World Wide Words -- 17 May 14
Michael Quinion
michael.quinion at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Thu May 15 22:02:00 UTC 2014
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WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 882 Saturday 17 May 2014
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Contents
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1. Feedback, Notes and Comments.
2. Colporteur.
3. Wordface.
4. Hail fellow well met.
5. Sic!
6. Useful information.
1. Feedback, Notes and Comments
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BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY Alfred Wild wrote: "The variant more familiar to
me in American English is 'postman's holiday', as in, 'What does a
postman do on his day off? Takes a long walk.' And since we call
them 'mailmen', not 'postmen', I'd guess that this phrase too is of
British origin."
It might not be. "Postman" was at one time common in the USA (as in,
for example, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M Cain.)
The earliest American example I can find is this:
Last night on the subway I was more than a little
interested to notice a man in a guard's uniform, very
common in appearance and not at all unusual in manner,
off-duty (presumably taking a postman's holiday by riding
on the cars!), reading from a book of Horace's Odes in the
original.
[Sioux City Journal, 21 Mar. 1928. "Busman's holiday"
would have fitted better; we may guess the writer didn't
know it.]
There was also a famous British music-hall ditty, The Postman's
Holiday, performed by Gus Elen from about 1902, in which he tells
how his family traipsed all over London during an eventful day off,
leaving him with blisters on his heel. This is obviously wordplay on
"busman's holiday" and might have been the source of the version Mr
Wild mentions.
Paul Hatt was among many who pointed out that Dorothy L Sayers also
played with the idiom: "Her last Lord Peter Wimsey novel was called
Busman's Honeymoon. Our hero and his bride Harriet Vane have to deal
with a murder on their honeymoon. My English tutor, Professor W W
Robson, memorably called this book the worst readable novel in the
English language. But then he died before Dan Brown produced The Da
Vinci Code."
Richard Bos commented, "It's always struck me as remarkable that
Dorothy Sayers wrote a second book with a title derived from this
idiom: Hangman's Holiday. I can't help but wonder whether the phrase
had a special meaning for her. (I'm also now imagining what a
hangman's honeymoon would be like.)"
2. Colporteur
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This word has nothing to do with a famous American songwriter nor
with a carrier of coals, though it was once an occupation of sorts.
Jonathan McColl told me about it. He had come across it on a death
certificate dated 1885 as the occupation of a man of Dingwall in
Scotland.
A colporteur was a pedlar who went from place to place selling
printed materials such as books and newspapers. More specifically,
he was employed by a religious society to distribute bibles and
other religious tracts. Such men were the literal foot-soldiers of
Christian missionary work. Even earlier were those encouraged by
Martin Luther to distribute the religious writings of Protestant
reformers. Such work could often be dangerous, as is shown by this
decree from the Ottoman governor of Wallachia, in what is now
Romania:
We order you to tear those writings that are against
our Holy Religion. Whoever will seize and deliver up the
publishers of those writings, shall receive 300 crowns.
... The Colporteur, on the contrary, shall be impaled
alive upon the very place where he was seized.
[Morning Post (London), 26 Apr. 1788.]
In origin the word is French, from the verb "colporter" and is still
current in both languages. It used to be thought that it came from
"col", neck, plus "porter", to carry, implying somebody who conveyed
his texts in a satchel across his chest. It's now thought it's an
alteration of "comporter", from the Latin "comportare", to carry
something with one.
It began to appear in English at the end of the eighteenth century
and became widely used throughout the English-speaking world during
the nineteenth, being taken by such organisations as the British and
Foreign Bible Society wherever it operated. It fell out of favour at
the end of the century and is now rather rare.
3. Wordface
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GHOSTLY MOVIES Last week, I mentioned a linguistic false friend
when learning French. Michael Hocken told me about another. It led
to an error in a BBC story of 10 May about a cache of letters sent
to it from occupied France during the Second World War that had
turned up in its archives. One letter was quoted: "In the next
seance, the audience was told that during the newsreel there must be
silence." The mistake in translation is easy to make, since the
French for a showing of a film is "séance". The general meaning is
of a formal session of a body, for which a good English word would
be "sitting". This makes sense, as it comes from the Latin verb
"sedēre", to sit. English borrowed "seance" in the French sense of a
formal meeting around the time of the French Revolution. When the
spiritualist movement started in Britain in the 1840s, the word was
borrowed for a meeting at which people attempted to make contact
with the dead and in time this became its usual meaning. So what do
the French call a seance in that sense? They have to qualify the
word to make themselves clear: "Une séance de spiritisme".
4. Hail fellow well met
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Q. Could you please elucidate the historical and present usage of
"hail fellow well met"? Most contemporary dictionaries classify the
phrase as adjectival (punctuated "hail-fellow-well-met"). This seems
odd, given its original use (I think) as a salutation or genial
exclamation. Why the shift? And when did people turn this phrase
into a mock-archaic saying? Do we blame the Society for Creative
Anachronism and World of Warcraft? [Tommy Richey]
A. It certainly sounds like a mildly humorous modern mock-archaic
creation. But it's ancient and is still to be found, especially in
the UK:
The grieving widow flinched as he approached and the -
ridiculously young - vicar twitched as if he was
considering confronting him. Barry grunted, "Don't even
think about it, lad." He reached the lectern and Ray, all
conciliatory, hail fellow, well met, said, "Come on,
Barry, be sensible. Take a pew and show some respect."
[Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson,
2010.]
It means a person, usually male, who is heartily friendly and
congenial, or more often is trying hard to appear so and overdoes
it. There's often an undercurrent of falseness of the sort that's
associated with the more pushy type of sales person.
It was created by putting together two ancient expressions, "hail,
fellow!" and "well met".
The greeting "hail" is from the same source as "hale", healthy,
which came into English from the Old Norse "heill", sound or whole.
It commonly appeared in greetings and toasts, such as "wæs hæil",
good health, from which we get "wassail". In medieval England, you
might have greeted a friend with "hail be thou", wishing him good
health. This was abbreviated over time into an exclamation and then
became our usual term for a shout to attract attention. A "fellow"
in medieval English was a comrade, companion or associate (which we
still have in phrases such as "fellow worker" and "fellow citizen")
and "hail, fellow!" was a way to greet one. However, by about 1580
the greeting had acquired a negative aspect, describing an over-
familiar person, often of the lower orders. A writer of the
seventeenth century warned "Let not your Servants be over-familiar
or hail fellow with you."
"Well met" was a greeting - roughly "it's good that we've met" -
that you might give a friend when you encountered him unexpectedly
or when inviting him to join a convivial gathering. A "fellow well-
met" by extension meant a boon companion, a close friend with whom
one enjoys spending time.
They were combined a lot longer ago than you might expect. The
Oxford English Dictionary has its first example from as early as
1581. In 1589, the writer Thomas Nashe described it as a "collation
of contraries", since "well met" was positive and welcoming, while
"hail fellow" could be two-faced and false.
"Hail fellow, well met" stayed in the language throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but only became widely popular
after about 1800, peaking in the middle of the century.
This was the case with Mr Phillott, who prided himself
upon his slang, and who was at one time "hail fellow, well
met" with the seamen, talking to them, and being answered
as familiarly as if they were equals, and at another,
knocking the very same men down with a handspike if he
were displeased.
[Peter Simple, by Frederick Marryat, 1844.]
It's popularity has fallen away a good deal since but, as I said,
it's still in use:
Nick Ferrari, the presenter of the LBC breakfast show,
makes for a somewhat alarming prospect first thing in the
morning, his hail-fellow-well-met manners and his
pugilistic confidence coming at you like a triple espresso
with too much sugar in it.
[Observer, 20 Apr. 2014.]
5. Sic!
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Zefanja Potgieter heard an announcement on Concert FM in New Zealand
for a forthcoming programme about the life of a (deceased) composer:
"The programme will include an interview with the composer when he
was alive".
In a widely reproduced AP report about Huy Fong Foods: "Residents
have signed sworn complaints that the odours from the plant's chili-
grinding operation make them sneeze and cough, their eyes burn and
in some instances, caused them to see doctors." David Armstrong sent
this in and commented, "Of all things to hallucinate about, doctors
are low on my list."
On 9 May, Jonathan McColl found the BBC's news feed had accidentally
conflated two stories: "The papers report concerns over plans to
allow tax officials to access people's bank accounts to claim unpaid
bills and to revive the England football team."
Sylvia Hacker spotted a National Wildlife Federation tweet: "Watch
200 Whales Swim Around Hawaii Without Getting On A Boat"
6. Useful information
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