VOL XIII, No 2 [Autumn, 1986]

The True Meaning of Christmas

Richard Lederer, St. Paul’s School Concord, NH 03301

The great English etymologist, Owen Barfield, once wrote that “words may be made to disgorge the past that is bottled up inside of them, as coal and wine when we kindle or drink them yield up their bottled sunshine.” When we uncap the sunshine that is bottled up in the many words that relate to the Christmas season, we discover that the light that streams forth illuminates centuries of human history and customs.

The word Christmas comes from the Old English Cristes maesse, meaning ‘the festival mass of Christ.” Christmas is a fine example of a disguised compound, a word formed from two independent morphemes that have become so closely welded together that their individual identities have been lost. Christmas is the only annual religious holiday to have received official and secular sanction by all of the states. The word holiday is another disguised compound, descending from the Old English haligdaeg ‘holy day.’ With the change in pronunciation has come a change in meaning so that holidays, such as Independence Day and Labor Day, are not necessarily holy.

The name Christ is a translation of the Hebrew word messiah ‘the anointed one,’ rendered through the Greek as Khristos. Jesus also goes back to ancient Hebrew and the name Yeshua (Joshua), which is explained as ‘Jah (or Jahveh, i.e. Jehova) is salvation.’ We learn about Jesus through the gospels. Gospel is yet another disguised compound, from the Old English god ‘good’ and spel ‘news.’ The four gospels spread the “good news” of the life and work of Christ. No surprise then that the four men who wrote the gospels are called evangelists, from the Greek euaggelion, which also means ‘good news.’

The babe was born in Bethlehem, a Hebrew word variously interpreted as meaning ‘house of bread or food,’ ‘house of fighting,’ or ‘house of (the god) Lahamut.’ The Christ child was laid in a manger, a word related to the French verb manger ‘to eat.’ Why? Because Jesus’s crib was a large wooden box that had served as a trough for feeding cattle. We call the worship of the new-born Jesus the Adoration, from the Latin adoratio: ad- ‘to,’ oro- ‘pray’; hence, ‘pray to.’ Among those who came to worship were “wise men …from the East,” magi, the plural of magus, a Latin word for ‘magician.’ Magi were members of an ancient Persian priestly caste of magicians and sorcerers.

In the Christian calendar, the period of preparation for the birth of Christ is called Advent, deriving from the Latin advenire ‘to come toward.’ the word yuletide, as a synonym for the Christmas season, dates back to a heathen and then Christian period of feasting about the time of the winter solstice (December 22). The origin of yule is uncertain. One suggestion is that yule issues from the Gothic giul or hiul, which meant ‘wheel.’ In this context, yule signifies that the sun, like a wheel, has completed its annual revolution. The Gothic ol or oel and the Anglo-Saxon geol, all meaning ‘feast,’ and the Middle English yollen ‘to cry aloud’ have also been considered as sources of yule. Whence the tide in yuletide? From an Old English word meaning ‘time,’ as in Eastertide and “Time and tide wait for no man.”

Among the most intriguing Christmas etymologies are those for Santa Claus and Kriss Kringle. When the Dutch came to the New World, the figure of St. Nicholas, their patron saint, was on the first ship. After the Dutch lost control of New Amsterdam to the English in the seventeenth century, Sinterklaas (a form of St. Nikolaas) gradually became anglicized into Santa Claus and acquired some of the features of the English Father Christmas. Kriss Kringle involves an even more drastic change from one language to another. The Germans and German-speaking Swiss who settled in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century held the custom that the Christ Child, “the Christkindl,” brought gifts for the children on Christmas Eve. When these Pennsylvania German (also known as Pennsylvania Dutch) communities were joined by English-speaking settlers, the Christkindl became Kriss Kringle. By the 1840s, Kriss Kringle had irretrievably taken on the identity of St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus. Slogans like “Put Christ back in Christmas” were coined in an effort to remind people of the holiday’s holy origin.

Of the various plants associated with the Christmas season, the poinsettia possesses the most intriguing history etymologically. A Mexican legend tells of a penniless boy who presented to the Christ Child a beautiful plant with scarlet leaves that resembled the Star of Bethlehem. The Mexicans named the plant Flor de la Noche Buena, ‘Flower of the Holy Night.’ Dr. Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. minister to Mexico, discovered the Christmas flower there in 1828 and brought it to this country, where it was named in his honor in 1836. The poinsettia has become one of the most popular of Christmas plants—and one of the most misspelled (Pointsettia, pointsetta, and poinsetta are all no-nos) words in the English language. Some dictionaries list both poin-set-ee-uh and poin-set-uh as acceptable ways to say the name of the plant, but language guardians much prefer the first pronunciation.

Another botanical Christmas item is the pear tree. In the seasonal song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” have you ever wondered why the true love sends not only a partridge, but an entire pear tree? That’s because in the early French version of the song the suitor proffered only a partridge, which in French is rendered as une pertriz. A 1718 English version combined the two—“a partridge, une pertriz,” which, slightly corrupted, came out sounding like “a partridge in a pear tree.” Through the process known as folk etymology, the partridge has remained proudly perched in a pear tree (une pertriz) ever since.

A Merry Christ Mass and Happy Holy Days to all.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“It means that corporal punishment for student misbehavior is as obsolete as disembowelment for murder used to be.” [From The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 11, 1985. Submitted by Douglas E. Chaffin, Ocean City, New Jersey.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Consent to Medical Treatment by the Mentally Ill.” [Headline in The Lancet, February 9, 1985. Submitted by Dr. Eugene G. Laforet, Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts.]

OBITER DICTA: The Arbuthnot Test

Laurence Urdang

Good old Frank Sullivan, who for many years wrote about Mr. Arbuthnot, the Cliché Expert, in the pages of The New Yorker, must be gazing down (or up) at us with what even for him would be a wry smile: the cliché has come out of the closet (whither any self-respecting English teacher would have it consigned) to emerge as the touchstone of culture in today’s trivia-minded world. During the past year or so there have emerged not only Trivial Pursuit, of which its pursuers—if not its creators—seem to have lost the perception of what is trivial, but TV game shows that give contestants the opportunity to win untrivial amounts of money by filling in the slots in mind-stretching linguistic conundrums like kick the—, bed and—, —under the collar, and Uncle—Cobbleigh and all. To add to the excitement and mind-stretching difficulty of such identification, London Weekend Television recently (January 1986) introduced a new program, Catchphrase, in which contestants are shown a rebus on an outsized, computer-driven television monitor and are required to identify clichés from appropriately obvious pictures. On one such program I watched a young man win £2435 for correctly linking their pictorial representations with the following “catchphrases”: high society; pushing up daisies; get it under control; picking up the pieces; daddy longlegs; pigeon-toed; skeleton in the cupboard; Big Ben; on the other hand; square meal; double-decker sandwich; dog-eared; elbow-room; scuba diving; and lay (!) in bed. I leave it to the reader to conjure up the illustrations associated with these—except the last, which is, of course, a grammatical error and not an opportunity taken by LWT to slip in a bit of pornography.

The question of whether all of the expressions, words, compounds, and so forth can properly be called catchphrases is not very important. What is important is that such a source of noninformation and, taking into account the bored, confused, and utterly stony-faced behaviour of the presenter, who is, in other incarnations, a comedian of some competence, nonentertainment could possibly attract viewers, much less a studio audience. One can scarcely place any blame on the contestants, who, considering the high unemployment statistics in the United Kingdom, ought to take as much as they can: after all, identifying pushing up daisies on national TV for a few hundred pounds in less than thirty minutes is easier than standing in a dole queue.

So-called quiz programs abound on both sides of the Pond. They stretch from the pre-war Information, Please, “moderated” (I think that’s the word) by Clifton Fadiman, litterateur and the sole survivor of the quadrumvirate that included Oscar Levant, John Kieran, and Franklin P. Adams, and the later, very much down-market Dr. I.Q. (“I have a lady in the balcony, Doctor!”), both originally on radio. One would have difficulty classifying You Bet Your Life as a true quiz show: it was little more than an opportunity for Groucho Marx to be funny, but no less entertaining for that. But Groucho’s poser, asked of failed contestants to enable them to leave the studio with a few coins to rub together, “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” seems to have set the standard for the well-informed of today. How is it possible to make people believe that knowledge may be important when a housewife can win $20,000-worth of prizes by correctly guessing the price of a dozen boxes of corn flakes or of a food mixer? At the other extreme are programs like the late, unlamented $64,000 Question (originally, when on radio, in less greedy or inflated days. The $64 Question) and Mastermind (BBC-TV), which seem to attract admirers of the idiot-savant, that is, the individual who knows a great deal about very little. The former met its demise, as most readers will recall, because some of the contestants were fed the answers (or the questions, I forget which) in advance; the latter, a national travelling road-show in Great Britain, where its weekly host is usually a university, allows its contestants to select topics like “Chinese history from 1611 to 1637,” causing the put-upon researchers for the show to devise questions dealing with extraordinary esoterica. This is undoubtedly great fun for the researchers, but unlikely to be informative to the viewers or studio audience, who come away with little more than a feeling of being impressed by one person’s ability to assimilate a collection of facts in the narrow compass of what may be a relatively broad subject. In any event, what is not conveyed by any of these up-market programs is the impression that their participants have any genuine understanding of the information they have often assimilated merely by rote. A typical example of such application of rote memory was Dr. Joyce Brothers’s knowledge of boxing. By her own confession, offered later on, she had no interest in or knowledge of boxing; possessed of a good memory, though, she boned up on the subject and, as a large segment of the American population breathlessly watched (and listened), relieved Jack Barry, producer of the show, of $64,000, which was quite a tidy sum in those days. It was never established whether she was one of those who had been fed the questions in advance, and I imply no conclusions here.

There is the occasional quiz show that is not characterized by overbearing triviality. One that comes to mind is Blockbusters, and ITV show in Britain; a quiz show for teenagers, it isn’t as degradingly bad as the adult shows. But it is more of a guessing game than a true test of knowledge of any profundity: a typical question is “Name an animal, beginning with A, that eats ants and whose name means ‘earth-pig.’ ” There are a few other shows, University Challenge, College Bowl, etc., that are also not so bad, but they are all directed at youngsters and have youngsters as participants.

It is only fair to distinguish between quiz shows, which are supposed to test the knowledge of participants, and game shows, in which the relative skill of participants need not extend beyond their ability to jump in and out of jockey shorts (Y-fronts to you Brits) more than twenty-one times a minute.

The issue to be addressed is not whether even the best kind of quiz show is entertainment, which is for individual taste to decide—the ratings cannot be denied—but whether the trivialization of knowledge on such shows is giving education a bad name. It does this in two ways: the trivial shows lead the public to believe that the assimilation of nonessential knowledge (or of knowledge possessed by every sane inhabitant of the country over the age of 12) should be rewarded. It is patently a disservice to education everywhere to delude people into believing that an ability to identify pushing up daisies from a picture, however crude, of someone, literally, pushing up daisies, is worthy of reward, any more than is inhaling or exhaling. At the up-market end of the quiz-show scale, it is dishonest to offer reward to people, whatever the monetary value of that reward, for having committed to rote memory the names and dates of, say, the presidents and vice presidents of the United States. With no such category implied, a contestant on a recent British TV quiz (Every Second Counts, BBC, February 23rd) was asked to name the regent after Victoria; given several seconds to guess (!), time ran out before she could give the correct response (which she did not know). The guesses were “George V, Edward II, Edward III, Edward IV”; the somewhat wooden “host” of the program, Paul Daniels, finally gave the right answer (reading it from a card) and pointed out that had she not stopped at Edward IV, she would soon have reached the correct answer. It was not apparent that the woman contestant was in any way below average in mentality or education—at least, she didn’t stop at Edward IV because she couldn’t count past IV. One cannot help feeling that an American competitor, asked to name the president following Teddy Roosevelt would have foundered in the same way.

Such facts and facts in general, as such, are not terribly important, perhaps: after all, if you have to know them, they can readily be looked up in dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, or other reference books. Moreover, an anti-education view, prevalent among secondary-school students, is that if you are a car mechanic, plumber, or the owner of a hugely successful fried-chicken franchise, it is completely irrelevant to know who wrote La Traviata or, for that matter, who is buried in Grant’s Tomb. That, though, is a slightly different issue, albeit not entirely unrelated; the point is that the kinds of TV shows discussed here are tantamount to the most insidious propaganda that could be devised to undermine any reasonable notion of what information is and what education is: had the greatest minds in the anti-education camp tried to invent a means for undermining public respect for education, they could probably not have come up with a more dangerously destructive device than the quiz show.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“The Via Dola Rosa, the pathway Jesus trod to his crucifixion…. [From an article in The Gettysburg Times, March 21, 1985. Submitted by Donald Marritz, Biglerville, Pennsylvania.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Dedication and commencement of Ecumenical Stud Groups on the theme ‘Growing Together.’ ” [From a church newsletter, Greater Manchester, England. Submitted by John Ferguson, Birmingham.]

Our Playful Vocabulary

Burt Hochberg, Games Magazine, New York City

In compiling a list of English words that originated in games, but not in sports, I began by trying to separate games from sports to avoid wasting time on irrelevant research. Trying, but not quite succeeding. The more I investigated the matter, the less clearly I understood what it is about a game that makes it not a sport, and vice versa. Even chess, the quintessential game, cannot be definitively categorized. In the Soviet Union, for example, it is considered a sport; can we insist that it is not?

Lacking an unequivocal guideline, I decided that every borderline game/sport that added anything interesting to our vocabulary was, for my limited purpose, a game. Bowling, golf, and croquet are included, though many people consider them sports. Archery, which is not a game anyway, was admirably covered by Peter A. Douglas in VERBATIM [V, 3].

This list does not pretend to be exhaustive—that would have been an unrealistic ambition in view of the large debt that our language owes to games. I have omitted many common expressions because of their obviousness (especially phrases with play and game), others because of their rarity or obscure origins. Many terms that originated in games were listed by Stephen Hirschberg in VERBATIM [XII,3]; they are not repeated here.

The game categories, and the terms within each category, are arranged alphabetically. Terms that apply to no specific game are given in the Miscellaneous category at the end of the list.

Board and Table Games

Atari

This Japanese word, familiar as the name of a leading American home computer manufacturer, is from the game of go, where it signifies a threat to capture one or more of the opponent’s pieces. Like the warning check in chess, it is not spoken during serious play.

back to square one

Back to the starting place. The phrase was popularized—at least in England—by radio broadcasters of cricket matches who hoped to make the game comprehensible by referring to grids which had been printed in newspapers. The broadcasters borrowed the image from a board game (probably snakes and ladders) in which an unlucky dice roll sends a player’s token to the beginning of the track. Hopscotch (q.v.) has been suggested as another possible source.

domino theory

If communism is allowed to take root in one country it will inevitably spread to neighbouring countries. So goes the domino theory, a metaphor based on the parlor trick of standing dominoes on end in such a way that pushing over the first one topples the one behind it, and so on ad Dominum.

endgame

The characteristic final phase of certain games, particularly chess and backgammon; metaphorically, any final phase, such as old age.

Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, etc.

From Monopoly; sometimes used as a wry enumeration of the consequences of bad luck or of a bad move or decision.

Kibitz

The flycatcher (also called lapwing, pewit, and other names) is an insectivorous bird with an irritating cry. Kiebitz, the German word for this fellow, is the source of the German verb kiebitzen ‘to look over the shoulder of a card player.’ The Yiddish version kibitz has several meanings, all of them well established in English: ‘comment while watching a game (typically cards or chess); second-guess; banter, wisecrack, or tease.’

Bowling

Bowling Green

The name of several towns in the U.S., and of a section of lower Manhattan. I do not know about the other towns, but New York’s Bowling Green got its name from the fact that it was a level grassy area (a green) where people bowled.

debut, debutante

The French word but means ‘goal, aim, target’ and also ‘point (in a game).’ Debuter, ‘to make the first play,’ was originally used in old forms of billiards and bowling, and probably other games.

Kingpin

The kingpin (or 1-pin or headpin) is the most important pin in the starting array because its action influences that of all the other pins. The term is used also for a person in the highest position of authority.

Card Games

above-board

Wrote Samuel Johnson: “In open sight; without artifice or trick. A figurative expression, borrowed from gamesters, who, when they put their hands under the table, are changing their cards.”

deal from the bottom of the deck

A form of cheating.

deuce

Generally, two of anything construed as a single unit (such as a $2 bill). In card games where the ace is high, the deuce is the weakest card. In craps an opening roll of deuce (two ones, or “snake eyes”) loses immediately. The unluckiness of deuces may be why deuce came to signify misfortune or evil or the devil himself. (See the OED.) The meaning of deuce to signify a tied score is found only in tennis and table tennis.

discard

Originally (and currently), to play or otherwise divest oneself of a card.

fast shuffle

A method of setting up a stacked deck (q.v.). Generally, any deceptive, underhanded tactic.

finesse

The meaning of finesse as an elegantly tricky or evasive stratagem originated in whist (and was later incorporated into bridge, a descendant of whist), where it is a technical maneuver in the play of the hand.

joker (in the deck)

Anything, as a clause in an agreement, that changes the purpose, effect, or nature of something, often unexpectedly or surreptitiously.

7-Up

One story has it that this brand of soft drink was named for the popular card game seven up (also known as all fours and old sledge). According to another story, 7-Up was so named because it was introduced in a novel seven-ounce bottle and because its maker wanted to exploit the popularity of Bubble-Up, a competing soft drink. A spokeswoman for the Seven-Up Company, in St. Louis, could not confirm either story; the name’s origin, she said, is unknown.

Shoot the moon

In the game of hearts, players lose points for every heart they’re stuck with at the end of the hand. But in the most popular version of the game, a player dealt the right cards can shoot the moon; that is, try to take all the hearts (plus the queen of spades) to earn a bonus. If the attempt fails, of course, the player will end up with a handful of losers. As a metaphor, the phrase means to risk all for the ultimate prize.

singleton

One of anything, as distinct from other things within its group (“a set of twins and a singleton”). The term originated in whist, where it refers to the only card of its suit in a hand, and is in common use in bridge.

stacked deck

A deck the cards of which have been secretly arranged—for example, by a fast shuffle—for the purpose of cheating. The victim (by extension, any victim) has the cards stacked against him, a situation in which he is powerless.

vie

This word, from the Old French envier (whence also envy), once meant, among other things, to ‘place a wager in a game’; specifically, the card game gleek. (See the OED).

Carnival Games

close, but no cigar

Cigars were once prizes in many carnival games.

gimmick

A gimmick, or gaff, is a secret device used to control a dishonest game, such as a wheel of fortune. Its meaning off the lot is ‘any trick, device, or stratagem employed to increase something’s interest or appeal.’

play fast and loose

The old fairground game, fast and loose (sometimes called the strap game), wasn’t exactly dishonest—it merely played on the gullibility of the suckers, as so many carny games do. A strap would be folded in half and rolled up with the two ends on the outside.

A sucker would be invited to bet that he could place a stick in one of the inside loops so that when the two ends of the strap were pulled apart the stick would be caught (“fast”). A sucker being a sucker, the stick was always in the clear (“loose”). To play fast and loose now means to behave in a deceitful or irresponsible manner.

shell game

This old gambling game (earlier known as thimblerig), in which the operator openly places a pea under one of three walnut shells, then rapidly shifts the shells around and challenges a sucker to bet on the location of the pea, has given its name to any kind of chicanery or subterfuge.

Children’s Games

animal, vegetable, or mineral

A phrase used to express doubt that the basic nature or purpose of something has been definitely established. It comes from the word-guessing game Twenty Questions, where the only hint given the guessers is the word’s category—animal, vegetable, or mineral.

blind-man’s buff

Any activity the practitioners of which seem not to know what they are doing. The OED cites figurative uses of the term going back to 1590. In the game, a blindfolded player tries to catch other players who are “buffing” (buffeting; i.e., ‘playfully harassing’) him.

dibs

Dibs, short for dibstones, were animal knucklebones (or pebbles) used in the game of dibstones, also called jackstones or, more usually nowadays, jacks. The meaning of dibs to stake a claim to something (as in “I have dibs on the crossword puzzle”) may or may not be related to that game. The Random House Dictionary says it is, but Wentworth and Flexner, in Dictionary of American Slang, say it comes from divvy, a slang form of divide.

getting warm

From the game Hunt the Thimble (known also by many other names), in which one player hides an object and tells the “hunter” whether he is getting closer to it (“warm”) or farther from it (“cold”).

hide-and-seek (or hide-and-go-seek)

A simple game in which one or more players hide themselves, and others try to find them. Figuratively, to play hide-and-seek is to maneuver evasively.

hopscotch

A rapid series of moves from place to place, literally or figuratively by hopping. Scotch is from an old French word meaning ‘scored line’ or ‘mark.’ In the game hopscotch, a player tosses an object into a numbered grid and then tries to retrieve it while hopping sequentially into every area of the grid on one foot (except the one where the object lies) without stepping on a line or losing his balance.

leapfrog

To advance (ahead of others) by jumping. In the game, players take turns leaping over the bent backs of players in front of them in a continually advancing chain.

musical chairs

In the game of Musical Chairs (known also as Going to Jerusalem), music is played while the players circle two rows of chairs, placed back to back and numbering one fewer than the number of players. The object is not to be left without a seat when the music stops.

Croquet

mall; Pall Mall

Pall Mall, a street in an elegant district of London, owes its name to Charles II’s favorite game, Pallamaglio (an ancestor of Croquet), which used to be played in an alley (now called The Mall) in nearby St. James’s Park. (Pall Mall cigarettes were so named to suggest the upper-crustness associated with that district.) The game got its name from the Italian palla (whence ball) and maglio (‘mallet’). The current mall (a shopping center) is a direct descendant of the alley where Pallamaglio was played.

Dice Games

hazard

This gambling game, a predecessor of craps, gets its name from the Arabic az zahr ‘the die.’

raffle

An old game using three dice; the winner of the stakes was the player who rolled either three like numbers, or the highest triplet if there were others, or the highest pair if there was no triplet. The word came to be used for various kinds of lotteries.

Golf

stymie

Before the rules were changed in 1951, a player could not lift another player’s ball that lay between his own ball and the cup. That situation was called a stymie, and the term came to mean any block or obstruction.

tee off; teed off

To tee off is to begin the play of a hole by driving the ball off the tee. It has several figurative uses: ‘to begin anything; to attack or denounce; to strike hard.’ Teed off, aside from being the past tense of tee off in the above senses, is an adjective meaning ‘annoyed’ or ‘angry.’ The NID3 relates it to the golf term, but other sources think that it an offspring of ticked off (which has been traced to WWI British navy slang) and should be spelled t’d off, or that it is a euphenism for peed off, itself a euphenism for pissed off.

Marbles

knuckle down

marble games are played by shooting marbles with the thumb while the knuckles of the other fingers rest on the playing surface for stability. In games, to knuckle down is ‘to prepare to shoot a marble’ in that way; figuratively, it means ‘to apply oneself seriously.’

Pool and Billiards

carom

An angled rebound. The meaning comes from Billiards, where a carom is a shot in which the cue ball is made to rebound so as to hit two other balls. Carom is a shortening of carambole, an obsolete three-ball game with a similar object. The origin of carambole is the East Indian carambola tree and its fruit, but their connection with the game is obscure. Were the fruits used as balls in a primitive version of the game?

Puzzles

jigsaw puzzle; piece of the puzzle

A common metaphor, especially in detective fiction, used to describe the intricate fitting together of facts or other elements to achieve completeness.

Miscellaneous Games

game not worth the candle

A lost cause. Before the invention of the electric light, it was said that to continue a hopelessly lost game would be to waste the candle used to illuminate it.

handicap

The origin of this word was Hand-in-Cap, an old lottery game in which two players and an umpire put forfeit money in a cap. The umpire then stated the difference in value between two articles that the players offered to exchange with each other. If neither player then put up more money, the umpire took the forfeit stake and the articles were not exchanged. If both players upped their offers, the umpire took the money and the articles were exchanged. If only one player increased his offer, that player won the stakes and there was no exchange.

high jinks

Originally, various tavern games in which patron would be challenged to sing or perform a silly task or drink a quantity of ale (or whatever) on penalty of some forfeit. The tasks and who would do them were sometimes decided by dice. High jinks (often spelled hijinks) now refers generally to any boisterous play.

jeopardy

In Old French, jeu parti meant ‘evenly divided game’; hence, ‘an uncertain outcome.’ In English, jeopardy took on the meaning of ‘danger or risk.’

Iudicrous

From the Latin ludus ‘game, play,’ ludicrous once meant ‘frivolous or characteristic of play.’ The meaning has shifted somewhat to ‘laughable or absurd.’

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“This time she was in the audience; Berlioz, contemporary accounts declare, was at the drums, and every time their eyes met he beat them with re-doubled fury.” [From program notes, City of Birmingham (England) Symphony Orchestra, 14 March 1985. Submitted by John Ferguson, Birmingham.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“It isn’t going to be any one person’s park…I think dogs are wonderful. But they’ve got to be kept on leashes, like everyone else.” [From an interview in the Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1985. Submitted by Pamela Jones, Sepulveda, California.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dictionary of Contemporary American English contrasted with British English

Givi Zviadadze, (Tbilisi University Press, 1981; VEB Verlag Enzyklopadie, Leipzig, 1985), 462pp.

A correspondent of mine in Yugoslavia sent me a copy of the 1981 edition of this book; before I could get round to writing anything about it, I learnt of the 1985 edition and decided to see in what ways it might have been improved or expanded. It arrived in April 1986 and is rather disappointing.

Zviadadze, as can be told by his name, is a Georgian and, as can be told by this book (DCAE), not a native speaker of English. It has always been my view that for the analysis of certain kinds of information, nonnative speakers are far superior, especially because they have the ability to identify language anomalies the native speakers are simply unaware of. However, it is absolutely essential that their analyses be vetted by a knowledgeable native speaker to correct misconceptions and misinterpretations that inevitably creep in if researchers are left to their own devices. From the lack of any acknowledgment in the Preface, it would appear that Zviadadze has relied entirely on his own analyses of the texts that form the corpus of the DCAE, and that is unfortunate.

The sources used, which number about 750 books, articles, and short stories in the bibliography, represent generally a satisfactory, if eclectic, choice. They do not, for example, suffer from the almost propagandistic choices I have seen reflected in other works from behind the iron curtain which tend to ignore all western writings except those of Dickens, Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and a handful of other authors. Yet, there are some curious choices— curious to me because I have never heard of the authors or the works cited and suspect their wide dissemination. I may be displaying a poverty of intelligence, but I have no knowledge of Ludwell Hughes or his Overnight Guest (Midwood Book, 1965), of Doug Harvey or his Abnormal Wench (Merit Book, 1962), of John Ehle or his The Land Breakers (Harper & Row, 1964), or of scores of other writers and their works. There is also, I think, too much emphasis on short stories and, perhaps, on books and stories that employ eye dialect (whence we find “cri(c)k” for creek, for instance).

Owing to the selection, which does not appear to have been checked with someone who might have offered useful advice, we occasionally find what would accurately be classified as American dialecticisms presented as standard (or colloquial, or slang) Americanisms. Owing to the absence of an American editor, we frequently find odd inclusions, like alcometer (which I understand but have not encountered), down one’s alley which sounds like an unidiomatic version of up one’s alley), automobilist (which, surely, is an archaism), beatster (for beatnik), bald as a pig’s knuckle—British English equivalent: bald as a bladder of lard—(for the absent but much more common bald as a coot), and many others. The definition of drug-store is a good one, but that of hardware store somehow missed: “a shop in which various metal-made articles are sold.” No comment is offered on nana for banana (Zola must be spinning), fork out and fork over are given as variants of one another, analyst and analysis are given, without comment, as the American forms for psychoanalyst and psychoanalysis, and air-line is given as the usual form of beeline.

In each case, the British English (BE) equivalent is shown for the American English (AE) entry. This leads to occasional confusion, as there may be no BE equivalent at the same language level as the AE form, as in the case of (AE) shake one’s ass (tail, etc.) and (BE) shake a leg, which is the more common AE form, as well. Sometimes, such faulty parallels are commented on, sometimes not. In most cases, the fault lies in the style of presentation of the information rather than in the descriptive text, which often explains— correctly—what is going on. Zviadadze’s failure to seek guidance has had a particular effect on the listing of slang terms, many of which seem quaint and archaic: without advice, how could the author know that sharpie is somewhat old-fashioned? The citations are all valid, and the lack of evidence from later sources cannot, necessarily, be construed as evidence that a word or expression is no longer frequent. For ‘a man; fellow’ are listed (AE) cat, skate, duck, bugger and (BE) bloke, cove, sod, bod. It is unusual to see bugger classified as American English until one reads the citations, most of which have “little bugger,” which is something entirely different. It is unlikely that any Englishman would put cove, bod, and bloke in the same list with sod.

People should be warned: researchers in any language rely on citational evidence alone at their peril. Using three good citations, namely, “he ran toward the moving cars,” “air hissed under the cars,” and “the brakemen go along the cars to the caboose,” Zviadadze concludes that (AE) the cars = (BE) train. Perhaps the worst plan was to include metaphors and similes, among which we find, listed for AE: sure as cowflops; rain pitchforks, Coke bottles and bananas (or kangaroos, chicken coops, darning needles, hammer handles); cuckoo as a clock; dead as a fried mule; bug’s age, snake’s age (for a ‘long time’); innocent as a starched shirt; naked as a bug, etc.

Native speakers, seeing on the cuff, would expect to find off the cuff; they would wonder at slapjack for flapjack (especially as there is no citation for the former); they might wonder how gal came to be equal in status (albeit slang) with frail and how BE came to adopt judy (same sense) as its own when citations like “This Judy is by no means a rutabage” is available from Damon Runyon (who, unfortunately, is missing from the bibliography). Americans will be surprised to learn that whin is used in AE for furze, and that tippity-bounce (for seesaw) appears outside its small isoglossal boundary in New England.

There is much good material in this book, but it has often been misinterpreted, misrepresented, or mispresented. There are typographical errors, as well: slapjack, already mentioned, may be one; vee-vee for vee-pee (vice president) is another; the heading of the bibliography is “Author’s [sic] Quoted” (which is repeated for 43 pages as a running head); and Sylvia Plath has been relegated to a home canning occupation by calling her book The Ball Jar.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: English Usage

Walter Nash, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), xiii + 167pp.

The dust jacket blurb of this book says, among other things, that it “will be an invaluable text for undergraduate students of English language, and will appeal to all readers interested in the elements of usage and style.” The former statement may be true for those specialized in the study of the English language; the truth of the latter depends entirely on just how much interest those readers have. The book has much merit and delves deeply into matters of style (which, I suppose, cannot really be separated from usage in the most general sense but which differs markedly from it to the mind of the specialist). The best and most readable parts deal with the author’s personal observations on matters of usage; the going gets a bit heavy in the analyses of stylistic nuances of word order, but that comment is directed to the casual observer of language, not to the specialist, who will find Nash’s treatment thorough, cogent, and to the point.

For the layman, there is much useful information and advice: he can simply skip over the penetrating analyses of syntax. The chapter on Punctuation is wise, but it scarcely reflects on the haphazard practices followed in British writing. The chapter on Authorities is sensible, but I was somewhat put off by what I consider to be a rather sparse Bibliography (even though it does contain—and with high praise— Porter Perrin’s Handbook of Current English, probably one of the best books ever done on the subject). Nash’s approach to books like Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage—indeed his whole attitude toward usage books—is descriptive and critical—not so much of the books as of those who consider them bibles.

English Usage is not a usage book in the same sense as a Fowler or a Strunk & White: it is a book about usage. The author properly criticizes the writing styles of some of the purveyors of purity in language, citing passages here and there that would have served their authors as bad examples. Notwithstanding its qualities, at $25 for 157 pages (of text) the book is a bit pricey and may end up in the hands only of those who must pursue their interest in language at any cost.

Laurence Urdang

EPISTOLA {Robert E. Marks}

In your review of Kind Words [XI,4], you remark that the euphemism join the majority (instead of die) will soon be meaningless, “for there will be more people alive on this planet than ever died.” As we economists say, whether this is so is an empirical matter, but lack of data has rarely stopped us from theorizing.

Two simplifying assumptions are that the world population has always been growing at a constant compound rate, and that all people have always lived to the same age (life span). With these, I have proved that, if the doubling time of the world population is less than the life span, then the number of people who have ever died will eventually overtake the number of people alive. Conversely, if the doubling time is greater than the life span, the number of people who have ever died is always less than the number of people alive.

For example, if all people have lived to their biblical span of three score years and ten, and if the world population has always grown at its present doubling time of about 39 years, (corresponding to a compound annual growth rate of 1.78 per cent), then the number of people alive has always been greater than the number of people who have ever died.

Of course, these assumptions are unrealistic, but the model does give us a feel for the relative sizes.

[Robert E. Marks, University of New South Wales]

The Nihongo Religion ¹

Paul V. Axton, Meikei High School, Ibaraki, Japan

To be a Japanese, at the same time that it means being a member of the Japanese race, also means speaking the Japanese language.—Takao Suzuki, Lecture of March 18, 1978, on “Why Teach Nihongo to the Foreigners?”²

The reason Japanese have the same mentality is that they have only one language and the same brain functions. From this point of view, if they lose the Japanese language they are no longer Japanese.— Tadanobu Tsunoda, Nihonjin no No, p. 171.³

For most Japanese the Japanese language is the central ingredient of being Japanese. To be a member of the race means to be able to speak the language, and one cannot speak the language if he’s not of the race. Takao Suzuki has noted, “Foreigners properly ought not to understand the language at all.”⁴ Those that do are intellectually banished as hen na gaijin ‘crack-brained foreigners’ or, in the case of Japanese Koreans, are classified as permanent aliens who must be fingerprinted and registered as if they have a home other than Japan. Japanese children abandoned in China as a result of World War II are now non-Japanese because they don’t speak Japanese. Every few weeks the news shows weeping Japanese being sent back to China having failed to find anyone to sponsor them as Japanese citizens. Petitions and pleading from those who fail have yet to change this official policy. Not even birth can guarantee acceptance into the race. To be Japanese you must speak Japanese, for that is what makes you Japanese.

This regard for the Japanese language dates back to early Shintoism and can be traced to the recent past in the Kokutai No Hongi, a document circulated before the war and banned by the occupation forces. The most recent and well-known spokesman, Tadanobu Tsunoda, has set out to prove scientifically that Japanese is what makes the Japanese people unique.

Tsunoda, a neurophysiological researcher with the credentials of an ear-nose-and-throat specialist, claims the Japanese brain functions have been modified by the Japanese language so that Japanese have maximum use of the left and right hemispheres of their brain. In a meeting of advanced and third-world countries, he says, only the Japanese could really understand both groups: advanced countries would be left-brain dominant; third-world countries would be right-brain dominant; while only Japanese could balance these two and operate equally well out of either hemisphere.⁵ Perhaps it is this data Takao Suzuki had in mind when he wrote, “…the reason why the UN does not now function effectively is because Japanese is not one of its official languages.”⁶ The language enables its speakers to be arbiters of peace. Strangely enough, this special characteristic, which took thousands of years to evolve, is lost with exposure to a second language.

Japanese themselves lose the functional usefulness of the “creative” side of the brain as soon as they begin speaking, reading, writing, or thinking in English. Japanese who feel out of their element in English, including myself, are somehow relieved when they hear the comment, “So many times when a person speaks really good English, he’s also a real drip.”⁷

Tsunoda does not just mean that while speaking English Japanese lose their creativity; he means that learning English will “dry up” one’s creativity entirely. Japanese become “drips” by learning English. His experiments, he claims, show a marked drop in activity in the creative side of the brain of second-generation Japanese living overseas, of Koreans, Indians, Westerners, or, it seems, anyone who is not Japanese.⁸

Tsunoda notes that the height of Japanese creativity was in the 17th to 19th centuries, during the Edo Period when Japan was closed to foreign influence. He claims it was in this period that most all significant cultural and artistic advances were made. The Meiji Period marks the demise of Japanese creativity, which Tsunoda attributes to the opening of Japan and influence from the West. Western thinking produced something of an epidemic of stifled creativity.⁹

This creativity, available only to the Japanese, is owing to the amazing activeness of the “linguistic side” of the Japanese brain. Japanese receive laughing, humming, crying, shouting, and animal noises in the left side of their brain, while Westerners receive these in the right side of the brain. Because of this, Japanese interpret what Westerners call “noise” in a very different and more significant way. These “noises” impart a meaning of linguistic import without words. The sounds of nature speak to Japanese where Westerners can perceive no meaning.¹⁰ Tsunoda first made this discovery at an American dinner party where with everyone jabbering away he noticed instead the “music” of the crickets outside. None of the other guests could perceive the profound beauty of nature’s music but were instead totally occupied by conversation. The Japanese brain allows nature’s sounds to intrude upon language. (The fact that Tsunoda admittedly speaks little English would also seem to affect the profundity of cricket sounds).¹¹

Tsunoda says nature’s music has had such an impact on Japanese that Japanese music is itself a careful duplication of natural sounds. Westerners hear nothing but “noise” from nature and, as a result, Western music sounds artificial. The Japanese must go through special training to appreciate Western music (though they can never appreciate opera, for it taxes the left side of the brain). To contrast the two types of music, Tsunoda says that a bird’s singing will cancel out Western music but will harmonize with Japanese music in the Japanese brain.¹²

Tsunoda claims Japan is a favorite stop for Western musicians because the Japanese have the capacity to listen to music for long periods. Apparently even Western music is perceived in a special linguistic way in the left side of the brain, which is why the Japanese never respond verbally to a concert as that would be like interrupting a conversation. Japanese clap but would never yell like Westerners, who receive music in the right hemisphere of the brain.¹³

Tsunoda explains that the Japanese connect logic to feeling, while Westerners pit logic against nature. Thus the West has produced modern technology and science which do not fit the Japanese regard for human beings as part of nature and their concern to coexist with nature. As a result, Japanese science, like Japanese music, cannot be duplicated by the West. Tsunoda uses the example of a Japanese monkey study to prove his point. Japanese can understand monkeys mentally while still able to view them objectively. This psychological analysis of monkeys is something that only Japanese scientists could accomplish. This is also why the Japanese readily understood and accepted evolution.¹⁴

One drawback to Japanese thinking, according to Tsunoda, is that the left side of the Japanese brain is so busy that it literally wears people out. This explains the two major activities on trains: reading comic books and sleeping. Adult comic books represent a major industry in Japan, which, Tsunoda explains, reflects a special need of Japanese to rest their left brain. Japanese are so good at sleeping on trains, something Tsunoda says Westerners don’t do, because their left brain is continually exhausted. It is also this left brain exhaustion that explains all the salutations in Japanese using “tired.”¹⁵

In the final analysis there is very little about Japanese behavior that Tsunoda does not attempt to explain as being language-related. The Japanese brain functions the way it does because of the Japanese language; these two unique elements came together in the evolution of the race so that all of Japanese culture is, in effect, a product of the language. Tsunoda reaches a crescendo when he claims Western people have cut themselves off from the creative source and that the world’s hope for creative advancement now rests with the Japanese people and their unique culture and language.¹⁶

Tsunoda’s “scientific” discovery of the unique nature of the Japanese language and brain has made him a national celebrity whose theory is known at every level of society. He is taken quite seriously even by the academic community, where university auditoriums full of people soak up his lectures without a snicker. The Japanese media, public, and even significant sections of government have eagerly adopted his ideas. This in itself is a significant insight into Japanese mentality.

The Japanese quest for “self-identity” (Nihonjinron) is a conscious national effort made necessary by World War II. The war constituted not merely a military defeat but total religious and cultural devastation. Of all things Japanese only the language remained, and it is the language that has served to explain Japanese “uniqueness” since. Tsunoda simply provides “scientific” evidence for the recurring answers to the question of identity. The Japanese are unique because their language is unique: Japanese cannot be understood by foreigners because foreigners cannot speak Japanese and “real” Japanese can’t speak English. The Japanese have an elusive, mystical mentality because of the nature and function of the language. Japanese books, magazines, and newspapers are filled with the same kind of statements. It is hard to find even a Western analysis of Japan that has not absorbed the same propaganda.

Roy Andrew Miller likens Tsunoda and his reception to the racism of Nazi Germany, but simple racism does not account for a discrimination that is just as often anti-Japanese as it is non-Japanese. This is true not only of the Japanese abandoned in China but of job applicants educated overseas and of children returning from overseas. In the last case the government has initiated numerous studies looking into the “problem” of overseas children in Japanese schools. That there is a problem goes unquestioned. It is assumed that prolonged foreign influence, especially if it is accompanied by fluency in a foreign language, must be “treated” much as a disease is treated. To those who have worked for a long period with overseas children, this “problem” prognosis seems even more ridiculous. Yet every year educators from all over Japan meet and discuss how to handle these children who have been exposed to foreign influence. Rather than racism this seems to be the reflexive action of a weak ego.

While many foreign influences have been welcomed, a strong linguistic influence in any form appears as a threat to the binding force of being Japanese. Edwin Reischauer has noted there is the fear “that, if many Japanese learned a foreign language too well, this might impair their command of the Japanese language or at least some of their identity as Japanese.”¹⁷ As a result, Japan is intellectually isolated behind its self-imposed linguistic barrier: “… it sometimes appears to be a tongue-tied giant or a sinister outsider on the edges of world society.”¹⁸

In explaining this linguistic barrier, Tsunoda seems to justify its continuation. According to him the Japanese brain is so unique in its functions that it cannot be made to handle English. This uniqueness is not something to be ashamed of but rather is itself evidence of the uniqueness of all things Japanese. There is, of course, no hope to regear the functions of the foreign brain so that it might handle Japanese. As a teacher of Japanese explained it in my presence (in Japanese) the foreigner can never really understand Japanese and even if he can perfectly imitate the sounds of the language he is still only producing sounds of which he has no knowledge. The Japanese-speaking foreigner is viewed as an intruder in the Holy Place, a profaner of the sacred. This exclusiveness of the Nihongo Creed guarantees that the Japanese will remain in their linguistic sanctuary, looking outward at the rest of the world.

Tsunoda’s work might be mistaken as an attempt to fill a gap in the hypothesis of Benjamin Whorf. Whorf, in trying to explain thought categories, relied completely on linguistic observations and did not provide independent evidence about cognition (Lennenberg 1953). Though Tsunoda’s experiments concentrate on cognitive processes he is actually seeking to prove something quite different than the Whorfian hypothesis. Whorf’s theory is built upon the plasticity of the child’s cognitive system. Children exposed to different languages learn different perceptual systems. According to Whorf, language determines perception regardless of race. Tsunoda’s main thesis is that Japanese brain functions are unique and that only Japanese are properly evolved to handle the language in all of its depth and grandeur. For Tsunoda, race and language are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. This not only contradicts Whorf but ignores the past twenty years of development in linguistics. Though Tsunoda’s hypothesis might also be called “linguistic determinism” this would mean something very different from what is commonly meant by the term.

---

Future Precedents and Nontoxic Poisons

Paul Duchon, Laguna Hills, California

We recently acquired a small vacuum cleaner. The assembly directions stated, “Press part A and part B together. When you hear an audible click, you will know they are in place.” I did as directed. I heard the click. It was certainly audible. Then I spent the rest of the evening alternately pulling parts A and B apart and pressing them together, trying to hear an inaudible click.

A few days later a politician said in a televised interview, “The saying ‘the best politician that money can buy’ should become a relic of the past.” His words sent me back to the never-never land of inaudible clicks to look for relics of the future. On a later program another politician talked about past precedents.

Unfortunately, redundancies clutter every avenue of verbal communication. Most of them muddle the message. Yet I love them. I love them as a dermatologist loves pimples. On the page, they flash red lights; spoken, they set off buzzers in my ears. I copy them— along with other verbal litter—onto scraps of paper which I have not yet learned to organize. Many are lost; resupply, however, is good. The people, the press, the air, they are all generous—to a fault. In company, my wife usually senses when I am about to say the wrong thing. If close enough, she nudges me, unobtrusively and usually gently. But after I say it, her nudge, usually not gentle, is no longer a warning. It is too late. Yet you will hear statements like, “I am warning you in advance.” “In advance” is a sick appendix: surgery is indicated. Advertisers continually offer “free gifts.” Since a gift is a free offering, “free gift” translates to “free free offering.” Do not, however, be carried away by propriety. Take the gift, even if it is free free.

More phrases that did not know when to stop:

toxic poison it will recur again he voluntarily signed a note of his own volition: Spoken by an immigration officer. Of course it was uttered in the official monotone and length which denotes objectivity and a dutiful presentation of every detail.

the bottles split and burst the market will take a dive down at least ten years ago or more new innovation returned back let us join together in prayer: I must admit that it is better than to join apart. How much more effective is “Let us join in prayer” or, simple and powerful, “Let us pray.” Let us—for the language.

internationally acclaimed all over the world

I have thrown a boomerang. My friends now collect redundancies for me. That much is good. But they have also developed incredibly sharp ears for the ones I commit. I am beginning to suspect that there is no one to throw the first stone. Why—in varying degrees, of course—are we all so afflicted? Perhaps we work overtime in order to make certain that others understand our brilliant thoughts. Perhaps we fear that if we stop talking we will have to start listening. Perhaps it goes back to those teachers who were more interested in how many pages we filled than in what we said.

But nothing is devoid of grace. Years ago a Milwaukee optometrist displayed a sign that many have since imitated: EYES EXAMINED WHILE YOU WAIT. I must tell my barber about that.

The Rhetoric of Real Estate

John E. Kahn, London

British speakers complacently mock the American penchant for high style in low contexts. American menu-prose is a favorite target:

Ol’ Smokey-burger: puts the ham back in hamburger—a sumptuous half-pound of melt-in-the-mouth char-broiled ground steak from our own prime corn-fed herd, nestled within a gently toasted sesame-spangled bun, topped with a lavish layering of sizzling hickory-smoked ham, and garnished with a generous farm-fresh side salad swathed in our own famed “seventh heaven” dressing. Memorably mouthwatering—a real hamdinger. (A homemade example, this— exaggerated perhaps, but not uncharacteristic if my memory of American diners is anything to go by.)

As one well-known British TV commentator put it, chewing bemusedly on a regulation American burger, “Where has all the flavor gone?—into the menu, it seems.” Only Americans could write that way, the British smugly think—or used to think.

If that ever were true, it certainly is not true now. In trying to emerge from its long and cherished economic complacency and to imitate successful American marketing techniques (well and good), British business is shedding its linguistic complacency too, imitating American copywriting techniques (not so good). It is sad for a speaker of British English to discover that the British are no more resistant to the blandishments of yukspeak, are in the main no more linguistically sophisticated than their “poorly spoken” American cousins. If no one ever loses a buck by underestimating the taste of the public, the same, it now appears, applies to a quid.

The stylistic field I want to survey is that of (real) estate agents, specifically the pen-portraits of London flats in their brochures. Estate-agent code is a familiar joke, of course: conveniently located for local transport facilities = ‘directly overlooking a major railway junction’; offering the purchaser a delightful opportunity to decorate according to his own taste = ‘appallingly sleazy’; would benefit from some minor structural improvements = ‘falling down,’ and so on.

But it is hyperbole rather than euphemism that the estate agent’s copywriter excels at. Here is a typical gush, from a recent brochure:

A stunning first floor apartment located in this unique detached Gothic residence in this most sought after treelined Avenue. Sumptuously appointed throughout this stylish and ingeniously converted apartment features 2 magnificent reception rooms and an absolutely breathtaking roof garden. Only an immediate viewing shall suffice.

All that is missing is a few exclamation marks (and hyphens, and a comma).

A word on estate-agent grammar, or lack of it: If my aunt were a man she’d be my uncle, and if the typical estate-agent copywriter were Randolph Quirk or William Safire he or she would earn a living in some way other than by working for an estate agent. Nevertheless, how indulgent should one be of the following extract?—the first sentence in the first brochure I pick up from the heap in front of me:

Set in one of the areas finest mansion blocks, we offer a well maintained 5th floor apartment in ready to move into condition which includes carpets and curtains.

The missing apostrophe from area’s you might put down to a typing error; the missing hyphens from well-maintained, 5th-floor, and ready-to-move-into you might ascribe to the pandemic mishandling of those simple punctuation marks; the misrelated clause at the beginning and the dubiously related clause at the end are not so easily shrugged off: they are the faults of pretension rather than ignorance, and the illiteracy of pretentiousness is the vulgarest and most reprehensible. Another diverting example of grammatical and stylistic laxity:

…could equally appeal to buyers seeking either a conversion or purpose built flat. Undoubtedly the quite spectacular 41' triple sized reception together with the excellent location are the main features this fine home affords.

Insert the missing hyphens. Omit the equally (or else introduce a second object of appeals to). Insert another a after or for the sake of parallelism in the either-or construction. Change together with to and to make a plural subject and thereby justify the plural verb are. Change features to attractions. And then cross the whole thing out, and start again. (“A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing”— Dr. Johnson.)

It is pointless flaying the grammar of estate-agent prose any further. All of ungrammatical life is there. In general, if you are ever in need of a citation to illustrate some particular grammatical failing (“the locale’s most premier roads”; a due to for an owing to, and so on), you would do well to begin your search by scanning listings from a few London estate agents.

Likewise for lexical confusion—comprises for consists of, quietude for quiet, and so on. In general, estate-agent vocabulary is at once fascinating and depressing. On the one hand, abstraction, lack of imagination, plodding clichés, recourse to routine jargon—feature, situation, facilities, characterful, just a stone’s throw from… “Representing excellent value,” the last-quoted blurb had begun, “a family-sized character-filled apartment…” (my hyphens). On the other hand, purple prose, dramatic clichés, high-flown epithets: “…nestling on the 3rd floor of this pristine mansion block,” the item continues. Both nestling and pristine occur unsettlingly often, pristine sometimes apparently being used in its controversial modern sense of ‘clean and tidy’ rather than in its traditional sense of ‘original and uncorrupted.’

Another commonly misused word is deceptively: in fact, I have never seen it used correctly in an advertisement. Here are just two examples of its faulty use:

The property is semi-detached and late Victorian and forms part of the former Bath House, and is deceptively spacious and interesting inside. [brochure listing]

A small recently built cottage that is located in a deceptively quiet location and has its own private patio garden. [advertisement in The Times]

Used correctly, deceptively in effect negates the adjective or adverb following it (in much the same way that apparently does): a deceptively simple contract is really a complicated contract. There is an idiomatic preference for favorable adjectives (a deceptively simple contract is a far likelier collocation than a deceptively complicated contract): furthermore, advertisers would naturally tend to shun any unfavourable adjective in their listings, regardless of its function. On both counts, the phrases deceptively cramped and dull inside and a deceptively noisy location would be avoided. But what the copywriters should have written, in conveying the contrast between appearance and reality, was not the unintended (though doubtless inadvertently accurate) deceptively spacious and interesting inside and a deceptively quiet location, but something like spacious and interesting inside in spite of first impressions and a surprisingly quiet location.

Another misused word I keep coming across is trendy. In British usage, this has become a subtly pejorative adjective (American dictionaries please note), along the lines of arty— closer in meaning to ‘faddish’ than to ‘fashionable.’ (As a noun, trendy is quite glaringly disparaging.) Nevertheless:

Located only minutes from fashionable Hampstead and Belsize Park with their transport facilities and trendy shops and nightlife, we are pleased to offer this ground floor conversion.

Missing hyphen, misrelated participle, and bathos apart, this sentence founders on the embarrassing misconception of the tone of trendy. One is reminded of the promises of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Robert Mugabe to “crack down on dissidents.” In current English, dissident—whether noun or adjective—is an honorific rather than derogatory term: what governments “crack down on” is subversives, terrorists, and perhaps agitators and counterrevolutionaries. Dissidents, however, like freedom fighters, are “given support by” the people or foreign powers.

Tone-deafness is again exemplified in the following extract:

Beautifully aspected at the rear of this magnificent Edwardian mansion with superb views onto the communal gardens, we offer a pristine first floor luxury conversion oozing with character.

That oozing says more than the copywriter knew, perhaps.

After nestling, the copywriter’s favorite participle for describing a conversion (that is, any of a set of discrete apartments built within a house that was formerly a single home) is hewn:

One of a quartet of stunning new conversions hewn from a quite magnificent Victorian house and finished to a degree of luxury rarely seen.

Carved and sculptured, equally inappropriate, sometimes replace hewn in such contexts, but hewn remains the most popular by virtue of its appealingly archaic ring. Archaism is much in vogue. In an extract quoted earlier, the words “Only an immediate viewing shall suffice” convey a confident authority—presumably. In another advertisement, the declaration “Positioned only seconds from Olde Highgate village” appeals to one’s taste for the picturesque and antique (or makes one’s gorge rise). Perhaps the most frequently used archaism is whilst. It typically indicates either some pseudo-contrast (as though this were an exciting feature of the property) or some actual incongruity in the building (as though this didn’t really matter). First, the “advantagenous” pseudo-contrast:

The accommodation is spacious and is in keeping with the traditional theme whilst being in very good order throughout.

Then, the “trivial” incongruity:

Whilst retaining a fine Victorian facade, the property has a contemporary and somewhat futuristic interior, and is peacefully set in one of the Village’s most historic quarters.

Note, by the way, the non sequitur introduced by the second and here. This spurious and is another hallmark of the exuberant estate-agent copywriter.

Purple prose is especially risible when the copywriters fail to sustain it. A propensity for bathos is the Achilles heel of these novelists manqués. I have quoted one example of this failing, at the discussion of trendy above. Here is another delightful example:

This Edwardian residence was converted 2 years ago and offers the finest accommodation currently available. Offering superb entertaining rooms, a fabulous floodlit rear garden and a parking space.

Finally, three tricks of estate-agent rhetoric: reinforcement through tautology; the camouflaging of confessions; and irrelevant detail.

1. Two examples of redundancy have already been quoted—the equally in

…could equally appeal to buyers seeking either a conversion or purposes built flat

—and located in

A small recently built cottage that is located in a deceptively quiet location.

Consider, as a further example, the emphatic—and otiose—both in the following extract from a brochure (with an excruciating archaism thrown in as a bonus):

In this quiet and idyllic position twixt both Hampstead and Belsize Villages, a huge family sized apartment…

2. The camouflaging of confessions takes various forms. Since the copywriter sometimes has to acknowledge “imperfections” (serious drawbacks) in the property, if only to retain some credibility with the clients, he might as well take the opportunity of displaying his talents. Euphemism has already been mentioned: “Ideal for the DIY [Do-It-Yourself] enthusiast” is a beautiful example I have just noticed in the latest brochure sent to me. Rather subtler is the bland, toneless, apparently offhand mention of the drawback as one incidental factor among many:

The flat features its own balcony off the reception room and requires some cosmetic improvements.

(Again the non-sequitur and.)

The flat has been superbly fitted and includes fitted carpets. Reception 25'6 by 12'9, unusual shaped room. Kitchen 9'6 by 7'2, fully fitted units…

Don’t complain when you discover that the living room is designed on the model of the letter Z, and has concave walls: we did specify that it is an “unusual shaped room.” What, you didn’t notice?

Cleverest of all is to turn the disadvantage to advantage. The best form of defense is attack. Couch a confession in the style of a boast, and the punter will cheer rather than hiss. The most common example, I believe, is the (mandatory) legend on some cigarette advertisements in Britain: “Every packet carries a government health warning.” One’s subliminal response to this phrasing is “Wow!,” as if the wording had been “Every packet carries a free raffle ticket.” Here, from an estate agent’s brochure, is a more sophisticated example:

Benefitting from a sun-kissed west facing garden with direct access from the reception, this interesting conversion with original cornicing and marble fireplace will tempt anyone wishing to put only minor finishing touches in order to create a truly fine home.

(That wishing, rather than willing, is a stroke of genius.)

A common ploy in camouflaging a confession is the substitution of and for though. The word though is in fact taboo in estate-agent prose: never concede openly, is the watchword. So:

The accommodation is in superb decorative order and would ideally suit those seeking additional living space as opposed to a 2nd bedroom.

For and would ideally suit read though it would better suit.

3. And here, lastly, is an example of the irrelevant detail, struck from the flint of the copywriter’s imagination in the heat of his creative frenzy:

Presenting a marvelous facade of immense character, an enchanting Victorian home just halfway between the rolling acres of Hampstead Health and the fine shopping and transport facilities of the High Street.

It’s the rolling acres that slays me. Do they take us for fools, these copywriters? Yes—and presumably, for the most part they’re right.

Antipodean English: In Praise of Creative Error

George L. Turner, University of Adelaide

Not all error is praiseworthy. In an earlier issue of VERBATIM [VI,1], I wrongly identified South Australia’s three-cornered jack with Bathurst burr (genus Xanthium) instead of spiny emex (genus Emex). There is no delight in an error like that. One just wishes it unwritten. But when a child describes two films as “a very clutching film of romance” and “a bloodlusty adventure” there is a kind of manic poesy in the words that creates a delight never imagined by the writer.

So it is with the traditional school “howler.” It releases us momentarily from the strictness of linguistic propriety, in an imaginative Joycean spelling like horrorscope (with its eerie nightmare prognostications) or in the extravagant action of The dog raced down the street emitting excited whelps. Precarious indeed are the lines dividing our meanings. We insist that writing cannot be written writting, or written writen and children take no notice. Serves them right then if we laugh when they produce The American Indians had very few domestic comforts apart from some coarse mating on the floor. I am reminded of an acoustically unsatisfactory staff club in a university where you could hear an echoing version of the conversation at every table but your own. On a blackboard outside it was aptly referred to as Dinning Room.

There are many good arguments for standardized spelling in a society like ours, but the possible misconceptions arising from a dangerous similarity of words is seldom considered. Yet spelling alone may preserve major distinctions. In New Zealand a word borrowed from Maori, where it means ‘house’ or ‘shed’ is whare pronounced in an Anglicized way to rhyme with “sorry,” and now meaning ‘beach house or holiday house.’ The boy who wrote Dad thought Mum looked tired so he hired a whore for the holidays was only following analogy in his spelling.

A class was asked (don’t ask me why) to copy down a sentence Sir Walter Raleigh approached, and, unbonneting, bowed to Queen Elizabeth. In one recension the unfamiliar word appeared as “unbuttoning.” And what teacher’s notes in what context could have led one examinee to coin a word dumbstruck, which another candidate heard as “bumstruck”?

It is very difficult to manufacture a howler (my examples are all genuine). Elizabeth Jolley, in the novel Miss Peabody’s Inheritance, has a school typist produce The copulation in the public schools is increasing at an alarming rat. It seems a little contrived, though I did know a Dutchman who talked of the “Public” Library. I have no prejudice against the Dutch, by the way; it is pure chance that one of the items in my collection of public examination howlers is a creature dragged from the Netherlands.

It is bad luck for a young writer whose words chime differently in an adult mind. American readers can perhaps make something of a quotation “How like a fawning Republican he looks.” Sometimes indeed the adult is responsible for a ludicrous touch which he himself chooses to give to an innocent expression— “Polonius was shot through the arras,” perhaps, or a newspaper headline “Police in dark on two girls.” (Two girls were missing.)

Teachers tempted to swap howlers are sometimes deterred because it appears to be ridiculing students. There is no doubt a danger of that, and yet a good howler is as much a criticism of the language as the student. Sometimes a word (like morale) is too similar to another word for a safety (I would like to be a nurse to cheer up patients with low morals). Sometimes, admittedly, we detect a Daisy Ashford innocence about life: She asked him to marry her. Sebastian kindly accepted the offer. Sometimes no more than memory is at fault and creative skill goes into filling a gap. One’s heart goes out to the student whose memory of a line from Keats went astray and was heroically recovered with only partial loss of face in “Season of fruits and mellow wistfulness.”

Even when grammatical patterns are not standard, an inexperienced writer may show a creative skill or syntactic inventiveness in a sentence like Australia has wild life such as koalas which are trying to be saved by setting up reserves. It is not only the inexperienced who can be caught with a misrelated participle, but the result is seldom as dramatic as the sentence in a schoolboy’s story: The hurricane swept through the town in which I had lived for twenty-five years causing chaos and smashing buildings and factories.

Teachers also can stumble over double meanings. One was showing slides after her return from studying abroad. When she came to pictures of the Roman forum she said, “And here are the statues of the vestal virgins, except some of them that have been knocked off.”

Behind the howler is a sincere desire to communicate. Sometimes it is merely a sense of tone or period that is lacking: (Othello had troubles because he was an ethnic or They went to the Forest of Arden for a different lifestyle). Written language has many pitfalls and we do not always analyze them or help the apprentice to avoid stumbling over them. It is often possible to look at the same passage as a ludicrous gaffe and as a reasonable attempt to definite an unfamiliar thing in a still unfamiliar form of the language. This passage was ridiculed but is not really inaccurate: The poem “Ballad” is a ballad and therefore it has no author. It was written when nobody could read or write, so they used to do it by singing.

Also ridiculed was the contradiction The cannibals lived in the uninhabited jungle. I began to grin myself, but my grin turned a little wry when I recalled mentioning Giles’s 1872 “discovery” of Ayers Rock to my son who works among people to whom Uluru, or Ayers Rock, has been a religious center for about forty thousand years.

Mine Eye May Be Deceiv’d

James C. Felty, Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.
—Thomas Hardy: “The Man He Killed”

Any novice in prosody would be quick to point out that down/crown is a perfect (or true) rhyme, but unless Thomas Hardy’s ex-soldier was speaking with, perhaps, a “Wessex” accent, war/ bar is less than perfect: it is an eye rhyme.

Two words rhyme when their accented vowels and all succeeding sounds are identical. Because of the sometimes bizarre nature of English orthography, words which, to the eye, should not rhyme, to the ear do rhyme: journal/colonel; busy/dizzy; who/Sioux; blubbered/cupboard.

The reverse process is also common: there are many words in English that look as if they should rhyme with one another but do not. These are called eye (or sight) rhymes. (They should be distinguished from the heteronyms previously discussed by Donald Drury in VERBATIM [IX, 3 and X, 1]: heteronyms have different pronounciations but, because of their identical spellings, they would never, strictly speaking, be taken for rhymes.)

Rhyme, in the history of literature, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was not a device which was integral to Greek, Roman, or early Anglo-Saxon poetry. By the time of Chaucer, however, rhyme was well-established. Scholars speculate that its rise to prominence came about through its use in the Catholic Church as a mneonic aid in religious ceremonies.

To historians of the English language, rhyme has proved to be a useful key in determining how words were pronounced at different times and in different places. Thousands of examples could be cited, but this excerpt from Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther (I: 445-447) should suffice:

Without respect they brush’d along the wood, Each in his clan, and, filled with loathsome food, Ask’d no permission to the neighb’ring flood.

Three words which once contained the same vowel sound have, over a period of three hundred years, parted company. Strictly speaking, Dryden’s use of wood/food/flood does not constitute an eye rhyme because at the time that he used these words, they actually did rhyme. If the words were used today in a similar manner, however, they would constitute eye rhymes.

Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner says (II: 53-56):

And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root:
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.

In this instance Coleridge is making use of a genuine eye rhyme.

I suppose that most word lovers are addicted to making lists and notations of curiosities they encounter. Eye rhymes have been a consuming interest of mine for years. I cannot say exactly what precipitated this mania, but I do know the first example which went into my notebook: mint/pint. Dozens of other items have been added to the list since then. I doubt that my list even approaches completion. My teaching and writing duties have never allowed me the time to search an unabridged dictionary in a methodical manner; with such perseverance this list might be several times longer.

The eye rhymes below have been alphabetized from that vowel after which all remaining letters are identical. Most of my items are in pairs, but there are a few triplets and one sextuplet—or septuplet, if I am granted a Scottish pronunciation given in the OED. In many cases I have let one word arbitrarily represent one or more other words. For instance, come/dome could as easily be some/home. Some examples are a touch obscure. Some, depending on the reader’s dialect, can be made to rhyme. And I’m never completely happy when I include a proper noun. On the whole, though, the list illuminates another of those curiosities which make the English language a constant source of wonder.

A

rabot/sabot
games/Thames
gasp/wasp
face/pace (prep.)
ran/wan
bass (voice)/pass
ache/cache
sand(er)/wand(er)
caste/waste
taco/Waco
canes/manes (souls)
fasten/hasten
pad/wad
hanger/manger
chat/what
paddle/waddle
pant/want
latch/watch
bade/wade
canton/wanton
later/water
Hades/shades
car/war
bather/father/lather
baffle/waffle
garble/warble
patio/ratio
raft/waft
card/ward
cattle/wattle
bagged/ragged
garden/warden
mature/nature
ague/vague/Prague
are/care
daughter/laughter
paid/plaid/said
cares/lares
lavage/savage
bake/sake (alcohol)
scarf/wharf
cave (beware)/gave
baked/naked
farm/warm
gavel/navel
balance/valance
barn/warn
haven/raven (prey)
(vā—)
harp/warp
slaver (drool)/waver
hall/shall
marry/starry/quarry
taxes/axes (plural of axis)
mallet/wallet
cart/wart
gallop/wallop
gas/has/was
axis/taxis
callow/wallow
base/rase
quay/say
ally/rally
baseline/vaseline
player/prayer
salve/valve
cash/wash
pays/says
rename/sesame

E

be/re (musical note)
ease/lease
here/there/were
sea/yea
beast/breast
erring/herring
bead/head
beat/great/teat
despite/respite
deaf/leaf
breath/wreath
fetched/wretched
beak/steak
beer/freer
ether/tether
leaked/peaked
height/weight
petty/pretty
(sickly)
demise/premise
brevet/chevet
deal/real (money)
demon/lemon
devil/evil
dean/Sean
lenses/menses
few/Jew/sew
fear/wear
Nepal/sepal
fey/key
beard/heard

I

hi/mi
climber/limber
fir/pir
chic/tic
primer (school-book)/timer
his/this
licked/wicked
list/Christ
die/Brie
imply/simply
distress/mistress
died/Lied (song)
bind/wind (air)
lithe/withe
lien (spleen)/mien
finger/ginger/singer
give/hive
drier/tier
stingy/stringy
shrieve/sieve
mint/pint
onion/Orion

O

go/to
brooch/pooch
fosse/posse
broad/load
food/flood/wood
cost/post
koan/loan
hoof/roof
both/moth
does (verb)/hoes/shoes
cool/wool
bother/mother
door/poor
pouch/touch/mouch
colder/solder
choose/loose
bough/cough/though/through/hiccough/rough/sough (Scot. pronunciation)
golf/wolf
boot/foot
doll/poll
coped/moped (motorbike)
holly/wholly
color/dolor
cord/word
mom/whom
cores/mores
foul/ghoul/soul
Roman/woman
cork/work
could/mould
bomb/comb/tomb
form/worm
pound/wound (injury)
come/dome
lorry/worry
omen/women
gorse/worse
pour/sour/your
don/son
mort/wort
bourse/course
ponder/wonder
forte (music)/torte
mouth/your
bone/done/gone
forth/worth
clover(r)/lover(r)/move(r)/
donkey/monkey
chose/dose/lose
donor/honor
Moses/roses
novel/shovel
cow(er)/low(er)
bowl/fowl

U

hue/rue
cure/sure
fuss/puss
buffet (sideboard)/tuffet
bury/fury
but/put
bused/fused
butch/hutch
rugged/slugged
bush/rush
lumber/plumber
humor/rumor
hunger/plunger

Y

cyan/Ryan

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: A Feminist Dictionary

Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler, (Pandora Press (Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1985), x + 587pp.

Where to begin? With the unpleasant little entry for lexicographer? With the nasty piece on dictionary? with the inaccurate definition of grammar? the somewhat silly entry at language? It is hard to tell. It is, in fact, hard to tell if this is really a dictionary in the usual sense of the word: much of it is a book of quotations (mostly) from the writings of militant feminists. It is universally condemnatory and bitterly sarcastic, a relentless diatribe against men, males, the masculine gender and, particularly, all who are seen to purvey language as the medium of oppression. As an expression (= ‘outpouring’) of propaganada, it is well done; as a dictionary and what we usually mean by that term, it is Biercian—but totally devoid of humor or, indeed, any compensatory qualities to mitigate its viciousness. Were I a woman, perhaps I might not feel so angry with it, but I should probably be made angry by it. As a man, I am irritated by its provocations, which would annoy any man by blaming all men for the injustices women have undoubtedly suffered throughout the ages. Language undergoes semantic change under myriad influences, many of which are poorly understood. If such change can be accelerated by propaganda, I have no objection to that. I object to the notion that change can be legislated.

There are some aspects of this book that are good, some that are bad and, possibly, self-defeating. The worst in the latter category is the continual confusion between lesbianism and feminism—at least insofar as I understand their concepts and practices. Lesbianism has to do with women being sexually involved with other women; I don’t really much care what people do with each other sexually—whether they are men or women—as long as they don’t interfere with the sexual pursuits or inclinations of others. Feminism, as I understand it, is something entirely different, being a matter of moral and civil right; that many who espouse feminism are also lesbians may be unfortunate for The Cause and has given it a somewhat warped perspective and aspect. There are, of course, other aspects to feminism—psychological, linguistic, sociological, etc.—and A Feminist Dictionary treats them all. What is objectionable about it, and what sets it apart from what most people expect from a dictionary or other reference work is its proselytizing, strident tone: the reader gets the feeling that the book is screaming at him.

As for the pronoun of reference (him) in the preceding sentence, it is the epicene one; on the other hand, there may be few women (and no feminists) who would react with the same measure of revulsion as a man to the tone of the book.

Looking at the book from an entirely different point of view—that is, not as a dictionary but as a collection of statements on the many topics it covers—it must be said to be an extremely useful documentation of the views of feminists on those topics, which range from A, abbess, and Abominable Snowmen of Androcratic Academia through an incredible variety of entries that few people are likely to know enough about to look up, to zugassent “Term used by George Noyes Miller (1845-1904) for the male continence program practiced at Oneida, New York, a utopian community in which members regularly analyzed sex roles and discussed their utopian visions of sex and class equality.” Set into a framework provided by the editors/authors, the “definitions” consist almost entirely of quotations, for which a full bibliography is provided (pp. 515-87).

While it is conceivable that someone might look up entries like pronoun (and other language terms), Ms, dike, and some others, it seems less likely that a user might expect to think of or encounter PMZ (“Post menopausal zest.”), quilting, or Grandmother Turtle. Thus, the book may be regarded as a series of short and long items that are to be read as such: it is only a bit peculiar to encounter such matter in alphabetical order. As documentation, A Feminist Dictionary records an enormous amount of information in a relatively small compass. Occasionally, that information is a bit distorted, though it is not easy to tell to what purpose. For example, the entry on Random House Dictionary reads as follows:

Edited by Jess Stein (1967), was financed inhouse by a publishing corporation interested in profit. Though dictionary-making in the U.S. has always been competitive and motivated by economics as well as scholarship, the Random House Dictionary embodies some of the consequences of purely commercial lexicography. (James Sledd 1972)

It is not clear what these comments have to do with feminism or even lexicography. There may be some complimentary and some unkind things to be said about the RHD and its treatment of issues that arouse feminists to militant rage, but they are scarcely worthy of repetition out of the context of the subject at hand. In defense of the RHD it must be acknowledged that, whatever its shortcomings, it has a better reputation and has better withstood the test of time than its critics. There are few other seemingly gratuitous entries in the book, but they are in the minority. All in all, viewed as a social document, A Feminist Dictionary is an outstanding piece of work that collects into one convenient volume the cogent, intelligent comments of feminists alongside the irresponsible ravings of the lunatic fringe, all of which must (apparently) be regarded as representative of feminism. As a dictionary, per se, it is a disaster, but only a minor one.

Laurence Urdang

Hawaij in the Washing Machine

N.C. Nahmound, Jerusalem

Jerusalem is a linguist’s delight. Within the city limits one can find not only all the existing European languages, but also most of those of the Middle East as well. In addition to Amharic and three variations of Persian, on any given day at the Old City souq one can hear Arabic from Iraq, Yemen, and North Africa, like a counterpoint against a background of the local dialect. There is also ‘written,’ or classical Arabic, of course, which is used on the radio but not in workaday conversations in the souqs and casbahs. Its pronounciation, closely adhered to throughout the Middle East, purrs with a grace and rhythm that are conducive to poetry.

The Maghrébi, or North African dialect is a different kettle of fish. Although we Anglo-Saxons refer to all Arabic-speaking countries as the “Middle East,” that is quite a relative view; a resident of, say, Bagdad, looks at North Africa as the western part of the world. The word Maghrébi means western. Maghrébri, now widely spoken in Israel, was introduced by the Jews who came from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria in the early 1950s. Maghrébi has none of the euphonious features of literary Arabic. Like Czech, it is nearly vowelless. It jolts along, rattling teeth and jarring jaws like an intercity bus taking the stones and potholes at 65 mph. Compare:

As-safárjal kan názal l’essúbbak (Literary Arabic)
L’sfŕzl knńtzl l’lsŕzm (Maghrébi)
The quince is falling on the window. (translation)

Nearly vowelless, that is, meaning the aeiou familiar to speakers of English and Spanish. There is one vowel in Magrhébi, however, that seems to occur without fail every time the larynx, pharynx, and epiglottis are exhausted from trying to pronounce a series of five or more consonants. This “last-straw” letter is the ö, a sort of u sound, as impossible to describe as it is to pronounce. Something like it can be heard occasionally in German and Hungarian but never, never in literary or Middle Eastern spoken Arabic. I feel my facial muscles assume most unusual positions as I take a deep breath to get out at least an approximate ö, to the unabashed delight of my conversation partners.

As can be readily imagined, such a state of affairs complicates word identification for the beginner. As phrase after phrase zips by, endings and beginnings of words melt into one another until all that has gotten to you is something like “brdbrdbrdbrd.” When I started plucking a recognizable word here and there out of a sentence in flight, I still had to put it through a mental computer for decoding, a lengthy process which entailed reinstating its vowels. This I did by imagining the word written in Arabic letters on a mental blackboard and chalking in the vowel signs. (Learning languages by ear does not come easy after thirty-five years of learning them by the visual method.)

Jewish Maghrébi Arabic cannot be learned by the visual method anyway, at least not in Israel, since there is no written material on the subject for the beginner. Thorough investigation of the North African shelves at Jerusalem’s Sephardic studies library yielded only three stodgy, erudite volumes, none of them geared to my level. The next stop after leaving this august institution was … the kitchen. Since the motive for undertaking my present project was to be able to participate more fully in activities with neighbors and sisters-in-law, what more natural setting for a housewife’s research? So, whenever I went visiting, I took along a pencil and notebook.

“Esh háda?” [‘What is this?'] I would ask as I helped peel vegetables.

“Khizö, [‘carrots’]; bdlžán [‘eggplant’]; drščúmeh [‘garlic’].” I put down the potato-peeler long enough to scribble my new etymological discoveries. Pretty soon the notebook thickened, and I began to burble intelligible (albeit far from grammatical) sentences on the order of “The farmer threw the cow over the fence, some hay.” These apron-clad linguistic seminars were never boring for either side, it goes without saying; indeed, the hilarity still remains at a constant high, judging by the reactions to an American accent wrapped laboriously around familiar words and expressions.

The highlight of my last such visit to a sister-in-law was the hawáij in the washing machine. In the Yemenite dialect, hawáij is a mixture of spices that goes into soup. To the Moroccans it means clothing, laundry. Thus when I was told that hawáij went into the washing machine with detergent, my immediate reaction was “Wow, that’s going to be an exotic-tasting load of laundry!”

I set up my English-Arabic lexicon by subject, with index tabs headed Family, Shopping, Food, Furniture, Clothing, etc., a collection of the basic topics of conversation indulged in by homemakers everywhere. The verb section of the notebook grew rapidly, too, as bits of conjugations fit together and fell into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

But my word lists are not all serious. In the back of the notebook I keep a little running list of words which appeal to me for various reasons. Some are poetic, others whimsical. Still others just plain tickle the funny bone. Three of my current entries seem to have a rather wintry flavor:

Brrrd means just what it sounds like: ‘cold.’ Akhcčú, on the other hand, is not a sneeze; it means ‘sister.’ Wldkhcčú, one of the prizewinners for uninterrupted consonant strings, means ‘nephew’ (literally, ‘sister’s son’.) Then there is wahdlháza—whatchamacallit.

I believe in memorization, and I make up my own exercises:

L’tŕbia gĺšt al’l’zŕbia.
The baby is sitting on the rug.

I also collect proverbs:

Krd ind umöacute; ajíj ktśr mul gházlah.
‘A monkey in its mother’s eyes is more beautiful than a gazelle.’

Learning a language is not just the ho-hum of conjugations. Words can be as full of historical surprises as a shard in the hand of an archaeologist, and Jewish languages are particularly wealthy in this regard.

Wherever there was a ghetto the Jews were certain to have their own lively lingua franca. Their isolation from the surrounding environment; their Talmudic studies in Hebrew and Aramaic; their peregrinations from one country to another—all these conditions contributed to the creation of interesting and quite internationalized vocabularies. The Jewish Maghrébi dialect, for instance, absorbed many words from the non-Arab tribes that have lived in North Africa from before the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Words like khizö; the pronounciation that makes vocal cords feel like a tangled mass of spaghetti; and the infamous ö, probably all came from that source.

The Spanish Inquisition brought a large wave of new residents to the Jewish quarters of North African cities and towns, and they brought with them words which got stuck permanently in the language: mediásat (medias) ‘stockings’; escuela ‘school’; sueldo ‘money’; sápat (zapatos) ‘shoes’ are common examples.

“Sáfi, sáfi!” exclaims a guest, refusing a second helping. I was surprised when I learned the origin of that one: Ça suffit ‘That’s enough,’ an absorption from the recent French occupation of North Africa.

Since the great influx of North Africans into Israel during the Fifties, Maghrébi has taken on modern Hebrew words. A sister-in-law gestured toward her silent TV set and said “Punch.”

“Some of the programs do make one feel like it, don’t they?” I murmured. Then it dawned on me that she meant puncture, a word introduced into modern Hebrew during the British Mandate. The original meaning was, of course, ‘flat tire,’ finally extended to mean ‘anything that is out of order.’

The last historical development I had noticed (in certain corners of my neighborhood) are some of my own American chickens coming home to roost. By now, our apartment house and the clientéle of Elgrábli’s grocery store are used to hearing certain interjections from my native California: OK, well, hi, bye bye, wow, oh yeah. But the other day I heard a brand new word, or so I thought: cúcusah. This turned out to be the feminine singular form of coocoo, another of my words. A perfect description, I decided, of how I feel after an hour of Maghrébi Arabic.

EPISTOLA {Burt Hochberg}

Stephen Hirschberg’s interesting article on words derived from games [XII, 3] includes the translation of checkmate as ‘the king is dead.’ The source of this chess term, the Persian words shah and mat, are often thus erroneously translated, no doubt because of the existence of mat both in Arabic, where it does mean ‘dead,’ and in Persian, where it means ‘abandoned, helpless, defeated,’ (from Old Persian mandan ‘to remain’). [Persian is an Indo-European language, Arabic a Hamito-Semitic language.—Ed.]

The error stems also from the fact that the Arabs introduced chess to the Western world, and it has been assumed that the Arabs’ language of chess was Arabic. But shah mat was used by Persian chess players long before the Arabs learned the game from them and adopted—without translating into Arabic—the Persian chess terms.

The game itself proves the point: a checkmated king, though under attack and having no means of escape, never actually “dies” (is captured). Moreover, the figurative meanings of to checkmate are ‘to thwart, arrest, stop, block, counter,’ etc.—but not ‘to kill.’

Mr. Hirschberg also includes behind the eightball. In my opinion, this should always be spelled 8-ball because what appears on said ball is the figure “8.”

[Burt Hochberg, New York City]

EPISTOLA {Alan Frank}

As a computerphile, I found Philip Howard’s mention of quinquagrams [XII,2] an obvious challenge. Using Webster’s Second New International, the word stock of which is available on my machine as dictionary of reference, I discovered several sets, as follows:

adlsu: udals, sauld, lauds, duals, Aldus
aeglr: regal, large, glare, ergal, argel
aelrs: seral, reals, laser, earls, arles
aemns: samen, names, manse, enams, amens
aenrs: snare, rasen, nares, earns, Anser
aenst: teans, stane, nates, etnas, antes
agnor: rogan, organ, nagor, groan, argon
eglos: segol, ogles, loges, goels, egols
inors: S-iron, rosin, ornis, noirs, irons

Of particular interest are the second and seventh examples, which do not use plurals. I was also able to find three hexagrams, the second of which is an extension of one of the quinquagrams:

aehnst: thanes, snathe, nathes, hasten, enhats, Athens
agnors: sarong, rogans, organs, nagors, groans, argons
einrst: trines, sinter, retins, niters, insert, estrin

[Alan Frank, Medford, Massachusetts]

Paring Pairs No. 23

The clues are given in items lettered (a-z); the answers are given in the numbered items, which must be matched with each other to solve the clues. In some cases, a numbered item may be used more than once, and some clues may require more than two answer items; but after all of the matchings have been completed, one numbered item will remain unmatched, and that is the correct answer. Our answer is the only acceptable one. The solution will be published in the next issue of VERBATIM.

(a). Privilege to worship as they please.
(b). Skirt the issue of whether the drink’s worth a groat.
(c). Counterfeit coin doesn’t smell right.
(d). Hypochondriac’s favorite drink?
(e). Sailor coils rope on phony featherbed.
(f). Source of pork sausage?
(g). Destiny and the sick poorly celebrated.
(h). Participated in strike against fabric of society.
(i). Official in charge of depravity.
(j). Sailor’s worst way to commit peccadilloes.
(k). Poor finale at the Sabbath.
(l). Holding on till end of story.
(m). Formerly, strolling, sauntering. Now, jogging?
(n). Yielding to feeble hebdomadal necessity occasioned by tiny genuflecting parts.
(o). This rogue knocks the big chive.
(p). They’ve gone off on this fellow who’s been in the sun.
(q). Infantile golfers gum on about this.
(r). An Oxonian decemvirate held together by these?
(s). Pole on which earth rotates rests on turtle, according to myth.
(t). Spain is where it’s at—not Don Carlos.
(u). Legal clause favors eyesight.
(v). Support Mussolini, the fruit—or vegetable?
(w). Bennett Cerf, a Sharply humorous chap.
(x). Loaded deck cannot supply bridge pincers.
(y). A person could die laughing.
(z). According to Beaufort, knocking the H—-out of a hoop skirt is breaking wind in a force 8.

(1). Aces.
(2). Ale.
(3). Bad.
(4). Cent.
(5). City.
(6). Dons.
(7). Down.
(8). Duce.
(9). End.
(10). Fake.
(11). False.
(12). Fart.
(13). Farthing.
(14). Gale.
(15). Feted.
(16). Gaits.
(17). Gent.
(18). Gripping.
(19). Ground.
(20). Hog.
(21). Ill.
(22). In.
(23). Kneed.
(24). Laughter.
(25). Man’s.
(26). Pagan.
(27). Pain.
(28). Pin.
(29). President.
(30). Pro.
(31). Pun.
(32). Rap.
(33). Rein.
(34). Rite.
(35). Sat.
(36). Scallion.
(37). Scent.
(38). Sham.
(39). Sin.
(40). Tale.
(41). Tan.
(42). Tee.
(43). Ten.
(44). Terra.
(45). The.
(46). Thing.
(47). Vice.
(48). Vision.
(49). Weak.
(50). Wee.

Answers for Paring Pairs No. 22

(a). Normally a tasty thirty-two. (44,41) Tooth Sum.
(b). Two-bit gee-gee. (34,25) Quarter Horse.
(c). Twenty-five pesetas here? (30,34) Latin Quarter.
(d). Sherwood Forest potty. (31,27) Little John.
(e). Fred Astaire’s beer hall. (42,36) Tap Room.
(f). Reverse into the boondocks. (3,46) Back Water.
(g). Watch out at the theater! (38,43) Show Time.
(h). Quartette of southern ladies is timely. (22,5) Four Belles.
(i). Desist—unless you’re loaded, Dad. (22,4) Four Bear.
(j). Jason found them periodically strange. (24,7) Harpies Bizarre.
(k). Pitch horseshoes into the mold. (10,26) Cast Iron.
(l). Former publicity man now works for freight company. (19,2) Express Agent.
(m). Down east seamstress in cloaca maxima. (32,37) Main Sewer.
(n). Are quarks, etc., edible? (20,11) Fission Chips.
(o). Nuder area. (9,48) Buffer Zone.
(p). Churchill’s method for removing wrinkles from the draperies. (26,16) Iron Curtain.
(q). Netting a crafty place. (45,8) Tulle Box.
(r). Spartan tatting fiend. (29,18) Lace Demon.
(s). Reach for the skies! (1,39) A Spire.
(t). Get twenty-four sheets of paper. (1,35) A Quire.
(u). Montezuma takes his revenge on Indians, too. (17,6) Delhi Belly.
(v). Monkey’s fist is abhorrent to pacifists. (13,33) Crew’s Missile.
(w). Torturous embroidery. (14,47) Cruel Work.
(x). Choreographed podiatry. (21,47) Foot Work.
(y). Fossil fuel or regal fool? (28,12) King Cole.
(z). Fixed by a Saturday night special. (40,23) Staple Gun.

The correct answer is (15) Curse. The winner was Shirley Bentley, Peoria, Illinois.

EPISTOLA {John M. Balsam}

Re: “Danger! Letter Loose!” [XI,2] and “Patterned Words and Phrases” [XII,3], I saw the following beauts a few years ago on a bulletin board at Radio Station KIXI in Seattle where I was working at the time. It was wire service copy:

Bullstery conditions are refarted in the Midwest.
The Apollo astronauts are now reunited in the shit which will bring them home.

Above the word shit some droll staffer had written “About 2 billion dollars worth.”

Concerning the various shock terms discussed, I heard my mother describe a relative as coming home from World War I shell-shocked, i.e., ‘rendered insane by combat conditions.’

[John M. Balsam, Las Vegas, Nevada]

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Winter: Mitten, tanned hides turning up here and there (12)
10. Have dinner, hiding staff’s blunder (7)
11. Doctor proud to take in United Nations assembly (7)
12. Spring: Sign in hedges, perhaps (10)
13. Times are changing at beginning of season (4)
15. The girl’s back to have a bite—make leftovers (6)
16. Last to supply weapons to ring in time of peace (8)
19. You and I at ends of some movies (8)
20. Embodiment of a Virginia sailor (6)
23. Right and proper intent (4)
25. Summer: Tan acquired by one middle-grade nobleman (10)
27. Plant spine catching in boastful gambler (7)
28. Movie shows doctor with patient’s heart and blood vessel (5-2)
29. Autumn: Hike around a boulder for trick (4,1, 4,3)

Down

2. Street vendor in northeast Leewards assaulted (10)
3. Strive to accommodate a piano master (6)
4. Peddler’s boat filling a yard and more (8)
5. Gave lessons in speech and tense (4)
6. Cherry that is up and down (5)
7. Composed for share of fifty pestas (7)
8. I get high, maintaining top of blood pressure reading (6)
9. Drunk’s hallucinations around bumpy dry times (8)
14. Deterrence of poverty’s beginning? No, it never comes up (10)
17. Infuriated by part of Sardou tragedy (8)
18. Large snake—what’s more, one wrapping a prisoner (8)
19. Waiter scattered bit of poison for bug (7)
21. Fat Pole holding up lunatic (6)
22. Stop strike getting old (4,2)
24. Board train after bad review (5)
26. Pop star’s beginning to raise ruckus (4)

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. AMBIVERT (anag.).
5. RIAL-TO (LAIR rev.).
10. LACERATES.
11. S-AGES.
12. VINY-L
13. ABORIGINE (anag.).
14. RAMPANT.
17. EL(LIP)SE.
18. FISSURE (homophone).
20. M(I-DYE)AR.
22. LA-AUNDRESS.
23. PU-MA’S (UP rev.)
25. OF-TEN.
26. G-REENGAGE.
27. SESTET (anag.).
28. I(DEAL-IS)T.

Down

1. ALL OVER (hidden.).
2. BA(CO)N.
3. VI(R)AL
4. RETRACT (CARTER rev.).
6. INSTILLED (anag.)
7. LAGNIAPPE (anag.).
8. OB-SCENE (BO rev.).
9. ASH-ORE.
15. MOS(QUITO)S.
16. A-BUNDANCE
18. F(EL)LOWS
19. EMERGE (hidden).
20. M(ISLE)AD.
21. RESPECT (anag.).
23. P(AND)A.
24. MIAM-I (MIAM rev.).

Internet Archive copy of this issue

---

1. Nihongo is the Japanese word for the Japanese language. Credit for this title goes to Takao Suzuki who first proposed making the language a religion. ↩︎

2. Cited in Roy Andrew Miller, Japan’s Modern Myth, New York & Tokyo: John Weatherhill, Inc., 1982. p. 144. ↩︎

3. I would like to thank Saori Amagasaki for translating and helping me understand Tsunoda’s Nihonjin no No. ↩︎

4. Takao Suzuki, Tozasareta Gengo-Nihongo no Sekai, Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1975. pp. 176-177, cited in Miller, p. 157. ↩︎

5. Tadanobu Tsunoda, Nihonjin no No, Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten, 1978. pp. 170-172. ↩︎

6. Takao Suzuki, Lecture of March 18, 1978, cited in Miller, p. 289. ↩︎

7. Tsunoda, The Japan Foundation Newsletter, April-May, 1978, cited in Miller, p. 76. ↩︎

8. Tsunoda, Nihonjin no No. pp. 170-172. ↩︎

9. Ibid. pp. 360-361. ↩︎

10. Ibid. pp. 90-95. ↩︎

11. Tsunoda, Lecture of November 9, 1984, at Tsukuba University. ↩︎

12. Tsunoda, Nihonjin no No. pp. 90-95. ↩︎

13. Ibid. ↩︎

14. Ibid. pp. 362-363. ↩︎

15. Ibid. pp. 98-99. ↩︎

16. Ibid. p. 378. ↩︎

17. Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1977. p. 398. ↩︎

18. Ibid. ↩︎