World Wide Words -- 06 Sep 14

[Michael Quinion]

World Wide Words
Issue 894: Saturday 6 September 2014

This mailing also contains a formatted version of the text. 
This issue is also available online (http://wwwords.org/iefy).


Feedback, Notes and Comments
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JENTACULAR. Darryl Francis emailed, following my piece last week on 
this word for breakfast, to point out that "jantaculum", a variant 
spelling of the Latin original, was used at Latymer Upper School in 
west London decades ago for an annual show. It was also used at 
Reading University around the same period for an annual feast and 
entertainment. How a word meaning breakfast should have become one for 
an evening event is difficult to understand. Perhaps a reader can 
help?

FARTHER AND FURTHER. Edna Heard resurrected memories of an old 
television sketch by the British comedian Benny Hill in which standing 
passengers were asked to "pass farther down the bus". An old man was 
pushed forward. This only works as comedy if "farther" is unusual and 
nobody pronounces their "r"s, which of course is true of much of 
Britain.

David Milsted recalls "furth" from Orkney, in the sense of "away 
from". Donald Kerr mentioned the Scottish legal term "Furth of 
Scotland", applied to persons, objects or obligations that are outside 
the legal boundaries of Scotland. "Furth" is a alternative form of 
"forth", and helps to explain why "further" is regarded as a relative 
of it.

CURGLAFF. Chris Smith emailed from Shetland. He noted that "gluff", as 
both noun and verb, meaning surprise or startle, survives in Shetland 
dialect. The Concise Scots Dictionary entry is under "gliff", noting 
the variant spellings "glaff", "gloff", "gluff" and "glouf". The same 
dictionary says that "cur-" is an intensifying prefix. That would make 
"curglaff" a severe shock. He added, "I have no idea why "curglaff" 
should be specifically the shock felt when plunging into cold water; 
perhaps a Banffshire informant was having a little fun with Jamieson?"

TWIG. Readers attempted to equate this British verb with Heinlein's 
"grok" (http://wwwords.org/grkhln). I'd argue the senses are 
different. When you twig, you come to a sudden realisation, but of 
something simple or trivial. To "grok" is to comprehend something 
intuitively or to completely understand a matter in all its details 
and intricacies. As James Forder pointed out last time, one doesn't 
twig the theory of relativity; however, one may grok it.


Epicaricacy
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Occasionally, I come across a word that's so rare and mysterious that 
it's a struggle to find out anything about it. 

This one turned up in an article in the Observer on 10 August by 
Lauren Laverne, who was looking for a word "for the mistaken belief 
that there is no English equivalent for a non-English word". She noted 
"Schadenfreude" as an example of such a word, the pleasure that one 
derives from another person's misfortune, which is from German 
"Schade, "harm and "Freude", joy. She said an English equivalent does 
exist - "epicaricacy". It does?

I tracked it down in Insulting English, by Peter Novobatzky and Ammon 
Shea, dated 2001. They say that it's from Greek "epi", upon, plus 
"chara", joy, and "kakon", evil. Fair enough, though why a borrowing 
from Greek should be more English than one from German is unclear. 
They also say it has "appeared in many old and esteemed dictionaries". 
I can't find a single one. Wiktionary says that it's recorded in two 
works compiled by Nathan Bailey - the Universal Etymological English 
Dictionary of 1721 and the Dictionarium Britannicum of 1730 - but I 
can't find it in either.

So far as I can discover, the earliest known recognition of 
"epicaricacy "is in Joseph Shipley's Dictionary of Early English of 
1955. I've found it in just two places - in the Times in May 2008 
and in one novel:

    Schadenfreude I know it is called. Or epicaricacy, as
    the English will have it. From the original Greek. 
    [Retromancer, by Robert Rankin, 2009.]

We must conclude it's not a fine old English word, but an erudite 
modern coining known to hardly anybody and of limited interest. 
Novobatzky and Shea may have attracted enough attention to it that in 
time it might find a place in the language. Just don't hold your 
breath waiting.


Wordface
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DEAD DISCS. It's a severe blow for velologists. We car-owning Brits 
must display a disc on the windscreen to prove we've paid the road 
tax, even though in my case the car's rating means the tax is zero. 
But we only need display discs until the end of September, as they 
have been abolished after 93 years. A "velologist" is a collector of 
tax discs and "velology" is the hobby. The initial "vel" comes from 
the discs' formal name, "vehicle excise licences".

SUCK IT AND SEE. It was reported last week that the UK's Royal Society 
for Public Health wants e-cigarettes to be renamed to try to reverse 
their appeal to young people. Their suggested name is "nicotine 
stick", which I can't help feeling will actually sound rather 
attractive. And, of course, it's not new: it's been round from the 
1990s, if not earlier, as a slang term for tobacco cigarettes (a good 
example of a retronym (http://wwwords.org/rtrnm), by the way) and 
more recently for e-cigarettes. If it does catch on, the first sign 
will probably be its abbreviation to "nick stick", though that will 
annoy an American maker of shaving requisites. 

SHAM POO. One of my newspapers recently greeted me with two new words, 
new to me that is, though not to people deeply concerned with the 
quality of their hair. One was "no-poo" (no laughing at the back), 
short for "no shampoo", the technique of washing hair with something 
other than commercial shampoos, which are claimed to strip off 
essential oils. The other word is "co-washing", again not what you 
might think. It's not being friends in the shower, but washing one's 
hair with conditioner rather than shampoo.


Hide one's light under a bushel
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Q. From David Siddons: Where did the phrase "hide one's light under a 
bushel" come from - especially the "bushel" bit?

A. For once I can give you chapter and verse for the origin, literal 
chapter and verse as it happens, since it's from the Bible:

    Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a
    bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto
    all that are in the house. Let your light so shine
    before men, that they may see your good works, and
    glorify your Father which is in heaven.
    [King James Bible, 1611, Matthew, 5:15 and 5:16.]

The bushel was at the time a container for measuring dry goods such as 
grain or peas. It was typically a wooden bucket with a volume of eight 
gallons (though this has varied over place and time). In the original 
Greek text of the Gospel, the word used was related to "seah", Hebrew 
for a rather smaller dry measure that held about a gallon and a half. 
King James's translators chose "bushel" because it would be obvious to 
people of their day. Nobody now uses the bushel measure; more recent 
translations of the gospels have replaced it with "basket", "bowl" or 
"measuring basket". 

To turn a bushel measure upside down and put a candle under it was to 
hide its light from view. We use "hide your light under a bushel" for 
somebody who figuratively does the same - who modestly stays silent 
about their talents or accomplishments.

    There are thousands more the length and breadth of the
    country who work tirelessly for their communities and
    hide their light under a bushel.
    [The Sun, 18 Jul. 2014.]

Though it's always regarded as biblical, a related idea was in use 
before the King James Bible appeared. A poem in Tottel's Miscellany of 
1557, whose Latin title translates as The Whole World Lies in 
Wickedness, contains the line "Truth under bushel is fain to creep".


Sic!
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In a Slate article on a documentary about Burt Shavitz, founder of 
Burt's Bees, Neil Hesketh found this: "He's a peacenik who takes 
target practice with his handgun, a hermit and a businessman."

Margaret Condy wrote: "The following caption appeared in the Toronto 
Star of August 30: 'Yannick Bisson, star of Murdoch Mysteries, at the 
hearth he built in his home with his family dogs Mack, left, a boxer 
and English bulldog Duke.' I wish I had dogs that were that talented."

You've still time to book up for the Oregon Bounty Grand Tasting on 19 
and 20 September, though you might not want to after reading the text 
that Gardin Carroll found on the Weekly Pint website: "At the 
festival's premiere daytime event, you can eat and drink your way 
through artisans, wineries and breweries on both Friday and Saturday 
from 12-5pm."


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