VOL XIV, No 2 [Autumn, 1987]

Sinister Dexterity 1

Karl F. Heumann and Hans H. Wellisch

Right. adj. 1. Straight… 6. Of actions, conduct, etc.: in accordance of what is just or good… 7…. correct, proper. Also, agreeing with facts, true. 8. Fitting, proper, appropriate. 10. Right side: that side of anything which is regarded as the principal… 18. The distinctive epithet of the hand normally the stronger; by extension also of that side of the body, its limbs, their clothing, etc….

Left. adj. 1. The distinctive epithet of the hand which is normally the weaker of the two … 2…. implying inefficiency of performance.

Oxford English Dictionary

A droitly as we try to avoid being gauche, we may be left with an outright sense of loss of directions. The OED’s definitions of right and left in their directional sense seem to us today to be curiously biased; they are almost oblivious to the fact that congenital lefthandedness is far more common than was perhaps thought in Victorian times when the formidable James Murray and his staff wrote their definitions. Other dictionary makers down to our own times have, however, followed in the footsteps of the OED, and define left and right not just as terms for opposite directions (derived from the terms for the two sides of our bodies), but right with the additional meaning of ‘correct, proper, just’ and similar concepts; left, on the other hand, has the connotations of ‘awkard, improper, unlucky,’ and even ‘ominous.’ During most of recorded history, people have clung to the belief that the left side is inferior to the right one. Muslims are even exhorted never to extend the left hand for greeting because it is considered unclean (being used for purposes of personal hygiene).

From a purely scientific point of view there is of course nothing to indicate that either side of a (more-or-less) symmetrical body in nature is the better or more favorable one, and one of the earliest refutations of such superstitious beliefs appeared, not unexpectedly, during the Enlightenment, though it was not at first based on pure reason but on a theological argument. Leibniz observed that God could have chosen to create either right or left first. As a mathematician, he was naturally concerned with symmetry (the two sides of an equation must have the same value). Another famous and more recent mathematician, Herman Weyl, in quoting him, said that “Scientific thinking sides with Leibniz. Mythical thinking has always taken the contrary view, as is evinced by its usage of right and left as symbols for such polar opposites as good and evil. You need only think of the double meaning of the word right itself.”

Yet, in another branch of science, namely in stereochemistry, the leftward direction does seem to indicate properties that are unfavorable (at least from the point of view of human beings and other higher animals), in that many levo- compounds are the active or benign forms of an organic compound, while the dextro- forms are inactive or toxic. The exact opposite also occurs, however, thus apparently confirming the general scientific view of nature not distinguishing between left and right, up or down, inside or out. That was also the accepted view of all physicists, expressed in the axiom of the Conservation of Parity, until about some 30 years ago, when two physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, discovered that some nuclear particles can and do “discern” as it were, between left and right, and that they have a distinct preference for the leftward turn. As so often is the case, the subatomic world is mirrored on the cosmic scale: astronomers have found that a very much larger number of galaxies spin leftward rather than in a clockwise direction.

The ambivalence of beliefs, whether mythical or scientific, on left and right is aptly reflected in the terms used for the two directions in the world’s languages, as a glance at the accompanying Table shows. This Table shows the major families of languages with their principal members and their terms for left, right (direction) and right (as a synonym for, ‘correct, proper’). Practically all languages have several terms for the latter concept. If that is the case and one of them denotes also the right side, that term was chosen for the ‘right’ = ‘correct’ column. The use of the same word for the right-hand side and for ‘correct, true,’ and related concepts is by no means a linguistic universal, and does not hold true even for languages which belong to the same family or branch. Thus, all Germanic languages use the same Indo-European (IE) root1 reg for the derivation of words indicating ‘correct, proper,’ and the Latin word for ‘king,’ rex, is also formed from the same root (hence, the notion of the divine right of kings, and the legal principle “the king can do no wrong”). That root is, however, not used in the three Scandinavian languages for the right side of the body, nor are their words for ‘left’ related to those used in English, German, or Dutch.

In the Romance languages, Latin dexter is at the root of all words for the right side, and the words for ‘correct’ are all derived from the same IE root as their German counterparts. But some interesting developments have taken place regarding the words for the left side: the Latin sinister originally meant ‘left’ and also ‘favorable’; only later on, under Greek influence, did the word come to mean the exact opposite, ‘unfavorable,’ and the left side or the left hand were considered to be those to be avoided lest something unlucky or untoward might happen. Pliny used the word sinisteritas in the sense of ‘awkward behavior’ as opposed to dexteritas which meant to the Romans exactly what its modern English form means to us. In French, senestre was in use until about the 15th century, when all of a sudden gauche became the word for ‘left’; yet even the most modern and comprehensive French dictionary cannot trace its etymology to a definite source, which is shrouded in the mists of the distant past: it probably had something to do with being askew or turning aside. In Spanish, sinies-tro was used until the 12th century, e.g., in the epic of El Cid; thereafter, the Basque word for ‘left,’ ezker, began to be used throughout the realm of the Visigoths as ezquierro, later changed to the modern izquierdo and similar words in Portuguese, Catalan, Gascon, and Provençal. While Italian has retained the sinistro of its direct ancestor, it also uses manco for ‘left hand,’ derived from Latin mancus ‘maimed, infirm’ (French manqué ‘lost, defective’ is from the same Latin word), again based on the idea of the left hand being the weaker one.

FAMILY LANGUAGE ‘correct’
Germanic English left right right
German links rechts richtig
Dutch links rechts recht
Yiddish links rekhts
Danish venstre hφjre rigtig
Norwegian venstre hφgre riktig
Swedish nster höger riktig
Icelandic vinstri haegri rétt
Italic Latin sinister dexter rectus
Italian sinistro destro retto
French gauche droit droit
Spanish izquierdo derecho recto
Romance Portuguese esquerdo direito reto
Catalan esquerre dret recte
Romanian nga dreaptă drept
Celtic Welsh aswy deheu cywir
Irish ciotóg dheas ceart
Hellenic Greek aristeros dexios orthos
Albanian majtë djathtë drejtë
Slavic Russian levyi pravyi pravyi
Czech levo pravo pravý
Polish lewy prawy prawy
Bulgarian liavo nadiasno pravilen
SerboCroatian levo desno pravo
Baltic Lithuanian denšinėn kairę teisingai
Latvian kreisi labi pareizi
Iranian Armenian tzakh atch ughigh
Farsi chap rast rast
Indic Sanskrit vāma dakshina shuddha
Hindi bānyān dānyān thīka
FinnoUgric Finnish vasemalla oikealla oikea
Estonian vasakul paremal otse
Hungarian bal jobb helyes
Turkic Turkish sol sağ doğru
Mongolian Mongolian dzüün barüün dzöw
Chinese zu\?\ yôu dui
SinoTibetan Burmese be nya to-
Tibetan yöö yëë tsöö
Thai paisai paiqua tūk
— Japanese hidari migi tadachii
— Korean oenp’yon orunp’yon parunyon
— Vietnames bên trái bên tay, phái dúng
Malayan Indonesian kiri kanan patut
Tagalog kaliwa kanan wasto
Bantu Swahili kushoto kulia haki
Semitic Arabic shmal yamin sakh
Hebrew smol yemin nakhon
Amharic gra qänn smami
Artificial Esperanto maldekstra dekstra prava

The Slavic languages show remarkable uniformity in their use of terms for ‘right’ and ‘left,’ all of which are based on the same roots and are practically interchangeable except for minor differences. Most Asian and African languages as well as the two principal Semitic languages do not identify ‘correct’ with the right side, but surprisingly, Korean (a language probably not related to any other known language or linguistic family) shows the same usage pattern as English.

It is obvious that the compilation of the Table could have been done only with the help of bilingual dictionaries and in some cases that of native speakers of a language. Dictionary look-up proved to be unexpectedly difficult. Many dictionaries fail to indicate the grammatical form of words, that is, whether the foreign term for right and left is an adjective, adverb, or noun, and whether there are differences between these forms (in English there are none, but in inflected languages there may be, which is not always made clear by lexicographers). In doing look-up, many times it was necessary to verify the correct meaning of a term in an English-to-foreign dictionary by consulting also a foreign-to-English one, especially when no context was given in the former; conversely, some large dictionaries offer so many different shades of meaning, illustrated by phrases, that it becomes difficult for the uninitiated to grasp the meaning that would best express the concept of right or left for the purposes of a comparative table. One is left to wonder how well bilingual dictionaries perform their intended task if it is difficult to figure out the correct term for such basic notions as opposite directions. For some of the less well-known languages we resorted sometimes to the types of small dictionaries or glossaries prepared for tourists, on the assumption (both naive and mistaken, as it turned out) that a traveler looking for directions on the street would need to know the words for right and left. To our great astonishment, only very few of these popular guides included what we were looking for, while offering translations of phrases such as “This tablecloth is not clean” and similar inanities.

The basic notions of right and left are not expressed in any consistent pattern by the world’s languages. Many of them have the same terms for right in both its English meanings. Most languages have several words expressing the concept of right in the sense of ‘correct,’ one of which may also be the word for the right side of the body or the right hand. Almost all languages have only one word for left, and many of them derive that word from one that expresses weakness or has an ominous ring to it. We shall let Oliver Herford have the last word on both right and left:.

Ambidextrous: not letting your right hand know who is holding your left hand.

The Morox

David Galef, New York City

Any student of language is familiar with oxymorons, those self-contained contradictions such as Milton’s “darkness visible” in Paradise Lost, or Hamlet’s “I must be cruel only to be kind.” The intent is to produce a compact image of paradox, a comprehension in the reader’s mind of opposites coexisting and reinforcing each other. But consider the following sentence, supposedly written by E.B. White when he wanted to get a rise from his editor Harold Ross at The New Yorker: “It is a pretty ugly building and a little big for its surroundings.” The two contradictions here are a far cry from elegant oxymoron, and, for lack of a better term, I will call them moroxes.

Just what is going on in a phrase such as pretty ugly that disqualifies it from being an oxymoron while enlisting it as a morox? To start with, there is no intent to make a skillful blend of opposites. The speaker or writer was simply trying to modify the adjective ugly and used the qualifier pretty as a word to mean ‘rather.’ Still, as Empson says in Seven Types of Ambiguity, “All languages are composed of dead metaphors as the soil of corpses.” And dead metaphors, as well as old or simply other meanings of words, have a tendency to reawaken. When someone describes Times Square as being “far nearer” than Port Authority, he is committing the same imprecision, using far as an intensifier without reference to its more regular meaning. One can spot many fewer problems, greatly lessened faculties, a plenipotentiary who is largely insignificant—but here, if one is going to start hunting for moroxes actively, he must introduce a rule: the happy morox should have a fortuitous quality, the sense of being unintentional. Hence, the candidates obscenely decent and calmly angry are suspect, having that slightly artistic tone that would place them in the category of oxymorons. So throw those out and try this one instead: barely clothed.

Moroxes in their befuddlement are the near-opposite of a structure known as the Tom Swifty, where the adverb modifies a verb or noun to form a pun. The organ-donor gave wholeheartedly is a Tom Swifty. The town was wholly fragmented over the election is a morox. Other prime moroxes are unbelivably real (popular among the video generation), awfully good (British usage), and kind of cruel (a morox version of the Hamlet oxymoron cited at the beginning).

What one learns in the hunt for the morox— which sounds like a line from either Dr. Seuss or Lewis Carroll—is that bad examples abound, and the moot validity of borderline instances may keep one awake at night. Does terribly nice qualify? How about acutely unaware or exactly wrong? Or does the faint smell of contrivance hang around them? He is completely partial—now, there’s a morox, depending on an unintentional meaning of partial—but how about the old gas-tank observations, half full and half empty?

One starts to collect likely-looking adverbs and adjectives for moroxes, such as simply— —, strongly— —, and strangely— —. Except that simply complex doesn’t cut it, and neither does strongly weak or strangely normal. Contrived, all of them, though the last may qualify as a legitimate oxymoron.

The latest ones I am working on include absolutely relative, just unfair, and maybe—just maybe— acutely dull. I am also experimenting with smaller units in sentences, such as, Usually, I go out in the street, but on off days, I stay at home. The out in and on off combinations are perhaps second cousins to moroxes, but they have that same solecistic slippage, to coin an alliteration. I continue the search for moroxes, but it is hardly easy.

EPISTOLA {Edward D. Graham}

Robert R. Rasmussen’s piece on the names of people from… [XIII, 3] was a delight. Perhaps because of his Californian remoteness, however, or his Californesque insouciance, he ducked a pair of tough ones which have dogged my life.

I now live in Michigan, where the controversy lies between Michiganian (which sounds like a made-up Indian name) and Michigander (which sounds avian with sexist overtones). A friend who speaks Yiddish has suggested, as a compromise, Michigass.

But there is worse. I grew up in Maine. Recently the Detroit Free Press ran a headline which contained the word Mainer with no qualifier. This, by Maine standards, is all wrong, for the correct form is the phrase State of Mainer. Of course, the wags always suggested Maniac.

[Edward D. Graham, Michigan State University]

Daniel Williman, (Broadview Press, 1986), 160 pp.

There seems to be nothing in the background of the author of this book to indicate a Cockney background, so the “An Historical…” in the subtitle is all the more surprising; for consistency, judgement is spelt with an e. The book must be for lawyers, for it is divided into chapters that treat subjects like “Judgement and Enforcement,” “Crime,” “Criminal Procedure,” and so forth. Many of the twenty-one chapters are introduced by a brief comment describing their subjects. The apparent purpose of the book is to provide etymological information and definitions of the modern applications of the terms listed. Most of the information, however, is not etymological: the author merely gives a translation of the phrase or word from its original language, followed by a definition which is not always clear—at least to a layman. Those etymologies that are given are not always accurately stated (e.g., we are told that law is “apparently not cognate to lex and legal,” which suffers from a lack of familiarity with the idiomatic use of cognate, among other things). The definitions are scarcely a paragon of clarity, to wit:

oyer and terminer [L > F] the Law French version of terms from English judge’s commission for criminal causes, audire et terminer, “to hear and bring to an end”. So, circuit commissions and courts, often paired in England with general gaol delivery.

This is about as clear as mud (to coin a cliché), and is rather typical of the rest of the book. Any good law dictionary—Black’s, Ballentine, etc.—would serve anyone, layman and professional, far better.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary

Martin H. Manser and Nigel D. Turton, (Penguin, 1987), xxiii + 839 pp.

This is an interesting dictionary, but it must be emphasized at the outset that it is British and is unlikely to be sold in the U.S.A. in its present form. The alphabetical entries are pretty much what one would expect to find in a chunky paperback: the definitions are brief, but to the point, example contexts are given for many of them, short etymologies abound; for a quick reference, the book serves well. The pronunciations are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet: the IPA, universally employed in European dictionaries, is relatively easy to use, though most Americans are accustomed to the respelling systems that have long appeared in dictionaries made in the U.S.

What sets the book apart from others are the vignetted etymologies and usage notes that appear on every page. Some of these are quite full (compared with the normally terse lexicographic treatment in this kind of book) and are generally interesting. Opening the book in the middle we find the following:

p. 432: maudlin - sense refinement and etymology.
p. 433: mausoleum - etymology.
p. 434: measles - note on German measles and comment (with examples) of medical synonyms, e.g., baldness = alopecia.
meat - discussion of historical meaning change.
p. 435: media - usage note on singular vs. plural.
p. 437: note on don’t mention it! and other stereotyped acknowledgments. mentor - discussion of etymology.
p. 439: meter or metre - (British) spelling practice of measurement unit vs. device.
p. 440: mews - etymological discussion.
p. 441: militate/mitigate - distinctions.
p. 443: milliner - etymology note.
mind your p’s and q’s - sense embellishment and etymology note.
p. 443: miniature - etymology note.

Thus, in a dozen pages, a baker’s dozen of “panels” is provided. These range from useful to interesting and do much to enhance the browsing features of the dictionary. The over-all variety is greater than that found in these few pages and goes a long way toward presenting in a form far more palatable than that encountered in ordinary dictionary entries the kinds of information that many people seek from dictionaries but seldom find because they are compelled to wade through a morass of ugly, complicated typography and boring, irrelevant matter. The style is informal and user-friendly, and the material should appeal to students and general users alike. Entries discussed carry a reference to the appropriate panel. I was disappointed by the absence of a panel on will/shall and by the failure to mention, under would/should some of the “will/shall” aspects of that pair (e.g., I should like to go/I would like to go—that is, not the ‘ought’ sense of should, which is adequately covered).

All things considered—space available, readership level, etc.—the special features are very well done and will do much to increase the user’s awareness of and interest in some of the more engaging aspects of the language.

Laurence Urdang

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Berliner Park is the biggest park of its size in Central Ohio.” [From the 6 p.m. newscast on 21 October 1984, Channel 6 TV, Columbus, Ohio. Submitted by Dorothy Branson, Columbus, Ohio.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms and Chambers Idioms

Daphne M. Gulland and David Hinds-Howell, (Penguin, 1986), 300 pp. and E.M. Kirkpatrick and C.M. Schwarz, eds., (Chambers, 1982) vi + 432 pp.

I have always found idioms fascinating and I like books on idioms. It is a bit perplexing, though, to come to grips with the organization of the Penguin. The organization of any book must conform to some rationale which, in turn, depends on the purpose of the book. Let us consider three possible applications of a book: it may be a teaching text; it may be a reference work; it may reflect a theory about the content. Each of these approaches could well result in different organization criteria: a theory about idioms might lead to an ordering based on types of idioms, their structure, their semantics, their grammar, their origin, or other characteristics; a specialized dictionary, as a look-up reference, might list idioms in alphabetical order, with ample cross references to take care of variants, key words, and other characteristics; as a teaching text for learners of English as a foreign language, it is uncertain which approach one might take—perhaps frequency, social situations, and other categorial criteria might be useful.

As this last is the avowed purpose to which the Penguin is to be put, I am somewhat confused by some of the 33 main categories into which these few thousand idioms have been classified. (I hasten to add that, counting subcategories, there are many more than 33. For instance, INSECTS has nine subcategories, CLOTHES, 44, and so on.) These are not semantic categories, since they have nothing to do with the meanings of the idioms: What a dish!, dish out, and flying saucer have nothing semantic in common, yet they appear in the same subset (Plate, Dish and Saucer) under FURNITURE AND HOUSEHOLD ARTICLES. If such categorization were reflective of some theory or of some practical teaching (or learning) apparatus, its expression eludes me, and the front matter, though it explains the system clearly, is silent as to its purpose.

One must refer to the alphabetic index (which is good) to use the book as a dictionary, though this involves the minor inconvenience of looking up everything in two places (till the categories are memorized, which may be never: I, for one, wouldn’t look up snails under INSECTS. If one looks up be a head-ache, the next entry (under Aches) is belly-ache. These are united by a categorial bond that is so tenuous as to be conceptually worthless. Is it conceivable that anyone would find a reason for learning idioms in such categories? If there is, it is beyond me.

As to the treatment, there are some shortcomings, two of which emerge in these two entries:.

to be a headache - to be a great trial to other people, due to one’s misbehaviour and bad temper.

The use of due to for owing to is technically considered a solecism, albeit not a serious one. Nonetheless, anything even slightly tainted ought to be avoided in a book for learners. The other is:

to belly-ache (Australian) - to complain continually. The phrase is now becoming fashionable in Great Britain.

In the first place, the term is just as common in the U.S. (where it might have originated) as it may be in Australia, hence the label is plainly wrong. Second, I’m not satisfied that “fashionable” is the mot juste: “common” would serve the same purpose semantically and would have the connotative advantage, as well. Third, the expression is (in the U.S., at least) not likely to be encountered in formal conversation, regardless of what they may say in Australia and Great Britain, yet there is no warning label.

Labels are sparse throughout the book, which leaves the poor student in the lurch: he has no way of knowing that intellectual myopia, hit the bottle, proper Charlie, and a two-fingered gesture are not all at the same level. Moreover, if, as one might assume from the cover, the same edition is to be sold in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.A., how is the student in the U.S. to know that go like a dream, love in a cottage, steal someone’s clothes, take silk, and scores of other idioms are not used or encountered there? Similar problems are likely to occur for users in other countries.

The definitions are not always accurate; some of the otherwise generally useful contextual examples are awkward, some entries not requiring them at all. For instance, ‘you can judge the character of a person by the company he keeps’ is not a definition for birds of a feather; ‘attractive’ does not define an eyeful. Substantives are used to define adjectives, adjectives substantives, substantives adverbs, and so on.

Chambers Idioms is not a completely straightforward, alphabetic dictionary either, but the headings under which entries are arranged are key words of the idioms. As the editors point out in the Preface,

Trying to find idioms in a dictionary is often not easy. Sometimes they are listed under the first word and sometimes under what is considered to be the most important word in the idiomatic phrase. It is difficult for the user to decide where to look. In this book we have made the task easier by including many cross-references.

Thus, if you are looking for a bitter pill (to swal low) or until/till/to the bitter end, they can be found under bitter, but they are not entered at pill or at end. It is not easy to see how the editors chose those items that merit listing under more than one key word: under bite we find three entries defined (bite off more than one can chew; once bitten, twice shy; and what’s biting you?) and five cross references (bite someone’s head off see head; bite (on) the bullet see bullet; bite the dust see dust; bite the hand that feeds one see hand; have two bites at the cherry see cherry). This is fine, but why aren’t bite off more than one can chew and once bitten, twice shy shown as cross references under chew and shy, respectively? The answer probably lies in the restrictions on space, a source of frustration to all compilers of reference books. It may seem to native speakers that bite off more than one can chew need not be listed under chew as well as bite, and, given the stringencies, I tend to agree. But I am not so sanguine about the (naive learner’s) ability to find the phrases that are coordinate and entered under only one of the key words. That is, in black and white could just as well be in white and black (to the non-native speaker if not the native, who is so familiar with this cliché), and a reference at white would have been in order.

Chambers Idioms is self-indexing—all entries and cross references are given in a single alphabetical listing—which makes it more convenient to use in that one is quite likely to find the entry on the first try (as compared with the Penguin, where the only useful access is through the index, requiring a double look-up every time.) The definitions are simple and straightforward, better than those in the Penguin, and sample contexts are provided. Although the labeling of entries is somewhat better, this book, though marketed in the U.S. and Canada, was clearly made for the consumer in Britain, as there are no labels provided for idioms like in for a penny, in for a pound; in penny numbers; the penny drops; a penny for them; and spend a penny. (Curiously, now that I notice it here, penny wise and pound foolish is as common in America as in Britain, despite the currency differences, but that is probably because it is more of a proverb than an idiom.) The Chambers has useful usage labels, like formal, often or usually facetious, derogatory, and so on. The fault is that the dialect labels (British) are scantily applied. In the list of labels appears NY, but, without reading every entry, I was unable to find those to which it might apply.

In general, the Chambers, despite its shortcomings, is preferred over the Penguin, but, without proper labeling, neither is suitable for marketing in the U.S.

Laurence Urdang

EPISTOLA {Barbara R. DuBois}

Thomas H. Middleton’s worry about the pronunciation of Uranus [XII, 4] reminds me of a story. One morning during WWII, chemists working in a government laboratory in Chicago got the word that they were not to say “uranium” anymore, but instead the code word “tuballoy.” At noon, when someone said, “Let’s go to lunch,” the answer came, “I’ll be right with you, but first I have to tuballate.”

[Barbara R. DuBois, Socorro, New Mexico]

Time and Life

Julienne Eden Busic, Dublin, California

Language serves not only to communicate ideas but to obscure them as well, transforming them according to the psychological needs of the individual speaker. In most cultures, for example, words and images with loaded meanings are dealt with indirectly, euphemistically, as though their essence could be altered, even denied, by assigning them new labels. The extent to which this linguistic transformation occurs indicates the way the culture assimilates or rejects the loaded concept. The type of transformation is important as well. In our society, for example, one does not simply die, one passes away, goes either on to greener pastures or west, meets one’s Maker. One also croaks or kicks the bucket. Here the idea of death, of eternal nothingness, is defuzed through the use of substitution, or of humor. Death is deprived of its sting, in both instances, either by prettification or ridicule. Fear and apprehension of the ultimate existential void are replaced by a certain whimsicality, a capacity to confront and accept the inevitability of death. The greater the anxiety felt within a culture or even by an individual about a concept, the more extensive the euphemistic system designed to obscure it, to render it tolerable.

The use of and need for euphemism is nowhere more apparent than within a prison population. In this highly specialized subculture, the psychological need to disguise and transform unpalatable realities becomes critical. In fact, conclusions about the nature of prisoner mentality, perception, and philosophy can be reached by examining the form these transformations take and the area in which they most often occur. In prison, the entire consciousness is consumed with the notion of time: how much time one has, what portion will have to be served, whether the time is concurrent or consecutive, whether “you do the time or the time does you.” Time is synonymous here with life. Of what else does life consist? What, indeed, is its very essence? The way, then, in which people relate to time is indicative of the way they relate to life in general, and this relation is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in a study of the language used by prisoners to talk about time. Some very basic psychological elements of the alleged “prisoner mentality” emerge during the course of such a study, lending insight into theories set forth by many social psychologists that such a mentality reflects special ways of looking at the world.

The length of a sentence, if it falls within an area between the two extremes of a very short period and a very long one, is expressed not in terms of years but of money. Generally, any sentence of less than five years does not merit its own particular expression and is referred to, if not derisively, then with a certain amount of condescension. A one-year sentence is one of the few exceptions. This sentence is called a bullet, taken from card-players' terminology for an ace. Anyone with a bullet has been dealt a good hand, one that is superior to most others. Short sentences are those which can be done standing on one’s head ‘with small inconvenience.’ The longer sentences, though, are described in monetary terms, perhaps because prisoners often equate time with money and all time spent in prison is money lost. A prisoner with a five-year sentence is pulling a nickel, ten years is pulling a dime, and twenty-five is pulling a quarter, all small change. These sentences are still relatively manageable and accessible to humor; however, the expressions for types of life sentences move away from concepts of money. In state prisons, those with three felonies are given twenty-to-life sentences. Those with more than three felonies are given fifty-to-life sentences. Thus, one has either the little bitch or the big bitch laid on him, derived from habitual in the Habitual Criminal Act. The prisoner is in the passive role; he doesn’t admit to having done anything actively to get the sentence: it is laid on him. Doing life means adjusting the consciousness to the fact that the prisoner ceases for the most part to be an autonomous entity. Things are done to him; he does little himself. A straight life sentence with a possibility for parole is referred to as all day long. Life without parole is one dark day. Time is no longer divided here into manageable units but becomes a continuum without end and without hope. The lightness and humor used to describe the shorter sentences are gone. There is simply no escaping reality, there is little left to joke about.

Humor, however, is a constant in the prison euphemistic system; it enables the prisoner to cope with his sentence, to defuze the tragic implications of his imprisonment. This whimsicality lends itself especially to the subject of concurrent and consecutive sentences. Concurrent sentences are two or more that are served simultaneously; for example, two five-year sentences are merged into one. With a consecutive sentence, one five-year sentence must be served before the second begins. Because a consecutive sentence is far more devastating and psychologically loaded to the prisoner, more humor is used to speak of these particular sentences to make them tolerable. Thus, two five-year sentences given consecutively become, in prison terminology, two nickels running wild, running cockeyed, or running bowlegged. One understands not only the humor here, but also the deeper currents of feeling which run throughout, the images which conjure up disorganization, chaos, a loss of control, lack of coordination, all states of mind typical of a human being left powerless, disenfranchised, imprisoned, without any control over his own actions or destiny.

Other expressions for consecutive sentences add yet another dimension to the prisoner’s perception of the world and his role in it. A consecutive sentence becomes a shove and a kick. The prisoner is a passive agent, he does no initiating, he is acted upon, as an object. First he is shoved, then he is kicked, and no mention is made of who is perpetrating this violence. The analogy to a nameless, faceless, uncaring bureaucracy is inescapable. The prisoner’s perception of himself is, again, that of a powerless entity, a victim of the fates and a universal injustice. Two nickels boxcarred or stacked further reinforce this perception. The first evokes images of involuntary connection, the state of being boxed in, stuck on one track from which there is no escape. The second, a stacked sentence, conjures up blocks piled one upon another, each standing in a state of extreme precariousness, and completes the prisoner’s psychological view of himself as existing in a type of limbo, in danger of toppling over at any time. In fact, there are no expressions presenting the prisoner in an active role save one, riding the buffalo, used to express what a prisoner is doing who has been told by the Parole Board to serve all of a five-year sentence. However, though he may be riding, he is not necessarily in control or determining the course the animal takes. The animal remains the more active agent, the prisoner the more passive. Actually, prisoners who are given harsh decisions by the Board are more often slammed or stretched or told to flatten it [their sentence] out. They are put into a time tunnel. These last images are more representative of the prisoner’s view of himself as being a powerless mote in the universe, exploited, maligned, and maltreated.

The use of the passive voice to assign him permanently to a fixed and static role, humor to make his assumption of the role bearable, even though the humor tends to reinforce the negative psychological state in which a prisoner perceives himself—all these linguistic manifestations provide clues to understanding the fatalistic way in which prisoners in general relate to the world and their corresponding role in it. Language is not merely a means for communicating ideas but for predicting behavior as well. To the prisoner, the most important concept in his circumscribed existence is time and, by extension, life. Any prisoner, when speaking about these, continually casts himself in a passive role and uses images that reinforce his sense of powerlessness and disintegration. In so doing, he perpetuates, consciously or not, a state of mind that precludes any modification of his behavior or of his perception of the world. This study indicated that those who regularly used this type of terminology were recidivists, while the others who avoided it tended to be innocent of prior criminal records and did not commit new crimes after release. While this hypothesis is hardly a new one, it does reinforce the idea propounded by many social psychologists that recidivist prisoners have low self-esteem, lack confidence in their abilities, and view themselves as passive pawns in a game that has been manipulated to their disadvantage. Prison slang and euphemism, developing and existing in a closed environment, change slowly—if ever. Therefore, the views of the world expressed by such language are reinforced and passed on from population to population. The results of this short study indicate that prisoner philosophy has changed little in the last twenty years, a notion unlikely to inspire optimism in those who continue to believe in “rehabilitation.”

Antipodean English: Divided by a Common Tongue

George W. Turner

Those who grow up as members of a minor speech community have one advantage, a strong incentive toward bilingualism. But speakers of a major language such as English have at least some faint shadow of this through their access to a number of literary sublanguages such as Welsh English, Scots, Indian English, British, American, Australian, and other varieties of English. Some more limited passive understanding of varieties of spoken language is also possible. Australians seldom speak of thumbtacks, sophomores, or tuxedos, but would recognize the words and understand their meanings. They know Americans call lifts elevators and petrol gas, lollies candy, railways railroads and trams trolleys or street-cars (known especially because of the play, A Streetcar Named Desire). Particularly strange is the pronunciation zee for zed. Australians may not recognize in tick tack toe a simple game of noughts and crosses and they might not know exactly what a drugstore sells, but they know the New York subway is not a pedestrian underpass. They rather admire the use of through to indicate inclusive dates. Similarly, British English expressions not current in Australia may be understood, cinema, wellington boots, or wing to refer to the mudguard of a car (what Americans equally strangely call the fender).

Not infrequently, however, differences result in misunderstandings. If I am told someone called, I assume that that person visited the house; an American or someone influenced by American usage might be referring to a phone call (we do use call in that phrase). When my luggage (all right, baggage) was stolen from a car (automobile?) in England, my wife, staying in the U.S. and, it appears, already contaminated with its usage, asked if I had locked the trunk. I took this to mean the suitcase but she meant the boot of the car. (In reporting this I have hesitated at the word car, thinking it might suggest a railway (often railroad) carriage!

We understand that suspenders are not only for socks, have given up trying to distinguish scones, cookies, biscuits, and crackers, and, in another context, have learned that British speakers talking of corn do not necessarily mean sweet corn (maize, Indian corn). More likely to cause trouble are references to a first floor, which we, like the British, would call a ground floor, or varying references to billions where, like the British, we are beginning to follow American usage, or gallons where the same name refers to different volumes in Britain and the U.S.

Australia has traditionally been attached to Britain and in theory follows British usage. There is a good deal of similarity in fact, and where there are differences it is often because there are local Australian developments. We follow English usage in saying tap much more often than American faucet; got, not got-ten; named after consistently, not for; engine-driver, not engineer; bonnet not hood for top of a car; draughts, not checkers; pram, not baby carriage; autumn, not fall; standard lamp; not floorlamp; and swede (consistently), not rutabaga (sometimes misnamed turnip). We are likely to call a two-week period a fortnight, and children don’t always know not to call an eraser a rubber when they go to the States. To tick off is for us to ‘scold,’ not to ‘anger.’

Sometimes it is the American word which is established here against the British. We talk of semi-trailers, or semis (pronounced SEMeez), not articulated lorries (though New Zealand usage appears to differ); our cuffs may be on trousers (British turn-ups) as well as sleeves; we say mail, not post; sedan, not saloon car; are familiar with bleachers or a university campus; say station-wagon, not estate car; know no other name for a crew cut; tend not to distinguish around from round and use it with figures to mean ‘about’; and would be more likely to say “Please come in” than “Do come in.”

It often happens that we are bilingual and use either a British or a U.S. term without distinction of meaning. There is no difference here between a broad jump and a long jump. Our luggage might equally well be baggage; a (car) muffler is another name for a silencer; a zucchini the same as a courgette. An egg-plant can be called an aubergine, a squash a marrow. Lorry has a somewhat British flavor as a name for a truck, but crib retains a faint American flavor as a name for a cot. Oddly the U.S. stove sounds more traditional than the English cooker (which I somehow associate with advertisements). Yard (if without vegetables or flowers) is favored over garden here, and there is local variation in Australia between runners (Victoria) and tennis shoes, sandshoes, or gym shoes (but plimsolls is decidedly British).

Americanisms in Australian English seem likely to increase as ties with Britain weaken and the Pacific region gains importance. There is a tendency for Americanisms to “take on.” There is much opposition. Even English teachers, untrained in linguistics, are apt to confuse colloquial and regional with substandard, and equate American influence, especially its more colloquial and disputed reaches, with a kind of disease in language. There was once a campaign against the use of overall to mean ‘general(ly),’ then hopefully as a sentence adjunct came under fire. Presently meaning ‘at present’ is attacked, and even the present liberalminded writer has qualms about following different with than (useful though that construction is). Where American flavor is less evident (as in using flashlight for torch or dessert for sweets) there is less likely to be opposition and in at least one case, the formula “You’re welcome” as a reply to “Thanks,” there should surely be general acceptance. Sometimes opposition is deeper to commercial penetration by American interests (French fries rather than chips), or an Americanism is left mainly to advertisers (drapes for heavy curtains—though stroller seems to be making some headway more generally against push-chair or pusher). Angry letters to newspapers by adults who hear a child call a skipping-rope a jump-rope presumably fear that it represents some threat to our independence. The degree of opposition to colloquial Americanisms is a measure of their attraction, especially to the young. There is a pleasure in saying for free or meet up with or miss out on which seems to be more than a liking for the forbidden. Unfortunately there is a further tendency to add a rich dose of what is taken to be American slang and so we have a stereotype American that most real-life Americans would be glad to disown. Never mind. They will have their revenge as a new stereotype invades their shores, the uncouth dinkum Aussie of some popular Australian films.

EPISTOLA {John M. Buckley}

Richard Veit’s contribution [XIII,4] was welcome and amusing, especially to those of us who are concerned with the problems of general education and basic skills of new students. Unfortunately, he has erred in his first paragraph.

The Toyota Tercel is not a newly coined word, as the Honda Acura is. A tercel (also, especially formerly, tiercel), is a ‘male hawk,’ and, as such, its use as a car name is part of a long-standing tradition which includes Thunderbird and Falcon.

Mr. Veit should not feel too bad. Even Marianne Moore missed this one in her correspondence with the Ford Motor Co. Let me close by saying what a pleasure it is to see your magazine in my mailbox each quarter!

[John M. Buckley, Long Island City, New York]

[Similarly from Douglas E. Blakely, Susan Forthman, Hugh W. Handsfield, Herbert I. Harris, M.D., Capt. John M. Le Cato, and, by press time, others.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Phonetic Symbol Guide

Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Laduslaw, (University of Chicago Press, 1986), xxx + 266 pp.

Surveys have shown that pronunciations are among the least used of the kinds of information provided in general English dictionaries for the English-speaking public. Considering the increasing number of spelling pronunciations one encounters these days, that is not surprising: afflúent, instead of affluent, probably because the traditional stress pattern makes the word sound like effluent. (This was not a confusing problem in the past, because fewer people then talked about ecology and effuents than today.) Other changes, some from Britain, seem to be born of sheer perversity: controversy, regulátory, disciplińary, etc. At best, determining the pronunciation of an English word can often be a pain in the neck for the casual dictionary user: interpretation of the key to the respelling system, usually repeated at the bottom of every other page, requires some effort, and even then, with variants given, users are often confused: if two or more pronunciations are shown, are they equally appropriate in the user’s dialect area or is the first “preferred” by 80 percent of the speakers and the other (or others) used by the rest? Are the variants shown distributed geographically? If so, how? The information provided in general dictionaries about pronunciation is very sketchy and, for the layman, hard to understand. (Most laymen misunderstand the term preferred, taking it to mean “preferred by the experts,” rather than ‘preferred by the majority of users of English’—or, more accurately, ‘preferred by the majority of users according to the information at hand.’ In many cases, for instance, where preferred may refer to the ordering of definitions, the data for huge numbers of the senses listed in a dictionary is very sparse.)

Although the stated purpose of this book in no way suggests that general dictionaries or laymen were even remotely considered in its compilation, it is a disappointment that they were not, for it would not have required much more space to have examined and reported on the phonetic representations of sounds in the major dictionaries. After all, the body of people affected by such words is far, far greater than the readership to which this book will appeal.

Notwithstanding the disappointment, for it is the function of a reviewer to comment on the book at hand, not the one he wishes had been written, this is an extremely good treatment and discussion of the symbols of the systems used by linguists, phonologists, phoneticians, and others who work in those areas professionally. The sources analyzed include IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), which is widely used outside of the United States, and various other transcription systems devised by linguists, chiefly those used by Chomsky and Halle in The Sound Pattern of English, by Trager and Smith, by Gleason, etc., which generally represent a modification of IPA. Because no general or bilingual dictionaries, American or British, are represented, many of the special symbols developed by phoneticians working with lexicographers to produce the relatively broad transcriptions shown in dictionaries—hence familiar to most of us—are not here.

Each symbol is shown clearly, as far as is practicable in alphabetical order, with a brief discussion of its application. Diacritics are also covered; there is a glossary of relevant terms and several pages of charts and diagrams showing the vowels and consonants in the systems covered. A comprehensive, useful bibliography is included: for anyone interested in phonetics, the bibliography alone provides an excellent, if somewhat specialized reading list.

In all, this is a unique and valuable book for linguists and phoneticians, as well as for lexicographers and other professionals who work with transcriptions of spoken language.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Amo, Amas, Amat and More: How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others

Eugene Ehrlich, (English Index, Harper & Row, 1985), xxii + 328.

[A VERBATIM Book Club Selection]

Perhaps it has taken a longer than usual time for this review to appear, but with the subject being Latin, it never seems as if passage of time is of great concern. Latin evokes a sense of permanence, immutability, and grandeur (pace Edgar Allan Poe; by the way, pace, surprisingly, is absent). Such is the mystique of the language that, when one uses a Latin term (outside of a legal or medical context) or announces his knowledge of that venerable tongue, people react with expressions of wonderment, incredulity, or the strong suspicion that the pope will soon appear. Hence the author rightly notes in his subtitle that use of Latin will bring astonishment but emphasizes that the book will turn this to the reader’s advantage. And so it may.

Ehrlich is an experienced editor and lexicographer, and the sort of care and consistency one should expect from such an author is evident throughout. The style is that of a dictionary, with entries set on a very open page, in comfortably large type, accompanied by pronunciations, and occasional “filler” illustrations. The pronunciations are given in the style of the “Moo Goo Gai Pan” school, e.g., bona fide is “BAW-nah FIH-deh” and intra vires is “IN-trah WEE-rays.” The approach is to give the so-called restored pronunciation, that is, the sounds that classics scholars think is closest to the way Caesar, Horace, and their contemporaries would have said things. This betrays Ehrlich’s education as a classicist and, while arguably a scientific method of showing pronunciation, it runs counter to the way non-classicists use or have heard Latin pronounced. (Though, in the example for intra vires given above, Ehrlich’s pronunciation suggests a final z-sound by the use of “-rays,” when final s is technically correct, and “-race” would have been a better rendering. Of course, the more common English pronunciation of vires in the expression would be “VIH-rays,” so Ehrlich’s version is here really a hybrid.) Lawyers particularly are given to highly anglicized pronunciations—just ask a lawyer to pronounce “writ of certiorari”—and that tradition, along with the (now fading) “Church” pronunciation of Roman Catholic liturgy, is much stronger among the general public than the classicists'. Ehrlich’s pronunciation for “de iure (or de jure)” is “day YOO-reh.” This sort of style is precious, on two accounts: de jure is by far the more common, not the secondary spelling in English; and virtually no one says anything but “day JUH-ray” in English contexts. Many would lament the decline of training in the classics in our society, but that sentiment does not lend authority to the use of a scholar’s mode of pronunciation in a dictionary for popular consumption. (To baldly state, as is done in the “Pronunciation Notes,” that “the Latin c is pronounced as though it were a k. Thus, Cicero is pronounced KIH-keh-roh” is overly simplistic and very misleading.)

The real stuff of the dictionary is, as it should be, the definitions, and they are both very good and very readable. Accuracy and completeness of defining—with both literal and metaphoric, or extended senses set forth—is everywhere in evidence. The definitions often provide a window into a bit of Roman cultural heritage—all without dry or preaching pedantry. The almost studied unattractiveness and stodginess that characterize so many classical references and texts (a subtle but contributing factor to the decline of interest?) are refreshingly absent from this book, as these examples may illustrate:

horribile dictu horrible to relate

In describing a particularly bloody automobile accident, for example, one might interject horribile dictu just before launching into the most shocking details of the narrative. (See MIRABILE DICTU.)

mirabile dictu wonderful to relate

The phrase to use when one wishes to express astonishment while recounting an event of overwhelming significance or accomplishment or irony. “Then, as the child watched, the figure, mirabile dictu, rose high in the air and vanished.” “As he left the penitentiary, where he had just completed a two-year sentence for stealing public funds, he announced, mirabile dictu, that he would be a candidate for a second term in the United States Senate.”

A lightness of tone that is indication of the author’s joy for the subject pervades this dictionary and is one of its most gratifying features.

In addition to the higher frequency terms that one is likely to encounter—alma mater, cum grano salis, ne plus ultra, and sine qua non are all here, and nicely defined—certain more common and insightful proverbial expresssions were selected, too, for inclusion among the roughly 1400 entries. These add an element of human interest to the dictionary:

bis vivit qui bene vivit he lives twice who lives well

Milton, in Paradise Lost, couched the same wisdom in these words:

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st

Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven.

So we are being told that quality of life is much more important than longevity. But bis vivit qui bene vivit, besides counseling us to lead productive lives, offers a consoling thought to recall when a friend dies young.

disputandi pruritus ecclesiarum scabies the theologian’s urge to debate is an incurable disease

Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639, an English poet and diplomat, wrote this sentence, literally “an itch for disputation is the mange of the churches,” in Panegyric to King Charles, and it was later used as part of Wotton’s own tombstone inscription. (Wotton is also recalled for his definition of an ambassador: “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”)

There is no denying that Amo, Amas, Amat and More is a source of real enjoyment and enlightenment, a rare enough combination. It is likely to remain serviceable for as long as the pages hold up. (One annoying technical flaw: the copy reviewed had several pages where the printing was blurred, not, one hopes, evidence of generally low-quality production standards.) And it is well worth adding that Ehrlich fashioned his dictionary around a sound and clearly stated concept, then executed it with diligence and grace. It is hard to imagine that anyone could be justifiably disappointed with this book. It is a dictionary of real and enduring value—and fun, too.

Frank R. Abate

Clue Me in to Anagrams

John R. Harris, Toronto

The anagrams given below form a set, and the set constitutes a clue to all of the answers. For that reason, the answers are not given (and will not be, unless readers object with great vigor).

The clue: each anagram is for a state and its capital.

“Ahoy”: a look at macho milk.
A low hula? I, uh, I…no
AA: spoken task.
Admiring rich vino.
Ali in a macro corn feast.
Andy cites car: Nova.
As aunt exits.
Bashed? Oi, oi!
Blacker Sloan Inn.
Boo a lame, a mangy Mr. T.
Chalky is late, taut.
Con shrewder champion.
Diana aids pain in loin.
Drain all soap, Manny.
Drool craven ode.
Envy pang: slur brains, hair.
Fiji cry: “One first mousse!”
Goal in a regatta.
Heal mean, no tan.
Hell, or Carthaginian, or…
I mulch bus…ooo!
I shred, pin dead clover on.
I, humus, a botanical color.
I. e., detour a top shark.
I’m changing nails.
I’m not showing a play.
Is Moose Wade in?
Jenny O. Wren Street.
Jim cops I. Spinks, as is.
Martha Roots, bank dick.
Maui tuna ages.
Mm! Prettier novel, no?
Noah in a prize ox.
One yawn by lark.
Or a Thai flees Dallas.
Pries in solid filling.
R.C. Knott, funky faker.
Regales moon.
Sauna à la juke.
Sheets enliven lanes.
Swamis in non-disco.
Taint sample on us.
Tastes ham, buns, scoots.
Taxes fame, new coin.
Ten trivial cases who grin.
Thin cod, craft counter.
Track rises at a knoll.
Unable to go, as IOU rain.
Weave, dear Lord.
Why conmen eye gin.

Verbatim Quotations

“Many are picked, but few are frozen.”—Motto of Frozen Fruit Company.

“God’s frozen people.”—Motto of Inuit Eskimos.

“A plaque on both your houses.”—Landmark Commission letter to the owner of two buildings of historical importance.

American Slurvian

Richard Lederer, St. Paul’s School

Language lovers have long bewailed the sad state of pronunciation and articulation in the United States. Both in sorrow and in anger, speakers afflicted with sensitive ears wince at such mumblings as guvmint for government and assessories for accessories. Indeed, everywhere we turn we are assaulted by a slew of slurrings. We meet people who hafta, oughta, or are gonna do something or who shoulda, woulda, or coulda done it. We hear how they love “drinkin outa bahls” (‘drinking out of bottles’) or how they’ve “just been Nittly” (‘just been in Italy’).

Here’s a typically American exchange:

“Jeet jet?”
“No, jew?”
“‘Sgo.”
(Translation: “Did you eat yet?” “No, did you?” “Let’s go.”)

In a 1949 New Yorker article, John Davenport labeled this kind of sublanguage with the delightfully appropriate name “Slurvian.” Taking Davenport’s lead, H. Alan Wycherley, in the now defunct pamphlet Word Study, distinguished between the pure and impure uses of Slurvian. Impure Slurvian produces nonsense sounds such as those listed above. But Slurvian in its purest form mispronounces English words into other English words.

To help to translate Slurvian into English and to preserve the growing canon of non-enunciation, I offer VERBATIM verbivores a grotesque glossary of pure Slurvian. The list is evenly split between entries from Davenport’s and Wycherley’s disquisitions and atrocities that I have collected during the past five years.

bar to take temporarily: “May I bar your eraser?”

calvary a mobile army unit: “At the last minute, the wagon train was saved by the calvary;” A rare example of spoonerized Slurvian.

dense a tooth expert. “I have a dense appointment today.”

forced a large cluster of trees. “Only you can prevent forced fires.”’

formally earlier. “Today she’s a millionaire investor, but formally she tried to make a living as an English teacher.”

girl an article of clothing. “She had to work hard to get her girl on.”

granite conceded. “Too many people take the good life for granite.”

intensive an idiom, as in “for all intensive purposes,” rather than the correct “for all intents and purposes.”

lays the opposite of “gemmen.” “Lays and gemmen, I now introduce our speaker.”

less contraction of “Let us.” “Less get started.”

lining electrical flash of light. “Thunder and lining.”

Mayan possessive pronoun. “What’s yours is yours, and what’s Mayan is Mayan.” A rare example of Slurvian created by adding a syllable.

mere a reflecting glass. “Mere, mere on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?”

mill between the beginning and the end. “A table stood in the mill of the room.”

mince unit lasting sixty seconds. “I’ll be back in a few mince.”

neck store adjacent. “I’m in love with the girl neck store.” A rare double play.

nigh opposite of day. “She woke screaming in the mill of the nigh.”

of have. “I could of danced all night.” Perhaps the most common of all Slurvian examples.

pain giving money. “I’m tired of pain these high prices.”

pal to propel a craft on water. “It’s your turn to pal the canoe.”

paramour a modern grass-cutting instrument. “I mowed the lawn with my new paramour.”

pitcher an image or representation. “As soon as we get the pitcher framed, we’ll hang it above the sofa.”

please officers of the law. “My house was robbed! Call the please!”

then conjunction introducing an adverb clause of comparison. “I can jerk more pounds then you can.”

torment a competition. “Mabel and I have entered the bridge torment.”

whore inspiring terror. “Whore films always scare the pants off me.”

win movement of air. “He was awakened in the mill of the nigh by flashes of lining and gusts of win.”

winner opposite of summer. “The Pilgrims faced many a hard winner.”

Slurvophobes unite! Keep your ears open and your notebooks handy, and send me more examples, care of VERBATIM. Together we can record an important second language in the United States and publish a useful new lexicon—The Concise Dictionary of American Slurvian.

EPISTOLA {Arthur J. Morgan}

I can only envy David Miles [EPISTOLAE, XII,4] his enjoyment of the opera at La Scala when, as a student of elementary Italian, he could doubtless understand many of the words. At that point, proud of his knowledge, he was sure he heard the feminine singular and the masculine and feminine plurals of the adjective bravo being shouted by others in the gallery, even as he himself was calling them out at appropriate moments. But anyone who shouted “brava,” “brave,” or “bravi” was, unfortunately, quite wrong.

There are three homonyms in Italian, all spelled “bravo,” (1) an adjective, (2) a noun, and (3) an interjection. The adjective, which agrees with the noun which it modifies in gender and number, is a very low-key descriptive, as the following examples, all taken from Italian dictionaries, will show.

Era un bravo cavallo. He was a good horse.
Ha un cane assai bravo. He has a very good dog.
Un bravo folegname. A skilled woodworker.
Una brava cuoca. A good cook.
Il tuo amico è una brava persona. Your friend is a decent guy.
Sii bravi mentre la mamma è fuori. Be good (children) while mommy is out.

The noun, which is pejorative and always masculine, is defined as ‘cutthroat.’ The Italian synonym is sgherro. I think we would all agree that that was not being shouted at La Scala.

And finally we come to the interjection, esclamazione in Italian. The synonyms given in the ItalianItalian dictionaries which I consulted are Bene! and Bis! These mean ‘well (done)’ and ‘encore.’ It is clear that these words refer not to the performer, but to the performance. The Italian-English dictionaries generally translate Bravo! as “Capital; Well done.” One dictionary added “Hurrah, Hurray!” Again, we see that Bravo! refers to the performance. Even if the word were not invariable, which it is, why would it agree with the performer in gender and number?

That the word is indeed invariable is shown by the following example: accogliere dei “bravo!” che non finivano più, “to receive bravos that were neverending.” (From A Short Italian Dictionary, Hoare, Cambridge University Press, American Edition, 1967.) So that even as its own plural (as proved by dei), Bravo! does not change its form.

Finally, to revert briefly to the adjective; who would apply a wet-rag adjective like bravo, used mainly for animals, children, and workingmen, to a diva like Montserrat Caballé? It would be the ultimate example of damning with faint praise!

[Arthur J. Morgan, New York City]

EPISTOLA {Dwight Bolinger}

Regarding Basil Wentworth’s observation on the position of alive [XIII,3], that “it apparently can appear only after the word it modifies,” we can refer to Cecily Raysor’s article, “An Unexpected Usage: ‘Ahead,’ ‘Alive,’ and the Like, Before Nouns,” American Speech 34 (1960) 302.

All he has to do is belong to a reasonably alive organization or be willing to join one.

—The Progressive, September 1962, p. 36.

Away games is now standard as the antonym of home games.

For the moment all the aghast mate’s thoughts seemed theirs.—Moby Dick (Chapter 123).

In 1977, Yuri Buzhor examined 40,000 pages and culled 93 examples of this phenomenon. His findings, unfortunately, are available, as far as I know, only in the published Ukrainian article in Inozemna Philologija 46 (1977) 10-14 (Lvov). Among other citations is one from Faulkner, It was like alive ice….

I’m still looking forward to capping my next trip to Japan with a stay at the Akimbo Arms Motel.

[Dwight Bolinger, Palo Alto, California]

EPISTOLA {Cosima V. Lyttle}

Elmer Suderman [XII, 1] speculates on other words for various varieties of farts. Nathan Bailey, in his numerous dictionary editions (1721-85), gives the noun feist ‘a fart without noise,’ also the verb fizzle ‘to break wind backwards without noise, to feist or to foist,’ and also poop ‘to break wind backwards softly.’ He further defines fart ‘an eruption of wind backwards’ and belch ‘to break wind upwards.’

[Cosima V. Lyttle, Decatur, Georgia]

EPISTOLA {Robin D. Gill}

I found Paul V. Axton’s article, “The Nihongo Religion” [XIII, 2], a bit too much to stomach.

“According to Whorf, language determines perception regardless of race…. For Tsunoda, race and language are so intertwined that they cannot be separated.”

Nonsense! Dr. Tsunoda makes it very clear in Nihonjin-no-No ('The Japanese Brain') that the process by which speakers of Japanese acquire their unique brain functions is epigenetic and that anyone of whatever race who learns Japanese before the age of seven or eight develops in an identical “Japanese” manner. Moreover, Tsunoda admits that people who have grown up speaking vowel-heavy Polynesian languages share the Japanese brain functions in question.

To be fair to Mr. Axton, it would seem he picked up the mistaken view of Tsunoda’s work from linguist Roy Andrew Miller who (knowing Japanese) should have known better.

“His experiments,” he claims, “show a marked drop in activity in the creative brain of second-generation Japanese living overseas, of Koreans, Indians, Westerners, or, it seems, anyone who is not Japanese.”

Nonsense! Tsunoda does indeed claim native Japanese speakers speaking English show even a stronger left hemispheric bias than they normally enjoy/suffer. (Koreans, on the other hand, can speak English without particular stress because they don’t share the Japanese brain-function.) But he never writes that non-Japanese are not as creative as Japanese. Rather he points out that Japanese overdependence on the left hemisphere may be responsible for a lack of truly creative work in Japan and therefore suggests that Japanese listen to Western classical music (harmonic music being one of the few sounds to be received by the right brain hemisphere of Japanese) in order to stimulate their creativity.

Ironically, Mr. Axton’s article has much in common with Dr. Tsunoda’s book in that both tend to mush together Tsunoda’s scientific experiments and amateur hypotheses. Tsunoda’s discovery of differences in sound cognition between, on the one hand, Japanese and Polynesian native speakers and, on the other, all other peoples he has tested to date is the result of a carefully conducted series of hearing tests. But his interpretation of the cultural significance of his finds was strongly biased as he took the preexistent Japanese self-image and other (Western) images as gospel and fit his interpretation to them.

Paul Axton’s heavy reliance on Andrew Miller also explains the numerous referrals to Professor Suzuki Takao who is unfairly depicted as some sort of high priest of “The Nihongo Religion.” Please note that when Suzuki wrote “Foreigners properly ought not to understand the language at all,” he was not expressing his opinion—which is just the opposite—but the unfortunate attitude of many if not most Japanese when confronted with a Japanese-speaking person with non-Japanese features. Suzuki did a great service by eloguently pointing out the problems arising from equating race with language and surely deserves better from Miller and, now, Axton!

I refrain from dealing with every mistaken fact and unfair innuendo in the article because it is Christmas Day here in Tokyo and I have better things to do, including correcting the galleys of my next book: Goyaku Tengoku (‘Mistranslation Paradise’), an expose of the poor quality of English-Japanese translation centering on Peter Farb’s Word Play, which was horribly mistranslated.

[Robin D. Gill, Tokyo]

EPISTOLA {D.S. Bland}

I have no intention of driving a coach and horses through Richard Lederer’s article [XIII, 1] on equine elements in the language. He himself has admitted to gaps in his compilation, and in any case the above idiom applies to the demolition of a shaky argument, which is not in question here. No, I simply wish to add to Lederer’s list and have no wish to snaffle any of his kudos.

The first example that occurred to me was tandem, a piece of serendipity in that it provided a storyline on which to hang the rest of this article.

When Daisy left the church after her unstylish marriage she did so on a “bicycle built for two.” If she had lived before the invention of that useful mode of transport she would probably have ridden pillion on her husband’s horse, and these days would do the same thing on his motor cycle. (Let us hope that her girth would not impede their progress.) But if he could have “afforded a carriage” he might have driven his horses in tandem, that is, one behind the other. The etymology is a translated pun on the Latin meaning—at length—and it was a natural transition to move the word from horses after the invention of the two-seater bicycle.

Did Daisy’s boy-friend propose by post, and if so was he aware that this mode of communication was associated with horses? In origin, to quote the words of the OED, a post was “one of a series of men stationed along roads at intervals, the duty of each being to ride forward with letters to the next stage.”

Daisy might have spent a day of her honeymoon at the races. If she put £1 on a winning horse at odds of 25 to 1 she would have collected a pony (£25). If she lost, she could console herself with the thought that there are horses for courses, which is a metaphor for fitting the right person to the job in hand. Luckily, she did win and treated her husband to a night out at the Hippodrome.

We don’t know how Daisy’s marriage turned out after that. She might have made an unfortunate choice (being blinkered by love) and found herself hitched to a man who was hairy on the hoof, a now obsolete idiom which expresses class distinction in equine terms. When the knight in armor disappeared his “high horse” descended to being the working horse, managed by farmers and peasants. Such horses tend to have hairy fetlocks, but hunters and race-horses and other such well-bred equine aristocrats have clean ones, and they became the perquisite of the upper classes.

So Daisy might have had to take the bit between her teeth and go out to work. If so, she might have cause to complain of being on the collar, like a horse that strains to drag a heavy load. Coming home at night she might well exclaim “I’m knackered!”—that is, only fit to be taken to the knacker’s (horse-slaughterer’s) yard. She would be much too tired to indulge in horseplay, but at least she had the whip-hand over her husband.

Poor Daisy! I fear she did not have a good run for her money, and ended up quite jaded, a jade being a wearied or worn-out horse.

[D.S. Bland, Southbourne, Dorset]

EPISTOLA {Norman Shapiro}

Your review of Neaman and Silver’s Kind Words: A Thesaurus of Euphemism [XI,4] prompted me to reflect on the vagaries of eponymous celebrity. Some great minds are destined to illuminate and energize the world as amperes, curies, ohms, watts, and such. Others, like a certain sanitation-minded Parisian prefect of the 1880s, live on in the ignominious immortality of the poubelle ‘garbage can.’

I had always thought that the most ignoble of all these posthumous glories was that of the Roman emperor Vespasian, who gave his name to the famous French sidewalk urinals, vespasiennes. The review reminded me of an equal ignominy. One cannot but have compassion for the eminent Jesuit Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), the pride of French ecclesiastical rhetoric—remembered today only by divinity students and some Ph.D. candidates—whose interminable sermons were supposedly the inspiration for a concealable oblong chamberpot, the bourdalou. (Note the spelling: not “bourdalon,” with an n, as reported.) The good churchman’s shades can take comfort in the knowledge that, unlike the everyday poubelle and vespasienne—the latter disappearing, but still of redolent memory—the bourdalou, both word and object, has long since fallen out of French vocabulary and usage.

That consolation would, however, be somewhat tempered if, as suggested by authors Neaman and Silver, the last syllable were, in fact, the origin of the English loo. I don’t know what evidence the cited Honour and Fleming’s Dictionary of Decorative Arts offers for this etymology; but unless it is compellingly well documented, it seems unlikely, even illogical. The bourdalou, after all, was a thing, not a place, used when the place in question—the “loo”—was inaccessible; used, indeed, in lieu of same. Which leads me to a long-held assumption—gardyloo and other etymologies notwithstanding—that loo is nothing more complicated than the English pronunciation of the French lieu, used euphemistically, like so many Gallic expressions for a variety of taboo terms (lingerie, derrière, douche, et al.).

The supposition is all the more reasonable if we consider that the French themselves commonly refer to the lieu(x) d’aisances, ‘latrines’—or simply the lieux— as euphemisms for the toilette (itself originally a euphemism as well, but that’s another matter).

[Norman Shapiro, Wesleyan University]

EPISTOLA {Ian J. Bald}

The article by Marc A. Schindler, “Unusual Place Names in Canada” [XIII, 1] was of special interest to me as a native of Canada. I was born in a town with an unusual name, Penetanguishene, a port on Georgian Bay in Lake Huron. It is an Abenaki Indian name meaning ‘the place of the falling white sands.’

I wish to correct one item in Mr. Schindler’s article. In section 1, “The Whimsical Names of Newfoundland,” he states that L’Anse aux Meadows is a “feat of bilingual redundancy,” since Anse means a ‘meadow.’ But Anse means a ‘cove, small bay, or creek,’ and thus there is no redundancy. The original name, given by early French explorers, was L’Anse aux Méduses, meaning ‘Jellyfish Cove.’ Since Méduses sounded roughly like meadows to the later English-speaking inhabitants, the spelling was changed accordingly. Presumably the early French settlers found medusas, or jellyfish, in the water of one of the many coves on the north shore of the island, and perhaps suffered some painful stings from their tentacles. The original name thus made good sense until it was corrupted to its present bilingual form.

The name is certainly unusual and deserves a place in Mr. Schindler’s article, not for the reason he cites, but mainly because it was originally given to a body of water but is now used for a land area, the site of an 11th-century Viking settlement, excavated in the 1960s. How and when did this migration of a place name from sea to land occur? Perhaps Mr. Schindler’s further research will reveal the answer to this question and others regarding unusual place names in Canada.

[Ian J. Bald, Washington, D.C.]

EPISTOLA {Robert M. Sebastian}

As my subscription began with XIII,l, I don’t know whether the Caveat Viator [XI,4] mentioned the glee Il Duce used to create in referring to “Franklin del ano Roosevelt.”

The Florence Goldman letter [XII,1] reminded me of a visit a Venezuelan geologist of ours made to Philadelphia some decades ago. He was an ebullient tipo who prided himself on his command of English. We were having after-dinner coffee when the name of our Maracaibo paleontologist came up. This was a gentleman who bore a recognizable resemblance to the fur-bearing seal, a fact which, alack, could not prevent the sudden tension that seized us all when our visitor exclaimed, “You know, he look just like an old foca!”

[Robert M. Sebastian, Philadelphia]

EPISTOLA {Ines Swaney}

With reference to Mr. Rasmussen’s essay, [XIII,3] “What Do You Call a Person from…?,” the following detail should be pointed out:

Mr. Rasmussen is erroneous in his translation of the term Peruvian into Spanish. The correct Spanish word, as can be verified in any Spanish-English dictionary, is peruano, not “peruviano.”

[Ines Swaney, Oakland, California]

OBITER DICTA

Herbert H. Paper, Hebrew Union College

For years now, we have had the works of the “pop” grammarians appear as best sellers. Edwin Newman, John Simon, and others—on numerous weekly occasions also William Safire—reign supreme in the public mind. In a recent issue of VERBATIM, the detailed review of a book by Jacques Barzun is an excellent example of the apodeictic views of that self-elected language guardian who really ought to know better after these many years of the debate. Urdang, the reviewer, documents the many instances where Barzun simply ignores the available evidence; not that it is a matter of descriptivism versus prescriptivism: it is just a plain ignoring the facts of the language.

Even the recently published book, The Story of English—the much touted companion to the generally quite good television program on Public Television—contains statements that are a bit too much for my linguistic digestion. For example, we are told (p.

  1. that “English has three characteristics that can be counted as assets in its world state. First of all, unlike all other European languages, the gender of every noun in Modern English is determined by meaning, and does not require a masculine, feminine, or neuter article.” Somehow, Latin—in its own time and world state—seemed to have had considerable sway and influence despite its three (grammatical—that is, nonsexual) genders.

“The second practical quality of English is that it has a grammar of great simplicity and flexibility.” Really? Just because of its “highly simplified word-endings”? The examples that follow concentrate on the fact that many words in English function as both noun and verb.

And finally, the third of the great characteristics of English that give it its world-sway cachet is “its teeming vocabulary, 80 per cent of which is foreignborn.” Really, Messrs. McCrum, Cran, and MacNeil?! Are there no historical or political factors that have given English its present position in the world? There is a rather large portion of the world, I would remind our three authors, where a language holds sway with three genders and lots of complicated word-endings and prefixes. It is called Russian.

Then we have the following incredible statement (p. 51): “In the course of one thousand years, a series of violent and dramatic events created a new language which, by the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, is intelligible to modern eyes and ears without the aid of subtitles.” [Italics mine. —HHP.] When was the last time that one of these authors read a page of Shakespeare—closer to our own age than Chaucer—and was able to understand it fully without recourse to the glosses and notes at the bottom of the page?

And then in the very next paragraph we have the following statements as a prelude to discussing Sir William Jones and his remarkable insight which later developed into the notion of comparative Indo-European. “The English have always [Always?—HHP] accepted the mixed blood of their language [Awful terminology. —HHP]. There was a vague understanding [Really?? —HHP] that they were a part of a European language family, but it was not until the eighteenth century that a careful investigation by a gifted amateur linguist began to decipher the true extent of this common heritage.” To refer to Sir William Jones as a “gifted amateur linguist” is a bit much. He deserves more than that designation surely. He was a master of most old and modern European languages, had written poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was well versed in Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. He wrote and published a grammar of the last language, and soon after arriving in India to take up his duties as a jurist he began to study Sanskrit and produced the first translations into English from Sanskrit literature. Is this then no more than “a gifted amateur linguist”?

Or, turning for a moment to matters phonological, we find this generalization (p. 123): “The English speak quickly; the Americans tend to be more deliberate; the English tend to use a greater variety of tone; Americans tend to a certain monotony. It is as much the variety of tone as the different pronunciation of words that makes English speech so different to American ears.” This in a book that purports to bring the general reader up to date in matters of language. Quo usque tandem abutere… patientia nostra… to repeat the words of a famous user of the ancient “world language” that seemed to operate quite uninhibitedly in a large part of Europe for some centuries.

On page 128 we read, “Shakespeare and his contemporaries had experimented with the English language as no other writers before or since. There was an air of childish innocence in the ease with which they broke the rules and made the language sing.” Really?! What self-induced romantic nonsense!

These citations may strike my reader as a personal indulgence in “nit-picking.” But they are only a few of the really unbelievable and wrong-headed formulations that I came across in a first leisurely reading of the book—a book intended for the interested lay public and intended to inform, to educate, and to update knowledge about the language.

So what has happened in all these intervening decades of efforts by linguists researching and writing on these matters? How can I be convinced not to despair?

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“If you don’t know who your roommate is going to be, write to them and find out what they’re bringing.” [From an article on how to furnish your college dorm, The Indianapolis Star, 22 September 1984. Submitted by Robert E. Koontz, Muncie, Indiana.]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Language of St. Louis, Missouri, Variation in the Gateway City

Thomas E. Murray, (Peter Lang Publishing, 1986), 272pp.

The body of Murray’s work, which is amply augmented by various statistical tables, is based on data he collected from 240 respondents, all of whom are “native St. Louisans.” Having been born in St. Louis and having lived there for at least 25 years, I was able to recognize many of the characteristic pronunciations and grammatical constructions favored by Murray’s informants. I, however, do not qualify as a native St. Louisan, according to Murray’s criteria—“one of the requirements… was that both [the informants] and their parents had to have lived in St. Louis all their lives.” Unfortunately, for Murray’s purposes, this criterion ruled out using blacks as respondents. He states, “It is true that inner St. Louis is now populated almost exclusively by blacks, but the vast majority were born in other parts of the country and then migrated to the Gateway City; thus I could not, strictly speaking, label their speech ‘the language of St. Louis.’ ”

The text of Murray’s work is peppered with linguistic “in-jokes” and other references, as well as examples of the author’s distinctive brand of wit. Murray alludes to “the well-known ‘danger of death’ question,” and to the “well-known department store survey” conducted by Labov in 1972. He also observes that “St. Louis does seem to have an inordinately high population of androgynous beings, supplemented with the typically small subcultures of transvestites, bearded women and so on…”

Murray attempts to end the debate concerning whether St. Louis speech is typically “North Midlands,” “South Midlands,” or a mixture of the two. He examines the language of St. Louis through a metaphor he creates around the term hoosier, remarking, “I can show conclusively that the linguistic choices of St. Louisans are heavily influenced by their collective perceptions of what it means to be and sound like a ‘hoosier.’ “According to Don Crinklaw, whom Murray quotes:

[St. Louisans] do not, as many think, use [hoosier] interchangably [sic] with hillbilly, which suggests a cute old fellow with a fishin'… pole, a jar of corn squeezin’s and a corncob pipe …[They] mean that displaced country man who moves into a city neighborhood and tears it up. As in, “First the hoosiers moved in, then the blacks.” I guess you could say a hoosier is a hillbilly who’s threatening.

Murray polled 480 St. Louisans (in addition, I gather, to his primary respondents) in order to ascertain precisely the local usage of hoosier. He finds it to be the pejorative term of choice when referring to white males. He even observes that many white St. Louisans use hoosier as a derogatory term when referring to blacks. (I can’t corroborate this bit of evidence, since never, in all my years in St. Louis, do I recall hearing a black person referred to as a hoosier. Not by anyone.)

Based on his research, Murray concludes that St. Louisans consider “northern” pronunciation and grammar more correct than “southern,” and they speak the way they do because they don’t want to be thought of as “hoosiers.” (On the subject of pronunciation, it might be useful to point out that the natives always say “saint LOOiss” not LOOee) and “saint LOOiss-un.” This notwithstanding “Saint LOOee woman,” “meet me in Saint LOOee, LOOee,” and other anomalies.)

Linguists might well find the book useful because it brings together data from previous surveys of the language of St. Louis, both Murray’s own work and that of Donald Lance, Rachel Faries, and Robert L. Johnson, among others. And Murray ambitiously attempts to reach some conclusions as to how St. Louisans have come to speak the way they do.

The inquisitive layman might find Murray’s work interesting for two reasons. First, one’s own commonsense assumptions about linquistic field research are borne out in Murray’s work. He had to switch his method of collecting data before he even got started, he states, because, “not only were my informants extremely uneasy when they became aware that I was observing their pronunciation, they quite obviously tried to effect certain changes in the formation of many of their vowels and consonants.” Also, he observes, people tend to speak in a manner they consider to be “more correct” when they are in a situation they regard as more “formal.”

Second, especially if the reader has ever spent much time in St. Louis, he or she might recognize or be amused by some of the distinctive constructions and pronunciations favored by St. Louisans. Murray notes the predominance of the “SUNduh” pronunciation of sundae, that wash and Washington become “warsh” and “Warshington,” forty turns into “farty” and that St. Louisans use you guys as a term of address for a mixed group of people. He also observes the preference St. Louis natives have for lightning bugs over fireflies, icing over frosting, jelly over jam, skipping school over playing hookey, and a grease job over a lube job. Finally, it is refreshing that Murray’s study lays to rest some of the misconceptions outsiders have about the speech of St. Louisans. They do not, Murray asserts, carry things around in sacks—they like bags better, and soda is their (non-alcoholic) beverage of choice, not pop.

The non-professional reader, however, might be perplexed at the nature of linguistic studies in general, judging from Murray’s account. I found myself debating the merits of a study which excludes a significant slice of the population of a city, while claiming to derive conclusions from the data gathered. Further, I cannot quite reconcile Murray’s use of past studies as models for his own. Some of the syntax and phonology vocabulary he investigates seem archaic. How significant is it, for instance, that St. Louisans store their potatoes in either a root cellar or a plain old cellar? In older, larger houses, a root cellar was often a separate part of a cellar, containing bins for apples, potatoes, etc. I understand that by sticking to formats used in the past by other researchers, Murray gives himself a useful basis for comparison, but it seeems to me he denies himself a great deal of information he could have gathered if he had listened a little more and predicted a little less.

It was disappointing to see that Murray failed to witness St. Louisans' predilection for such phrases as same difference (used in lieu of same thing). And had Murray allowed himself to interview black St. Louisans, he more than likely would have been treated to the construction be’s, which is used in place of is or are, as in, Sometimes things just be’s that way.

[Thomas Finkel, Providence]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English: A Guide to Word Combinations

Morton Benson, Evelyn Benson, and Robert Ilson, (John Benjamins, 1986), xxxvi + 286 pp.

I have two complaints about this book: One is that it is too brief: the language is vast, and the number of collocations (which, out of sheer perversity, I prefer to call collocutions) is enormous. It is doubtful that all could be covered, and it is sad that a combination of the authors' efforts and the publisher’s support could not have produced a more comprehensive work. My second complaint—though one that is more readily answerable—is that the bibliographical sources for this book are listed in another book, Lexicographic Description of English. That book is not at hand while I write this review; in fact, I am not certain that I have it, and I think it unforgivable (I blame the publisher) that a reader/user be referred to a different work; I find the present work greatly diminished by the shortcoming.

For those who have not needed to distinguish between idioms and collocutions, an explanation is in order. It is generally accepted that an idiom is a collection of two or more words the meaning of which is different from the sum of the literal meanings of the individual elements. Thus, while red herring may be, literally, a herring that is red, it is more likely to mean ‘false trail’ or, in financial circles particularly, an ‘offer of new shares in a corporation.’ Similarly, kick the bucket, fly off the handle, take in ‘deceive,’ comic book, green thumb, etc. A detailed discussion of this complicated genre must be left to another time. At the other extreme are the ordinary formations that reflect completely independent grammatical and lexical uses of the language. Thus, on the house in The roof is on the house is such a usage, while in The drink is on the house, on the house means ‘free of charge.’ Somewhere in the middle, between these extremes, are collocutions, that is, the ordinary combinations that habitually recur in a language. These may be more or less metaphoric (which creates a genuine problem of selection) and, like idioms, fall into the general category of clichés. The BBI (for Benson, Benson, Ilson) Dictionary concerns itself with such collocutions, their listing, and their classification into several grammatical and lexical classes of some refinement. I get the impression because of the very difficult work of classification that a number of common collocutions have slipped through the net and that some of those included have missed their proper categorization. Before detailing these items, it would be just to point out that when a native speaker deals with his own language, the semantic elements being analyzed frequently become like optical illusions: they appear one way on a Friday afternoon and in a completely different guise on Monday morning. Here are some observations and queries:

1) Why is run over in, showing She ran over to her friend’s place? In my analysis, run in this context is rarely literal, any more than it is in I’ll run out (or down) and buy some more beer. If run up to is exemplified by She ran up to me, then perhaps a better example for run over would be She ran over to where I was standing. (Note that run over in the senses of ‘overflow’ and ‘hit with a car or other vehicle’ are not in, nor should they be, for they are idiomatic, not collocutional.)

2) Check in seems to be missing, though it is the intransitive form for check into: one says I checked into (or in at) the hotel this morning (but not *I checked into this morning) and I checked in this morning (but not *I checked in the hotel this morning).

3) For American English (AE), check off (British English: tick off) ought to be in: They checked our names off; Please check off the books you want. And what about check in ‘report,’ as in I’m just checking in?

4) Where is rubber check? The modern colloquialism cut a check?

5) Why is to count one’s chickens before they are hatched in?

6) Some of the definitions could be made more precise. For example, it works like a charm is defined as ‘it works perfectly,’ while a more felicitous gloss might be ‘it works like magic.’ At chemistry, ‘empathy’ might be better than ‘personal feelings.’ What is the difference between charge 4 … they charged ten dollars for shipping (our books) and 12… she charged fifty dollars for her services?

Generally, the treatment of nouns is better than that of verbs. If one looks up chin, for instance, the words double, smooth, and glass are shown as frequently associated with it, but not chin music or up to the chin in—. Nose is missing retroussé, but cauliflower ear is in. Other common combinations are not covered, e.g., battered child (but battered wife is in), child labor, to get with child, buffalo chips, to let the chips fall where they may, chip shot (golf), Father Christmas, Christmas present, Christmas sale, Christmas tree, etc. These are probably not oversights but deliberate omissions made in order to have the space to accommodate entries deemed more important, and more’s the pity that the book is not several times its length and comprehensiveness. A scanning of Idioms and Phrases Index, Gale Research Company, 1983, would have yielded a number of entries, and recourse to private collections (I have some 50,000) would have been fruitful, too. It is worth mentioning that a work by Albrecht Reum, A Dictionary of English Style, Leverkusen, 1955, attempted a similar analysis, though employing a different structure. It is entirely possible that BBI had access to these sources, but without a self-contained bibliography, it is hard to tell. [A subsequent check revealed the Reum book in the Bibliography of Lexicographic Description of English.—Ed.]

As it stands, the book reflects contemporary English. One of its useful features is the system of usage notes appearing here and there, for example: “The verb grow ‘to become’ often suggests a gradual process rather than a sudden change. Compare to grow cold (gradually) and to turn cold (suddenly)”; “The sentence she needn’t have gone implies that she did go (though there was no need for her to go). The sentence she didn’t need to go does not indicate if she went or not.”

The structure of the entry is a little confusing at times, but any user, especially the learner of English as a foreign language, will find valuable information here once he breaks the code.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dictionaries of English: Prospects for the Record of Our Language

Richard W. Bailey, ed., foreword by Clarence L. Barnhart, (University of Michigan Press, 1987), viii + 161pp.

As Robert W. Burchfield recalls in “The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary: The End of the Alphabet,” his contribution to this collection of papers on dictionaries:

There were no courses, no conferences, no seminars, no handbooks or manuals of lexicography.

The time referred to was 1957, when he began his assignment “to prepare a new Supplement.” I do not know the attitude in England to lexicography at that time, but as a practising lexicographer in America I can attest to a similar situation there, with one or two exceptions: Uriel Weinreich, who held the Atran chair of linguistics at Columbia University, was sufficiently interested in the subject to offer a course called Lexicology, which, albeit rather vaguely, dealt with the principles of lexicography. (To this day, while I maintain such a distinction, I find that the terms are somewhat muddied.) On the other hand, my other graduate studies towards a doctorate in general and comparative linguistics were conducted by professors who clung so doggedly to the precepts of structuralism in linguistics and to theoretical matters that anything smacking of applied linguistics was at once stigmatized. The prevailing philosophy of the day—at least at Columbia—was the Bloomfieldian notion that one could not—should not—treat semantics because “we know so little about the subject of meaning.” My rebellious retort was that we were unlikely to learn more about it by struthiously ignoring it; my protests carried no weight at all, and work on meaning did not emerge till many years later, save for some isolated pockets of resistance.

Today, the situation has changed. There is a Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA), which conducts annual meetings of considerable importance to the field and publishes proceedings and a Newsletter; and there is a European Association for Lexicography (Euralex), which holds biennial conferences and other, specialized meetings and also has an active publishing program. The volume of material on lexicography published in the past decade—no, only five years or so—is voluminous compared with everything published before 1980. Much of the useful material published before then appeared in the early 1960s, most of it the results of work done on mechanical translation (an activity that became dormant, for lack of results, in the mid 1960s). Some of the best was contained in the papers of the late Margaret Masterman, of Cambridge University.

Lexicography has come into its own as a proper discipline, though I daresay there are still some diehard linguists who score it as being no better than popular culture.

The dean of American lexicography is, without doubt, the venerable Clarence L. Barnhart, a gentleman who has been active in the making of dictionaries for at least fifty years. He was responsible for the Thorndike-Barnhart series of school dictionaries published for many years by Scott Foresman, for the American College Dictionary (Random House), and for the World Book Dictionary, which is an adjunct to the World Book Encyclopedia. Barnhart speaks mainly through his dictionaries, which have always been characterized by their innovation (his was the first to use the schwa in a dictionary for the general public or students); I have often been disappointed by his reticence in imparting his wisdom in papers delivered at professional meetings, for they are quite sparse. His Foreword in Dictionaries of English is no exception: the reader is informed about the difficulties of amassing lexicographic citations and other data (of which lexicographers, who make up the majority of those likely to read this book, are already aware) and of little else. As a Foreword, Barnhart’s comments are sufficient: it is a pity that he could not have been persuaded to reveal more in an article.

All of the articles, Frederic G. Cassidy’s on the OED and DARE (Dictionary of American Regional English), E.S.C. Weiner’s on the New OED, T.F. Hoad’s on lexicographical sources in Old and Middle English, Jürgen Schäfer’s on Early Modern English in the OED, the New OED, and the Early Modern English Dictionary, and others by Richard Allsopp, A.J. Aitken, R. R. K. Hartmann, and Richard W. Bailey tend to treat matters that are largely of interest to lexicographers, linguists, and (possibly) philosophers and logicians. But there are noteworthy exceptions, depending on how specialized are the interests of nonspecialists. Bailey, for instance, treats shortcomings of existing dictionaries (in a general, not a technical sense) and his writing is always lucid and eminently readable. Hartmann treats dictionaries from “The User’s Perspective,” which emphasizes the differences among general, historical, and other kinds of dictionaries prepared for different users, e.g., youngsters, learners, etc. Aitken’s article on the treatment of Scotticisms in English dictionaries and his general comments on dictionary genealogy may be of interest to non-lexicographers and non-dialecticians.

I find it incumbent on me to criticize adversely any book of this kind that does not contain an index, though I am too well aware that its absence is more often attributable to a denial of adequate space by the publisher rather than any failing on the part of the editor. But indexes are valuable: less so, perhaps, at the first reading of a book than later on, for reference to a topic or idea one needs to access. Not all indexes are as good as they should be, but the total absence of an index is the worst of all choices.

My only (other) disappointment is the lack of coverage of computational lexicography. Although that area is, admittedly, a special interest of mine, the application of computers to lexicography has vastly simplified—even removed—some of the more onerous (and expensive) tasks from the lexicographer and, by eliminating the necessity of maintaining staff to do things like alphabetization, checking to make certain that all words used in definitions are entries, and other routine functions, has allowed the journeyman dictionary-maker the freedom to focus on more important matters. But computational lexicography concerns itself with far deeper matters than these routines, which were already being done more than 25 years ago. Computational lexicography may well enable us to gain insight into the structure of meaning in language (or tell us if there is one) and to integrate such disparate elements as meaning and frequency, pronunciation and distribution, “root” sense and metaphor, etc.

Dictionaries of English, though it does not consistently live up to the promise of its subtitle, belongs in the library of everyone concerned with or about dictionaries and lexicography.

Laurence Urdang

EPISTOLA {John E. Driemen}

In his article Who Is Rula Lenska [XII,1], Don L. F. Nilsen quotes a Ross V. Hersey story about “a student who raised his hand to go to the bathroom. The student returned a few minutes later saying he couldn’t find it.” Eventually, with the help of a second boy, it was found. Boy number one had his pants on backwards. This invites a brief inquiry into the origin and chronology, as well as the gestation period for an anecdote.

To my knowledge, the story had its genesis in the autumn of 1963. My wife was then a kindergarten teacher. One of the delightful fringe benefits of her work was the treasure trove of anecdotes that came out of her 35-plus years of teaching. The episode of the boy who couldn’t find it because he had his pants on backwards actually occurred on that day in 1963 in room 104 of the Kenny School in Minneapolis. With some extended drama, I might add. My wife told me the story that same evening.

I first used it, built up and embellished, in March of 1964 in a speech I gave to a convention of lumbermen in Missoula, Montana. It evoked a satisfactory burst of laughter and a hearty round of applause. No one claimed to have heard it before. Some two months later the story came back to me through a friend, an executive whose business frequently took him to Montana. Then, the story seemed to drift into limbo, although I used it in several speeches thereafter.

Twenty-one years later, it suddenly reappears: first, in July on a radio show broadcast from station WCCO-AM in Minneapolis; second, in your Summer issue; and again on August 15 in the comic strip The Ryatts by Elrod and Alley. Where next?

I would not dispute the possibility of the exact sequence of events happening more than once. But it did happen in my wife’s kindergarten room some 22 years ago. Now, two decades later, it blossoms ubiquitously. Indeed, a lengthy gestation; but at least, a legitimate lineage can be established.

[John E. Driemen, Minneapolis]

Paring Pairs No. 27 by Howard M. Berger

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). Destiny completed the job, but shed its ending.
(b). Live backwards with lan.
(c). Low-class bird takes potshot at eavestrough.
(d). Contest queen holds sway in wetlands.
(e). Regretful betrothal.
(f). Fishy appendage in Scottish lake artfully captures king in bridge game.
(g). Leer at Amerind athlete to found Georgia.
(h). Washer and Mixmaster cycles make bachelor lady
(i). Anti-bellum epergne for
(o). Signal greeting from lofty trigonometric function.
(p). Fruitful bracing contest.
(q). Familiarity with the Almighty provides olfactory protection.
(r). Rising seance sound provides closing summary.
(s). Gardner and Chaney make for misty isle.
(t). Headhunters lure intellectual talent into sinkhole.
(u). Course assignment on bishopric seat leads to
(u). Course assignment on bishopric seat leads to high religious office.
(v). The key is to stay alert or get stung, Becky.
(w). Minstrel performer to make isle extinet.
(x). Missing veteran golfer discovered in deep.
(y). Bob the dog’s appendage.
(z). A bit of a legal professional.

(1). Accompli.
(2). Ava.
(3). Beauty.
(4). Bee.
(5). Book.
(6). Brain.
(7). Café.
(8). Cur.
(9). Drain.
(10). End.
(11). Evil.
(12). Fate.
(13). Fin.
(14). Found.
(15). God.
(16). Gutter.
(17). Hi.
(18). Knows.
(19). Lock.
(20). Lon.
(21). Maker.
(22). Man.
(23). Mouth.
(24). Ness.
(25). Ogle.
(26). Pairing.
(27). Paper.
(28). Peace.
(29). Pears.
(30). Piece.
(31). Plight.
(32). Pro.
(33). Raining.
(34). Rap.
(35). Razed.
(36). Reef.
(37). Royal.
(38). Said.
(39). See.
(40). Senta.
(41). Sharpe.
(42). Sine.
(43). Snipe.
(44). Sorry.
(45). Source.
(46). Spin.
(47). Spirit.
(48). Step.
(49). Stir.
(50). Tail.
(51). Thorpe.
(52). Up.
(53). Worcestershire.

Answers to Paring Pairs No. 26

(a). Concrete evidence of first Gael? (17,1) Mac Adam.
(b). Annie Laurie in Scotland. (17,26) Mac Truck.
(c). Gaelic sailor stern first at airfield. (24,17) Tar Mac.
(d). Whistler catches Gael at genuflection. (17,14) Mac Kneel.
(e). If he hadn’t bloomed, Gael would make history. (17,3) Mac Cauliflower.
(f). Gaelic bird call. (17,4) Mac Caw.
(g). A Gaelic scheme born after seven. (17,13,11) Mac In Eight.
(h). Gael insensate at speed of sound. (17,19) Mac Number.
(i). Gael amazed at Indian blanket—this is straight. (17,13,2) Mac In Awe.
(j). Trim Gael. (17,13,25) Mac In Tosh.
(k). Gael tells long country tale. (17,23) Mac Rural.
(l). Gaelic bovine in Hong Kong harbor? (17,7) Mac Cow.
(m). Composer for woodwinds? (17,10) Mac Dowel.
(n). Gaelic-Indian mother. (17,9) Mac Cree.
(o). Noisy Gaelic lexicographer. (17,16) Mac Loud.
(p). Gaelic weatherman. (17,5) Mac Cloud.
(q). Gaelic actor never went up on his lines. (17,21) Mac Ready.
(r). Reagan’s horizontal line of Gaelic descent. (17,22) Mac Ron.
(s). Poetic relative of Gaelic uncle? (17,18) Mac Niece.
(t). Attendance was spotty, Scotty, and you are tardy. (17,27,15) Mac You Late.
(u). You win either way with Gaelic inventor. (17,20,17) Mac Or Mick.
(v). Bashful Gael is the genuine article. (17,8) Me Coy.
(w). Gael given to insolent, elementary writing. (17,12) Mc Guffey.

The correct answer is (6) Cloy. The winner of No. 26 was Sarah Milburn Moore of Somerville, Massachusetts.

Winners receive a credit of $25.00 or the equivalent in sterling towards the purchase of any title or titles offered in the VERBATIM Book Club Catalogue. Two winners will be drawn from among the correct answers, one from those received in Aylesbury, the other from those received in Old Lyme. Those living in the U.K., Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa should send their answers to VERBATIM, BOX 199, Aylesbury, Bucks., HP20 ITQ, England; all others should send their answers to VERBATIM, 4 Laurel Heights, Old Lyme, CT 06371, U.S.A. You need send only the one-word solution, on a postcard, please.

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Modern painter’s wild destiny (13)
9. Icy dessert fixed including aromatic plant (7)
10. Cleared out of state (7)
11. Clounts up handbags (5)
12. Is offended at houses I had for tenants (9)
13. Enterprise, perhaps for struggling harpists (8)
14. Was taken with a party communist (6)
17. Ape clutching an awning (6)
19. Witnesses taking in cunning hunts (8)
23. Taunt about a cardinal being frightened away (6, 3)
25. Magnetism left in long speech (5)
26. Pull at leaflet (7)
27. Love poems and article from across the Atlantic (7)
28. Musclemen tattle endlessly, enthralling Prime Minister (7, 6)

Down

1. Typeset a story, netting some Spanish money (7)
2. Vision problem right on entering empty train (9)
3. Confederate employs symbolic writings (7)
4. A muscle builder from a small planet (8)
5. Skinnydipper stumbling in dust (6)
6. Wrote secretly when company stocks terminated (7)
7. Couple win at caroms (5)
8. Rented for the minium amount, say (6)
15. Gives auditions in legitimate theater tryout? (9)
16. Hairstyle featured in broadcast from shore area (8)
17. Foreign actors shares the billing (6)
18. Show nervousness getting official introduction (7)
20. News stores closed finally, getting small amount of money (3, 4)
21. Rescue 50 held by barbarian (7)
22. Hate to put ring into shop machine (6)
24. Opposed to crook’s first caper (5)

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Pronounced dead in 1976 accident, boy, 12 leads healthy, active life.” [Headline from an item in The Hartford courant, November 10, 1983. Submitted by Frank Abate, Old Saybrook, Connecticut.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Two of my descendants came over on the Mayflower in 1620.” [From a correspondent to Percy Ross’s column, The Columbus Dispatch, 9 September 1984. Submitted by Dorothy Branson, Columbus, Ohio.]

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. SOFTHEARTED (hidden).
9. CLOSE-UP (anag.).
10. INGENUE (anag.).
11. N(A-R.R.)ATIVE.
12. I-DEAL.
13. ST.-RIDES.
16. DI-ARIES (I’D rev.).
17. NIAGA-R-A (rev.).
19. FL-YTRAP (PARTY rev.).
21. TAPER (2 meanings).
22. PE-RIME-TER.
25. FLATTER (2 meanings).
26. S-EX-POTS.
27. CON-FERMENTS.

Down

1. SE-CO.-NDS.
2. F-LO-OR.
3. H-YEN-A.
4. APPL-I-ES.
5. T-AIL-END.
6. DIGNITARY (hidden rev.).
7. INFE-RIO-R
8. BE-LLES (SELL rev.).
14. REAP-PEAR.
15. DIA-CRITIC (AID rev.).
17. NOTIFY (anag.).
18. ASPIRIN (g).
19. F-ORES-EE.
20. PER-USES (REP rev.).
23. MA-X-IM.
24. T-HORN.

Internet Archive copy of this issue

  1. From a phrase in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, p. 384.26. ↩︎