VOL X, No 2 [Autumn, 1983]
Yiddish for Fun and Profit
Lillian Mermin Feinsilver, Easton, Pennsylvania
[First Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
In my smalltown community, some friends used to have a pekipoo named Mentsh ‘Fine Person.’ Others have a miniature poodle that for years has appeared in their “Season’s Greetings” family pictures as Shana Maydellah [sheyne meydele ‘pretty little girl’]. I was not unprepared when a canine puppet on TV’s Sesame Street was called Farfel ‘bits of noodle’ or when race horses were discovered with playful Yiddish tags. According to the Jewish Digest, a horse that ran in 1967 was Nisht Amool [nisht a mol ‘not sometime’—now!]. In at least one case a vulgar appellation—Alter Kocker [Alter Kaker ‘Old Crapper,’ commonly euphemized bilingually as A.K. or (since about 1960) “Alter Coyote”—caused disqualification of the nag until his name was changed.
Boats, too, have been treated to Yiddish monickers. There was in 1970 (and may still be) in Black Rock Harbor off Bridgeport, Connecticut, a boat named Mahia [mechaye ‘pleasure’] and another (owned by a Gentile), L’Chayim ‘To Life.’
On other levels, announcers on WWDB FM radio in Philadelphia have given billing to a psychologist as “Murray Needelman with his hour of tsuris [var. of tsores ‘troubles’]”; and New York Republican Paul Slotkin in his campaign for Congress used the slogan “Don’t Plotz [plats ‘explode’], Vote Slots.” In further bilingual fun, Lucille Ball on an old Jack Benny TV show (rerun Sept. 24, 1981) dubbed lumbering John Wayne “El Klutzo” [kluhts, var. of klots ‘log’]. Abigail van Buren in 1980 referred to the man who sorts her Dear Abby mail as her “faithful Jewish ‘schleppercaun’ ” [shlepper ‘lugger, tramp’].
As we’re told in the McDavid edition of Mencken’s The American Language (1963), a Chinese Noshery [nasheray ‘snackables’] was established c. 1955 in the nation’s capital. What do you suppose the New York catering service specializing in kosher Chinese food is named? Shang-Chail In Philadelphia a restaurant offering kosher Italian cuisine is (what else?) The Kosher Noshtra. (These are reminiscent of the joke recently quoted in VERBATIM about the mixture of Manischewitz wine and tomato juice, an “Oyvay [oy vey ‘woe is me’] Maria.” Last year I met a woman from an Italian Catholic family who is married to a Jew; she told me, “He’s a Litvak [Jew of Lithuanian origin], and I’m a Litwop.”)
In the twenties and thirties, Jewish high-school students used to clown around with nonsense French and Yiddish: “Chevrolet coupe,/ a vu tut dir vey? […/‘where does it hurt you?'].” Today, as mature adults, such persons have been heard to comment tolerantly, “Chacun à son mishugas [‘wackiness’]” or to exclaim critically, “Quel chutzpa [chutspe ‘gall’]!” or to inquire smilingly of a new acquaintance, “Qu’est-ce que c’est dayn chazer’she [‘your filthy’—lit., ‘swinish’] business?” There’s of course a New York eatery named Bagel Delox, and it may be pertinent that Mimi Sheraton, food critic of The New York Times, on Aug. 31, 1976 described the service at most bagel restaurants in New York as “haute schlock” [shlak ‘stroke,’ hence ‘disaster,’ ‘junk’; schlacht ‘slaughter’; shlogn ‘to hit’]— without quotation marks or italics.
The students who used to spoof Spanish with Yiddish—in “Vi est a qui una mesa?” [Vi est a ki (var. of ku) on a meser? ‘How does a cow eat without a knife?']—now quip about the Mexican woman who serves her Jewish husband “enchilatkes” [latkes ‘pancakes’]. Moreover, the old Latin-Yiddish conjugation amo, amas, amat, a mames, a tates, a kind ‘…a mother’s and father’s child’ has been followed by modern twists on Latin, like the line from a wag in my family about the girl who checks her suitor’s astrological sign and finds that it is Tsores. (Interestingly enough, a Latin-Yiddish term appears in American black slang: mater mazuma [mezumen ‘ready cash’] ‘female college teacher,’ reported in 1970 from southern black college student use of the 1940s.)
Reportedly, Jewish residents of Hawaii have been known to welcome visitors with “Alohaleichem” [aloha combined with the greeting sholem aleichem ‘peace be with you’]. And comic strips have shown bilingually named personalities like the plastic surgeon Dr. Poonim [punim, var. of ponim ‘face’], the matchmaking mother Ma Zeltov [mazel tov ‘good luck, congratulations’], and various others.
Especially fascinating have been the word-playing antics in Sid Caesar’s TV skits over the years. Witness his Japanese characters Gantse Mishpūchah [gantse mishpuche (var. of mishpoche) ‘whole clan’]; Taka Mitziah [takeh, matsie\?\ ‘really, ‘really, bargain’; presumably a further play on the name of Japanese composer Takemitsu]; Shmatsay [shmatte ‘rag’]; or Princess Tushy Tushy [bilingual children’s diminutive (recorded in 1962 as tushie), from tuchas, var. of toches ‘rump,’ these being sources of English tochas, tuchas, tuckis, tookis, tukis (and the comment tough tukis ‘tough luck,’ dating to the 1960s), tokis, tokus, dokus, and possibly of both the underworld term for a ‘lifer,’ tocker (he sits on his rump), and the British terms for ‘administering or receiving a thrashing,’ give (or get or catch) toco or toks]. Author Sol Weinstein, in his parodies of mystery fiction, probably paved the way for Caesar’s writers with his war between Israel and TUSH—the Terrorist Union for Suppressing Hebrews!
It may not be too surprising that a Miss Tushy beauty contest was mentioned in the Los Angeles Times May 31, 1982, as a project of a bar near the L. A. airport, or that syndicated columnist Earl Wilson on April 16, 1982, concluded his remarks on the shapeliness of Pia Zadora with these words: “Indeed, said the photographer, Pia’s derriere will out-tushy Bardot’s.” Most striking is the annual Miss Tush of the Year pageant, inaugurated in 1979 by a California women’s apparel shop with outlets in Hermosa Beach and San Pedro. The name of the shop? The Tushery!
The colorful alphabetical expressions of Jewish Americans, first recorded in the 1940s, persist and grow. Although these have included alphabetizing of English (M.O.T. ‘Member of the Tribe’ and the more recent J.A.P. ‘Jewish American Princess’— the latter the cause of a brouhaha this year at a midwestern university), they are more often Roman letters for Yiddish expressions, as in the aforementioned A.K. or the old T.O.T. ‘cash on the line’ [Toches Oyfn Tish ‘Arse on the Table’] and T.L. [Toches Leker ‘Arse Licker’], which (as recorded in 1970) has bred T.L.er and T.L.ing. Other forms of the past twenty years or so (also recorded in 1970) are the bilingual play on the pharmacy degree Ph. G.: Papa Hot Gelt ‘The father has money’ and on A.M.: Able Mamzer [‘bastard’].
What a boost Yiddish has given to commercial enterprise! It has shown up in the names of various food emporiums: Eppes Essen ‘Something to Eat’ delicatessens in Indiana, Florida, and elsewhere; a Ye Noshery hotel snack bar in Florida and a Nosh Bar delicatessen in London; Bagel Mavin [meyvn ‘connoisseur’] and Bagel Nosh restaurants in New York; the Mavins New York Scene Restaurant and Deli in San Diego, etc. It has also spiced up food-product names like Ba Tampte [batamte ‘tasty’] Pickles; Tam Tam [Flavor Flavor] crackers; Noshies, a Japanese (!) type of snack by Tem Tee; and so on.
Other products capitalizing on Yiddish have ranged from the Nebbish ‘Poor Fool’ gift items and the Bupkis [buhpkes, var. of bopkes ‘beans,’ ‘trifle’] Family of zany dolls, to imprinted aprons (“Any shnook [shnukel ‘sap’; shnuk ‘trunk, snout’] can cook”) and shopping bags (“Schlep!,” “Son of Schlep,” and “Super-Schlep”), to the Remco game called Shmo [supposed euphemism for vulgar shmok ‘prick,’ source of shmuck and shmucky (increasingly used without awareness of their vulgarity) and probably of the low-level British forms shmook, schmock, smock, and (anti-Semitic) shmog and smoggy]. Not only has there been a board game by Parker Bros. named Plotz!; but a card game by Originals Only Co. is named O. Shlemiel [‘Lummox’]; and a widely selling ladies’ panty-liner from Poirette Corsets, Inc., is dubbed Gotke [gatke ‘drawer’].
Bemusing, too, is the variety of entrepreneurs that have taken advantage of Yiddish in their business titles. Two seem to have built on a Sid Caesar joke mentioned earlier: Mitsia Motors, a Toyota dealer on Long Island, and Takamitziah, a New York resort hotel with Japanese architecture and a Samurai lounge (!). Among many others, there are the Lewis Imaginative Ippsy-Pippsy Photographers in Los Angeles; Rent-a-Kvetch [kvetsh ‘whiner’], Inc., a New York firm handling consumer complaints; the Chutzpah [sic] Phone Service in a number of cities, making challenging calls on assignment; as well as authors and publishers of such volumes as the Organic Yenta [yente ‘gossip’] Cook Book and the Book of Buffs, Masters, Mavens [sic] and Uncommon Experts.
As several writers have observed, science fiction seems particularly hospitable to Yiddish word-play. Corrupt cops on a transgalactic planet, for example, are Ganavim [ganeyvim, pl. of ganef ‘crook’]; interplanetary visitors to Venus who look like little brown pillows with tentacles are Bulbas [bulbe ‘potato’]; a character named Milchik [‘dairy’ adjective relating to dietary laws] has an uncle named Fleischik [fleyshik ‘meat,’ adj.], etc.
Other fiction, as well as political cartoons, greeting cards, movies, and stage productions have also utilized Yiddish. One adoption that has surfaced in all these and other places is the deprecating shm- phoneme (discussed by several authors in the fifties). It became famous in the old quip, “Cancer, shmancer, abi gezunt [‘as long as you’re healthy’]” and in the adjective fancy-shmancy. Typical are such examples as the classic Herblock cartoon about the Atomic Energy Commission a generation ago “Mutations, Shmutations, Long as You’re Healthy”; the dramatic ad of the oil industry in The New York Times Nov. 25, 1979, concerning the windfall-profits tax, headed “Windfall-Schmindfall [sic],” to the tesselated puzzle recently produced by Professor Sam Savage of the University of Chicago, wryly named Shmuzzles.
In direct translation, too, Yiddish has been exploited in the marketplace and in various media—in several versions of “Wear it in good health” on Misty Harbor raincoat labels; in the defiant question or exclamation “Who needs it? (!)” in advertising of Union Oil Co. and Mutual of New York, among other companies; in the ironic “That’s all I need” in radio commercials for Bayer aspirin; in the versatile question “Where is it written that…,” etc. Significant are the widely adopted translations that affect—besides intonation as seen in the foregoing—syntax and even meaning: “Hurt, it can’t”; “What’s with him?” [What’s with for What’s the matter with], “What’s to argue?” [What’s to for What is there to…about]; “O.K. by me” [by for with—recorded in 1962]; “I don’t want to know from…” [know from for know or know about—recorded in 1970—a usage established by the old translation “He don’t know from nothin’,” recorded in 1943]; the ironic “Go know” and “Go figure” [Go for How could I or Just try to—recorded in 1955]; the shrugging “I should worry” [‘Why should I’ or ‘I’m not about to’—first recorded as a Yiddishism in 1914]; the destiny-invoking “You should be so lucky”—a headline in Punch Dec. 17, 1980 [an expression recorded in 1962, its close relative, “I should live so long,” having been recorded in 1943], etc.
Also seen and heard, of course, are jaunty bilingual adjectives like shmaltzy ‘sentimental,’ shlumpy ‘slovenly,’ klutzy ‘awkward,’ etc., and inventive bilingual verbs like to hoo-ha ‘to make an issue’ [hu-ha, n. ‘to-do’; exclam. ‘Oh boy!’, ‘Fancy that!'], and others like the one a White House transcript credited to President Nixon in 1972: to get schnookered [sic], an apparent combination of shnook and the pool term snookered.
Inevitably, malapropisms abound. Just two “for-instances”: the confusion of Yiddish intensives in translation, yet and already, by the Los Angeles Times’ travel editor Bruce Hamby: “…I’m ready to cry, ‘Enough, yet!’ ” (March 25, 1979); and the mistaking of shmegeggi [shmegege ‘jackass’] for shmear by Jean Bach in a remark to Arlene Francis on New York’s WOR radio Dec. 24, 1979: “When I was a little girl I had German…kuchen and the whole shmegeggi.”
If we are not witnessing what the maverick psychology professor A. A. Roback predicted fifty years ago—a flooding of English by Yiddishisms—we are certainly seeing a high tide. Appropriate indeed would be a sail on each of those two Connecticut boats, L’Chayim and Mahia: i.e., we should live (and be well) and enjoy!
Down to Earth in a Low Country
Harry Cohen, Brussels, Belgium
[Second Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
“We cut off their heads and then let the blood drain out,” the Michigan State professor told his European visitor cheerfully. He was describing his laboratory’s experiments on frogs. “But in our reports,” he continued, “you’ll read that we decapitate and subsequently exsanguinate them. Oh, why must scientific publications always be so studded with learned expressions that even well-educated outsiders can hardly make sense of them?” He would have had less reason for complaining if he could have drafted his reports in Dutch. In Holland, even the most pedantic scientist would not think of using Latinisms like decapitate or exsanguinate. He would rather write de kop afsnijden ‘sever the head’ and laten leegbloeden ‘let bleed until empty.’ And no reader, whatever his education, has any difficulty in understanding such phrases.
This is by no means the only instance where scientific terminology is more accessible to the general public in Dutch than in English. When a doctor in Holland diagnoses pneumonia, he need not give his patient a lengthly explanation but simply tells him that he is suffering from longontsteking. The word literally means ‘lung inflammation’ and thus conveys, in everyday language, the essence of what a lay person normally wants to know about his condition. Numerous medical terms are equally unesoteric in Dutch, such as hersenschudding ‘brain shaking,’ i.e. concussion or hersenvliesontsteking ‘brain-membrane inflammation,’ i.e. meningitis. Even the science of medicine itself is in most cases referred to in words whose meaning a child can grasp, namely geneeskunde ‘the knowledge of curing’ or geneeskunst ‘the art of curing.’ This terminological transparency is, as we shall see, not restricted to the sphere of medicine.
Stressing the relatively high proportion of Latinate terms in English may seem a sheer platitude. We all know that English, unlike Dutch, is not a “pure” Germanic language but derives from Latin and Old French as well. A higher frequency of vocables of Romance root is therefore unsurprising. All this is true, but it is beside the point here. The purpose of this article rather is to highlight a practical consequence of this situation: whereas a considerable proportion of English scientific terminology is compounded from recondite elements (usually of Latin or Greek origin) and hence abstruse to the uninitiated, Dutch offers in many such cases an expression that is made up from everyday words so that any layman can understand it.
Let us look at another example. When an English-speaking child is confronted for the first time with the word polygon, he needs an explanation. Then, after having been taught what the word stands for, he has to deal with another problem: how to retain the meaning in his memory. He will have to learn the relationship between the new word and the signified object by rote, because the components of the word are of no help in the memorization process. Indeed, they are literally Greek to him. On the other hand, a Dutch child has no such difficulties. The corresponding word is veelhoek ‘many-corner,’ which is self-explanatory, even with the limited vocabulary of a youngster. And the meaning can be recalled at any moment since the components constitute a built-in mnemonic aid. In short, this scientific term offers him no more problems than, say, the word keyhole does to an English-speaking child. This is so for many other geometrical expressions as well: schuine zijde ‘slanted side,’ i.e. hypotenuse; kromme ‘a bent one,’ i.e. curve; raaklijn ‘touching line,’ i.e. tangent; middelloodlijn ‘middle lead line’ (lead = ‘plumb’), i.e. perpendicular bisector; zesvlak ‘six-plane,’ i.e. hexahedron.
Geometry itself is called meetkunde ‘the knowledge of measuring.’ Incidentally, the ending -kunde, which occurs in the names of many branches of science, is obviously a cognate of ken (in the sense of ‘range of knowledge’). So alongside meetkunde ‘measuring ken,’ we have rekenkunde ‘calculating ken,’ i.e. arithmetic; stelkunde ‘positing ken,’ i.e. algebra; and the other subdivisions of wiskunde ‘certainly ken,’ i.e. mathematics.
Picturesque and sometimes amusing instances can be culled from other parts of the curriculum as well: stikstof ‘choking matter,’ i.e. nitrogen, from scheikunde ‘sundering ken,’ i.e. chemistry; kernsplitsing ‘kernel splitting,’ i.e. nuclear fission, from natuurkunde ‘nature ken,’ i.e. physics; rangtelwoord ‘rank count-word,’ i.e. ordinal numeral, from spraakkunst ‘language art,’ i.e. grammar; vleeseter ‘flesh eater,’ i.e. carnivore, from plant-en dierkunde ‘plant and animal ken,’ i.e. biology; Stille Oceaan ‘Calm Ocean,’ i.e. the Pacific, from aardrijkskunde ‘earth-kingdom ken,’ i.e. geography; melkwegstelsel ‘Milky Way system,’ i.e. galaxy, from sterrekunde ‘stars ken,’ i.e. astronomy.
Some of these examples may give the impression that a scientific discussion in Dutch sounds like sophisticated baby talk, but that’s because I have told only half the story so far. The full truth is that most of the learned expressions used for scientific notions in English (and other Western languages) are also known in Holland. They form part of the vocabularies of many people and are to be found in dictionaries, albeit adapted to Dutch spelling conventions. So, for philosophy, we have the choice between filosofie and wijsbegeerte ‘desire for wisdom,’ just as in English one may either use penultimate or last but one. In fact, it’s quite normal for Dutch scientific terminology to occur in pairs composed of a “difficult” and a homier variant: ephemerid can be translated as efemeride or as eendagsvlieg ‘one-day fly’; also in the figurative sense; hypothesis as hypothese or as veronderstelling ‘under-setting,’ and so on.
Similar pairs exist in English as well (although to a lesser extent, I feel). In both languages they may present a problem to the user: sometimes the twins are absolutely interchangeable, sometimes not entirely, sometimes not at all. It seems indeed true that there is a time and a place for everything! The system of usages that govern this interchangeability in Dutch is much too intricate to be set out here in full. Nevertheless, a few remarks may be of interest to the English-speaking reader because they can help him to discover analogous patterns in his own language.
In the first place, when is a pair really a pair? Words like uneatable and inedible must have been synonymous at one time, but now many people feel that they have slightly different meanings (in certain contexts at least) and should not be confounded. Such pseudo-pairs are encountered in Dutch too. The nearest equivalent of melancholic is melancholiek, but we also have the word zwartgallig ‘with black bile.’ Although a literal translation of its Greek twin, the latter represents a slightly different nuance of gloominess. Perhaps it’s more like ‘atrabilious’!
Secondly, even when two vocables appear to have identical meanings to the layman, an expert may have his doubts. Scientists favor unambiguous words that designate sharply defined notions. Anatomists would rather say esophagus (or spell it oesophagus) than gullet because nobody knows exactly where a gullet begins or ends, and, anyway, the word has more than one meaning, even within the field of anatomy. For similar reasons, a Dutch geologist prefers vulkaan ‘volcano’ to the pictorial but imprecise vuurspuwende berg ‘fire-spitting mountain.’ On the other hand, he would have no objection to alternating eruptie ‘eruption’ with uitbarsting ‘outburst,’ the latter giving no rise to confusion in a given context. Dutch scientists seem to be more often in a position to use such a demotic term than their English-speaking colleagues. To come back to gullet, the Dutch equivalent is slokdarm ‘swallowing gut,’ an earthy expression but quite precise and therefore not unfit for a professional text.
But we had better not attempt a full-scale analysis here. Even when all parties agree that the scholarly and the vernacular members of a given pair of scientific terms have exactly the same meaning, their interchangeability is nonetheless subject to a maze of unwritten rules. It may be a matter of context, of spoken or written language, of tradition, “good manners,” prudery, and so on (cf. abdomen versus belly). Sometimes it is a matter of class, and often one of generation. There are also euphonic considerations, individual quirks, linguistic chauvinisms, snob habits (“arcane = chic”), and inverted snobberies (“simple = honest”). We shall not dwell on these variations, but there is one aspect that should not go wholly unmentioned: the fluctuations of usage in the course of time.
Preferences for learned and for familiar words change over the years. Nowadays, it has become somewhat outmoded to say staathuishoudkunde ‘state household ken’ for economics or aardkunde ‘earth ken’ for geology. Weerkunde ‘weather ken,’ i.e. meteorology, and kruidtuin ‘plant garden,’ i.e. botanical garden, are definitely out (except in Belgium: linguistic developments in Flanders do not always run parallel to those in Holland, because they are partly determined by political considerations). Anatomical atlases have done away with the somewhat bluff pisbuis ‘piss tube,’ i.e. urethra. The grote lichaamsslagader ‘big beating vein of the body,’ i.e. aorta, is also about to go; it was marvelously descriptive, though quite a mouthful! On the other hand, new self-explanatory expressions are constantly being coined for the goodies that this age keeps bestowing upon us. Rekentuig ‘calculation gear’ for computer has not caught on, but ongevalsheelkunde ‘accident healing ken’ for traumatology seems to have a future. But enough of all that.
A completely different question is the semantic content of those easy-to-understand Dutch words. As several of the preceding examples suggest, many apparently native expressions are really calques of Greco-Latinate terms that have international currency in the world of science. Here are a few more: dierenriem ‘animal belt,’ i.e. zodiac; mierenzuur ‘ants sour,’ i.e. formic acid; knaagdier ‘gnawing animal,’ i.e. rodent; vierling ‘fourling,’ i.e. quadruplets; zelfmoord ‘self-murder,’ i.e. suicide; Onbevlekte Ontvangenis ‘unstained begetting,’ i.e. Immaculate Conception. Spells of Germanic chauvinism have left us with unseemly agglutinations like boldriehoeksmeting ‘ball three-corner measuring,’ i.e. spherical trigonometry, and uncritical calquing made us adopt a few misnomers holus-bolus: buik-spreker ‘belly speaker,’ i.e. ventriloquist.
In other cases the translation is freer, or more explicit than the original, or the two are not related at all: aardolie ‘earth oil,’ i.e. petroleum; schuilnaam ‘hiding name,’ i.e. pseudonym; veelwijverij ‘many-womenship,’ i.e. polygamy; verloskunde ‘delivery ken,’ i.e. obstetrics; sterrebeeld ‘stars picture,’ i.e. constellation; Maria Hemelvaart ‘Mary’s passage to heaven,’ i.e. the Assumption; vallende ziekte ‘falling disease,’ i.e. epilepsy; kinderverlamming ‘children’s paralysis,’ i.e. poliomyelitis; heelal ‘whole all,’ i.e. the universe.
Readers familiar with other Germanic languages may well observe that all this is not descriptive of Dutch alone but applies equally to German and the Scandinavian languages. Indeed, many of the quoted instances are mere German loan words, facile calques of calques. Nevertheless, some of them are Dutch originals, as are the following examples: letterkunde ‘letters ken,’ i.e. literature; buikloop ‘belly run,’ i.e. diarrhea; godgeleerdheid ‘God learning,’ i.e. theology; hoogleraar ‘high teacher,’ i.e. professor; dierentuin ‘animals garden,’ i.e. zoo; kraakbeen ‘creaking bone,’ i.e. cartilage; vermenigvuldigen ‘to manifold,’ i.e. to multiply.
Let us conclude with a few curiosities. Some seemingly simple words are tricky because they have come to express two dissimilar notions, e.g. zenuwarts ‘nerve doctor’ for both neurol- ogist and psychiatrist. Others are sheer folk etymology, like scheurbuik ‘ripping belly’ for scurvy (Lat. scorbutus). And a few are—as already pointed out—outright misnomers, such as blindedarmontsteking ‘blind gut inflammation,’ i.e. appendicitis, and eiwit ‘egg white,’ i.e. protein. But the “wrongness” of a word has never been a reason to eliminate it from the language. Or is there anybody out there who is willing to give up the word atom, just because the thing has subsequently been found to be fissionable? That would indeed beat the Dutch!
A Short History of Punctuation
John Bateson, Berkeley, California
[Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
Without punctuation words run together and writing is difficult to read it should surprise no one therefore that the system of stops pauses expressions of uncertainty interrogation and emphasis and the marking of direct speech which helps the reader understand writing is integral to almost every language indeed punctuation is so much a part of written communication that it is largely taken for granted at one time though punctuation did not exist
Pinpointing the origins of punctuation is difficult, and much work remains to be done on the subject. Part of the problem is defining what is meant by the term punctuation. In Hebrew texts of the fifth and sixth centuries and perhaps as early as the first century B.C., single, double, or triple points were placed above consonants to indicate preceding or following vowels. Hebrew as a spoken language was dying out at this time, and scholars were worried that correct pronunciation of the sacred texts would be gradually lost. To preserve the traditions of pronunciation and intonation for literary and religious purposes, the system of points was instituted to denote vowel sounds, since the Hebrew alphabet was composed of consonants only. This system was widely used; but should it be considered punctuation? Its function was unrelated to the present function of punctuation, which is to clarify the meaning of writing.
Greek inscriptions written before the fourth century B.C. were continuous; that is, words and sentences were not separated. It was Aristotle who first noted the division of topics into paragraphs, although scholars of today disagree whether paragraphs were initially marked by dividing strokes between them or by horizontal lines (called paragraphos) under the beginning of a line in which the topic was concluded. Fragments of Plato’s Phaedo, found at Gurob, have evidence of paragraphs ending with a double point (:) as well as short dashes separating different speeches. Before Plato, Euripides used a wedge, or sideways “V,” to mark changes of speakers in his play Antiope. Again the question arises, however: do paragraphs and speaker markings constitute punctuation as we now define the term? Moreover, far from indicating general practice, the above were isolated instances and might only show that ancient Greeks knew such marks had value. Since the marks were not commonly or systematically employed, it is possible to conclude that they were generally thought to be insignificant.
Most etymologists attribute the invention of punctuation to Aristophanes of Byzantium, who was the librarian of the museum at Alexandria in 200 B.C. Aristophanes devised a system of points corresponding to our comma, semicolon, and period to mark short, medium, and long sections of writing (the sections were divided according to rhetorical theory). The points followed the last letter in each section and were placed at the bottom, middle, or top of the letter, depending on the length of the section. (In short sections the point was at the bottom, in long sections at the top.) Since all writing at that time was done only in majuscules, or capital letters, it was easy to distinguish the three positions.
In addition to points, Aristophanes is generally credited with creating the virgule, hyphen, apostrophe, and quotation marks. The virgule, which sometimes appeared as a slash and other times as a long comma, was inserted between words where the meaning might seem ambiguous. The hyphen served to denote compound words and was drawn as a curve or line under the adjacent letters. The apostrophe varied from a curve or straight accent to a mere point; besides marking elision it was placed after foreign names to note their origin and was used to distinguish two consecutive vowels and double consonants. Quotation marks in the form of crosses, horizontal strokes, waved strokes, or wedges (perhaps evolved from Euripides) were placed in the margin to draw attention to a quotation.
Aristophanes’ system was intended for the textual work of scholars and was little used by scribes. It was not until the Renaissance that modern Greek punctuation became established and Latin punctuation, which had borrowed from the Greek system of points but used the points irregularly, without adhering to their meaning, was incorporated. Between Aristophanes' day and the Renaissance, there were two important developments in the history of punctuation.
First, during the seventh and eighth centuries, handwriting changed from majuscule to minuscule letters. This led to capitalization, or a way of noting which words have more value. It also produced ascenders and descenders, which made writing more difficult to read without punctuation marks.
Second, Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor from 768 to 814, and Alcuin, director of the palace school, spirited an educational revival that resulted in improved spelling and punctuation in biblical and liturgical texts. Until the eighth century only a degraded form of Aristophanes' system was in use, consisting of two marks, the point and the colon, with the colon’s purpose simply to indicate an intermediate stop. (Frequently the colon was replaced by an inverted semicolon or what is now the exclamation point. This symbol was not used for true exclamation, however. It is widely believed that today’s exclamation point comes from the Latin word io ‘joy’, with the one letter placed above the other.) By the eleventh century, Aristophanes' system was restored; moreover, two new punctuation marks—including one called punctus interrogativus, which strongly resembles the question mark of today—had been added to indicate both a syntactical break and a change in inflection. These marks derived from the musical notation used in Gregorian chants.
In 1453, Constantinople, the centre of Greek culture, was attacked and conquered by Ottoman Turks. Many Greek scholars migrated to Western Europe and there sparked intense interest in Greek literature and writing. When Italian printer and editor Aldus Manutius set up a printing press in Venice in 1490, many of the books that came from the press were popular editions of Aristotle, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Demosthenes, and Plutarch, all printed in Greek. Greek punctuation was used so that the modern comma, colon, and period—as well as the apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter—became, by the time of Aldus’s grandson (also named Aldus), standard for writers and printers. The Latin question mark of a comma over a point was maintained but the comma was enlarged to look like the upper part of our present question mark; the Greek question mark, a point above a comma, became the semicolon.
Aldus Manutius the younger explained the markings in a book called Orthographie ratio (“System of Orthography”). Even more important than the exposition is the fact that in this work Aldus became the first to state that the purpose of punctuation was to clarify syntax; therefore punctuation should make for an orderly and systematic arrangement of phrases, clauses, and sentences. Earlier printers, like Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer in Germany (who used only the point and colon) and Sweynheym and Pannartz in Italy (who used the point and colon and added the semicolon for abbreviation), had no clear conception of the purpose of stops. As a result, early printers, like early writers, employed few marks.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the system of punctuation as described by the younger Aldus was widely used, albeit inconsistently. Usage was predominantly based on elocution; punctuation marks came to identify pauses of one (comma), two (semicolon), and three (colon) units, which might be observed by a reader, especially if he was reading aloud to an audience. It was an age of drama, poetry, oratory, and song, and great attention was given to spoken language. However, there was a second school of thought at the time that believed pauses of varying lengths to be arbitrary and saw punctuation as a means of clarifying the grammar of a text. As pauses in speech and breaks in syntax do not always coincide (speech being more flexible than syntax), the two schools were in conflict. By the end of the seventeenth century the second school had prevailed.
The evolution of modern punctuation in English is related to the rise of writers like Jonson, Hobbes, Dryden, Defoe, and Swift, who favored a shorter and less complex sentence structure than Donne, Hooker, and other writers of “earsplitting eloquence” whose work was modeled on Cicero’s. Shorter and simpler sentences meant less punctuation was necessary. Less elaborate prose also led to further standardization of the punctuation system and produced a better understanding of what punctuation can do and need not do.
Today, the drive toward fewer punctuation marks continues—“to the point of insufficiency” according to noted linguist Jacques Barzun. Modern readers tend to be distracted by the heavy punctuation in the prose of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Today, even if the writing were as ponderous and involved as, say, Sterne’s, many of his compounded punctuation marks would be omitted.
It is unlikely that the move to lighter punctuation will be reversed, at least in this century. Newspapers and magazines, which often seem overly preoccupied with brevity, continue to proliferate, setting the tone for present writers. Narrower columns and smaller type also play a part because they make punctuation more noticeable. Numerous commas and semicolons in a newspaper sentence, for instance, would be more hindering than helpful.
On the other hand, punctuation probably won’t die out as it did following Aristophanes, even though present writers who have difficulty mastering punctuation might sometimes prefer that it did. The system of pointing (“punctuation” derives from the Latin word punctus ‘point’) is too valuable. It provides humor when it is used incorrectly, as Shakespeare does deliberately in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but, more important, it helps writing become more understandable. Proper punctuation even makes it possible to make sense of a sentence that has the word had eleven consecutive times:
Jim, where Bill had had “had had,” had had “had”; “had had” had had the teacher’s approval.
No system that can do that will ever be lost entirely.
Winners of the VERBATIM $2500 Contest
The judges have judged, and the winners of the VERBATIM Essay Contest have been notified. More than 150 entries were received, and the choices were whittled down to ten. The winners are:
First Prize: $1000
Lillian Mermin Feinsilver, Easton, Pennsylvania,
“Yiddish for Fun and Profit” (which appears in this issue)Second Prize: $500
Harry Cohen, Brussels, Belgium
“Down to Earth in a Low Country”Other Prizes: $250 each
John Bateson, Berkeley, California
“A Short History of Punctuation”Rebecca Christian, Decorah, Iowa
“The Language of Consuming Passions”Richard L. Faust, New York City
“Language Crimes: The Case of the Contending Relatives”David L. Miles, Charlevoix, Michigan
“No Sex, Please, We’re English”
Many very good articles were received, and we were quite pleased with the number and quality of the submissions. Our commiserations and thanks to the losers; our money, thanks, and congratulations to the winners.
Watch for the announcement of our next competition, which is as yet unscheduled.
The Language of Consuming Passions
Rebecca Christian, Decorah, Iowa
[Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
In my family, food is treated as reverentially as conversation. Since we all regard eating and talking as the noblest, if not the only, worthwhile human endeavors, it is little wonder that we have developed our own language about food.
There is no place in it for those clichéd staples of food writers—the “robust” stew, the “piquant” sauce, and the “amusing” wine. Instead, we speak of the “prance and a half,” the “wad,” the “pick,” and the “nice little supper.” To the uninitiated, our consuming passion can be disconcerting. Recently, my newly acquired brother-in-law declined to participate in a communal “pick” with the astonishing intelligence that he wasn’t hungry.
“What has that got to do with it?” my father demanded severely. The rest of us gaped at the alien in our midst. Even after a seven-course meal, we can always find room for what Winnie the Pooh called “a little something.”
A “pick” is akin to “a little something” and usually consists of an array of leftovers from a “prance.” A “prance” is a meal on which the hostess has labored for at least a week. The term originated with my mother, who for twenty years prepared elaborate holiday spreads two times annually, at intervals only a month apart. As the third decade dawned, she served notice that she would no longer “prance with a turkey” at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. This gave rise to visions of a giant turkey waltzing through the kitchen with Mama in his arms. The term stuck, as did a derivative, a “prance and a half.”
The “prance and a half” applies when a hostess has worked herself into a genuine lather over a meal. If she has spent hours poring over recipes to find the perfect blend of dishes, if she has ferreted out obscure ingredients in dusty ethnic markets, if she has strained these ingredients through cheesecloth, if she has marinated them in olive oil, if she has pulverized them with a mortar and pestle, then her Herculean effort will be rewarded with the accolade “a prance and a half.”
A “pick,” then, features a better class of food than mere leftovers. Rarely is the food reheated. During a “pick,” dining etiquette is suspended. A table is not laid, nor is the Almighty’s blessing sought. “Picks” are usually eaten standing up at the refrigerator, without utensils. One may coo appreciatively, pigeon fashion.
In contrast to a “pick,” ordinary leftovers heated up and passed off as a meal are called a “heppy-seffy.” This rather whimsical expression came our way from a visiting southern belle. She who offers up the “heppy-seffy” is made to feel somewhat defensive. Thus she deals the plates around the table with narrowed eyes and calls out with an air of challenge, “Hep yoresef.” If the diners examine the food too critically— before even sampling it—she will snap that she’s had a busy day, and wasn’t up to “horsing” with cooking. “Horsing” is short for “horsing around” and gives a pejorative nuance to the usually laudable “prancing.”
A meal that is prepared with the proper respect for ingredients but that entails far less work than a “prance” is called “a nice little supper.” “Nice little suppers” are served only to guests one knows intimately, and only on weeknights. Even “nice little suppers” always feature “beast,” or at least “bird.” Carnivores all, we take relish in using these designations instead of the more euphemistic “beef” and “poultry.” Chicken, even when it is young and tender, is often called “ol' hen.” This is a legacy of the family’s roots on the farm. There, chickens were not sacrificed for food until, tough and elderly, they had reached the nadir of their egg production. One uses convenience mixes and packages sparingly, even for a “nice little supper.”
“Store boughten” food is disdained by my grandfather, patriarch of the clan. He is from the south and opines that eating fruit-flavored gelatin is “raht next door to not eatin'.” My mother is very much her father’s daughter in that regard. She once startled a timid visitor by declaring, quite without provocation, “I cannot stand canned soup. In fact, I don’t even like people who like canned soup.”
If you have made something “from scratch” but failed, Aunt Ruthie will reproach, “You didn’t love it enough.” Likewise, Granny claims love and instinct are the ingredients that assure perfect alchemy in food. When begged for the recipe for her incomparable noodles, she will be no more specific with measurements than “a half-eggshell” of water and a “smidgen” of salt. Should you want to know how long to beat, pound, knead or whip, she replies, with the hooded eyes of Mona Lisa, “‘Til it’s raht.”
Like a “pick,” a “wad” is also eaten standing up. A “wad,” however, is a solitary piece of inferior, if not disgusting food. The diner falls upon it with little pleasure, merely to quiet the beast in his belly. Physically satisfied but psychologically famished, he will probably succumb to a “binge” before long. “Binge,” in our tribe, has a narrow meaning. To “binge” is to devote oneself single-mindedly to a large quantity of a given delicacy—polishing off a pint jar of artichokes, a pound can of Spanish peanuts, or a soup-bowl full of hot fudge sauce. “Binges” are undertaken alone and in stealth, which gives them a verboten quality that heightens the enjoyment. An occasional “binge” is tolerated—nay, even expected. Evidence of too frequent “binging,” on the other hand, is considered faintly perverse. Eating and socializing are so interwoven that the chronic lone “binger” gets the same reputation as one who drinks alone before lunch.
As opposed to a “binge,” an “org,” short for “orgy,” is undertaken by a group. “Org” may also be used as a verb. An “org” is often inspired by batters, doughs, or other elixirs in the middle stages of production. Like sharks sniffing blood in their waters, “orgers” gather intuitively from all corners of the house. Those who gather to lick the beaters from Aunt Ruthie’s brownies or who crouch over the ice-cream freezer to catch the drippings off the paddle are said to be “orging.” One who has partaken so ambitiously of an “org” that he must lie belly up, like a dead goldfish, is sympathetically diagnosed as “orged out.” Mama will urge him to “take” a little Coca-Cola to settle his stomach.
At night, however, restless spirits who prowl the pantry are “grazing.” When a term fits, we borrow it. I first read about “grazing” in a magazine article lamenting the decline in public morality. “Grazing,” the outraged author explained, is what supermarket managers call the behavior of certain mothers with small children who frequent their stores. As the mother herds the children along, she stops long enough to open a box of cereal or crackers, and sneak the kids a quick “wad.” Then she replaces the box on the shelf before moving on.
“Grazing,” to us, has a depraved connotation. A “grazer” is usually wild-eyed and clad in rumpled pajamas as he forages from cabinet to cabinet, perhaps swiping his forefinger through the peanut butter jar and then the honey jar before dipping it into a bag of coconut or miniature marshmallows. Likely as not, a fellow insomniac plagued by nocturnal demons of his own will hear the rustling and stumble down to join him. If there is nothing to titillate the palate in the house, the “grazers” may adjourn to an open-all-night deli to “get us something good to eat.” Sometimes this phrase is abbreviated to “get us something,” the quest for nourishment being implied. My father’s approach is more pugnacious, when he declares his intention to “get ahold of something good,” as if he must first wrestle it to the ground.
Other verbs we find useful are “oinking,” “hunkering down,” and “making bilge.” “Oinking” is not to be confused with stuffing down a “wad.” One “oinks” such food as potato chips or jelly beans, nutritionally worthless, but pleasing to some individuals nonetheless. An “oinker” is not necessarily fat. My sister is the quintessential “oinker” but keeps her weight to a wraithlike 103 pounds. This she accomplishes through a regimen of strenuous exercise and a diet comprised chiefly of Chablis and cheese-flavored tortilla chips.
To “hunker down” is to eat wholesome, plebeian food— “vittles”—in awesomely large portions. But only children young enough to require a high-chair “make bilge.” “Bilge” is the viscous substance that results when a tot mixes foods like peas, mashed potatoes, ground meat, and pudding with his hands. The high-chairs of “bilgers” can be cleaned only in the shower.
Infants not yet able to manage solid foods are described as “blissing out” at the climax of a vigorous workout at breast or bottle. A “blissed out” baby’s lips part involuntarily, and his eyeballs roll ecstatically back in his head under flickering eyelids. I have only once seen an adult in that condition—my friend Johnny, on the eve of his nuptials to an exquisite ballerina. As I recall, they had pretty good “goobers” at that wedding reception. “Goober” is, of course, a colloquialisim for peanut. We have expanded “goober” to mean any small food, such as a cocktail sausage or raw vegetable, which is easily managed by the hands and serves as an appetizer or hors d’oeuvre.
Granny is probably right when she contends that there is an essential connection between food and love. It is perhaps Freudian that the terms we use for appetite are so closely related to sexual desire. In fact, my lusty husband has pronounced himself “horny” for imported Godiva chocolates and a cup of espresso—very hot, very black. I myself was once inspired to quote Ezra Pound’s love poetry as I chose an unusually beguiling lobster from a restaurant tank. “Your eyes,” I whispered to my squirming selection, “are my Sargasso Sea.”
Hunger is always accorded the utmost respect in my clan, on a par with financial insolvency and unrequited love. During a trip to Spain, I discovered how satisfying it was to declare “Tengo hambre.” My family was enchanted with the translation, “I have a hunger.” “I am hungry,” we decided, sounds feeble by comparison. Now the youthful contingent of the family has taken up the urgent cry, “Hiyamunger! We got hunger!” This chant is the signal for a pizza to be ordered for delivery, which reminds me that writing inevitably develops a ferocious appetite. What remains of last night’s “beast” brisket dinner beckons me. I must repair to the refrigerator for a “pick.”
No Sex, Please. We’re English
David L. Miles, Charlevoix, Michigan
[Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
In Italy recently, a friend who spoke a self-taught yet passable basic English chided me for being un neutro, which amused but puzzled me until he explained, “You have no sex in your words.” To an Italian, that is very important. He was, of course, correct in that English gave up, centuries ago, in one of the most sensible moves the language ever made, gender differentiation in all but a few of its nouns. He felt the language lacked an essential component, a “spiritual” side even, having had the notion ingrained in his every mode of thought since he heard his first word. And he never questioned the validity of this at-times confusing classification system. It just simply was, is, and probably always will be. The peculiarities of association it fostered never concerned him for one moment. Most of the European languages likewise have retained this quirk, an irksome and seemingly unnecessary bane to English speakers trying to fathom it and all the frustrating grammatical acrobatics it entails. Multifarious cultural conceptions of sexuality—or lack of it—and gender assigned to objects with or without animistic qualities, people in various stages of growth or position, and abstract ideas formulated since the preliterate dawn have baffled investigators since linguistic science began. But linguists cannot decide whether natural and obvious sexual differences influenced grammatical gender or if grammar in flux over centuries assigned arbitrary and sometimes illogical labels as ideas changed. Masculine assignations are thought to have come from a perception of something as active, mature, concrete, large; feminine as passive, weak, quiet, small; neuter as inactive, general, indeterminate, impersonal. Hundreds of nouns entered a gender categorization less from their intrinsic active or passive, large or small, “male” or “female” qualities than the way they came to be pronounced, modified, and spelled, their final letters and suffixes the agents that placed them in their destined slots. Pursuers of knowledge in the Romance languages (here only French and Italian will be used as examples) usually find a satisfactory proportion of agreement among the two-gender attributions bestowed by a common Latin ancestry. But let them plunge afterward into three-gender German and their previous grudgingly accepted notions turn topsy-turvy, and they surface crying for help.
To begin at the beginning, the words for “gender” and “sex” themselves receive a more macho, Mediterranean emphasis in masculine-oriented France and Italy, whereas in cooler, maybe less assured Germany both words are conveniently neuter to avoid argument. But why a feminine “sexuality” in all three tongues? Perhaps in the deep primordial stirrings of the unpredictable id a man should be attracted by it but dare not display it. German diminutives usually contract to a sexless base. Maidens are feminine by definition, including a German Jungfrau, virginity intact; but let her be a Mädchen or Fräulein not yet capable of reproducing herself and she finds her femininity neuterized. Likewise is a Männlein—a ‘little man’— not even that. Twain put his finger on it: “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.” Then she grows into a feminine Frau. Hebrew absorbed German to form idiosyncracies of Yiddish, but at least Yiddish abandoned Teutonic indifference in the warm Semitic sensibility that made mejdt (from Mädchen) feminine where it belonged. A German capacity for motherhood restores her femininity, but her female totality of Frau and Mutter is lopsided. The neuter “false friend” das Weib, coguate with wife, has led more than one poor soul into linguistic trouble. (Some German-English dictionaries even add to the problem.) The current connotation is closer to ‘broad’ than ‘bride.’
Odder yet in Romance languages and in German is the position of husbands or lovers if they sire a child—“paternity” is feminine in all three tongues. To top that off, so are “virility” and “manhood.” German does have a second word for “manhood,” but it takes the side of neuterdom. Taking the distaff side in German are, of all things: masculinity, maleness, manliness, manly vigor, bravery, courage, manly dignity, man and male collectively (Mannsbild), and a Mannsperson. But even women who have overstepped the bounds of socially acceptable femininity have been unsexed by the language. Das Mannweib, an amazon or virago, is a neutered female. Grammatical Maskulinum and Femininum are both neuter. The idea of feminism is also neuter. Even Vienna, that ineffably feminine city, has been desexed into neuter das Wien. Strange people, those Germans. But wait. Across the border, French masculinity is also feminine, while feminism is masculine (likewise for both in Italy), and grammatical feminin is masculine. To top this off, that ineluctably female part of the female anatomy, the vagina, is masculine. Strange people, those French. As if that were not enough, women in all three countries carry their children in masculine uteri. Androgynous German women can have an alternate female womb. And all these children are conceived via eggs produced from masculine ovaries (but in Italy an ovary can be bisexual). And every woman in Italy, France, and Germany wears a masculine brassiere. Strange people, all.
Italians sail feminine boats on a masculine sea full of feminine water, Frenchmen masculine boats on a feminine one (Where does the root of the difference lie, and why?), while Germans in a neuter Boot can’t make up their minds about neuter water in large quantities. Their thoughts larger than a puddle range from manly “lake” (der See) to womanly “sea” (die See) on the same word, masculine der Ozean, to neuter das Meer, an all-encompassing hermaphroditic-neutero overview. The French fly male airplanes through male air, Italians pierce a male craft through female air, the indifferent Germans neuter through unfulfilled female. It begins to sound like a hetero-homo-bi mixed-doubles invitational.
At table, on any masculine day of a feminine week in all three tongues except for the Italian Sunday yanked into femininity from such crass company, Romance cuts with masculine knives, German with neuter (food for thought, there); all three find female characteristics in a fork’s prongs (strangely, Spain sees them as phallic); French spoons are rounded female forms, male for some reason in Italian and German. Masculine butter tops the same bread in France and Italy; German feminine butter finds her efforts wasted on neuter bread.
Twain again: “…In Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.” His mouth and feet are male, his nose and hands female, eyes and ears neuter. Romance finds feet and hands to be likewise, but roving Romance eyes are all masculine. Male hearts beat inside male breasts in Italy and inside female French breasts, but neuter hearts throb inside female breasts to the north.
These people of many parts all inhabit a feminine earth, yet the French and Italians are close to masculine lands, the Germans again undecided, even in das Vaterland and das Mutterland, an atavistic idea so strongly feminine in Romance. For this idea, Romance fights female battles for feminine glory in ladylike wars, but Germany wages female battles for male glory in masculine wars. In peacetime, they all find protection under the watchful eyes of matronly police forces manned by virile cops.
Germany is unique in Europe in finding femininity in the source of life, our sun, then in a recalcitrant, obtuse flurry of confusion calls sunshine masculine and sunlight neuter. Not far behind, but on the other side of the looking glass, is Romance— the great masculine ball of fire gives off a feminine shine. To further the muddle, Romance lovers spoon beneath a feminine moon while less ardent German lovers—again unique among Europeans—see only the man in it. And to bring the ridiculousness full circle, Romance moonshine is male, but Germany has to have its night light and shine both confusing ways as before.
In the arts, what must a female singer feel like at the realization that the operatic status she enjoys is a male one? Not the parts written for her (excepting those few trouser roles), but the range in which she sings them—high sopranos down through contraltos are all masculine. In France, a countertenor might feel all the more acutely the implied slur that his vocal range has a certain prissiness to it, for une haute-contre here is feminine. So are Boris Godunov and Don Giovanni, for that matter, for in France une basse is female, profondo or not. Black and white pianos are neuter, curved violins womanly in Germany, but masculine in the others; flutes are manly in Italy but feminine in the others.
Botticelli could never have painted La Primavera, so full of gorgeous females in divers guises, in the exact manner he did had he been born a Frenchman or German, both of whose springtimes are of the male persuasion. At least each language agrees that winter is masculinely harsh, also autumn, time of harvest but not of planting. Summer is too, except in Italy, where it can be torrid as a temptress.
None of the three can agree on much of the natural world, either. Male rain patters on a neuter German field; female rain soaks male fields in France and Italy. (Frenchmen protect themselves from the elements with male coats, Italians with female ones, while the Germans wear all three—der Mantel, die Jacke, das Jackette.) France has two sexes of lightning and thunder, Italy only two of lightning. Male waterfalls cascade in Germany, female in the two others; nothing cascades in a female German desert or masculine French and Italian ones. German mountains are male, not so in the other two; Italian plains are male, not in the other two. The feminine forests of Italy and France can’t compare to their masculine woods, vice-versa in Germany; at least the upright trees in all of them are male. Even the stars in the all-masculine sky are different when seen from femininely oriented Romance eyes and masculinely based German ones.
And so it goes through those tongues of the world which still insist the universe and all it contains can be viewed according to an arcane system of categories and assigned their places in the great cosmic scheme of things. Even so, they can come to virtually no agreement by what standards this should be done, nor do they ever consult one another before doing so. All languages give birth from the constant fecundity of new ideas and things, but those with gender retention not only have to decide what to name each new child but what sex to proclaim it (or, in Germany, whether it even deserves a sex), and who, really, has been granted or assumed the authority to assign one? Criteria differ not only over linguistic and national borders but also within them, serving only to compound the confusion. So English, both American and British, with “no sex” in its words, thank you, blithely goes its merry way, keeping itself relatively simple in its verb structure and its gender repudiation, not presuming to impose its views or wishes upon those who have difficulty enough getting a grip on this world. It realized wisely a long time ago that if nobody can agree on how the elements of creation might be winnowed and pigeon-holed, maybe they ought not be winnowed at all. Less really is more. Small wonder English is fast becoming the standard communicator of the world.
Language Crimes: The Case of the Contending Relatives
Richard L. Faust, New York, New York
[Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
The knock on my office door was as gentle as a heartbeat. I thought at first that I had imagined it, but when I looked at the glass-paneled door with my name on it—AHA (readable from either side)—I saw the outline of what looked like a little girl, and I wondered why she would be coming to the office of a PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.
“Come in,” I said, and a porcelain doll entered my office. She was clearly oriental, probably Chinese (like my ancestors), petite, delicate, beautiful as a plum blossom, and not a girl at all, but a young lady.
“Are you Mr. Aha?” she asked, with temple bells in her voice.
“I am. Please sit down. Why have you come?”
“Someone is trying to kill my great-grandfather. Perhaps you have heard of him—Sum Won Hoo. I am Wanda Hoo.”
The Hoo family was famous in our area; it had produced many politicians, nominative types who were always running for one office or another, but most of them died tragically, and quite young. Some said there was a curse on the family. In fact, I recalled that only old Sum Won and Wanda were left. The old man was about ninety, fabled to have made his fortune in the China trade before World War I.
I nodded and asked, “Why don’t you inform the police?”
“It is a rather delicate matter because we think we know who it is.” She paused, then added, “His cousin, Hoom.”
There were old rumors of tension between the Hoo and Hoom clans, of jealousy leading to Tong wars and disappearances, even of attempted assassinations. No one knew exactly why. The police could find out nothing.
My honorable ancestors often said, “Ask the obvious questions first.” I went to the heart of the matter and asked, ungrammatically, “Why would Hoom want to kill Hoo?”
She hesitated. “It’s because of the tontine.”
The answer stunned me. “What’s a tontine?”
“It’s a kind of business arrangement, an insurance plan, whereby a group of participants buy a shared annuity, and as each participant dies, it is agreed that the final survivor will receive the whole amount. It was very common among maritime families, a form of gambling. We orientals love to gamble.” She lowered her head. “Now I think the tontine was a big mistake.”
“Your great-grandfather is a member of a tontine?”
“Yes. He and his two cousins and a friend entered into an agreement seventy years ago. The friend, who was older, was named Whence, and he died quickly, with no family to mourn him. The one cousin, Hoom, I have mentioned. But the fate of the other cousin, Hooz, is a sad tale. At the turn of the century, Yu No Hooz was a strong young man, able to pilot a junk, fight off pirates, and navigate across the Pacific. The month before he was to marry, he began to lose his mind. Some say a villain put powdered dragon bone into his wine. At any rate, Hooz became extremely possessive; he thought he owned everything. He began to relate in a possessive way to animals and things, not just to people. Hoo and Hoom were shocked that their cousin could lose his human orientation. Hooz’s bride-to-be drank poison rather than enter into a humiliating marriage.”
“Where is Hooz now? Is he dead?”
“No. He was committed to a mental institution in Denver sixty years ago, and there he languishes. The Jespersen Foundation, which manages the tontine, has declared him legally unable to inherit.”
I thought for a moment. With Whence and Hooz out of the running, only Hoo and Hoom were left. No wonder Wanda thought Hoom was trying to kill Hoo.
“What was the nature of the attempt?”
She pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to me. The address was clearly printed: Sum Won Hoo, at the address of his famous mansion. Inside was a single sheet of white paper with a large “W” printed on it in red.
“He received this four days ago and immediately collapsed. We have him in the emergency ward of the Pronoun Resuscitation Institute; his situation is critical. I still have hope because he has been in and out of comas many times before this.”
“Did anyone talk to Hoom about this?”
“No. Hoom disappeared three days ago,” she informed me, “as soon as word of the attack was made known.”
I decided to take on the case. Wanda added that she was Hoo’s sole heir, all the others having died or been mysteriously killed off, and she felt herself in some danger now.
“Do you know who Hoom’s heirs are?”
She paused. “He has only one, just like our clan. His family too has suffered many tragedies. His great-grandson, Will Hoom, is his only living descendant.” She added, “Will and I went to the same college. We both wish the tontine madness would end.” With lowered eyes, she whispered, “Perhaps one day we can end the terrible separation that is causing the competition.”
“Does the W mean anything special to you?”
“No,” she replied. “Unless, of course, it refers to Will, or to my name, Wanda.”
After she left, I went directly to consult with my friend Billy Emerald, lex guard at the Oakland dictionary depot. He had not heard of the tontine, but he knew Hoo and Hoom had been fighting for many years.
“Aha,” he said, “we guards have been watching the battle. Hoom is definitely weaker and seems to be losing. His only strength is in his objectivity; he prides himself on being able to avoid subjectivity in all things. Hoo, on the other hand, accuses him of often being distant from his antecedents, of being a humble follower, even of associating with preppies and following them. It was a scandal twenty years ago. To counter that story, Hoom has endowed a famous prep school and takes great interest in education. Hoo is totally media-oriented, attaching himself closely to celebrities and famous subjects.”
“Where is Hoom’s prep school?”
“It’s called the Spenser Academy and is up in Riverstone.”
“Thanks, Billy.” The trip to Riverstone was short. If Hoom could be found anywhere today, it would be at a fashionable prep school.
The headmaster at Spenser, Mr. Parsing, was a stickler for rules, but he arranged for me to talk with some of the senior students. I walked over to their dormitory, a clean well-lighted place, and knocked on the door of a suite for four. Their names were on plates just under the room number: B. Low, A. Cross, B. Hind, and N. Too. I was told that they were exemplary preps. All four were studying in the living area.
“Has anything unusual happened in the last three days?” I asked.
Silence. Then Low said, “Nothing. We’re studying for midterms now.”
“What about strangers on campus or strange phone calls or deliveries? Any differences in routines?”
Nothing.
My oriental ancestors always said, “Ask the river and the ocean may respond.” I looked at their buttoned-down shirts and took a wild guess. “Who does your laundry?”
They all laughed and said, “Shur Ting, on Main Street. Maybe you’d like to see the fortunes we found in our pockets today?”
They each pulled out small strips of paper like fortune-cookie sayings and presented them to me. They all had the same message: Hold Onto Old Meanings.
“Capital,” I said to myself, “a capital idea.”
I thanked them and hurried down to Main Street. The case was nearing the end.
There in the steaming back room of Shur Ting’s Laundry, I found Hoom, busy putting shirts in packages and tucking adages into the pockets. What better place for a rich old Chinese gentleman to hide than in a Chinese laundry? “You must come with me,” I said, and he came quietly.
The scene in the hospital room was like a scroll painting— the dying patriarch in bed, surrounded by the two young heirs and his equally elderly cousin. On the edge of the group was the private investigator. But I was also the artist who had arranged the tableau.
“Honorable Hoo,” I began, talking to the silent figure in the bed. “Let me assure you that Hoom did not mail you the almost fatal letter. At first I thought it was a W but I soon realized my mistake when I recalled that my ancestors often said, ‘The view from the South is not the same as the view from the North.’ The W was actually an M, and that is the letter you saw. Of course, the M has been the indicator of the major difference between you and your cousin all these years. When you saw the M, you assumed it was from Hoom, who often tried to irritate you. High blood pressure did the rest. But if you had had time to examine the postmark on the letter, you would have discovered it was sent from Colorado. It was Hooz who mailed it, hoping to create dissension.”
Hoo blinked his eyes and smiled like a Buddha. Hoom shuffled, ill at ease in Hoo’s presence.
Wanda spoke. Just as she had started the case, she presented a solution to the whole affair. “Dear great-grand-father,” she began, “may I ask your permission to marry the man I love, Will Hoom, the great-grandson of Hoom? He will ask you officially if you agree. We love each other. Why must the tontine continue? We can bring the families together after all these years. Please give us your blessing.”
The rest is history. In my office the next day I read the announcement on the society page—“W. Hoo to marry W. Hoom.” From now on, I thought, the relationship would be carefully shared, each one relating in his or her special way. The fight was over.
The wedding a few weeks later was lovely; Wanda looked wonderful. I was listed in the guest book as “friend of relatives.”
My palindromic name has made me sensitive to spelling oddities, and, as I was writing up the case in my office, I pondered the significance of certain letters, especially first and last letters. And I thanked my oriental ancestors for giving me an A.
EPISTOLA {Graeme Hirst}
Mr. Koplow’s remarks [IX, 4] on analog and digital are a little misleading. An analog computer is one that represents quantities by physical analogs—for example, the number 5 could be represented by 5 volts or 5 degrees of rotation—and performs computations upon them by physical manipulation of the analogs. A nonlogarithmic slide rule is a simple analog computer that represents quantities by length, and can add two numbers by adding the two lengths to get the analog of their product. (Normal slide rules, of course, represent logarithms of quantities and multiply the quantities by adding the lengths, but the principle is the same.) On the other hand, a digital computer represents a quantity as a set of symbols (in effect, digits) and performs computations upon them by means of symbol-manipulating procedures. The physical realization of the symbols, electronically or otherwise, is irrelevant to the procedures themselves.
Likewise, an analog watch represents time with an analog, namely the rotation of its hands; a digital watch uses symbols. As digital stereo systems start to become common, we may see nondigital records referred to, quite correctly, as analog records: the groove of the record is an analog of the sound wave that is recorded.
A small note about Mr. Urdang’s article is the same issue on word processing and computers: Stupidity and illiteracy are as rife in the computer world as anywhere else. Be assured that many computer professionals are concerned about raising standards. At Brown, courses in writing are required of all students majoring in Computer Science; it’s not a perfect solution, but it helps.
[Graeme Hirst, Brown University]
Baragouins and Penguins: The Celtic Connection
P. Emlyn Stephenson, Swansea, Wales
[Prize Winner, VERBATIM Essay Contest, 1983]
“British English” is something of a misnomer. For the language of Boudicca and Arthur—the language of the Ancient Britons—has contributed surprisingly little to the word-stock of English. The same is true of three descendants of Brythonic Celtic, namely Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Yet small though it is, the Brythonic legacy is none the less real for that. What follows is an exercise in etymological rehabilitation. Goidelic Celtic has been omitted from the writer’s purview since the Irish and Scots contribution has received a relatively full lexicological airing. Budding Gael-diggers are, however, referred to the following: banshee, bog, brat, brogue, caber, carrageen, clan, claymore, dudeen, gab, galore, gob, gombeen, leprechaun, piggin (whose marriage to the Norse wassail is consummated in the pub name, “Pig and Whistle”), plaid, ptarmigan, shamrock, shillelagh, slogan, slug ‘a mouthful,’ smithereens, spalpeen, sporran, tanist, tory, twig ‘to suddenly understand,’ and, of course, whiskey. Those who detect a phoney ring to any of these should note that the Irish word for ring—fáinne—may well be the etymon of phoney, and is unreservedly hailed by Thomas Pyles as “the noblest contribution of Irish to American English.” The derivation of humbug from the Irish uim boig ‘false coin’ would provide a perfect partner, but it is, alas, groundless. With the death of Ned Maddrell in 1974, Manx Gaelic expired as a “mother tongue,” leaving carvel (a native form of carol) as its only English epitaph.
Direct Old English borrowings from Brythonic are of the ground, but extremely thin on it: down, tor, coomb, pool, brock ‘badger,’ and, with Anglo-Latin mediation, peat. Strangely enough, Gaulish, which became extinct shortly after the Roman conquest, has been a far more prolific source of Celtic loanwords. About 180 Gaulish words, largely agricultural, were absorbed into Latin and thence into Old French or its dialects. By the sixteenth century, a number of these had duly found their way into English: inter alia, gravel, car, chariot, lawn, lees, league, crease, marl, skein, sock ‘ploughshare,’ socket, truant, vassal, valet, javelin, arpent, gob ‘lump, mouthful,’ gobbet, and possibly, via the latter duo, job. The hypothesis, subscribed to by Littré, that Druid originates in the Gaulish derw ‘oak’ (a druidic deity, sacrament, or both) is certainly plausible and finds some support in the Welsh spelling derwydd.
By the end of the sixth century, Brythonic had begun to separate out into its three constituent parts. Ass may have entered Old English via the Old Welsh assen. However, the Old Irish asan is also a contender for this honor and, in any case, we are dealing here with an ultimately Indo-European root. The earliest genuinely Welsh borrowing, which appears in the anonymous Cursor Mundi (ca. 1300), is crag, from the Old Welsh creik ‘rock.’ Later in the fourteenth century, bodkin, maggot, flannel, bug, and lubber all make their debuts. Bodkin is probably connected with either the Welsh bidog ‘dagger’ or the synonymous Gaelic biodag. Though it is now customary to endow maggot with a Teutonic provenance, it has also been etymologized as the Middle Welsh maceiad, akin to magiaid ‘worms’ and magu ‘to breed.’ Flannel (originally flanyn or flannen) almost certainly derives from the Welsh (g) wlanen, ultimately gwlân ‘wool.’ Bug has been traced to the Middle Welsh bwg ‘ghost,’ and the eighteenth-century bugaboo finds its parallel in the Welsh bwcibo ‘hobgoblin, scarecrow’ and the Cornish buccaboo. Similarly, the Welsh bygel may have provided the English bogle, which, in turn, became the nineteenth-century bogey. As with maggot, lubber is usually ascribed a Teutonic origin, but Skeat, for one, prefers the Middle Welsh llob ‘a dolt’ or llabbi ‘a stripling.’ Unfortunately, Skeat’s Celtophilia occasionally overreaches itself. His proposal of llob as the source of the verb to lob; his assimilation of dudgeon to the Welsh dygen ‘malice’—though at the time of dudgeon’s debut, dygen meant ‘sadness’; and his attempt to base dandruff on ton drwg ‘bad surface’ are all very interesting but … as the Oxford English Dictionary tactfully puts it, “historically and phonetically baseless.” On firmer ground is coracle, which occurs in Salesbury’s Dictionary in English and Welsh (1547) as the English equivalent of kwrwgyl ‘round boat,’ and the archaeological term cromlech, which is used in Owen’s Pembrokeshire (1603), from the Welsh crom ‘circular’ llech ‘slate.’ Gambrel ‘a stick for supporting carcasses’ also appears at about this time. Probably a loan from Old French, ultimately rooted in the Celtic cam ‘crooked,’ it has also been traced directly to the Welsh cambren ‘swingle-tree.’ Interestingly, cam has, in addition, been posited as the source of the dialectal game or gammy, meaning ‘lame.’ Though this is rejected by the OED on semantic grounds, it should be noted that cam is a common Celtic sobriquet for the lame.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Welsh contribution turns culinary. Flummery ‘a cold oatmeal pudding’ is nothing more than a transliteration of llymru, from the adjective root llymrig ‘harsh, raw.’ The initial “f” is symptomatic of the English phonetic perplexity with the sibilant Welsh “ll.” Shakespeare does, of course, follow the same escape-route by converting Llywelyn into Fluellen. Pikelet ‘a type of crumpet’ originates purely and simply in the Welsh bara ‘bread’ pyglyd ‘pitchy.’ It is interesting that the homonymous pike may well be an Anglo-Saxon borrowing from Insular Celtic, as evidenced by the Welsh pig ‘point’ and the Gaelic pig ‘pike.’
Eisteddfod, which is first used in an English work in 1822, is, of course, a direct loan from Welsh, meaning literally ‘a sitting or meeting.’ From 1822 we traverse more than a century into the world of the royal kennels. Corgi, from cor ‘dwarf’ ci ‘dog,’ is first attested in Welsh in 1342, but its entrée into English had to await royal patronage of the breed in the 1920s. Before we leave Wales we should, perhaps, give a mention to lad and lass. These thirteenth century English entrants have been the source of much speculation and controversy. For lad, one school of thought favors the Irish lath ‘youth, champion.’ Lass is then posited as a contraction of laddess, itself formed from lad. Henry Bradley, on the other hand, suggests that the Middle English ladde coincides with the adjectival form of the past participle of the verb ‘to lead,’ the original meaning thus being ‘one led in the train of a lord.’ The relation of lass to lad he sees as merely coincidental, lass probably deriving independently from the Scandinavian laskw ‘unmarried.’ However, Skeat and his sympathizers understandably plump for the Middle Welsh llawd ‘lad’ and llodes ‘lass.’ Whatever the validity of their argument, it is interesting that a Welsh cognate of llodes—herlodes—is given by Dr. Johnson as the most probable origin of that other thirteenth-century entrant, harlot. Modern etymology does, of course, postulate a link, through Old French, with the Old German hari ‘army’: thus the signification of “camp follower.” Alas, the same Teutonic root almost certainly accounts for harbor, thereby putting paid to George Borrow’s attempt to folk-etymologize that word to the Welsh/Gaelic aber ‘riverine estuary or confluence.’
Perhaps Borrow could have still spoken littorally—and more convincingly—about quay. For although mediated by Old French, it is either of Gaulish origin, or directly from the Old Breton kai ‘fence, enclosure.’ Breton, the descendant of the language spoken by the sixth-century refugees from Wales and Cornwall, understandably boasts but a small legacy in English, and all words have been mediated by French. Mien possibly derives from the Old Breton min ‘beak, snout’ though, like quay, there may be an older Gaulish provenance. Again, tan may have a Gaulish root, or derive from the Breton tann ‘an oak.’ Moving into clearer etymological waters, we encounter the paradox that whilst Frenchmen have consistently dismissed Breton as a worthless baragouin ‘patois, gibberish,’ the origin of that pejorative is undoubtedly Breton. The word has been deployed in French since the late fourteenth century, though its English importation had to wait till 1613. Littré gives two etymologies. Firstly, the exclamation of Breton soldiers on first encountering bara gwenn ‘white bread.’ Secondly, and more cogently, the customary supplication of Breton pilgrims to French innkeepers: bara gwin ‘bread, wine.’ The persistence of the surname Painvin in southeast Brittany provides corroboration for the latter, though the fact that a whole family in Roscoff is cognominated Baragwenn lends some credence to the former. The nineteenth century witnessed the English importation of three more Breton words. Though bijou had, by the time of its English appropriation, developed the extended meaning of ‘trinket,’ it originates in the Breton bizou ‘fingerring,’ from biz ‘finger.’ We conclude with two archaeological terms. Menhir appears in 1840, from the Breton men ‘stone’ hir ‘long.’ Dolmen occurs in Jephson’s Brittany in 1859. Though almost certainly from the Breton taol ‘table’ men ‘stone,’ some authorities prefer the Cornish tolmên ‘hole of stone.’
It is somewhat poignant that if tolmên were, indeed, the genuine etymon, its Anglicization would have postdated the expiry of the Cornish tongue by over eighty years. In 1777, Dolly Pentreath—the last native speaker—was interred at Mousehole cemetery. Even so, Cornish boasts a more substantial lexical epitaph than its longer-living cousin, Manx. As one might expect, the Cornish legacy fully reflects that region’s piscatorial tradition. A cookery book dated 1430 includes the first recorded use of gull in English. The OED favours the Welsh gwylan as source, but W.B. Lockwood argues convincingly for the Middle Cornish gullen, adding that the en was probably dropped because it was still the plural suffix in the southwestern English dialects of the time (the Old Welsh assen probably suffered a similar fate). It is interesting that the French cognate goéland emerged from none other than the Breton gwelan. In all three Celtic languages, the word finds its root in the verb weep. To locate the remaining trio of Cornish loanwords we must sink beneath the waves. Brill, European flatfish, appears in 1481 as a transliteration of the Middle Cornish brŷthel (the intervocalic “th” is silent), from brŷth ‘speckled.’ Wrasse is probably a late seventeenth-century misspelling of the dialectal wraffe, ultimately the Cornish (g)wrâgh ‘old woman.’ Finally, and a century later, the mackerel shark makes its alternative debut as the porbeagle, and, according to the Cornish lexicographer Morton Nance, owes its misleading canine moniker to either the Cornish porgh-bügel ‘swineherd’ or the equally Cornish porth-bügel ‘port herdsman.’
It is, however, on the shores of the New World that the maritime tradition of the Celtic nations has found its most exotic lexical manifestation. In 1568, one hundred men were put ashore by Sir John Hawkins in the Gulf of Mexico. In sworn evidence subsequently published in Peckham’s True Report (1583) and Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations (1589), one of these men—David Ingram—claimed to have walked some two thousand miles along Indian trails to the region that is now Maine. His peregrinations apparently brought him into contact with pillars of gold, elephants, red sheep, and a flightless bird: “exceeding fatte and very delicate meate, they have white heads, and therefore the Countrey Men call them Penguins.” The bird was the now-extinct great auk, which was found in abundance off Newfoundland during the sixteenth century. The name penguin was later, of course, transferred exclusively to its cousin in the southern hemisphere. But it is the unspoken minor premise of Ingram’s “syllogism” that is so exciting, namely that in Welsh pen means ‘head’ and gwyn ‘white.’ But why, one may ask, should the indigenous “Countrey Men” use a Welsh epithet? In the context of Elizabethan proto-imperialism, the answer is quite simple. The Tudors themselves were of Welsh extraction and only too willing to deploy Welsh mythology against rival Hispanic claims to the New World. Thus Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd—an obscure North Walian princeling whose only factual claim to bardic fame had been his nautical bent and eventual disappearance at sea—was euhemerized by Tudor propagandists into the pre-Columbian discoverer of America. And if, as the story went, Madoc had landed in America circa 1170 and had introduced, along with Christianity, the Welsh language, then it was not beyond the bounds of imagination that vestiges of that language should remain enshrined in contemporary Indian speech. Royal patronage of the Madoc myth did, indeed, enable Welsh writers to indulge their imaginations almost without limit. Nahuatl virtually became a Welsh dialect overnight, and Montezuma a descendant of Madoc. Locations as diverse as Curacao (supposedly from the Welsh croeso ‘welcome’) and Cairo (Welsh caer ‘city’) fell prey to what can only be termed a spate of etymological irredentism. Bible-bearing Welsh-speaking Indians were, of course, being spotted everywhere. And, throughout, the Welsh provenance of penguin remained unassailed. Even a relatively sober lexicographer like Johnson is willing to reject Grew’s derivation from the Latin pinguis ‘fat’ in favor of the Welsh claimant, and, as late as 1755, to uncritically accept his predecessors’ chair-bound conviction that the bird possessed a white head. However, the fact that the great auk sported a black head with merely two white patches should not prompt us to throw out the etymological baby with the mythopoeic bathwater. In the first place, bird names are of notoriously uncertain application. One need only refer to albatross, grouse, and pelican. Secondly, one may surmise that the label was originally applied to the snow-capped island on which the auks were first sighted. Indeed, early references to penguin are usually related to the island as well as the bird.
If we discount the possibility of Welsh Indians, we are, of course, left with the question of whether it was a Welsh, as opposed to Cornish or Breton mariner who first coined the neologism. We shall never know; the lexical outcome would, in any case, have been identical. It would be nice to think that it was none other than Davy Jones, that legendary bugaboo whose name might itself be a distant echo of Shonee, the Celtic sea-god. But perhaps that would be to stretch the “suspension of disbelief” beyond the bounds of willingness. And who wants to be accused of flanneling on behalf of baragouins? Only an ass of a lubber!
A Partridge for Christmas
Walter Hayes, Ann Arbor, Michigan
For twenty-eight years, from 1950 to 1978, I had a Partridge every Christmas. No postman was ever so eagerly awaited as the one who would bring this annual reminder that the old gentleman was alive and well and still contributing to the wonder and wisdom of everybody who loved the English language.
Many writers, printers and publishers have celebrated Christmas with special editions, mostly ephemera, for their friends. Cambridge University Press did for some years. Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, gave up sending Christmas cards in 1960 but more than made up for the omission the following year when he wrote: “I have decided I will no longer burden the Christmas mails with expressions of wit and sentiment. Instead of a card, I propose, as the spirit moves me and the occasion warrants, to send a book or keepsake…” In 1961, therefore, his friends received a limited edition of The Trial of Lady Chatterley.
Chicago’s excellent Lakeside Press began to send special editions of the Lakeside Classics to their friends as long ago as 1902 and they are still going strong.
Eric Honeywood Partridge, the great lexicographer of his long day—one of the few fit to look Samuel Johnson in the eye—began his Christmas Partridges in 1927 and, except for one year during the Depression and two or three during the Second World War, continued until 1977, when the usual four-page leaflet printed on heavy white card was replaced by a smaller postcard and an apology. Owing to the cost of printing and envelopes, he explained, “I am regretfully obliged this year and any others left to me, to send you a meagre postcard.”
He could not, however, give up the habit complely, and the following year—which was the last year of his life—he sent another small but more characteristic postcard with some typical comments about his Dictionary of Catch Phrases which “succeeded to a degree that surprised the publishers and ‘more than somewhat’ startled me.” He died on June 1, 1979, at 85 years of age.
His Christmas cards—essays, extracts from books in progress, commentaries on his published work—were a marvelous compendium of insight and autobiography and present a revealing picture of an extraordinary man.
Eric Partridge was born on a sheep farm in New Zealand in 1894. He left school at sixteen to become a trainee teacher in Australia, and won a scholarship to the University of Queensland. He joined the Australian infantry in April 1915 and served in Egypt, Gallipoli, and on the Western Front in France. In 1921 he went to Oxford and worked simultaneously on two degrees. After lecturing at the Universities of London and Manchester, he gave up teaching to become a full-time man of words.
Much as he hated the war—he was never more than a Lance Corporal—he confessed that in his four fighting years he learned more than in the rest of his life, and it was in the blood and mud of Gallipoli that he first divined his future.
In one of his Christmas cards he wrote: “The fighting services have always generated more slang than any other trade or profession; they are, in a sense, closed corporations, vast and human, grave and gay, commendable and reprehensible, marked by a variety of activities and evoking an invincible camaraderie. From all walks of life and from all social, educational, cultural levels, men intermingle, exchange ideas and enrich one another in innumerable and incalculable ways.
In slang and colloquialism and catch phrase they find and form a freemasonry of speech. No school, no university, no civilian trade or profession can begin to equal a fighting service as a beneficent hotbed and an indirect developer of natural and vivid speech. In 1915—1918, I made not a single linguistic note; verbal memory sufficed, mine happening to be fairly good.”
This freemasonry of speech began to enchant a wider audience when he published Songs and Slang of the British Soldier (with John Brophy) in 1930; American Tramp and Underworld Slang (of which he was assistant editor) in 1931; Slang Today and Yesterday in 1933 and A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in 1937.
Partridge went back to war when the Second World conflict broke out and served another four years in the Army and the Royal Air Force. Out of these experiences came A Dictionary of R.A.F. Slang, in 1945, and A Dictionary of Forces Slang, in 1948.
My earlier Christmas cards from him have disappeared, but I remember being astonished by these reminders of his enormous output. Johnson described a writer of dictionaries as a “harmless drudge,” and perhaps it seemed so to him for he was an indolent genius, but Partridge—who never had a full-time assistant—did not make it seem so. He also knew that, like Johnson, he lived by the revenues of literature and he had chosen to develop a branch of that great bank of knowledge which pays small dividends.
The 1961 card, which is the earliest I still possess, again discussed his torrent of work and three new books which had come out that year: The Smaller Slang Dictionary, Adventuring Among Words, and Comic Alphabets. These, he observed, “amount to nothing more imposing than opuscula, one of them a parergon or, as the Anglo-Saxon fanatics would say, a by-work.”
In a piece written about Partridge in 1951 by Edmund Wilson and titled “Eric Partridge The Word King,” Wilson expressed the view that “one cannot help having the feeling that Partridge has been overexpanding”—and it was hard to disagree.
Still, they had much in common. For some years, Partridge had suffered the same anxiety over the deterioration in cultural standards that so concerned Wilson himself. The moral and intellectual disruptions of the war had brought about a deterioration of literature and the arts, and Partridge’s Christmas card for 1966 reflected his anger. It was actually a revised version of an article he had written for The New York Times Book Review, where it appeared on September 18, 1966, and is, I think, the nearest he ever came to invective. It was a trenchant defense of everything he valued and a testimony to everything he stood for.
He called it “The Envious Ones” and tilted his quill against the levelers who feared superiority of mind and spirit. Even worse, they envied it; therefore, they pretended to despise it. Lacking these qualities themselves, they could neither admire them nor see their necessity in other people.
He concluded: “To degrade language is to degrade civilization.”
The title of his 1967 Christmas card was “Tail Wagging the Dog,” and it was an apology for having published no new books that year. There were two new editions of previous works, and he did explain that for the third edition of A Dictionary of the Underworld, British and American he had completed a revision which included a mere 75,000 new words, rather more American than British. He had also revised that small masterpiece, Shakespeare’s Bawdy.
In 1968, he was back to autobiographical reminiscence in a card entitled, “How did you come to write your Dictionary of Slang? Or, indeed, your Usage and Abusage?”
He explained that he was lucky with his parents. Although “only a farmer,” his father knew Greek and Latin and French and spoke very “good” English. He revealed that his father had once quietly condemned him for devoting four years to a subject so “shabby” as slang, and that it took him ten years to admit that “perhaps I hadn’t been so very wrong to do so.” His mother, he added, “always backed me up.”
In 1969, in a card called “Below The Surface,” he praised T. S. Eliot and his friend and fellow finder-of-words, Christopher Fry, for having turned poetry from stylized diction to natural diction, loving the way that Fry was able to impart “an agreeable colloquialism” to his poetic drama, and praising both Kipling and Steinbeck for their ability to render “the technical and difficult, non technical and easy.” He had learned to call a spade a spade and not a bloody shovel in the trenches of World War I, and he remained in love with simplicity and directness in language.
In 1973, Partridge reported at Christmas on perhaps the most popular of his books which he had recently started writing, A Dictionary of Catch Phrases. For this, he read and absorbed source material from the 1530s to the 1970s. He noted with favor Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon and Robert Benchley. “Those Americans,” he wrote, “who feel that Britain is basically ‘hostile’ towards them might more wisely remember that we in Britain and the Dominions have always welcomed and enjoyed American humour.”
The following Christmas produced a further report on Catch Phrases, and I was reminded how few people appreciate the enormous amount of reading that is involved in lexicography.
When he began to write A Dictionary of Catch Phrases in September 1973, Partridge had devoted five years of reading to this project alone and a month or so putting the entries into alphabetical order. His reading included Dickens and Noël Coward, Will Rogers and The New Yorker.
The card of 1975 was a thank-you to all the correspondents and friends who had helped with A Dictionary of Catch Phrases. They came from all over the world. His American correspondents included Professor Harold Shapiro of the University of North Carolina, Norris Davidson, a retired Philadelphia network commentator, and, inevitably a military man, Colonel Albert Moe of the U.S. Marine Corps.
My Christmas card for 1976 contained a handwritten message. For some time I had got into the habit of sending him a bottle of champagne on his birthday, but I could never get out of the habit of calling him “Mr. Partridge.” This gaunt, venerable Colonial could not have been more friendly, but I always addressed him formally. He shook me out of it in typical fashion in his eightieth year. On the card he wrote: “Dear Walter, For heaven’s sake, let’s drop the Mister!! Puts years on me. Eric.”
1977, as I have said, brought the Christmas letter cards to an end and, perhaps because the cards ended, we corresponded more frequently.
He always pretended never to expect the regular champagne. In a note after his eightieth birthday, he wrote: “At about noon today, Fortnum and Mason delivered a long cylindrical mysterious parcel; and when I saw the name on the delivery slip, I said, ‘Well, I’m damned if you haven’t sent me a ‘commemorative!’ And so it was. Now living in the home of friends (my wife’s in a nursing home, 3 yrs, 8 months now), I’ll share the bottle with ‘em this evening. Glad it came to-day, not yesterday; they had ‘laid on’ an attractive evening for me; had been given, by friends, a lunch at the Savile. Bless you. As ever.”
The Savile Club in London, to which he was elected in 1950 and where I was sometimes bidden to dine, was one of his four great places. The other three were desk K1 at the British Museum Library, Lord’s cricket ground, and the Oval cricket ground in London—for cricket in summer was the only thing that could get him away from his books and the only form of holiday I ever knew him to take.
Only his body let him down. The mind was still tickety-boo to the end.
I still think of him often and especially at Christmas. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all lexicographers still strikes me as a splendid toast. Champagne eventually exhausts its bubbles, but Partridge left his behind. There is nevertheless something missing each December, and my ear, I suspect, is less anxious for the postman’s knock. So won’t somebody make all those Partridges into a book? 1984 is his centenary year, and would there by a better way to say Happy Christmas and 100th birthday at the same time?
EPISTOLA {W.N. Smith}
In “Meretricious Words” [VIII, 3] Bryan Garner explained, hooker: ‘one who hooks or entraps, often in a happy manner’; 20th century. Then Frank E. Day [IX, 1] proposed that the usage began during the Civil War when Gen. Hooker allegedly received prostitutes in his quarters. Garland Hicks [IX, 3] suggested that the term referred to camp followers in general, and not specifically the ones allegedly enjoyed by Gen. Hooker personally.
The prostitutes may have been called hookers, but the term predates the Civil war, and Gen. Hooker should not carry the etymological burden. The homographical coincidence of his name and the slang term was undoubtedly the source of coarse humor and the stories related by Day and Hicks.
From the DAE:
Hook (Perhaps influenced by Du. hoek, ‘corner,’ ‘nook.’
A sharp bend in the course of a river or channel {1670—}… 1848 Bartlett 179: This name is given in New York to several angular points in the North and East rivers; as, Corlear’s Hook, Sandy Hook, Powles’s Hook….
The Hook: A district in New York City [situated at the southwest corner of Manhattan island and bounded on the south and west by Corlear’s hook of the East river]… Hooker: 1859 Bartlett 201. A resident of the Hook, i.e. a strumpet, a sailor’s trull. So called from the number of houses of ill-fame frequented by sailors at the Hook (i.e., Corlear’s Hook) in the city of New York…
John Russell Bartlett was a lexicographer, bibliographer, and ethnologist. A Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States was a standard work of reference—1st ed., 1848, New York; 2d ed., 1859, Boston; 3d ed., 1860, Boston; 4th ed., 1877, Boston. He was a contemporary of the John Bartlett who compiled Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Some etymologists accept Bartlett; others are skeptical of colorful etymologies and note that the earliest citation refers to a red-light district in Norfolk, Virginia.
In a letter dated Nov. 18, 1845, written at Edenton, North Carolina, by T. Houghton, a student at the University of North Carolina, he advised a friend that “if he comes by way of Norfolk he will find any number of pretty Hookers, in the Brick row not far from French’s hotel” (Norman Eliason, Tar Heel Talk, Chapel Hill, 1956, pp. 71, 124, 129, 277).
The writer capitalized the word Hookers, which suggests that it is derived from a proper name, the Hook (district); but it isn’t compelling because he also capitalized Brick.
However, if Bartlett was correct, it is certain that the word would have been delivered at once to Norfolk by merchant seaman. Virtually all commercial and personal travel was by water. New York City was the largest city, largest port, and the commercial center of the U. S. Norfolk then had more maritime commerce and shipping than any other town in Virginia and was the port for the northern part of North Carolina.
Also, sailors of the U. S. Navy would have circulated the term. The huge Brooklyn Navy Yard was established on Wallabout Bay in 1824 and was about one half mile south of the Hook. In Bishop Davenport’s Gazetteer, New York, 1842, the entry for Norfolk includes, “The handsome marine hospital is on Washington Point, one mile distant, and a short distance up the river is a large U.S. navy-yard.”
[W.N. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma]
Etymological Overlap: Analogous Derivatives in English
Bryan A. Garner, Austin, Texas
“So now they have made our English tongue a gallimaufry or hodgepodge of all other speeches.”— Edmund Spenser
“I know that some will say it is a mingle tongue. And why not so much the better, taking the best of both and the other?”—Philip Sidney
The etymological potpourri that we know as the English language has unquestionably benefited from the diversity of its sources. In the Renaissance, writers of English freely borrowed foreign words—mostly from Latin, French, and Greek—when they sensed lacunae in our word-stock. Thus William Caxton, who introduced printing into English in 1477, is credited in the Oxford English Dictionary with the first use of abjure, admiration, affability, apparition, calumnious, capacity, contumelious, desperate, factor, ingenious, inhuman, nuptial, quasi, seduce, sumptuous, and turpitude. Other of Caxton’s loanwords have not fared so well: for example, exsidion ‘extirpation’ (a nonce-word), exercite ‘army,’ magistration ‘command’ (also a nonce-word). Sir Thomas Elyot, the great early 16th-century word-borrower, also had his lexical successes (animate, attraction, education, excrement, exterior, frugality, irritate, persist, ruminate) as well as his failures (allective, applicate, assentatour).
Amid the xenophilic inundation of the English lexicon during this period, however, many words were brought into the language not so much to fill gaps as to satisfy particular writers’ penchants for the far-fetched. Our historical dictionaries contain a superabundance of strange and ridiculous formations (many of which appeared only once in the language), coined by fervent neologists with little or no sense of the lexical exigencies of the time.
One such ridiculous word, which surfaced late in the Renaissance, is celeripedian (Latin celer ‘swift’ + ped- ‘foot’), meaning ‘swift footman.’ Henry Cockeram recorded the word in his English Dictionarie of 1623. In fact, Cockeram very likely coined celeripedians, as at least 200 obsolete verbs are known only through that work. Cockeram’s brand of whimsical lexicographic invention (almost an oxymoron) was short-lived, to the credit of subsequent dictionary makers.
Inevitably, as a result of copious borrowing and because of the affinities of Indo-European languages, words composed of analogous etymological elements began to crop up in English. Some of these were calques, or loan-translations, arrived at consciously by analogical agglutination. Thus Dan Michel’s French work Remorse of Conscience was translated anonymously in approximately 1340 under an analogous title: Ayenbite of Inwyt. Dickens, in an essay entitled “The Growth of English Words,” described the calques in Wycliffe’s version of the New Testament:
Sometimes Wycliffe employs a Latin word, as Resurrection, at other times he translates it, the Agen-rysynge (or again-rising); so also the word Except appears as Out-taken, thus, Out-taken women and children, for Except women and children.
Doubtless many etymological equivalents, unlike those in Wycliffe’s writings, arose unconsciously. It is often difficult in a given case to trace whether the Anglo-Saxon analogue was arrived at purposely or inadvertently. The best clues occur where an author uses the Romance term and then glosses it with the Saxon equivalent; some authors actually refer to their neologizing and attempt to rationalize it. In other instances it seems that the affinities of Indo-European languages, in conjunction with rampant borrowing, gave rise to the creation of etymological analogues. It is interesting to note that, whether or not consciously derived, many of these analogues, having coexisted in English for many centuries, retain the same basic meaning, while others have, to varying degrees, been differentiated in meaning. In some instances the connection seems quite remote.
What follows is a small compilation of etymological synonyms in English. One finds that the words composed of the rarer analogues have generally retained similar senses close to root meanings. Those composed of more common morphemes have often strayed from the literal meanings, so that the analogous formations now bear little resemblance to one another.
Whether the etymological synonyms have diverged or remained constant in meaning, it is useful to enhance our awareness of equivalences in English affixes and roots, for we thereby acquire a greater sensitivity to our language, its origins, and its nuances. The list should illustrate a point made by Coleridge more than a hundred fifty years ago:
It may be doubted whether a composite language like the English is not a happier instrument of expression than a homogeneous one like the German. We possess a wonderful richness and variety of modified meanings in our Saxon and Latin quasi-synonyms, which the Germans have not.
In the three columns listed below, such etymological analogues as are attested are matched horizontally, showing derivatives from Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon elements, respectively. It may be worth pointing out that although compound words made up of certain elements of another language exist in English, the “mother tongue” did not necessarily contain the compounded form, i.e., the compounding was done in English or French.
| GREEK | LATIN | ANGLO-SAXON |
|---|---|---|
| prolegomenon | prologue | foreword |
| prophesy | predict | fortell |
| thesis | position | placement |
| enchiridion | manual | handbook |
| prolusion | prelude | foreplay |
| hyperopia | supervision | oversight |
| anomalous/anomic | illegal | unlawful/lawless |
| agnostic | nescient | unknowing |
| anonymous | innominate | unnamed |
| ……. | terra firma | [solid] ground-shaky |
| sarcophagous | carnivorous | meat-eating |
| somatic | corporeal | bodily |
| anthropophagous | hominivorous | man-eating |
| hypogeal | subterranean | underground |
| hypodermic | subcutaneous | ……. |
| epilogue | (postscript) | afterward |
| hypothesis | supposition | ……. |
| metathesis | transposition | ……. |
| synthesis | composition | ……. |
| antithesis | (contra-)(op-)position | ……. |
| ……. | legislator | law-giver |
| metamorphosis | transformation | ……. |
| metaphor | transfer/translate/transport | ……. |
| periphery | circumference | ……. |
| synopsis | conspectus | ……. |
| entomology | insectology | ……. |
| syllable/syllepsis | conception | ……. |
| prodrome | precursor | forerunner |
| ……. | previous | foregone |
| peritomy | circumcision | ……. |
| periscopy | circumspection | ……. |
| anacoluthon | non sequitur | ……. |
| polyglot/pangloss | multilingual | |
| ……. | innocent | hurtless |
| sympathy | compassion | ……. |
| empathetic | impassioned | ……. |
| prognosis/prognostication | prescience | foreknowledge |
| ……. | portable | bearable |
| ……. | fraternity | brotherhood |
| ……. | sorority | sisterhood |
| tele[vision] | [tele]vision | farsightedness |
| eulogy | benediction | ……. |
| morphology | formation | ……. |
| proscenium | ……. | forestage |
| ……. | premonition | forewarning |
| prolepsis | precept | |
| prothesis | proposition | ……. |
| ……. | pospartum | afterbirth |
| ……. | transgress | overstep |
| ……. | superscribe | overwrite |
| ……. | superficial | overdone |
| ……. | incredible | unbelievable |
| ……. | culpable | blameworthy |
| ……. | influx | inflow |
| anthology | florilegium | ……. |
| ……. | superfluity | overflow |
| ……. | preclude | foreclose |
| ……. | presentiment | forefeeling |
| ……. | retraction | drawback |
| ……. | succeed | undergo |
| ……. | substantiate | understand |
| ……. | ingress | instep |
| ……. | induction | lead-in |
| ……. | disinter/exhume | unearth |
| symphony | consonance | ……. |
| ……. | infidelity | faithlessness |
| ……. | excrescence | outgrowth |
| theism | deism | ……. |
| ……. | eruption | outburst |
| ……. | expatriation | outlandishness |
| ……. | duo/duet (etc.) | twosome (etc.) |
| cardiac | cordial | hearty |
| ……. | fugacious | flighty |
| pyrotechnics | ……. | fireworks |
| analphabetic | illiterate | unlettered |
| apocalypse | revelation | ……. |
| diaphanous | transparent | see-through |
| ……. | exonerate | unload/off-load/ |
| ……. | ……. | unburden |
| ……. | inimical | unfriendly |
| ……. | omnipotent | almighty |
| ……. | inevitable | unshunnable |
| ……. | precede/antecede | forego |
| cacophony | dissonance | ……. |
| hysteron proteron | preposterousness | ……. |
| ……. | incogitant | thoughtless |
| ……. | extirpate/deracinate | uproot |
| ……. | homunculus | manikin |
| ……. | contradict | gainsay |
| ……. | infinite | endless |
| ……. | avuncular | uncle-like |
| ……. | mortmain | deadhand |
| cephalgia/cephalalgia | ……. | headache |
| ……. | insulate | island (vb.) |
| polycephalic | ……. | many-headed |
| chirography | ……. | handwriting |
| geophagous | ……. | dirt-eating |
| ……. | depilate | unhair |
| exlex | ……. | outlaw |
| anamnesis | reminiscence | |
| ……. | prelibation | foretaste |
| ……. | expectation | outlook |
| ……. | export | carryout |
| ……. | exclusion | shutout |
| ……. | ejection | outcast |
| ……. | eman(cip)ation | handout |
| ……. | explication | unfolding/foldout |
| ……. | erect | outright |
| ……. | extend | outstretch |
| ……. | eversion | turnout |
| ……. | effusion | outpouring |
| ……. | non obstante | notwithstanding |
| ……. | intercessor | go-between |
| symmetrical | commensurate | ……. |
| symbiotic | convivial | ……. |
| syndrome | concurrence | ……. |
| syngeneic | congenital | ……. |
| ……. | effluvium | outflow |
| ……. | multiplicity | manifold |
| ……. | postcenal/ postprandial | after-dinner |
| ……. | supercilious | highbrow |
| coprophagous | merdivorous | ……. |
| anodyne | painless |
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“The previous weekend, the Green was the site of the Guilford Fireman’s Bizarre.” [From the New Haven (Connecticut) Register, July 21, 1983, page 38. Submitted by Mary-Louise Bean, Guilford, Connecticut, who, as she did not attend, has no idea of what could have been going on.]
English English by Philip Howard
Philip Howard
Earlier this summer The Times of London, God bless her and all who hack in her, carried the following headline on its back page: WHO THE UNIONS WANT. This provoked Mrs. Galina M. Carter of Cambridgeshire to write to us at VERBATIM in grief and anger:
Is there nothing that can be done to stop this erosion of the correct use of ‘who’ and ‘whom’? English is fortunate in having a minimum of cases and genders, and it seems to me that the basic structure of the language should be maintained, even though the language must remain flexible and subject to contemporary change. I find it distressing when a newspaper with the high standards and reputation of The Times allows such slovenly writing and editing. I suppose the fault lies with the schools. But perhaps by publicizing and criticizing we may be able to influence the trend away from such carelessness.
Sorry, Mrs. Carter. We must try to do better. The truth of the matter is that we and the rest of our contemporaries have increasing difficulty with the inflections of our pronouns. There are various reasons for this. One of them, as Mrs. Carter herself points out, is that our schools no longer teach grammar in any systematic way. Indeed a representative of the teacher’s biggest union recently told a Parliamentary select committee that grammar and spelling were trivial subjects and should not be taught in schools.
The Sixties generation of boys came out of school thinking: “I don’t have to wear a necktie; I can grow my hair long; and I can spell how I want.” The girls had similar thoughts appropriate to their gender. These young men and women are now the sub-editors and compositors who produce our newspapers. Consequently there has been a relaxation in the strict rules of old-fashioned style and grammar, causing grief and pain to readers who were born before the Sixties.
A connected reason or consequence of the change in attitudes of the Sixties is that the case-endings of our pronouns are quite rapidly withering away, as the dual case, for example, of Old English faded away nine centuries ago. THE MAN WHO THE UNIONS WANT in the headline still looks illiterate, and should not have appeared in The Times. But, when answering the telephone, today it would sound pedantic and unfriendly to say: “Whom am I Speaking to?” All but the most rigid upholder of Victorian values say: “Who am I speaking to?” (if they don’t say: “Who’s that?”), which can be conveniently smudged into: “Who’m I speaking to?” Only the learned owls of Oxford and Cambridge still hoot “To-who, TO-WHOM” on every occasion when they should use the accusative.
The A-D section of the Yellow Pages of the London Telephone Directory has a full page advertisement in huge print which runs: IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU WANT … BUT YOU DO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. I think that their copywriters would justify the use by saying that who sounds colloquial and matey, whereas whom would sound prissy and magisterial.
An even odder relative confusion substitutes whom where who is correct. This is odd because in general whom is avoided in colloquial registers as being old-fashioned and punctiliously correct. But when some some other words intrude between the nominative relative pronoun who and its verb, it has become conventional to write whom instead of who. For example, it is still correct to write: “Ronald Reagan, who is President.” But it is becoming correct, or at any rate customary and in due course idiomatic, to write and say: “Ronald Reagan, whom he reminded his listeners was President of the United States…!”
I suspect that this peculiarity is didascalogenic (on the analogy of iatrogenic diseases); as in also, for instance, It’s hard on we girls, and the wine-waiter who served my wife and I. We are in a state of uncertainty about the inflections of our pronouns because of uncertainty in the teaching of grammar, and, when put to it, in a panic, we often plump for the wrong inflection.
The aberrant use of whom as a nominative has decent precedents. You remember The Tempest: “Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown’d.” Remember even higher authority, with an interrogative rather than a relative pronoun: “He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?” Of course, both the Greek and the Vulgate of Matthew XVI, 15, have the accusative (and of course infinitive) here, because accusative and infinitive is the Greek and Latin construction for asking an indirect question. No doubt the translators of the Authorized Version, and Wyclif and Tyndale, were influenced by their classical training. Maybe Shakespeare was also (or maybe) writing in a hurry, he was confusing his grammar with another way of putting the phrase: “Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose to be drown’d,” an English accusative and infinitive.
Over here we have increasing confusion about the cases of our pronouns. How is it over there? We still try to get them right in The Times, because our readers were taught grammar, and care for such precision. But in the long run, by the next century, I do not believe that there will be many cases left in our pronouns to trouble the subs and compositors. A pity, would you say? Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Anything that reduces the distinctions of English coarsens its use. But the principal object of language is to communicate meanings precisely. And the gradual loss of the last surviving inflections is not going to impede communication greatly. In the meantime, we shall try to use our pronouns properly in The Times.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dictionary of Newfoundland English
G. M. Story, W.J. Kirwin, and J.D.A. Widdowson eds., (University of Toronto Press, 1982), lxxii + 625pp.
The title of this book begs the question. It is not a dictionary of all the English spoken in Newfoundland; nor is it a dictionary of Newfoundlandisms. It is, broadly speaking, a dictionary of what is distinctive and characteristic of Newfoundland English. It is thus closer in conception to the Dictionary of American English (DAE) than to the Dictionary of Americanisms (DA), while it is closest in scope and format to A Dictionary of Canadianisms (DC). The editors, in fact, approve the DC’s definition of a Canadianism as a “word, expression, or meaning which is native to Canada or which is distinctively characteristic of Canadian usage though not necessarily exclusive to Canada.” They thus enter regionally relevant senses of such general English words as bay, coast, harbour, and alongside such true dialect items as bawn, ‘meadow, expanse of rocks on which salted cod are dried,’ coalies ‘playing-cards,’ hapse ‘hasp,’ and shoreyer ‘American common eider.’
Much of the scope and stature of the dictionary comes from the range of the editors’ sources and their responsible treatment of them. Of their printed sources they say: “Our aim was to read intensively the body of literature devoted to the island of Newfoundland and coastal Labrador from its beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries down to about 1850, and thereafter to read and excerpt more selectively as the volume of material became more extensive” (p. xxi).
Fourteen and a half two-column pages of the Bibliography authenticate material taken from oral sources, found in the field records collected specifically for the dictionary and in a treasure hoard with the engaging name of MUNFLA. This acronym does not represent the sound coming from the nostrils of the dragon guarding the hoard but stands for the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive. This collection, begun in the early 1960s, now contains a formidable array of cards, manuscripts, questionnaires, and tapes, identified when cited in the dictionary by the letters C, M, Q, and T, respectively. Field records are identified by the letter P. The citation of each such item includes a speaker’s or collector’s code and the date of accessioning or recording.
The editors go out of their way to justify their use of oral sources, but it is hard to see why they felt it necessary, for oral sources are an important aspect of traditional Newfoundland culture. Philip Howard’s recent comment just does not apply in this case: “I believe that the criticism of the OED for neglecting spoken English is largely mistaken. It seems that a new word or new use is written down somewhere almost as soon as it is coined” [VERBATIM, IX,3]. That may be true of current English, and it may be true now in St. John’s and Cornerbrook, but it certainly was not true (at least until recently) in “Fogo, Twillingate, Morton’s Harbour, all around the circle.”
The actual treatment of entry words is marked by precision and austerity. Phonetic respellings, for example, given in IPA, are provided “only when there is firm evidence from speech or tape, when the regional stress pattern is distinctive …when the spelling of the headword is misleading… or when the recorded variants are potentially useful for dialectologists” (p. xxix). Pronunciations are, therefore, fewer than seal hairs in a flipper pie. In many cases they are not missed, but not in all. One would like to see them, for example, for babbish, also babbage, babeesh, (‘strips of animal hide’), for which there are two oral citations and for which the DC (under babiche) shows stress on either syllable. On the one hand, the editors may be playing safe in their reluctance to give pronunciations; on the other, they are often leaving the reader in the lurch. (Similarly, but perhaps with better cause, the editors have eschewed the use of using labels, not caring—or daring—to indicate whether words are slang or colloquial, archaic or obsolete.)
Respellings, when given, are part of what is called the headnote. To quote the editors yet again, “The main body of the headnote is taken up with the comparative evidence presented in other pertinent historical and regional dictionaries, lexicons of other languages, and a variety of published works found to be useful” (p. xxix). This procedure is an extension of that used in the Dictionary of Jamaican English (DJE), in which the notes, being less compressed and more discursive, are easier to read and more entertaining. One problem with these comparative references is that they assume the reader has to hand the OED, OEDS, EDD, DAE, DA, DC, DJE, and some other English dictionaries, as well as Dineen’s An Irish-English Dictionary, Joyce’s English As We Speak It in Ireland, and a few other frequently cited references; another is that the use of these same headnotes is expanded whenever the editors decide to give etymological information, which they do sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. Thus livyer ‘a permanent coastal settler,’ after the citing of forms and of occurrences in other dictionaries, is overtly referred to the OED treatment of ier with the direction to compare lovyer, millier (entered as millyer), and shoreyer. On the other hand, the entry for caplain (the fish, merely includes in the comparative references a mention of the Trésor de la langue francaise entry for French capelan (fr Provencal), the accepted etymon.
Basically, the editors do not give etymologies where they are adequately given elsewhere or where there is no firm basis for a derivation. It would, however, be helpful if they indicated, as DFE does, when the etymology of a term is unknown. Words such as bavin ' “splits” used for kindling' or killick ‘a type of anchor,’ for instance, are referred to the OED, so the reader may well look there for an etymology. In each case, however, the OED says the origin is unknown or obscure, though sume suggested sources are given for bavin. The editors scrupulously avoid controversy.
The definitions themselves are clear and concise, and they make good use of references to other entry words. These, set within an entry in small capitals, may be used as defining synonyms or may be preceded by “See,” “See also,” or “Cp.” There is a hierarchy of references implied here, but the precise use and differentiation of these different types of routing signals is nowhere explained.
Phrases and combinations are given as subentries after the Oxford pattern, and one cannot help wishing the editors had followed the more current and predominantly North-American pattern of consistently entering compounds as main entries. As it is, some are and some are not, and some simple entry words exist only as carriers of subentries for combined forms: for example, cropping (for cropping shed and cropping time) stark (for stark-naked tea—no milk or sweetening), and cross (adjective, adverb, and noun, for several combinations each). Yet cross-handed is a separate entry and has cross-handed dory and cross-handed skiff as subentries. Where, then is the reader meant to look?
The citations are, as one would expect, one of the strengths of the dictionary. It seems that the earliest known use of a word is given first, followed by as many other citations as seem useful or justified. The editors are to be congratulated on using, as they say, “a greater number of illustrations than is customary in some historical dictionaries” (p. xxxiii). It is surprising, though, how many entries are supported by one citation only, whether written or spoken. Some entries have no citation at all but only a reference to a source. Thus feck, of which the total entry reads, “feck n A fine goose feather used in oiling the works of a clock. (1027 Christmas Messenger 47)” What is this feck? Has it anything to do with either feck in the OED, with feck as a verb meaning to steal (OEDS), with feckless, or even with fitch? The editors don’t know and so offer no suggestions. As elsewhere, they present what evidence they have and leave the rest of the work and worry to the reader.
Finally, with reference to the presentation of material, mention should be made of the excellent typography. It seems to be modeled on that of the DC, and the same ragged-right margin and even more generous space between entries give each page an open, inviting appearance. One could wish that the OED pattern had been followed in the setting of part-of-speech labels in italics, to distinguish them more clearly from what follows, especially as they are sensibly not followed by a period. It also makes sense to have dispensed with periods after such other abbreviations as comb, phr, cp, and esp. It would, however, have been useful if a clearer typographic break could have been made between a comparative reference or other headnote discussion and an immediately following definition. There are no pictures, but there is a ghastly map that seems more appropriate to students of oceanography than to those of dialectology: it is good on bathymetric contours but does not identify the Avalon Peninsula (mentioned in the Introduction) or any town or city other than St. John’s.
On the whole this book is excellent—a fine scholarly achievement, to be as eagerly welcomed as it has been long awaited. But there are several ways—some minor and some quite significant—in which more help could have been given to the reader.
[Patrick Drysdale, Abingdon, Oxfordshire]
Crossword Puzzle
Across
1. Place a hidden bet on your plant.
5. Remove that attitude from within the State of Delaware.
8. This worker can be a driller after the State of Louisiana.
9. Grow? No, I rush helter-skelter.
11. In truth, look back to a rubber cushion in half the Navy.
13. Reproduce to find a symbol after rhenium.
15. Incongruity: half of Ronald in two-thirds of ivy.
16. Stupefied, ate pi in olive drab. 10 Lordliness? He hugs satin.
18. This pliable fabric cheats relatives.
19. The pie was a pie-eyed victim.
21. Ought, aught, and naught. What’s missing?
23. This vegetable can alternately be a suffering.
25. A musical instrument is hiding in the latest udometer.
26. Estimates tell us there’s a giant among kings.
28. Bicycles definitely designate ages.
29. Herb can logically be removed from allowance.
Down
2. Prohibition is mirrored in the historic “O, grab me.”
3. Pole came with the boat, but, upset, turned to Danish money.
4. Long ago, there was gold in you.
5. Common, yellow, and flowery, but best-dressed in the wild.
6. Sullenly, you tangled with a teepee.
7. Salary could mean tips' end, in uncertain presentation.
8. Affection in a fog could flower.
12. Season it, you’ll hear in time.
14. Related to the buttercup, they adorn monastics.
17. Diminish that idle, confused chatter.
18. A family group is disagreeable with the borders of democracy.
20. The lower part is in opposition to female deer.
22. Ordinarily but excitedly it becomes a Hawiaiian feast in the South.
24. It could be liquor, but is a popular flower.
27. Sesame, retrospectively becomes condensed literature.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“For a month he laid in the berth watching the ships depart through the porthole.” [From The Yukon Breed, by Lee Davis Willoughby. Submitted by Betti Slack, Boulder, Colorado.]