a day off it is supposed that he spends
it riding around on the top of a friend's 'bus, seeing how he does
things."
Other writers are justly scornful of such sentimental explanations.
Anyone who has looked into the history of nineteenth-century London
buses will know that their horses were no better cared for than any
other working nags and that they were often sweated to death.
The most plausible explanation given by writers who seek to explain
matters is that a popular day out among working-class Londoners in
the late nineteenth century was to make an excursion by bus. A bus
driver or conductor who went on such a trip was said to be taking a
busman's holiday.
However, the earliest examples point to its instead being humorous
urban folklore, retold here in all seriousness by an actor:
I shall indeed take a holiday on the Continent off the
stage, soon, probably but it will be a "Busman's Holiday."
The bus-driver spends his "day off" in driving on a pal's
bus, on the box-seat by his pal's side; and I know that
night after night, all through my holiday, I shall be in
and out of this hall and that theatre, never happy except
when I am watching some theatrical piece or variety
entertainment.
[English Illustrated Magazine, 1893.]
That story is paralleled by one from nearly three decades later:
Few stories of London origin are more familiar than
that of the cabby who, regarding his day off as one of his
indisputable rights, spent it each week in riding about
the City with a fellow cabby in order to keep him
company.
[Punch, or the London Charivari, 14 July 1920. Punch, a
humorous and satirical weekly that became a British
institution, claimed to be quoting an unspecified Sunday
newspaper and connected the story with "busman's
holiday".]
This surely confirms that a tale about pally cabbies was as common
as the one about friendly busmen and equally likely to be a joke.
Americans of the period seem to have been mildly intrigued by the
leisure activities of London busmen. An article from the London
Chronicle was reprinted in a Kentucky newspaper:
Recently I came across a really happy omnibus
conductor, who knew me by sight, and remarked that it had
been a splendid day. He had almost a whole day off, and
looked jolly. What had he done? Why, what he always does
when on a day off! I had never really believed in the
phrase "The busman's holiday." It's true. For that man
always gets on the top of another man's bus and has a good
long ride into the country and back. It cured him of
insomnia, he said.
[The Richmond Climax (Kentucky), 19 Nov. 1913.]
We may conclude from all this that "busman's holiday" was based on a
Londoner's joke, along the lines of "What does a busman do on his
day off? He takes a bus ride with a pal, of course." Over time, the
joke was forgotten but the phrase survived, to become the target of
much speculation about its genesis from etymologists separated in
time and space from the environment in which it was created.
5. Sic!
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Charlie Cockey found this sentence in a report dated 22 April on the
website of KTVB, a TV station in Boise, Idaho. "Quijano admitted to
police she'd stabbed her former boyfriend, Santiago Pineda, the day
after she did killed him."
The following appeared in the online issue of Sporting Life of 1
May, John Lynch tells us. "Fast bowling all-rounder Ben Stokes is
also recovering from the broken wrist sustained when he punched a
locker in the Caribbean, opening the door for Chris Woakes' return."
This headline over a report of 30 April on Yahoo! News was spotted
by Ed Floden: "Maggots found in Whole Foods meat case, health
officials say they're not moving fast enough to fix the problem."
Who isn't?
Carolynne Robertson-Dunn found this sentence in a Sydney Morning
Herald piece of 7 April: "Other celebrities to have been prevented
from entering the US for bad behaviour include Lily Allen, in 2007
after she was arrested earlier that same year for allegedly punching
a photographer, Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse, footballer Jermaine
Pennant and Boy George."
6. Useful information
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