World Wide Words -- 13 Sep 14

[Michael Quinion]

World Wide Words
Issue 895: Saturday 13 September 2014

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


Feedback, Notes and Comments
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BUSHEL. I was forcefully reminded of the logical gulf between "some" 
and "none" when dozens of readers told me that my assertion that 
nobody now used the bushel measure was quite wrong. The USA (and to a 
lesser extent Canada) continues to use the bushel measure for grain, 
fruit and other commodities as well as the peck, a quarter of a 
bushel. Many subscribers reminded me of the Frank Loesser song lyric 
from Guys and Dolls, 1950, sung by a line of chorus girls: "I love 
you, a bushel and a peck ..." And the expression "hide one's light 
under a bushel" is much older than the King James Bible of 1611 - a 
similar version is in John Wycliffe's bible of the late fourteenth 
century.

EPICARICACY. Nancy Spector of the Wordcraft website pointed out that I 
was wrong to say the word "epicaricacy" doesn't appear in any of 
Nathan Bailey's dictionaries. It is included in An Universal 
Etymological English Dictionary of 1721 but in the spelling 
"epicharikaky". Ammon Shea, whom I doubted in my piece, tells me it's 
also in John Ash's New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language 
of 1775 and in A Dictionary of the Synonymous Words and Technical 
Terms in the English Language by James Leslie of 1806, both in the 
same spelling as in Bailey's. The word appears several times in 
various works in the original Greek spelling; a writer on the 
Wordcraft site found it a century before Bailey in Robert Burton's The 
Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621. It was familiar to Burton and to other 
Greek scholars because Aristotle had used it.

GOING AWAY. It's time that I took another holiday, it would seem. As 
it happens, I shall be away most of next week, 15-19 September. The 
next issue might be sent out late.


Porphyrogeniture
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If we had this inheritance principle in Britain, Prince Charles would 
lose his pre-eminent right to succeed to the throne to his younger 
brother Andrew.

That's because "porphyrogeniture" refers to a child who has been born 
to a reigning monarch and specifically to a right of succession to the 
throne based on having been so born. Queen Elizabeth's two eldest 
children, Charles and Anne, were born before she became queen in 1952, 
but Andrew was born in 1960.

The prefix here, "porphyro-", derives from classical Greek "porphura" 
for the colour purple. The second part is from Latin "genitura", a 
person's birth, which is from the root of "gignere", to beget. So the 
word means "born to the purple", an English idiom dating from the 
seventeenth century for being born to a reigning monarch. 
"Porphyrogeniture" was created around 1860 as a high-flown Latin 
version of the idiom.

In ancient times, to wear clothing coloured purple was the prerogative 
of royal or imperial families, because the dye, Tyrian purple, was 
rare and costly. (It was a variable shade often much nearer red than 
we would now consider purple; it was also called Tyrian red.) This was 
probably where the idea of being born to the purple came from, though 
it was reinforced by Byzantine empresses who gave birth in a room in 
the Constantinople palace that was lined with a purple stone called 
porphyry.

"Porphyrogeniture" isn't as rare a word as you might think. Historians 
find it useful when discussing some cases of disputed royal 
succession, where having been born to a reigning monarch potentially 
trumped the rights of an older son who had been born before his parent 
became sovereign. 

It's a member of a set of words of which the best known is 
"primogeniture", which is strictly speaking the state of being the 
first-born child, but which is more often used for the practice of 
making the first-born male child the automatic heir. Others are 
"secundogeniture", the right of succession of a second son, the rare 
"tertiogeniture" for the third son and "ultimogeniture" for 
inheritance by the youngest son, which was once the custom in some 
counties in southern England.


Wordface
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WHEREABOUTS? I learned from last week's issue of Nature that each of 
us has acquired a new line in our celestial address. We're not just of 
Earth, or of the Solar System, but of Laniakea. Brent Tully and his 
colleagues at the University of Hawaii have given this name to the 
supercluster of about 100,000 galaxies to which our galaxy, the Milky 
Way, belongs. The team took the name from the Hawaiian words "lani", 
heaven, and "akea", spacious or immeasurable.

DISORDER. Howard Denson asked about an expression of his wife's late 
aunt, from South Georgia, concerning evening meals, "I guess we'll 
just mess and gom tonight." "Mess and gom", also "mess and gaum", is 
mainly a Southern US expression for a state of disorder and, as a 
verb, for creating one: "Don't mess and gom up this living room!" The 
second word may be from the Scots "gaum", "gome" or "coom", perhaps 
from the Middle English "culm", for messy black stuff such as soot or 
coal dust, which is probably connected with "coal". This doesn't seem 
to be relevant to a meal, unless another sense of "mess", a portion of 
food, was lurking in her mind.

ALL THAT GLISTERS. A piece on the British shopping channel Gems TV 
mentioned the unusual semi-precious gemstones it specialises in, such 
as spinel, tourmaline, spessartite, sphene and labradorite. This last 
one was originally named "Labradorstein" in 1780 by a German 
geologist, Abraham Gottlob Werner, because it was found in Labrador; 
its name was modified in English to include the "-ite" suffix denoting 
a mineral. When mentioning labradorite, the presenters were told to 
emphasise its "labradorescence". The Oxford English Dictionary defines 
it as the "brilliant play of colours exhibited by some specimens of 
feldspars, especially labradorite."

DO AS YOU WILL. Ed Matthews asked me about the expression "Liberty 
Hall", a place where, at least notionally, one may do just as one 
likes. The Oxford English Dictionary says that it may originally have 
been alluding to a patriotic song with that title of 1770, the last 
line of which runs "For Liberty-Hall is an Englishman's heart". Three 
years later it was picked up by Oliver Goldsmith in his play She 
Stoops to Conquer: "This is Liberty-hall, gentlemen. You may do just 
as you please." There are many real locations with that name but they 
all seem to have been established more recently than 1770.


Set one's cap at
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Q. From John D Arnold: Do you know the provenance of the idiom "to set 
one's cap for" someone or something? 

A. It's often "set one's cap at", though both forms now feel rather 
dated. The idiom conventionally refers to a woman who sets out to gain 
the affections of a man, often with a view to marriage. The idiom 
starts to appear in the middle of the eighteenth century:

    She was never known to set her Cap at any Man, and her
    Conversation is always so negligently sensible, that
    she cannot be suspected of studying to be brilliant,
    and if she captivates every Heart, it is without any
    premeditated Design.
    [The Gray's Inn Journal, 5 Jan. 1754.]

It has been suggested by at least one writer that the phrase was 
borrowed from the French expression "mettre le cap sur". Today, that 
has the sense of "head for", "set out for", but in the eighteenth 
century it was specifically a seafaring idiom meaning to set course 
for some place.

We may imagine some young woman of the period, determined to marry 
well, aiming herself like a ship in full sail at the eligible 
bachelors of her acquaintance. Unfortunately for that fantasy, nobody 
has found any link between the French and English terms and none of 
the early examples of the idiom have nautical associations. The 
supposed connection seems to be based principally on "cap" appearing 
in both versions.

It's much more likely that it derives from the conventional female 
dress of the period. At that time, unmarried young women would have 
worn a lace cap in public. When at an entertainment where she might 
meet an eligible male, she would naturally have worn her best clothes, 
including her cap. This is hinted at in this comment by Miss Kate 
Hardcastle to her father on the matter of a suitor, Mr Marlow:

    My dear papa, why will you mortify one so? - Well, if
    he refuses, instead of breaking my heart at his
    indifference, I'll only break my glass for its
    flattery, set my cap to some newer fashion, and look
    out for some less difficult admirer.
    [She Stoops To Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith, 1773.]

The idiom remained common throughout the nineteenth century, used by 
Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and others. American 
authors have also used it, though it has remained mainly a British 
idiom. 

There were signs early in the nineteenth century that it was becoming 
unisex and was broadening its sense to refer to trying for some goal:

    So the Rev. Mr. Begg of Paisley is leaving his good
    folks at last for the parish of Libberton. The minister
    of Libberton appeared just a-dying, and he [Mr Begg]
    began to set his cap at it.
    [The Reformers' Gazette, 31 Jan. 1835.]

By the end of the century, a gentleman setting his cap at some 
objective was no longer unusual, the cap having become so figurative 
that no image of maidenly lace was evoked. That is still true, as in 
this reference to the late John Updike:

    But from earliest adolescence, he set his cap at "The
    New Yorker" as the summum of American literary
    production; and by the tender age of 22 he attained his
    goal. 
    [Newsweek, 9 Feb. 2009. Summum: Latin for highest or
    greatest.]


Sic!
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William Logan read in the New York Times about the problems city 
householders were having in getting promised money for repairs after 
Hurricane Sandy. James S Oddo, the Staten Island borough president, 
was quoted: "They turned the spigot so tightly that we went to the 
other end of the pendulum, and we created this gridlock."

Gary Mason explained that Heartwood Forest north of London is much 
used by dog walkers. Bins for disposing of dog waste have notices 
placed alongside: "Help keep Heartwood beautiful. If this bin is full 
please take it home with you".

An Associated Press report of 9 September on a fire in Yosemite, seen 
by Hilary Powers, quoted a hiker who had been rescued by helicopter 
from on top of Half Dome: "It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but 
I don't think I'll do it again."

Norman C Berns overheard a repeated national NBC News broadcast 
comment about the asteroid that passed Earth this week: "Even with a 
telescope, this object can't be seen with the naked eye."

Roger Clark notes that BBC America online reported on Wednesday: "In a 
nationally televised speech outlining his strategy against IS, 
[President Obama] said that any group that threatened America would 
'find no safe heaven'."  


Useful information
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