VOL XV, No 1 [Summer, 1988]

Gunning for the English Language

Richard Lederer, St. Paul’s School

At the very end of the last century, there was a crisis at the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The man who was shot out of the cannon during each show was asked by his wife to quit his high-risk job, much to the distress of the great P.T. Barnum. Barnum, whose wit was equal to his showmanship, summoned the fellow to him and said, “I beg you to reconsider. Men of your caliber are hard to find.”

Without fully realizing it, all of us speak the language of guns and cannons in our everyday conversation, and many words and phrases we spark forth date back to the era of black powder and muzzleloading. Take the words shot, shoot, and shooting. Sure as shooting, some hotshot big shot is bound to shoot the breeze and shoot this big mouth off about taking a cheap shot potshot at some troubleshooting competitor. Then he shoots his bolt and wad by taking a long shot at some one-shot deal that will win him the whole shooting match. It is not always easy to ascertain whether the underlying metaphor in such expressions is the bow and arrow or the gun and cannon (see Peter A. Douglas’s “The Bows' Stratagem,” VERBATIM VI,3), but we can be fairly certain that the wad in shooting one’s wad refers to the wad that held the powder and shot in position to be fired from early guns and that the pot in potshot signifies the dinner pot to be filled with an animal that was shot close up without any regard for rules.

Or take two of the most popular verbs we use to describe somebody who has been dismissed from the job—fired and discharged. Both are metaphors that compare the unfortunate victim to a projectile shot out of a gun or cannon. Hand guns of the fourteenth century were equipped with touchholes; in order to discharge such a weapon it was necessary to touch it with a torch.

I am feeling quick on the trigger, quick on the draw, hot as a pistol, and loaded for bear, so I am going to get the drop on you and let you have it with both barrels. Here is a small arsenal of words and expressions that turn out to be figurative spark-offs from the language of guns and cannons.

bite the bullet If you visit a Revolutionary War battle site, like Fort Ticonderoga, you may see some gruesome artifacts in its museum—bullets with teeth marks in them. Having no real anesthesia to ease the agony of amputation or surgery, a surgeon of two centuries ago offered wounded soldiers the only pain reducer available—a bullet to bite on. The whole idea of such a procedure is enough to make one sweat bullets. After anesthesia was introduced in the U.S. in 1844, the phrase came flguratively to mean to ‘deal with a bad situation resolutely,’ as in Rudyard Kipling’s lines “Bite the bullet, old man,/ And don’t let them think you’re afraid.”

flash in the pan This phrase sounds as if it derives from the way that prospectors pan rivers for gold. In truth, though, flash in the pan refers to the occasional misfiring of the old flintlock muskets when the flash of the primer in the pan of the rifle failed to ignite the explosion of the charge. The estimates of misfirings like this run as high as fifteen percent by those who fire flintlocks these days, when the expression signifies an intense but short-lived success or a person who fails to live up to his or her early promise.

go off half cocked Muzzleloaders, then as now, had a half cock, or safety position, for a gun’s hammer that partially back-locked the trigger mechanism so that the weapon could not be fired. Half cock does not give enough power to generate sparks and fire the pistol, so it is a futile gesture. Thus, in modern parlance, when a person goes off half cocked (or at half cock), he or she is not in control of the situation.

skinflint In many parts of early America, necessities such as flint were scarce. When one side of a flint used in a flintlock weapon had worn away, it lost proper contact with the frizzen and caused inadequate sparking to set off the powder charge. Faced with this problem, some gun toters would skin, or sharpen the flint with a knife, creating a bevel in the flint, which could then make full contact and generate an adequate shower of sparks. A fellow who “skinned his flint” was looked upon as being a parsimonious, penny-pinching, stingy cheapskate—a veritable skinflint.

ramrod A ramrod is a rod of wood or metal for ramming the ball and patch down the barrel of a muzzleloading firearm and setting them against the main powder charge. Eventually ramrod became personified, taking on the added meaning of ‘one marked by rigidity, stiffness, and severity,’ even though the original ramrods, which were straight, were rather flexible.

point-blank In ballistics, a weapon fired point-blank is one whose sights are aimed directly at a target so that the projectile speeds to its destination in a flat trajectory. By extension, a point-blank question or accusation is one that is direct and straightforward —right to the mark. The opposite of point-blank is hanging fire, ‘undecided, up in the air.’ In munitions, hanging fire describes the delay in the explosion or charge in a firearm.

heavens to Betsy! Digging up the roots of this exclamation has given many a scholar calluses and a bent back. In his introduction to Heavens to Betsy and Other Curious Sayings (Harper & Row, 1955), Charles Earle Funk said that the very title of his book “turned out eventually to be completely unsolvable.” Funk dismisses Queen Elizabeth I and Betsy Ross as possible eponymous sources and concludes, “It is much more likely to have been derived in some way from the frontiersman’s rifle or gun which, for some unknown reason, he always fondly called Betsy. However, despite exhaustive research, I am reluctantly forced to resort to the familiar lexical locution, ‘Source unknown.’ ” Discussion with my gun-loving friends supports Funk’s penultimate etymology. The smooth-bore muskets used during colonial, revolutionary, and frontier days were known as Brown Besses, hence the nickname Betsy.

cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey Before you cancel your subscription, please read on. In nautical jargon, the monkey was a tray-like metal casting with round indentations arranged in a square pattern. These “monkeys” held pyramids of cannonballs for each gun in a muzzleloading battery on a battleship. Soon iron monkeys gave way to more expensive but corrosion-resistant brass monkeys. But because the iron balls and the brass holders had markedly different coefficients of expansion, the pyramids of cannonballs had a tendency to collapse during cold snaps—weather that was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

As further ammunition to support my bulletproof contention that our language is loaded with guns and cannons, I’ll conclude by gunning for items that have the word gun in them.

go great guns The word great used to mean ‘big,’ and great guns referred to cannons and other large firearms, as opposed to “small guns” or musket rifles. By the late nineteenth century, these uses of great and small became obsolete, but to go great guns continued to allude to the loudness, forcefulness, and large size of long-ago cannons and still means to ‘proceed with considerable momentum, to go full steam ahead, at full bore.’

son of a gun This expression is frequently employed as a euphemism for another phrase that begins with the same three words, but the question remains why gun has been elected as the surrogate word. The Sailor’s Wordbook, published more than a hundred years ago, offers this explanation: “ ‘Son of a gun’ is an epithet conveying contempt in a slight degree and was originally applied to boys born afloat. One admiral declares that he was literally thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage.” Taking this clue, word detectives suggest that son of a gun originated during the eighteenth century, when nonmilitary women were permitted to live aboard naval ships. When one of these women gave birth to a child without knowing which sailor had fathered it, the paternity was logged as “gun,” perhaps alluding to the midship gun, which was often located near the makeshift maternity room.

stick to one’s guns When we stick to our guns, we hold adamantly to our position. To stand and continue firing when under heavy attack on the battlefield took courage because artillerymen usually lacked infantry weapons. When an artilleryman broke and ran, the enemy could turn the guns to their own use. Thus, many a soldier was actually chained to his gun to ensure bravery.

spike one’s guns If an army had to fall back and abandon its field artillery, the simplest way to render its guns useless was to jam a spike into the fuse hole. Gradually, spike one’s guns came to mean ‘frustrate the enemy by blocking his intended plan of action.’

give it the gun While giving their airplane engines all the gas they could handle, World War I combat pilots would open fire on the enemy with their machine guns. This led to the association of rapid acceleration with “gunning,” and to give it the gun was soon extended to automobiles, speedboats, and objects and matters nonmechanical.

Sure as shootin', I’ve just shot my wad—lock, stock, and barrel—demonstrating how guns and cannons echo through our language. Please don’t think me a trigger-happy son of a gun if I shoot the breeze with one last pistol-packing explanation. The lock, stock, and barrel are the three main components of a gun that together compose essentially the entire weapon. Thus, lock, stock, and barrel has come to mean the entirety of something—the whole shooting match.

Duende: Gypsy Soul and Something More

George Bria, Pound Ridge, New York

Besides going to Valencia for paella, the compleat traveler in Spain should experience duende. This is not easy to arrange, however, for duende, unlike paella, cannot be made to order. All the ingredients may be present—the music, the singers, the dancers, the setting, and costumes—but, alas, duende itself fails to show up and the production fizzles.

As the cognoscenti define it, duende (pronounced DWEHN-deh) is a ‘magical quality, of a peculiarly Spanish nature, that raises a performance to peaks of enthrallment.’ The occasions when duende grips a singer, dancer or torero are punctuated with cries of “Olé!” from the audience. When a performer is inspired, it is said that he, or she, “tiene duende” (‘has it’).

The Spanishness of duende is underlined by the absence of a look-alike word in the sister Romance languages, Italian and French. Like Italian, Spanish has estro, from the Latin oestrus ‘gadfly’ (English estrus) to denote artistic inspiration (and female sexual heat), but duende goes further. It is something like the zone of current sports lingo in which a tennis player, say, enters a trance-like state, putting him on a roll where he can’t miss a shot. But duende has deeper vibrations, evoking for its disciples the very ethos of Spain. Soul, from the black culture, is perhaps closest in English.

Duende meant ‘hobgoblin,’ ‘sprite,’ or ‘ghost’ in Spanish for a long time, but it is not known when it acquired its artistic coloration. It did not become a buzzword, at any rate, until fairly recently. In his Iberia (Random House, 1968), James A. Michener said duende “now dominates Spanish conversation” and “seems to have become the sine qua non of Spanish existence,” whereas in previous visits to Spain he had not heard it at all. At the time he was writing, Michener noted that dictionaries had not caught up with the current meaning. It does appear now, however, in dictionaries and the English-language media. A New York Times story by Hubert Saal on flamenco (March 22, 1987) speaks of the “mysterious duende” as “a kind of gypsy soul, which flies only on the wings of spontaneity and improvisation.” I have seen a calendar (Workman Publishing Co., New York) which defined it as “personal magnetism and charm,” and said, “Given today’s extensive TV coverage, political candidates need duende if they hope to be accepted by the public.”

Etymologists say it originally meant dueño de una casa ‘lord, or master, of a house’ and is a contraction of duen de casa. Duen is the apocopated (cut-off) form of dueño, which stems from the Latin dominus. As the Spanish word evolved, the de was suffixed to the duen, the casa was omitted altogether, and el duende thus became “the lord of the house.” But its plural form duendes also signified ‘household gods,’ like the Roman Lares and Penates, and took on even broader, pantheistic overtones in duendes de las montañas y de las cuevas ‘spirits of the mountains and caves.’

The connotation of gifted artistic performance, however, might stem from the gypsy culture in Andalusia whose dialect, caló, has words like duquende (possibly from the Russian dook) meaning ‘spirit or ghost,’ and duquendio, meaning ‘maestro.’ One scholar, Allen Josephs of the University of West Florida, surmised that “from duquendio or duquende to duende is a short step, especially in Andalusia, where gypsy mastery would be precisely flamenco mastery.”

Whatever its derivation, duende as artistic inspiration found its apostle and guru in Andalusian-born Federico García Lorca, lyric poet and dramatist who was murdered in 1936, at age 38, in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. His empathy with the gypsies of his native region is reflected in many of his poems. In 1933 García Lorca gave a lecture in Buenos Aires on the Teoría y Juego del Duende (‘Theory and Play of Duende'), which has become the bible of the initiates. The address (Obras Completas, Aguilar, Madrid, 1963) is a 5,000-word virtuoso performance in which he describes duende variously as “the spirit of the earth,” with Dionysian roots, and as “the mysterious spirit of sorrowful Spain.” He quotes an Andalusian artist, Manuel Torres, as having exclaimed of composer Manuel de Falla’s Nocturno del Generalife, “Todo lo que tiene sonidos negros tiene duende” (‘All that has black sounds has duende'). García Lorca recalls a Spanish girl street singer and dancer transforming “the horrendous” Italian song, O Marí into an artistic gem by virtue of her “rhythms, silences and intention.”

But García Lorca also finds duende to be intimately linked with death and hence achieving its most striking manifestation in the bullfight. “At the moment of the kill,” he says, “the help of duende is needed to bring it off with artistic truth.”

The Expanding Lexicon of One-letter Words

Richard Bauerle, Ohio Wesleyan University

One-letter words are proliferating despite the limits of our alphabet and the possibility of misunderstandings arising from multiple meanings. Below are the words and meanings noted since an earlier account of new one-letter words in the Summer, 1987, issue of VERBATIM.

WORD	MEANING	SOURCE
A-word	adultery	Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 29, 1987
Variants:
	Big A	Life, Oct. 1987
	A-question	New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 1988
B-word	bimbo	Wall Street Journal, Nov.5, 1987
	bitch?	Oprah Winfrey Program, ABC-TV, Oct. 2, 1987
C-word	cancer	Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 3, 1987
	challenge	Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 3, 1987
	courage	Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 3, 1987
D-word	detente	New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 1988
F-word	fart	USA Today, May 22, 1987
M-word	merger	New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 1988
	mind	“Murder, She Wrote,” CBS-TV Dec. 20, 1987
Variant:
M-question	marijuana	New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 1988
K-word	kids (generic)	“A Year in the Life,” NBC-TV, Sept. 7, 1987
O-word	Olympics	Nude O-word, CNN Daywatch, Feb. 16, 1988 (Sign in front of girlie show in Calgary, Canada. Olympics copyrighted.)
Variant:
standing O	standing ovation	ESPN, July 20, 1987
R-word	recession	Joan Lunden, ABC-TV, Oct. 27, 1987
Variant:
dirty R	Reagan	Mike Royko, Columbus Dispatch, Dec. 15, 1987
T-word	taxes	New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 1987
U-word	unemployment	New York Times Magazine, Jan. 17, 1987
W-word	woman?	Mother Jones, Oct. 1987 (previously recorded)
Y-word	yuppie
Variants:
dirty Y-word		Esquire, Feb. 1988
Y-people		New Republic, Jan. 25, 1988
Y-person		Doonesbury cartoon, July 6, 1987
Y-worders		USA Today, Sept. 29, 1987

As the above citations indicate, the distribution of one-letter words is quite broad, extending from The New York Times to Mother Jones, from the print world to cartoon country and TV land. Its domain is clearly more extensive than the range of argot or slang.

Noteworthy, too, are the strategies that have been devised to cope with the limits of our twenty-six letter alphabet. Users are apparently willing to risk being misunderstood by giving new meanings to a single letter, as the citations show. How much context can clarify meaning is difficult to determine, but it may help to recall that the three letter set has a multitude of meanings. (The Oxford English Dictionary devotes twenty-one pages to set). Another strategy often used to assure comprehension is to use a one-letter word and then to follow it with the meaning intended. Thus Joan Lunden on ABC-TV said to Steve Crowley, “Are you ready to use the R-word recession?” Many words like recession could be called semi-taboo words or limited taboos, for scarcely anyone would be shocked or offended to encounter them, though some people avoid using them.

Perhaps most promising in expanding the range of meanings for one-letter words are variant forms. Thus we now have the big A as well as the A-word and the M-question as well as the M-word. Perhaps we shall see such forms as the little A, the new A, or the A-option. If these variants prove productive, the lexicon of one-letter words could “spread like wild flowers,” as Sam Goldwyn once said. We could then stop asking the L-question: what is the future of the one-letter word?

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“I hope the committee recognizes ad homonym [personalized] arguments are the weakest kind of arguments….” [John Banzhaf, as quoted in Smoking and Health Review, August 1986. Submitted by John Biddle Lawrence, San Bernardino, California.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“We serve a classic Tuscan meal that includes a Florentine terrine made with dick and chicken livers….” [Sirio Maccioni as quoted in the New York Post, 29 December 1986. Submitted by Frank R. Abate, Old Saybrook, Connecticut.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“By the year 2000…Let’s Overcome Literacy.” [A message to businessmen from the Pasco County (Fla.) school district, quoted in The Orlando Sentinel, 22 October 1987. Submitted by Richard E. Langford, DeLand, Florida.]

The Joy of Scottish English: Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

J.A. Davidson, Victoria, British Columbia

One cannot but admire a standard dictionary that defines middle-aged as “between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner” and says that the verb perpetrate means “to execute or commit (esp. an offence, a poem, or a pun).”

These definitions are given in the most recent (1983) edition of Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, which was edited and published in Edinburgh. For a desk dictionary (or college dictionary, as Americans like to call them) it is rather pricey at $36.95 in Canada—but I do not think that the ghost of my Scottish father glowered (good Scots word, that) at me when I bought my copy of it. Incidentally, it is now the reference dictionary for the National Scrabble Championship in Britain.

This edition when published was said to give more word definitions than any other British desk dictionary; including its main competitor, The Concise Oxford. But in 1986 it was moved into second place by the second edition of Collins Dictionary of the English Language. (Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language seems about the same size as the Oxford; the Gage Canadian Dictionary is slightly smaller.) The first edition of Chambers was issued in 1898: Bernard Shaw said of it, “my favorite of half a dozen.”

The Scots who edit and publish Chambers do not accept what most English and Americans and Canadians do when they say some Scottish words that have become standard English on both sides of the Atlantic. For instance it gives “played” as the proper pronunciation for plaid—although, with delicate condescension, it parenthetically notes, “by the English also ‘plad.’ ” The Concise Oxford allows both pronunciations. It is shameful that the Gage Canadian allows only “plad.” as does Webster’s New World. According to Chambers, a plaid is “a long piece of woollen cloth, worn over the shoulder”—and it need not be of checked material, which is “plad,” as we generally think of it. In Scotland the checked material, of course, is tartan.

In June 1984 I moved from Ottawa to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, where I now enjoy genteel retirement. Not long after settling here I asked for a raisin scone in one of the city’s tonier tea-rooms. I pronounced scone to rhyme with John, and I was upset a little when the waitress brought it to me and said, in a pleasant English accent, “Your scone sir,” rhyming it with Joan. I wondered if I should switch to the Joan-pronunciation now that I am living in veddy English Victoria. But then, the Scots played the dominant role in early Victoria, and there are many oatmeal accents to be heard here these days. Collins allows the Scots pronunciation, but, I am sorry to report, favors the English. Chambers gave me warm feelings of assurance when I consulted it later that day. “Skohn,” as in John, is given as the proper pronunciation, but it reports that “in the south of England often (it is) pronounced ‘skoan.’ ” The definition given has nice rhetorical balance, almost Johnsonian: “a flattish, usually round or quadrant-shaped plain cake of dough without much butter, with or without currants, baked on a griddle or in an oven.” Wisdom on the scone-pronunciation issue was shown by Sir Ernest Gowers in his 1965 revision of H.W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. He moved on from Fowler’s following of the big Oxford English Dictionary in allowing both pronunciations but with preference for “skoan.” Gowers, himself an Englishman, said that “in Scotland, its land of origin, the pronunciation is skawn, and English people who know this so pronounce it.”

Dictionary buffs have long been attracted to Chambers because its editors have not scrupled against a little editorializing in some of the definitions they offer, such as those already mentioned. The user is offered a choice with man-eater: “a cannibal: a tiger or other animal that has acquired the habit of eating men: a woman given to chasing, catching and devouring men.” An eclair is “a cake, long in shape but short in duration, with cream filling and chocolate or other icing.” A picture-restorer is “one who cleans and restores and sometimes ruins old pictures.” That kind of pawkiness is fitting in a dictionary edited and published in Edinburgh and which defines pawky as a Scots word meaning “drily or slyly humorous.”

Feckless—“spiritless, helpless, futile”—is given in all my desk dictionaries, but only Chambers has feck (nice to see a lost positive found), which comes from effect through vowel-loss and is defined as “efficacy” or “quality.”

The pronunciations given in Chambers are not those of the Received Pronunciation—the BBC or Oxonian accent—as they are in all the other British dictionaries I have consulted. It is quite firm about the r-sound when it follows a vowel-sound or is at the ends of words, not dropping it as is usual with the RP but insisting that it be given full value, in various ways, as it is in Scots and Irish and, generally but not always, in the speech of most Americans except for those in New England and the South. (And of us Canadians too, except for a few who like to toff-up their speech just ever so.)

An English authority on dictionaries, James Root Hulbert, says that The Concise Oxford is the best for literary use in Britain and Chambers the best “for general British use.” I must assume that he did not take into account Chambers’s pronunciation principles. That assessment was made before the new Collins a peared on the dictionary scene. I do not know how he would rate it, but I must confess that for general use I am inclined to put it just a little ahead of Chambers. But I haven’t found it quite as much fun to browse in.

Recently in Chambers I came across the adjective perjink, a Scots word given also in Collins, but not in any of the other desk dictionaries I use: it means “prim: finical.” A more emphatic adjective is perjinkety; and it has the noun perjinkity, defined as “a nicety.” It also gives pernickety as another Scots word with a similar meaning: this is found in the other dictionaries. I am inclined to prefer perjink and its derivatives.

Word-fanciers, and not only those with some sort of Scottish bias, might enjoy dipping into another Chambers dictionary, Chambers Scots Dictionary, which was first issued in 1911 and most recently reprinted in 1984. It is specifically a dictionary of Scots, or Lallans, which some scholars consider merely a dialect of English and others a distinct language rooted in Old English. A good book for browsing in, giving many Scots words which have come into use in other parts of the English-speaking world and others which could perhaps add a little color (or colour) to English vocabulary here and there.

EPISTOLA {Hugo von Rodeck, Jr.}

Re Sam Hinton’s The Meaning of Scientific Names [XI,1], I have had an experience which, in true biological tradition, will probably make me mildly notorious in perpetuity. I collected, in northeastern Colorado, a very large (ca. 1 inch) species of robber fly (family Asilidae). This I turned over to a friend who was an expert in that family of the Diptera, for study, identification, and naming. He found the species to be unnamed, and did me the real honor of naming it rodecki, meaning “of Rodeck.” The result of his well-meant and highly-appreciated gesture is that there is now in the deathless literature of entomology a robber fly species named Proctacanthus rodecki James, which is roughly translated “Rodeck’s thorny anus.”

[Hugo von Rodeck, Jr. Northglenn, Colorado]

EPISTOLA {Frédéric O’Brady}

Thank you ever so much for having communicated a reader’s objection to my transliteration of tadachi with two is. It was indeed a mistake. I might have been influenced by the preceding double is in tadashii. But I find that tadachi ni is frequently written and printed in two words, ni meaning ‘in,’ so that tadachi ni just might be equivalent to something like ‘in the immediate.’ The Kenkyusha dictionary has even three signs for it, -chi and -ni in Hiragana, following the Chinese character which in my naive innocence I would pronounce tadachi by itself. The Chinese do pronounce it chih, meaning ‘directly, at once.’

I cannot however be compared to Japanese schoolboys: I have never been to Japan, and I am self-taught; I can read and write Japanese (slowly) for I did learn both the Katakana and Hiragana syllabaries (47 signs each) as well as a few thousand Chinese characters. My speech, of course, is very hesitant and often discouraging. There is nobody around I could practise with.

[Frédéric O’Brady, Rochester, New York]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Maledicta 9

Reinhold Aman, ed., (Maledicta Press, 1986-1987), 320pp.

Since 1977, Dr. Reinhold Aman has been publishing Maledicta, subtitled The International Journal of Verbal Aggression, from his bivouac in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Maledicta is not for everyone’s taste, and some may even go so far as to maintain that the subject of its attention is not a valid one for investigation. There is no arguing with taste, but even those who support the second tenet must admit that if researchers felt that way about cancer, syphilis, and AIDS, there would not be much point to research at all. It is unlike Dr. Aman to cloak his subject—dirty language—under the euphemism “verbal aggression”: he and most of the authors of the articles appearing in Maledicta let it all hang out; some, however, tuck it away neatly and write under a pseudonym. (And everyone should now take a few minutes to ponder the meaning of it in the preceding sentence.)

Not all of verbal aggression is concerned with four-letter words; much of it (and many of the four-letter words) involves insults, racist and other prejudicial language, and other parts of the nether reaches of language formerly represented largely by asterisks. (I have often wondered why the publishers did not have the nerve to call themselves “F**k and Wagnalls.”) To ignore it is plainly wrong; all the reasons that can be adduced for ignoring it are compelling testimony to its impact, and anything with such impact cannot—must not—be dismissed as unimportant. Contrary to popular belief, the point of studying verbal aggression is not to modify or ameliorate or eliminate it—serious scholars consider it bad form to tamper with the evidence—but to describe and codify it, much as investigators have tried to do with all other available phenomena, whether natural or artificial, whether in pure or physical or social science. To quote in part from what may be termed its “statement of purpose,” “Maledicta specializes in uncensored studies and glossaries of offensive and negatively valued words and expressions, from all languages and cultures, past and present.”

The present volume, only one year in arrears, includes an interview by Aman with Lillian Mermin Feinsilver, an authority on Yiddish and author of The Taste of Yiddish. At the end of the interview is a good bibliography of Feinsilver’s work. It should be noted that interviews are quite rare in such journals, and it is certainly unusual to find a linguist humanized by such a device. Although the interview suffers from a number of faults—for instance, it is not penetrating or thorough enough, probably because Aman is a better scholar, writer, and editor than interviewer, and it contains gratuitous information about the interviewer who cannot resist blowing his own horn—it is at least an attempt at documenting that has not, to my knowledge, been done before in the field of linguistics. Perhaps Aman will sharpen his perspective and techniques and institute such interviews as a regular feature of Maledicta.

Mrs. Feinsilver has an interesting article in this volume, too, “Comment on Aman’s ‘A Yiddish Minnie-Legend’ and the Romanization of Yiddish.” Other articles include “Is George Bush a Wimp?,” “The Moving Spray Can” (on graffiti in England), “On the Pronunciation of Cunnilingus in Dictionaries,” and numerous others on a wide variety of subjects; these are interspersed with short bits and pieces, cartoons, and asides generally attributed to “Folklore” and, presumably, gathered by the editor. Although the subject matter might be viewed as an area of legitimate investigation, I am not sure I see the point in employing the subject style of language in the descriptive text, which would be far more telling were it restricted to the language of the linguistic clinician. Aman evidently disagrees, for his writing is peppered (salted?) with references like “every asshole with access to a typewriter.” It is many years since my contemporaries and I got a kick out of seeing even the bowdlerized f**k in print (in Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 1935), and fug in Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead allowed prudery to mock itself. But the power of words is such that I contend their impact is totally lost if not treated clinically: somehow, there is a difference between “Someone had written shit on the wall” and “Some asshole had written shit on the wall”: the writer of the former has more credibility; the writer of the latter was, very likely, the very asshole who had written shit on the wall.

These are minor quibbles. Maledicta is instructive, funny, gross, informative, vulgar, impolite, and sometimes well written. I am afraid that an adjective like penetrating is not only a bit strong but would be likely to be adopted as a slogan by the editor. I do think that Aman contributes something important to the linguistic literature, and I think he ought to view a bit more seriously (and less rancorously) the opportunities accorded him by his experience with these powerful, private parts of the language to pursue a theme of analysis of its impact and why and how it carries so much weight, both denotatively and connotatively.

Laurence Urdang

[Note: Maledicta is available by annual subscription from Maledicta Press, 331 South Greenfield Avenue, Waukesha, WI 53186, USA. It costs US$25 a year; back issues are available as are several books, none expensive.]

OBITER DICTA

According to a report in The Times [30 October 1987], “Nearly 3,000 people have signed a petition urging Mr Kenneth Baker, Secretary of State for Education and Science, to make grammar, including syntax, compulsory to ‘encourage the clear and accurate expression of meaning.’ Among the signatories are… Iris Murdoch, William Golding, Anthony Powell, Ted Hughes, Roy Fuller, Kingsley Amis, Anita Brookner, Malcolm Muggeridge, Brigid Brophy, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Michael Hordern, Auberon Waugh and Lord Scarman.” This was accompanied by the (usual) lamentations over the “murder of a fine language,” the generally poor standard of English encountered in the newspapers and on radio and TV, and the observation that “children cannot spell or use the right tenses.” All this activity is being carried on by the Queen’s English Society, characterized by The Times as “a pressure group with fewer than 300 members.” On October 29th, a BBC Radio Scotland program was running a competition in which people calling in were asked to spell ventriloquist and kibbutz (among other words, presumably); several callers with “older” voices—they certainly were not children—were unable to do so; does that mean that the Scots are to be excepted from the QES campaign “to compel all children to study formal grammar up to the age of 16” or that the rot set in long ago? It may be interesting to note that the very same evening one could hear (and watch) a rebroadcast of Malcolm Muggeridge’s 1984 interview with centenarian Catherine Bramwell-Booth whose uses of the subjunctive rang forth like a battle cry for the freedom of the English language. Letters in support or condemnation of the QES program (though one may assume they will insist on programme) should be addressed to Mrs Anne Shelley, Secretary, Queen’s English Society, 3 Manor Crescent, Guildford GU2 6NF, England. (And you had best not put a period—oops! full stop—after the Mrs or you’ll be drummed out of the corps.)

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Stiff Prices at Auction of Erotic Art.” [Headline in the New York Post, 10 December 1987. Submitted by John B. Rockwell, New York City.]

Do Mistake—Learn Better

Joseph Hynes, University of Oregon

To a Western ear, the most predictable of language traits, perhaps, is the well-advertised Japanese use of r for our l. Indeed, in my travels about Honshu during a three-month visit, I did hear “coinrocker,” “see you rater,” “Adurt Graphics” (dirty books), “blackwrrants” (hit-and-miss rendering of black walnuts), “Coffee Corombia” (a chain of coffee shops), and “Coconut Glove.” The Japanese spell and pronounce what they hear and are accustomed to pronounce, much as Americans are inclined to say “Kindagarden,” “ekscape,” “lawnjeray,” “asterik,” and “ekcetera.” Such spellings and soundings are hardly surprising, however delightful. They may at least begin to suggest the considerable language barrier between my hosts and me.

Latin may provide a good analogy to what I experienced in Japan. We are not taught to speak Latin (a “dead” language), and the Japanese are not taught to speak English. Thus I met any number of expressions which I could work out, given their contexts, and which have in common both a valiant attempt to use English and an unfamiliarity with idiom. Among these are: “Get Back” (a sign flashed on TV to invite or command the viewer to return after the commercial, or maybe promising that the production will return then); “Pants 50% Down” (ad for a sale); “in my side” (for my part; on my side of the argument); “Step the Pedal — Water Will Flow” (sign in a train lavatory); “Drive-Thru Window” (at the bank); “How do you doing?” (“How do you do?” wed to “How are your doing?”); “Let’s Sports!” (ad for an athletic club)’ “Tasty Menu” (printed on a menu); “Big Heights Tahiragi” (the Tahiragi high-rise apartment building); “Build Saito” (the Saito Building); “pair glass” (a pair of drinking glasses); “Arrange Ball” (Pachinko or pinball); “History and Future Pavilion” (Pavilion of Past and Future); “fillet of minion” (entanglement perhaps not so simple); “Extra Interior” (factory-printed sign on a car: roomier? better-equipped and -furnished?); “My Life, My Gas” (ad for Tokyo Gas Co.); “Make Mens” (placard over a men’s tailoring shop); “Hot Coffee—Endless Service” (all the hot coffee you can drink); “Mons. Kamiya—Close” (the Franco-Japanese hairdresser is out to lunch). Into this category fall three additional items which, because I never ordered them from the menu, I cannot recommend—or even reliably identify: “Steak Bites Teriyaki Sauce,” “Lunch of Junior,” and “Lady’s Salad with Whipped Cream.” For me, all of these expressions convey a plucky willingness to learn a foreign language and to use it in everyday situations. In the words of a newspaper ad for a language school, “Do Mistake—Learn Better.”

When my students and I approached the heart of the course—talking the English language—nothing seemed to work for me until I closed all the books and compelled two or three students at a time to put themselves in commonplace situations in which they had to speak English. Going to the game, shopping, making plans to take the train, giving directions to one another or to me—these little situations created high drama more often than not, but they also brought about utterances, sounds on which we could at least start to work. Incidentally, I startled them one day with Victor Borge’s punctuation system, which instructed and delighted them with its differentiated popping and spitting. I think we made modest progress in three months.

On the other hand, of course, I had to swallow my own pedagogy in my trips to the store and in my efforts to buy train tickets to the right places. Sometimes I gave up, as when pointing to my temples (white) brought shampoo rather than the desired bleach. At other times I won because I could eventually dig out the desired object from the shelf (no help at the train station). Sometimes I engaged in pantomime of undoubtedly ludicrous dimensions. This had the effect of puzzling some clerks, of occasionally leading to communication (finger-pinching for clothespins worked, for example), and most often of bringing out the clerks’ sense of humor, expressed in good-natured if frustrated laughter. I found that by pointing to beer in a refrigerator, pulling up my collar, slapping my sides, and frowning—and by then throwing open my coat, mopping my brow, and smiling—I could get the desired unchilled beer (“hotto beeru”). It was impossible not to remain humble in these circumstances. My students were waging a linguistic battle, whereas I was merely doing a bad job of imitating Marcel Marceau.

Japanese English is a great joy and a wondrous thing, as I have indicated. What a pleasure, for example, to discover that one who has been tagged out at home plate is the victim of an “out-throw.” How reassuring to be told by one’s smiling, hooded, middleaged woman caddy that one’s drive is “safe-o”—that is, not unfindable; or that one’s next shot will require a “nine-o” or an “eight-o” or a “wedgie” (if one is in the “sand-o”). What a surprise to hear, first, an American commentator on a televised golf tourney describe a reverse-necked putter colloquially, and then to hear the Japanese broadcaster translate that description into a terse sentence or two ending with the expression “bassackawad putta.” What a curious sensation to have a cabaret girl stop her professional smiling and knee-patting, forget about passing scotch and veggies while carrying on in rudimentary English (“What is your hobby?”), and run into the back room for her textbook in order to ask how to pronounce “banal.”

Other experiences are linguistic only in reverse, or only as one thinks of what the language ought to be. For example, James Garner’s Rockford dubbed as a Japanese tenor is a reminder of one’s firm awareness of Garner’s American tone and timbre. Better yet, the dubbed Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Marlon Brando, and company made me conscious of how I had originally “heard” Superman I, and of how I commonly ignore what pitch and range (apart from diction and idiom) contribute to any language. Best of all, probably, was the unintentional but unavoidable hilarity roused by Hattie McDaniels, Butterfly McQueen, and Vivien Leigh as they jabbered and squeaked in Japanese about Ashley Wilkes, Mista Rhett, and the fall of Atlanta. A perennial language puzzler is the famous “yes” in response to very nearly all questions and declarations. To be able to distinguish among types of “yes”—to be able to discern when that word means “no” or “perhaps” or “yes, I don’t think so”—that would mean that one had become intimately Japanese.

My marginally linguistic education merits some corollary mention. A local factory, I soon discovered, pipes the strains of “Goin' Home” at noon and at quitting time. When a baseball player is removed by the manager, the organist plays “Auld Lang Syne.” What was I to do in the men’s community bath at a Japanese hotel (a ryokan), besides wash? Obviously, I could not say much. I sat soaking at about 100°F, while an exuberant gentleman on my left, who was wearing his washcloth draped over his head, gave me his four words of English: New York, Broadway, Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon. The real cultural joy, however, lay in just immersing myself in this aura, evoking Dante and 8½, and watching the occupants through the steamy haze as they lathered, rinsed, and squatted on little plastic stools to shave before low-hung misted mirrors against the walls—all this before I slap-slapped back to my room to enjoy dinner on the floor. Finally, in this context, I think back on what I derived from different kinds of theatre: Bunraku, Kyogen, Noh, and Kabuki. Never before had I been required to see and soak up that drama which depends on a whole array of techniques that have nothing intrinsically to do with words. Here was the proof. I was compelled to pay strict attention (for four or five hours at a time) to setting, lighting, music, gesture, singing, pace of over-all presentation; to this or that role’s performance, costume, formal distancing from the audience (Noh) or Globe-like intimacy with the audience (Kabuki); to traditional methods of men’s playing women’s parts, audience’s anticipation and shouted recognition of favorite plays and actors and moments, tone of voice, etc.

I find it difficult to imagine a people more hospitable, more generous with their time, than the Japanese who took care of me. The nation is renowned for its gift-giving, as we all know. My hosts were always calm and kind in putting up with the odd foreigner who was bound to find larger signals gross and yet to miss nuances altogether, coming across as deaf, dumb, and functionally illiterate. A final instance will make my point. In late October a young woman librarian at the college took me to a flower-arranging exhibition. In early December I received under my office door a note from this young woman containing the following excerpts: “How are you? It is almost one month I haven’t met you…and I’m worried whether you are fine or not, or you are very busy…And only one month is left. Only one month! I want to know much of you. So if there are something interesting or something worried, please give me a call at any time. I should worry. I have no knowledge to tell you about Japan. But I try to help you.” That’s what I miss: language and more.

EPISTOLA {Allah K. Swit.}

As his writings always do, Richard Lederer’s item on “American Slurvian” [XIV, 2] delighted me. But his “typically American exchange,” beginning with Jeet jet?, is incomplete. The coda is Nose twirly. And Mr. Lederer will be happy to learn of a student of mine who defined sanguine as ‘an American penitentiary’ and of another who wrote of the peddle of a rose.

Slurvian, however, is not confined to English. To prove its dissemination, I offer the following from the announcing system of the railroad station in Toronto:

Le train de Montreal eh pret ass voir lay pass J

[Allah K. Swit.]

EPISTOLA {A. M. Kinloch}

Since Slurvian thus exists in both a Germanic language (English) and a Romance language (French), must it not therefore follow that Slurvian has its origin in the common ancestor of both tongues, that is in the Indo-stage? That is to say, beside Indo-European and Indo-Hittite, there must have existed an Indo-Slurvian. As for Allah K. Swit, he must have been one of their tribal deities.

[A. M. Kinloch, University of New Brunswick]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“June has privy to what’s going on today in sex research.” [Sally Jessy Raphael introducing Dr. June Reinisch on ABC-TV, 18 July 1986. Submitted by Alma Denny, New York City.]

“We hope the events of the near future will not… disrupt or inconvenience our customers…. It is time for

Onomatoplazia

Chester Delaney, Hoboken, New Jersey

Deine de klagge geneto argureoiou bioiou.

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu guatit ungula campum.

Declaim that line of transliterated Greek, and you can listen to Homer’s cunning selection of words and genitive case capture the twanging release of Ulysses' silver bow. Try the Latin aloud, the way it was meant to be read, and the hollow thump of a horse’s gallop is in the sound as well as the meaning of Virgil’s words.

Onomatopoeia has a long, honorable, and pleasurable history—from Aristophanes' brek-ke-kex ko-ax ko-ax to Kermit’s ribbet, ribbet—from majestic lines in ancient epic poetry to simple, homey words like plop, splash, and murmur. In every language and time, the sound and look of some words have given clues to their meaning: their sound has suggested their sense.

I have been intrigued now and again, starting as a small boy, by words which seem to act in exactly the opposite fashion, words which point away from their meaning, words which seem almost mischievously to mislead. They suggest something other than what they mean and in some instances do so all the more effectively the more one knows about words and etymology. Very often, of course, the misdirection lasts only for a second, until training and traditional knowledge take over. The initial deception is no less real, and it is precisely this that fascinates. In parallel with the roots of onomatopoeia (onoma ‘name’ + poiein ‘to make or do’) I have christened the effect onomatoplazia: onoma again + pladzein ‘to mislead or deceive.’ A fellow word-lover, flakier and less classically educated, suggested “offomatopoeia,” and my own pragmatic bent led at first toward “anti-onomatopoeia.” But it seemed finally better to be analogous rather than cleverly whimsical or totally derivative. Thus, onomatoplazia.

I offer the following as a sampler of words that delightfully and sometimes disconcertingly confuse. They certainly did me when first I came across them. I usually hazard a guess in such first encounters, àla the game of “Dictionary.” In all the following cases, the spelling, (apparent) roots, or sound of the word actively suggest a meaning different from the true one.

noisome Has nothing to do with sound or decibel level, but means simply unpleasant or disgusting. This was the word that first caught my eye as the obverse of onomatopoeia.

highbinder Not a hip-length legging nor a Rocky Mountain farm implement, but incredibly enough a swindler or crook, especially of the Chinese variety.

macaronic Does not refer to pasta; it is a text which is half Latin and half vernacular. (The computer age term, “spaghetti code,” derives from the same pasta-related idea as macaronic, but more obviously so.)

polymath Does not describe my brownstone partner, who is in fact a Ph.D. in mathematics and who does indeed seem, at least to this philosophy major, to know many kinds of arithmetic. The word, however, accurately describes him as a person of much and varied learning.

lowing Has no reference to height or the lack of it, but is the sound commonly made by Oliver Goldsmith’s herd. Admittedly, lowing is also onomatopoeic. Nonetheless, the initial trompe l’oeil is there.

gingerly Neither denotes nor connotes spice or snap or red hair, rather just their opposites: cautious, careful, wary.

bosom pressers, breast buffers, chick sexers Not names for denizens of Manhattan’s 42nd Street, although the functions suggested doubtless occur there if the price is right. These are job titles for, respectively:

a) A clothing presser in the garment or dry-cleaning industry who specializes.

b) A worker in a shoe factory who smooths and polishes the forepart of the heel, called the “breast” of the shoe in the trade.

c) An employee of a poultry farm who identifles the gender of baby chicks so as to keep males and females apart (using a light!).

crepuscular Has always evoked for me images of muscles or funereal trimmings or infected tissue, instead of twilight or evening.

crapulous, crapulent What this suggests would, of course, only occur to pre-pubescent boys and has nothing to do with the real meaning of drunkenness, overeating.

farthingale Neither a singing, nocturnal coin, nor a storm of flatulence, but the light wooden frame that puffed out milady’s 16th-century skirt.

pediculosis Not as foot disease nor the bad breath of children, but just plain (and literally) lousiness.

impregnable Non-English speakers have been known to think this means inconceivable.

hydrox It is wildly improbable that this is the name of a cookie and not a many-headed, bovine monster.

catamite Neither a light, fun sailboat, nor a small, feline bug, but a young boy used for unnatural purposes.

newsprint As a young boy I found it unnatural that this means merely paper.

metapsychosis One of the finest of traps for the knowledgeable logophile: it has nothing to do with some over-arching, society-wide psychological illness like alcoholism or jogging. Rather, it means mind-to-mind communication without any observable intermediary—ESP.

metaschizotherium Not an over-arching, society-wide split personality, but mind blowingly enough an extinct rhino with a fivetoed foot.

over-determined A misleading term in psychoanalytic jargon used to describe a condition with many causes (thus, “multi-determined” would be better). This would logically appear to be a technical psychological coinage useful for referring to a personality or condition that is excessively rigid or stubborn.

analysand Another term from psychoanalese: one of its words for ‘patient.’ This 19th-century neologism was obviously derived directly from the -nd marker of the active gerund in Latin, which suggests the therapist (active agent) rather than the patient (the recipient, the one the treatment acts upon). This doubtless reflects psychoanalytic theory’s cherished insistence that the patient actually does the analyzing in the long run and thus is more truly the active partner.

pogonip Another sure-fire dictionary winner: not a quick drink snatched while riding a bouncy stick, but a fog laden with particles of ice. This charmer is Shoshonean in origin, an example of the onomatoplazia which readily occurs when the etymology in question is not from your usual, garden variety, linguistic roots.

bosky I was positive this was a new kind of dance or maybe a Pollyannaish feeling, until I looked it up to find it means simply ‘woodsy.’

benthos Neither an English social philosopher nor a petit bourgeois weepy feeling, but the bottom of the sea and by extension its flora and fauna.

swimmingly Has nothing to do with the sea—its bottom, its top, or its sports. It just means ‘well.’

titmouse Not any kind of rodent, noticeably mammalian or otherwise, but merely a small bird.

Note: this is an example of a “HobsonJobson”—foreign words or expressions twisted into a more familiar configuration by the pervasive influence of linguistic chauvinism, a rich source of onomatoplazia. “The Elephant and Castle,” “nitwit,” and “big cheese” are other examples. See Willard Espy’s delicious An Almanac of Words at Play, pp. 21 and 203.

oxymoron Not a name for dumb cattle, but a rhetorical device that couples opposites into descriptions effective for their irony: cold as hell, honest as a politician.

bar code Not the ethics of the legal profession nor the law that interferes with the corner conviviality, but the small rectangle of stripes (bars) on store merchandise that provides coded pricing and inventory information to electronic scanners.

These examples of onomatoplazia are a personal set, words that have led me astray. There may be others who have had the same experience with them. There may also be additional examples which others might like to drop into this intriguing piggin of words.

EPISTOLA {William Gray Johnston}

David Galef has coined the term morox [XIV, 2] to designate unintentional, inelegant oxymorons such as many fewer problems, largely insignificant, and barely clothed. I collect solecisms of all sorts that I hear on television broadcasts. In a handful of slips taken from the top of my stack, I found at least one clear-cut morox: Nevada is “much more sparsely populated” than eastern states, according to Robin MacNeil (MacNeil/Lehrer News Report, PBS, 29 May 1986). And in several of these random instances of pleonasm, truism, kinky syntax, malapropos metaphor, and just plain dumb things to say, I perceived the moroxonic spirit at work. They did not, however, conform to the letter of Galef’s definition—conjunct words of contradictory literal meaning.

Consider, for instance, the assertion, by a woman being interviewed on the NBC Today program, that losing 45 pounds “has caused my life to turn around 360 degrees.” The newly svelte lady surely had in mind an about-face, not a pirouette, and was lithely (as she might say) unaware that her expanded metaphor had canceled the sense of her loss (a moroxish pun?). Substantively, if not literally, she made a morox.

Now consider the lament of an NBC Today guest that an undertaking had been frustrated “and now we’re back to ground zero.” The inadvertent substitution of ground zero for square one, while luminously ludicrous, is not self-canceling and hence does not convey the empty sense of morox.

But what about a reference by MacNeil’s partner, Jim Lehrer, to “some ten thousand black gold and diamond miners [on strike in South Africa].” The ambiguity resulting from the conjunction of black and gold is akin to the distraction caused by optical illusions: Lehrer’s phrase is both literally correct and literally nonsense. Is it at heart a morox? It does not seem to qualify as double entendre.

The onus for double entendre, particularly if risqué, properly lies with the perceiver. But who can resist a smirk when a female network broadcaster observes that with respect to celibacy in the priesthood, “the pontiff remains firm.” The howlers in my collection that I most cherish, however, depend for their charm on skewed syntax.

My prize example was uttered by the incomparable Cher, during a morning-show interview. “It took me really a long time to sort what was going on in my mind out,” she said. Her interviewer didn’t bat an eye.

Cher’s gem stood unrivaled until I recently heard a Monday Night Football savant announce to the nation that despite confusion among the officials on the field, a touchdown had indeed been scored, because “the plane of the ball broke the goal line.” Technically, it is not a spoonerism. Have such transpositions a name?

And as I look at the last slip in my random handful, again I encounter a classificatory conundrum:

No government can go against [the laws of economics] with impunity and get away with it.

[William Gray Johnston, Boulder, Colorado]

EPISTOLA {Paul Pascal}

In Richard Conniff’s urbane account of travelers' putdowns of some of the great and not so great cities of the world [XIV,3], he quotes a splendid passage from Dr. Samuel Johnson’s poem on London, which culminates with the words, “Here falling houses thunder on your head, / And here a female atheist talks you dead.” This, while perhaps not strictly an example of a traveler’s denunciation, is certainly appropriate to the article as a choice description of one of the Babylons of the world. While Mr. Conniff is doubtless aware of the connection, he does not mention the fact that Johnson’s poem is throughout a very close and respectful pastiche of the Latin poet Juvenal’s Satire III, on the city of Rome. (It should be noted that Johnson made the same kind of adaptation of another poem by Juvenal, Satire X, calling it The Vanity of Human Wishes.) Juvenal wrote his satire on Rome in the early years of the second century, during the reign of the Emperor Trajan. Among the subjects he touches on in his poem are street crime, unemployment, the degradation of the welfare system, tacky urban renewal projects, overcrowding, high rents and unscrupulous landlords, noise, vehicular traffic, congestion, even problems of immigration and integration. Under this last heading, among the many alleged undesirables in Juvenal’s Rome is what he calls in a memorable phrase Graeculus esuriens, the “hungry little Greek.” In Johnson’s poem this becomes a “fasting Mounseer.” Of the despised and wily but accommodating Greek, Juvenal says In caelum iusseris, ibit: “Tell him to go to the sky, and he will be off.” For Johnson’s Frenchie this becomes, “Bid him go to hell, to hell he goes.”

The passage in Juvenal’s poem which corresponds most closely to the one quoted by Mr. Conniff is near the beginning (lines 7-9), where Juvenal, building up to an ironic crescendo, shudders at the thought of:

…incendia, lapsus

tectorum adsiduos ac mille pericula saevae urbis et Augusto recitantes mense poetas.

…fires, the constant collapse of buildings, and the thousand perils of the savage city — and poets reciting in the month of August.

Johnson had no trouble finding fairly exact counterparts in his London of the eighteenth century for many of the blights of Juvenal’s ancient Rome, but there was really nothing to match the horror of the amateur poetry reading in Trajan’s time; the closest analogy Johnson could come up with, an elegant one under the circumstances, is his “female atheist.”

[Paul Pascal, University of Washington]

EPISTOLA {Dan Cragg}

Henry Henn gets a linguistic maggie’s drawers for “‘Nam, Gook, Gung-ho: Nonsense” [XIV,2]. Taking aim at military slang because it is “itinerant and erroneous” misses the mark completely. Slang is slang precisely because it does not adhere to the well-defined meanings of standard usage. Far from being “mindless and infantile,” slang in its wonderful vigor and versatility allows us to express how we really feel about persons, places, and things.

Military slang is first spoken by soldiers, who then carry it into civilian life. When enough Americans serve in uniform or when their slang is picked up by the news media as it was in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, it spreads to the general slang lexicon. Examples of this type of linguistic osmosis as GI, poop, honcho, gook, and gung-ho, all of which are now understood by a substantial number of Americans who have never been in the military service. The slang of one military generation passes on to the next, so the Marines who called the Koreans gooks in the ’50s and the Vietnamese gooks in the ’60s and ’70s were the linguistic heirs of the Marines who called the Nicaraguans gooks in 1912.

I agree with Mr. Henn that the origins of slang words are hard to pinpoint. To call a brown-skinned person a gook may be reinforced by words in his own language, Chinese Mee Gook for “beautiful country,” or Korean Myguk (My = “America” + guk = “country”), but the word is extraordinarily derogatory, reinforced by, if not derived from the common English slang gobbledegook (the brown man’s language) and gook (his food).

Gung-ho, which once had a positive connotation, is now used derisively among servicemen to describe ‘individuals or organizations in a state of active and zealous military enthusiasm,’ and usually modifies other words such as “sonofabitch,” etc. If today among civilians it has come to mean a go-getter or a standout, then it has undergone another permutation and that is just additional proof of the language’s dynamism. Gung-ho was popularized in WWII by Lt. Col. Evans Fordyce Carlson, USMC, who picked it up from the Red Chinese when he was an observer to the 8th Route Army in 1937-38. It is a contraction of gung-yeh ho-dzo, ‘industrial cooperation, ‘and it caught on because it is easy to pronounce, as in ‘Nam or the States. ‘Nam by itself is no more derogatory or misleading than shortening airplane or telephone or gung-ho.

The nuances of Vietnamese history, which Mr. Henn finds so fascinating, were as useful to the men who fought Ho Chi Minh’s military machine as the facts of the Meiji Restoration to anyone who fought the Japanese Empire in WWII.

Finally, I would remind Mr. Henn that the point of the Vietnam war has nothing to do with whether we called the country ‘Nam or Vietnam. It is that today Russian military personnel operate their ships and planes out of our former base complex at Cam Ranh Bay while the political language Ho Chi Minh imported from Moscow is now current through all of Indo-China.

[Dan Cragg, Springfield, Virginia]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Can we not reverse the approbation in which lawyers are held by the public today?” [From a column by John R. Tomlinson in the Spring 1987 issue of Litigation News, published by the American Bar Association, Chicago. Submitted by Kate Ankeny, Phoenix, Arizona.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“…characteristics of secular humanism are:… Defication of humankind as supreme.” [From SLATE (Support for the Learning and Teaching of English), July 1987, published by the National Council of Teachers of English. Submitted by Eugene V. Moran, Laramie, Wyoming.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Afterwards, the Bishop walked among the crowds, eating their picnic lunches.” [From the Southwark (England) News, July 1987. Submitted by John Ferguson, Birmingham.]

OBITER DICTA

The Times [20 February 1988] reports that the restoration of a 400-year-old statue of Fame, at Wilton House, Wiltshire, “may include the replacement of her famous trumpets, weathered away from each hand but not before prompting the expression ‘blowing your own trumpet.’ ” To the best of our recollection, this may be the only instance in which the origin of an expression has been traced to a statue. Corroboration is not readily forthcoming from the OED, unless we accept a citation from Lydgate, dated c 1450: Pryd gothe beforen And schame comythe aftyr, and blawythe horne.

A perfume called Poison has appeared on the market. Poison? Who would want to wear such a scent? Perfumes are supposed to attract, not repel (or so their makers would have us believe), and the name scarcely evokes the image of an attractant. The naming of perfumes is a sensitive business: one assumes that Equipage is supposed to invite associations with foxhunting in Devon (or Virginia), not with the odor of sweaty saddles and bridles or bits redolent with horse’s saliva. The first reaction was that Poison was another misspelling (like Elizabeth Arden’s Millenium) and should have been Poisson; but, on reflection, the salability of a scent promising the smell of fish seems a little remote. Coco, named for Mme. Chanel, does not smell from cocoa; I haven’t tried opium, but cannot imagine that Opium smells much like an opium den; and it is impossible to guess at what the millennium will smell like. Charles Jourdan has now introduced L’insolent—“Half invitation. Half challenge.”—and that sounds like good ad copy to me. Lady Stetson, though, I should expect to smell like stained hatbands on sweaty cowpokes. The old standby, Nuit de Paris, is all right (provided you hit the right nuit). Maybe we’ll soon have Heroin (or Heroine, or Heroine), Smack, and Coke, (though we can be sure that the company coming up with the last of these will hear from you-know-who). Grass, on the other hand, might make sense for Chanel, for many of the flowers used in Chanel perfumes are cultivated at Grasse, a town in southern France. Lancôme has begun to market a line of cosmetics called Niosôme, which lexics (opposite of dyslexics) may read as Noisôme, a singularly unimaginative name for a product: it ranks with product names like Anusol (regardless of its pronunciation in commercials). I cannot wait to see a new perfume marketed under the name Mephitis, Osmatique, or Puanteur. But don’t hold your breath—just your nose.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“This is absolutely putting the horse before the cart.” [Alexander Haig on ABC News, 27 November 1987. Submitted by Dr. Hugo G. Rodeck, Northglenn, Colorado.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“The hospital counsels the women… to have a tubal litigation.” [From St. Petersburg Times (n.d.). Submitted by Judy Wall, St. Petersburg, Florida.]

Word Droppings

Garland Cannon, Texas A&M University

Cannon¹ tabulated an attrition rate of 1.5% for new meanings and new items originally admitted to the Merriam Addenda Sections which were cumulatively included in reprints of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1961) at five-year intervals in the 1966-81 period, but then were excluded from Merriam’s 9,000 Words (1983). Thus a surprisingly high 98.5% of the main entries were retained in the four Addenda Sections in question. These evidently possessed whatever qualities of viability are required for an item to survive in at least written English once it has experienced adequate quantity and variety of printed occurrence to justify initial listing in the first place. Of the 111 items that were dropped, 61 vanished in just two to five years, suggesting that the early years of a word’s temporary admission to the English lexicon are the most critical.

During this period, two hardcover versions of the Addenda Sections were published—6,000 Words (1976) and 9,000 Words. Now the hardcover version of the 7873-main-entry 1986 Addenda Section, appearing simultaneously as 12,000 Words (1986), permits an updating of the statistics. Only 164 previously listed main entries did not appear in the 1986 Addenda Section, some of which had first been listed as long ago as 1966, but a high 39 of which were first listed in 1981 and so continue to indicate the critical quality of a new word’s first five years in the lexicon. If we compare these 164 deletions to the retained 7873 entries, we find that the updated 2% attrition rate only trivially raises the earlier 1.5% rate. With the thought that word lovers will be interested in these 164 apparently unviable words, we will list them below. Since the word-formation process by which they came into the vocabulary may provide crucial information, the list is organized according to that process. Thus, we can see at a glance that, for example, the highest mortality again appeared in the new noun compounds, where 28% of the deletions were noun compounds, whereas the only variant form was tabbouli. The deletions consisted of 134 nouns, 16 adjectives, 12 verbs, and 2 affixes. The taxonomy is that determined by the 13,683-item corpus described in Cannon (1987).

NEW MEANINGS

(25)

analyst
bob
butter pat
delocalize, v.
derrick, v.
digger
fat
gate
immune, adj.
laggard
lagger
meson
microelectrode
mu-meson
paging
plasma
poach, v.
muonon, suffix
receptor
reduplicate, n.
spinner
standoff
station
zone

VARIANT FORM
tabbouli

FUNTIONAL SHIFT (6)
decorative
diplotene, adj.
dirty
dustoff
punch-up
skim

BORROWINGS (6)
beef Bourguignon
dynapolis
incendive, adj.
macchinetta
periselenium
scree

ABBREVIATIONS (4) ADP
BAL
EEC
IDDD

ACRONYM
KWOC

UNABBREVIATED SHORTENINGS (6)
detox, v.
gox
hydro
immuno-,
comb.
form
jetavator
youthcult

SHORTENING + BOUND FORM (7)
ambidextrous, adj.
autodrome
birdyback
colorcaster
gravisphere
moonfall
parakite
resistojet

BLENDS (2)
gayola
plench

BOUND-MORPHEME ITEMS (7)
Afrophile
aposelene
aposelenium
biotron
quadriphony
reticulosis
technopolis

INITIAL AFFIXATIONS (20)
antienvironment
antimissile
antirheumatic, adj.
antisexist, adj.
audiotypist
bioelectrogenesis
cryochemistry
cytoecology
dehydrotestosterone
geoprobe
heliborne, adj.
helilift, v.
helispot
hexamethylenetetramine
megnetofluidmechanic, adj.
neurokinin
parapolitical, adj.
protocontinent
telelecture
xenobiology

TERMINAL AFFIXATIONS (18)

Africanity
audiophile
channery, adj.
computerite
Dolbyized, adj.
ductibility
electrohydraulics
fluidonics
fluoridizer
incapacitator
Mosleyite
mysterium
oceanologic, adj.
projectual
psychedelicize, adj.
quadriphonics
quantized, adj.
restartable, adj.

MIXED AFFIXATIONS
antinatalist

NOUN COMPOUNDS (46)
ABC art
adenosine 3’, 5’ monophosphate
Age of Aquarius
air battery
Aquarian Age
arcjet
arc-jet engine
Berring time
bitch box
bodyclothes
broken home
Colourpoint Longhair
aerial tomography
core city
cyclic group
death control
dunk shot
eye doctor
fly-cruise
fractional orbital bombardment system
gamma decay
heat pollution
hemoglobin S
imitation milk
ionic propulsion
isolated camera
juice man
kill ratio
lepton number
lip-gloss
media mix
memory trace
new issues
offtract betting
pump jockey
rap session
slack-fill
special situation
speed freak
surfer’s knot
teaching machine
T-time
up quark
wake surfing
water toothpick
xenic acid

ADJ. COMPOUND
air-cusion

VERB COMPOUNDS (5)
clock in
clock off
clock on
clock out
fuck around

---

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Longman Dictionary of the English Language

(Longman, 1984), xxviii + 1876pp.

This is a curious work. I was under the impression it was based on Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, and indeed it was; but there are so many improvements and changes that the absence both of a Longman copyright notice and of any identification of a specific editorial director are a bit mysterious. One is drawn to conclude that the work is the product of some disembodied corporate entity. To be sure, four names—Heather Gay, Brian O’Kill, Katherine Seed, and Janet Whitcut—appear on the Acknowledgements page, but so do names of a lot of other people (like Frank Kermode, Melvin Bragg, Clement Freud, Germaine Greer, Clive Jenkins, and Janet Street-Porter) whose direct connection with the book at hand would seem to be much more remote. Having myself dealt with consultant linguists and specialists in other fields who contribute something to the preparation of accurate structure and definitions to a dictionary, I think I can safely say that such people are only indirectly responsible for the quality of a dictionary, and the major responsibility for a book of such complexity rests with the editors. But only four editors for such a massive work? I suppose it is possible. In any event, it seems unfair not to have listed them on the title page, assuning (as I presume we must) that their contributions were more or less equal.

Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary [hereafter W], despite many improvements over its forebears, still suffers from shortcomings ultimately traceable to the aberrational lexicography reflected in Webster’s Third Unabridged. Although direct comparison between the Longman Dictionary of the English Language [hereafter L] and the W reveals many similarities, there are many differences, too. One gets the impression that the editors of L used the good stuff from the W and substituted their own, much better material when they encountered some of the bad stuff.

The L was based on the W, but a comparison, albeit superficial, reveals a number of differences, to wit:

1. The headword is syllabified in W, not in L. In older dictionaries the words are syllabified mainly to help in pronouncing them; latterly, syllabication has been used largely to find where a word can be hyphenated at the end of a line of text, though, judging by today’s newspapers and magazines, one would be sore put to believe that a dictionary had ever been within the grasp of their editors, proofreaders, or the programmers who wrote the hyphenation programs for the automatic typesetting many of them now employ. The syllabication of headwords is not an important feature in British dictionaries: the Collins English Dictionary, which offered an elaborate system in its first edition (1979), set the words solid in its second edition (1986), but I am informed that the major portion of the correspondence received at Collins Publishing concerning the dictionary concerns this change and is critical of it.

2. The pronounciation systems differ. L’s set of symbols is somewhat closer to that of the International Phonetic Alphabet; W follows the system used in the Third Unabridged, which is too complicated for my taste, being replete with diacritics. L uses a version of what I call the “Moo Goo Gai Pan” or “Ah-oo-gah” system, favored by newspapers because, though primitive, it is virtually transparent: unlike the W system, which requires even a casual user to deal with distinctions between a ā, \?\, ä and a\?\; (rendered in L as a, ay, o, ah, and ow, respectively). The description of the pronunciation of English is much fuller in the front matter of the W, but, as the only people who read the front matter of dictionaries seem to be students (who are enjoined to under pain of death) and other lexicographers, the absence of comprehensive coverage of the subject in L would not appear to be a serious omission. W follows the (useful) practice of listing a shortened pronunciation key on each right-hand page; L’s failure to do so is a disadvantage, notwithstanding the simplicity of their system, for the user must ferret about to find the description given on page xxii to clarify any question. L would be well advised, in future printings, to give a complete pronunciation key on the inside (front) cover of the book, an easily accessible place that is at present unused.

3. W lists etymologies near the beginning of those entries that have them, directly following the inflected forms (if any); L places them at the end of the entry. As surveys have shown that etymological information is the least often sought after, making the average user wade through the etymology before getting to the definition has always seemed pointless and irritating to me; besides, it is unlikely that the serious, consistent seeker of etymological information is likely to use anything but the OED or a major etymological dictionary. W lists the “date of the earliest recorded use in English …of the sense which the date precedes.” The Second Edition of the Random House Unabridged follows a similar practice, and I find it speculative, spurious, and specious except for the documentation of relatively recent coinages. Such information is very likely to be misinterpreted by the average user, who does not approach a dictionary with a critical eye. For example, W shows for leeway the date 1669; from my experience with even above-average users, that is usually taken to mean that 1669 was the first time that leeway appeared in English: one day it did not exist; the next, Presto! Change-O!, it sprang into view on a printed page. That is nonsense, of course; but even if the users remain keenly aware that 1669 is the date only of the earliest written evidence, of what use or importance is that to them? Moreover, as we in the dictionary biz are only too well aware, an earlier citation might be found today or tomorrow, making the information obsolete. I feel less strongly about a designation like “17c” which seems usefully vague. To give “1604” as the date for lemonade after giving “15c” as the date for lemon might give one the impression that it took Englishmen about 200 years to find out how to make lemonade (or what to name what they got when they squeezed a lemon and mixed the juice with water and sugar). Even the Scots are likely to give them more credit than that. Also, the date given for the adjective lemon (as in lemon flavor, lemon color) would draw one to the conclusion that those retarded speakers of the language needed some 300 years to use the noun as a modifier. Mercifully, L has omitted such dating.

4. Another odd thing in the W etymologies, carried over into the L, is the practice of using “more at—” as a cross reference indicator. For example, at lento, after showing it to have come, via Italian, from Latin lentus ‘slow,’ one reads “more at LITHE.” But if you look up the etymology for lithe you discover only that the original form of that word (lithe in Old English) is “akin to… Latin lentus slow.” My objection to the form of the reference is that its wording suggests, “there is more information about the etymology of lento to be found under lithe,” but that does not actually turn out to be the case: all the user has learned is that lento and lithe are (or might be) cognates. In the event, why not just say “cogn: lithe” under lento and the reverse under lithe? (This latter piece of information is unaccountably lacking.)

5. Compare the entries for literally in the two dictionaries:

W 1: in a literal sense or manner: ACTUALLY < took the remark ˜ > < was ˜ insane > 2 : in effect: VIRTUALLY < will ˜ turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice—Norman Cousins >

usage Since sense 2 is the opposite in meaning of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

L 1 in the literal sense; without metaphor or exaggeration 2 with exact equivalence; verbatim < follow the instructions ˜ > 3 — used to intensify a metaphorical or hyperbolic expression < she was ˜ — tearing her hair out >; disapproved of by some speakers

To be sure, the W usage note, even with its verbosity and the oxymoron “pure hyperbole,” is more helpful than L’s cryptic “disapproved of by some speakers”; but the definitions are better in L because they assume that if a user does not know the meaning of literally, then that of literal is unlikely to be that obvious. On the other hand, “figurative or exaggerated expression” would probably have been a simplified improvement over “metaphorical or hyperbolic expression,” which might be tough going for someone who had to look up literally to begin with.

Users of the L will be far better off if spared the technique of defining in the W, carried over from the Third Unabridged, in which the full explanatory definition is abandoned in favor of a scattering of synonyms set in SMALL CAPITALS, which, more often than not, are likely to lead the user who has the paitence to pursue them to other words defined in the same inept manner. There is a difference between using a word in a phrasal definition and suggesting it as a— presumably substitutable—synonym. In the present case, ACTUALLY is such a loosely used “filler” word in the language (like really, I mean, y’know, etc.) as to be almost useless as a substitute (except “literally”).

In general, the definitions in W have been clarified, simplified, and made more precise in L. Also, the citations in W have either been omitted, where unnecessary, or paraphrased, and sources are not given. I have never understood why, in a dictionary of this size, W ever thought it useful to give the sources of citations, especially inconsistently: who among the general, college-dictionary-using population of today knows the identity of Norman Cousins? Is H. G. Rickover being held up to the user as a paragon of English usage? What is the significance in citing anonymous writers, Longfellow, L. P. Smith, or giving no citation at all? The treatment in W is erratic, to say the least.

6. The entry list in L seems to be fuller than in W, but a quick direct comparison is not easily done. In one interval checked, W reveals Montague (Romeo’s family name), Montmorency (a kind of cherry), Montrachet (wine), monuron (a herbicide), moon-eye (a fish), moon-eyed (open-eyed), and moonflower, as headwords not in L; the same interval in L reveals montbretia (a plant), Montessorian (teaching method), month of Sundays, Montilla, -mony (suffix) Moog synthesizer, moon daisy (the oxeye), moon-faced, moonglow, and moonrat, which do not appear in W. Leaving aside the plants and animals, which are differently distributed for American and British users, the only significant omission from L is Montrachet, while the important words omitted from W are Montessorian, month of Sundays, -mony, Moog synthesizer, moon-faced, and moonglow. The last word is not in the RHD II, but it should be, for the L citation is from Henry Miller and the word also appears in the lyrics written for the popularized rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony. It should also be noted that idiomatic expressions (e.g., once in a blue moon, listed under moon in L) may be listed elsewhere (under blue moon in W) and that others (e.g., over the moon ‘elated’) are not much used in American English.

On the whole, readers can draw their own conclusions about the breadth of coverage; as for me, I should (regrettably) sacrifice Montrachet to gain others.

7. There are lengthy usage notes and synonym studies in W that do not appear in L at all or in greatly abbreviated form, sometimes mercifully so, for W occasionally succumbs to prolixity. Notwithstanding, such features are valued by users and cutting them could be a disadvantage.

8. W has illustrations (better than those in the Third Unabridged); L has none, but it must be noted that other British dictionaries lack them also, so L need not have included them purely for competitive reasons in the main market it is intended to serve.

9. Both dictionaries list abbreviations and biographical and geographical entries in separate sections at the back, a practice I have never liked. Experience (and a moment’s thought) shows that names of people and places occur with equal, sometimes greater frequency in the language than a very large percentage of the words listed in dictionaries of almost any size (except the smallest), and on that ground they should not be treated as nonwords or as being outside the pale of lexicon. Also, it is awkward to find Glasgow or Shake-speare in one part of the dictionary and Glaswegian or Shakespearian in another. Finally, fictional people and places are listed in the main body of those dictionaries that include them, but real people and places appear in the appendices; as it may be assumed that users look up things they do not know, the immediate assumption is that they ought to come to a reference book already aware that Homer was a real person (despite speculation to the contrary) and that Jesus was both real and, as “the Jewish religious teacher,” fictional; fundamentalists will be disturbed to discover that most of the characters in the Bible are treated as fictional. It seems silly to separate Gruyère the cheese from Gruyère the place in Switzerland whence it comes— indeed, the latter is not even an entry in the geographical sections of either dictionary. Of the two, the W geographical listings seem more complete: W lists Aylesbury, which, through some grievous, egregious fault, is not in the geographical section of the L but does appear in the A-Z section (because of the ducks).

10. Although L has, in addition to the names, abbreviations, and only a few pages of miscellaneous materials—Handbook of Style, Ten Vexed points in English grammar—and some tables of moneys, weights and measures, etc., W has short sections on Foreign Words and Phrases (most of which are dispensable), Signs and Symbols, and Style, as well as one of those interminably boring listings of Colleges and Universities that clutter up most American college dictionaries.

11. L has 1876 pages, W 1562 pages. A rough comparison yields the following:

	Longman	Webster
depth of column	50 picas	52 picas
width of column	67mm	72mm
characters/line		70
lines/column		104
characters total (approx.)	18 million	22 million

No allowance has been made in the above calculations for the pronunciation key appearing on each odd-numbered page of the W.

12. L is, of course, a British dictionary, W American. But for other reasons they are not directly comparable. The entry for Boolean in L reads as follows:

adj of or being a type of algebra in which logical symbols are used to represent relations between sets, and which is used entensively in the theory of computer programming < ˜ expression

Under Boolean algebra, W has the following:

a set that is closed under the two commutative binary operations and that can be described by any of various systems of postulates all of which can be deduced from the postulates that an identity element exists for each operation, that each operation is distributive over the other, and that for every element in the set there is another element which when combined with the first under one of the operations yields the identity element of the other operation<under the operations of taking intersections and unions, the subsets of a given set form a Boolean algebra

The definition in the Third Unabridged was a model of clarity compared with that. Focusing on these two definitions, it must be conceded that naive users who did not know the meaning of Boolean or of Boolean algebra before going to either dictionary are unlikely to come away any the wiser. But the second reads like gobbledygook while the first tries to provide some basic notion of what is involved and where it is applied while, at the same time, gently notifying users that they are going to have to seek elsewhere for a proper definition, the understanding of which requires far more backgound in mathematics and logic than can be assumed in the average user.

Lexicographers constantly face problems of defining terms that, in some instances, might require a brief essay to explain and far more specialized knowledge than can reasonably be expected from the user. The source of the problem lies in the fact that there is no law forbidding ordinary mortals to bandy about terms like theory of relativity which only a few people in the world truly understand: to be sure, it is impossible to conceive of writing a definition for it that would fit into a dictionary’s procrustean requirements. The dilemma can be resolved either by attempting a definition (which no one will understand) or by providing a superficial pass at a definition couched in language suggesting that the user can find no succor in the work in hand. I prefer the latter approach, though I have of ten thought it might be only fair to mark such entries with some symbol (like a death’s head).

Conclusion? I think the Longman is a fine dictionary, superior to the Webster, but I have been careful not to compare it with the Collins, which remains my favorite British English dictionary for reasons that modesty forbids my detailing here.

Laurence Urdang

OBITER DICTA: Computational Lexicography

Laurence Urdang

I recently purchased a new computer, and, because it operated on a system different from the one of my old computer, I asked a few friends to recommend a word-processing package that I might.find useful. I was particularly interested in one that would allow me to designate a variety of typestyles during keyboard-ing, ideally one that showed the styles on the monitor as the text was being typed.

Those who are familiar with computers or do not want to know about them should skip to the next paragraph. For those who are unfamiliar with computers and the need for a word-processing package, I should explain that when you buy what is fondly call a “personal” computer, you get three pieces of equipment (though they may be combined in some models or makes): a rectangular box with some slots in the front and sockets in the back, a monitor, which is nothing but a small TV set, and a keyboard, which looks like an ordinary typewriter keyboard but, in many models sold today, has a number of additional keys alongside those for the familiar alphanumeric characters: on mine, nestled among some control keys on the right side is what is called a “number pad,” which resembles the key arrangement one sees on a small adding machine or calculator; on the left side is a double bank of five keys marked “F1” through “F10” which, when pressed alone or in combination with another key, perform certain functions, some of which are useful, others of which are evidently thought useful by the manufacturer but which I never use. These boxes come with wires (called cables for some reason) that allow them to be connected to one another and into a power source. The trick is that they will not do anything unless and until you have installed what is called a Disk Operating System, which comes with the machine. After it has been installed, the DOS, as it is called (once identified, nothing in computerese is ever called by its full name again: a Personal Computer becomes a PC; a Disk Operating System becomes a DOS; if it is made by a company called MicroSoft, it is called MS/DOS), performs certain functions, though rarely any that anyone but a computer specialist would want to perform. In order to do something useful, you have to buy a program, which is a package consisting of a number of diskettes and a manual. A diskette is also called a “floppy”; the reason for the name is not immediately apparent (nor why the item is called a “diskette”, for that matter), but all becomes clear. The so-called diskette is a flat black square of rather tough plastic with a hole in the middle and an oblong slot on each of the flat sides; it is said to be 5¼ inches square, but that is a lie: as the only person who probably ever measured one of these things, I can tell you it is 5 3/16 inches square; that may seem irrelevant, but it is only the beginning of the Great Deception. Inside this square plastic casing (which you should never open) is a flimsy flat black plastic papadum. If the diskette is placed in the slot of the machine, a motor engages the center of the disk inside and spins it around at a great speed so that portions of it are exposed as they pass by the oblong slot, allowing them to be “written on” or “read” by some device inside the box. The diskettes that contain programs have information on them that the computer “understands” and translates into a number of commands that make the machine do certain things. The things done depend on what kind of program is on the diskette.

I bought a word-processing program called Framework II. It is quite versatile and, as I required, allows me to create certain kinds of files in which I am able to style the text as I wish, but I shall not go into that here. Framework is sold by Ashton-Tate, a Silicon-Valley concern that makes quite good programs but, like most of the “software” companies, produces such abominable manuals with directions for using the programs that they have to maintain a staff of several dozen “technical personnel” who are on duty about 12 hours a day beginning at six in the morning (California time) merely in order to answer the questions of confused customers. This failing appears to be endemic to the industry: I recently spoke with an executive of Okidata, a manufacturer of a very good computer (laser) printer, who told me that his technical staff answers 60,000 telephone queries a month. I pointed out to him that if they made available a proper manual the number of calls could probably be reduced to 6,000. Only the telephone company was profiting from such ineptitude.

But the foregoing is all preliminary and background to the main theme. One of the services performed by Framework is in a program subroutine called Spelling Check. I do not need a spelling checker, but I have found it extremeely useful as a means for proofreading text that has been keyboarded into storage in the Framework program. The way it works is this: after completing an article, chapter of a book, or whatever it is that I am working on, I press a few keys and the program automatically scans every word of text, comparing each with a “dictionary” contained in the program. It is not really a dictionary, of course, in the sense that is lacks definitions; it is merely a word list. I have not seen the word list, but, from the directory of programs I can invoke on the monitor, I know it contains about 223,000 characters, or about 37,000 words. Being a computer, the machine performs this comparison checking very, very rapidly: it takes only a minute to “proofread” a file containing about 7,000 words. The proofreading is slightly moronic, for the program cannot alert the user to an error like “an” for “and,” because “an” is a valid word in its memory; still, it is better than nothing. If it encounters a word that is not in its repertoire, it offers a choice of actions: at the stroke of a key or two you can ADD the word to the list; GO ON and ignore the word entirely; or EDIT the questionable item (by correcting a typo, for instance). There is another option called, SUGGEST, which, if invoked, lists up to seven or eight words that you might have had in mind when you wrote the one that offended the machine, and this brings me to the point of this article.

It seems unnecessary to point out that Framework cannot have a very sophisticated list of words if it has only 37,000 in its memory, but I thought it might be interesting to see what substitutions were evoked by SUGGEST. In each listing below, the boldface word is the word at which Framework stopped, offering to SUGGEST a substitute; the words following are the substitutions it suggested. Where ellipses occur, I have not bothered to copy down the entire list of offerings, selecting only those that struck me as odd, either because of the incongruity of the choice or because I could not, in the wildest flights of dyslexic, schizophrenic-fancy, imagine the criteria employed in arriving at the selections. I am fully aware that some of the words in my text are not everyday items you find about the house, but I included those anyway; attention is drawn, particularly, to the suggestions for the more common words.

arthropods - arthropod, arthritis, arthritides, Orthodox, arthritic

gallium - galling, gleam, galleon, gulling, gallon, gelling, gullying, gamily

thermionic - sermonic, thorniness, sermonize, thermoset, theorematic, thermometer

interstellar - interstate, interstitial, interstice, interceder, underscore, understate

q.v. - TV

caecum - chicane, cocaine, cocoon, caucus, caching, cactus, coaching

Myriapoda - moribund, morbidly, marriageable, marigolds, moratoria, marauding

vermiform - forevermore, Vermonter, verifiers, vermicular, formicary, forefinger

neuromuscular - murmurously

nucleic - nucleate, nutlike, neglect, knuckled, nutlet, nickeled, niggled

streptococcus - stereopticons, scrupulosities, stroboscopes

staphylococcus - sycophantically, sycophantishly

lakeside-lattice, legislate, legalized, localized, leakiest, ladyship, regicide

Algonquian - Eglantine, Halogenating, Accounting, Eglantines, Ugandans, Accountant

yellowjackets - illogicality, illogicalities

unmanageable - unimaginable, manageable, inimitable, manageably, amendable

breastfeeding - breathtaking

horseracing - resurfacing, reassuring

childbearing - …chalkboards

unemotional - …emanational, unmentionable, unanimously

nonflammable - mentionable, nonviolently, monosyllable, nonvolatile

reawakens - weakens, wakens, reddens, rattans, weaklings, walk-ins, walk-ons

Beaujolais - beguiles, bobtails, beauteous, bodiless, beauties, bellicose

Bordeaux - burdocks, bureaux, broadax, paradox, birdseed, bordellos, birdhouse

…Well, you get the idea. I had some fun substituting the program’s words in my sentences and in simple sentences, too. For instance,

All arachnids and insects are arthritic.

Scientists at NASA are developing an interstate rocket that will take 20 light-years to complete its journey.

They removed his formicary appendix. (No wonder he acted as if he had ants in his pants!)

Some children are unimaginable at the age of five.

Why is she still breathtaking when her child is already four?

Steve Cauthens has devoted his life to resurfacing.

The prisoner was unmentionable when the verdict was read out.

I certainly do enjoy some bordellos or beauties with my steak.

As if the preceding were not enough, I also noticed, assuming that the program did not stop and offer choices if the word was in its memory, that oligopsony is in, but psychoneurotic is not; Winston is in, Churchill is not; isosceles is in, scalene is not.

It is a good thing that the technical staff at MicroSoft is not being asked to field questions about its Spelling Check; I am not sure I would want to hear the answers.

Finally, it might be worth mentioning that the program has the capacity to store in a temporary memory buffer about 100 words (proper names, for instance) that it has identified as not stored in its dictionary. The first time such a word is encountered, if the operator chooses GO ON, the program stores it and will recognize it when it recurs, obviating the need to repeat the GO ON command. For example, if you are writing an article on Churchill, not listed in the 37,000-entry dictionary, the program will stop at the first encounter; but once you have signaled it to GO ON, it will pass over any further repetitions of Churchill. When the temporary memory has been filled, the following message appears on the screen, which makes me wonder why I am relying on the program at all:

NO FURTHER WORDS CAN BE REMEMBERED FOR CORRECT MULTIPLE OCCURRANCES OR FOR GO ON.

Spelling check, check thyself!

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“In court, a prime CBS objective will be to refute characterizations of Adams by Westmoreland’s witnesses as a rouge elephant within the CIA.” [From The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 January 1985. Submitted by Douglas E. Chaffin, Ocean City, New Jersey.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“John James Audubon led an extraordinary life and enjoyed making cryptic comments about rumors that he was, in fact, the Lost Dolphin.” [From an exhibition catalog, Florida Painters: Past and Present, produced by the St. Petersburg Historical Society, 30 November 1984-3 February 1985. Submitted by Lynne Brown and Beverley Knight, St. Petersburg, Florida.]

Paring Pairs No. 30

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). Imprison Capone; keep him inside.
(b). Irish smartass actor.
(c). Did sisters of father of founder of Oil State come from here?
(d). Disappoint the comedian.
(e). King’s rule over salad.
(f). Had festive snack with Pygmalion.
(g). Aristophanes’ garret comedy.
(h). Was Carver a property enthusiast?
(i). Lavatory bottle for the half-arsed?
(j). Charley’s sounded exuberant.
(k). Glue used to bind a book.
(l). Suspended central European heretic.
(m). Superficial wave rider.
(n). 3 + Andreev’s 7 = 1 surfer.
(o). “Please Pay Here”—a password?
(p). Emergency communication by steampipe.
(q). Vernal fashions at end of mooring.
(r). Rodent’s occupation with shroud.
(s). Cotton to French desserts assortment.
(t). Put former fashions in a row.
(u). Bows to codswallop.
(v). Feed story of New England state intravenously.
(w). Singleness of the unmarried gangster.
(x). Bench moonlighting.
(y). Plain Cockney widow’s pique.
(z). Cub stringer hopes to purchase this.

(1). A.
(2). Ace.
(3). Air.
(4). Al.
(5). Ant.
(6). Arian.
(7). Attic.
(8). Aunts.
(9). Bachelor.
(10). Boy.
(11). Buy.
(12). Case.
(13). Cole’s.
(14). Counter.
(15). Cunning.
(16). Demi.
(17). Fiddle.
(18). Gala.
(19). Ground.
(20). Ham.
(21). Hang.
(22). Hood.
(23). Hot.
(24). Hung.
(25). In.
(26). Intern.
(27). John.
(28). Law.
(29). Line.
(30). Main.
(31). Mousse.
(32). Nut.
(33). Penn’s.
(34). Polish.
(35). Rat.
(36). Side.
(37). Sign.
(38). Spring.
(39). Stand.
(40). Sticks.
(41). Surf.
(42). Tea.
(43). Ten.
(44). Up.
(45). Wit.

Paring Pairs Prize

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.

Answers to Paring Pairs No. 29

(a). Record work and create star of first magnitude. (8,32) Can Opus.
(b). Castle in the air. (27,21) Light House.
(c). Look briefly through cravat collection. (42,49) Scan Ties.
(d). Entrance for wandering opera star. (11,17) Diva Gate.
(e). Churchman’s debts to second-hand experiences. (52,22) Vicar I.O.U.s.
(f). Blemish from being borne in Pullman. (5,28) Berth Mark.
(g). Aptly named country of angry people. (23,26) Ire Land.
(h). Coin is something at a great distance. (15,47) Far Thing.
(i). Nonitalic (!)words inspire sentimental twitch. (40,48) Roman Tic.
(j). St. Andrew’s bunker for athletic supporters? (24,50) Jock’s Trap.
(k). Gypsy man’s horseplay leads to love. (39,3) Rom Antic.
(l). What one must pay today even for a doghouse. (10,38) Cur Rent.
(m). Rambunctious western without music. (20,35) Horse Play.
(n). The least you can expect from Little Mother. (29,30) Mini Mum.
(o). Fake ache from the bubbly? (44,33) Sham Pain.
(p). Unimportant midget’s coffin. (45,4) Small Beer.
(q). Scented French chamberpot sounds mixed up. (36,34) Po Paris.
(r). Allow me to say the swindle is over. (9,12) Con Done.
(s). Chance’s partners become one always in bad odor. (14,46) Ever Stinker.
(t). Lovers entwine to create woman’s plant. (18,31) Her Oleander.
(u). Fertile lorry source. (51,16) Truck Garden.
(v). American beauty is up to it. (1,41) A Rose.
(w). Recognize information about current electrical state. (2,25) A.C. Knowledge.
(x). Purchasel (7,53) Buy Word.
(y). Hip joint. (6,19) Butt Hinge.
(z). Clupeid delicacy arranged on this before fiery furnace? (43,37) Shad Rack.

The correct answer is (13) Dun. The winner was Jean Snyder of South Miami, Florida. The European winner of No. 27 was Mr. D. G. Norris, Cambridge.>

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“How to protect your neighborhood against crime and Jennifer Beals, star of ‘The Bride.’ Live at Five.” [From a tease on CBS-TV (New York), 11 August 1985. Submitted by Robert Sherman Corwin, New York City.]

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Article following pop art movement (4)
2. Left Louisianil city with actress Turner questioning (10)
3. Murderer’s cloak hiding terrible truth (9)
4. Drop a nickel picking up alarm (5)
5. Requirement for hanging ring through nose (5)
6. Girl takes in hackneyed words from the priest (4, 5)
7. Paints name inside city trains (7)
8. Bedraggled, quiet advice columnist (6)
9. Film about western bar worker? (6)
10. Regrets sleuth Spade’s returning for muscle man? (7)
11. Practice too long in full view before shower (9)
12. Rover turned on cuckoo (5)
13. Burning that is suppressed by cook (5)
14. Working together to make Peruvian owl sounds (2,7)
15. Lowest storage bottle found in trap (10)
16. Declared right of king in check (4)

Down

1. Wine bottle and beer container found in bar (8)
2. Bandit took stocks likewise (5)
4. Old ones exercising brains (7)
5. Flowers for drawing exercises (7)
6. VCR user’s contract (5)
7. Policeman’s Prisoners put on ice (9)
8. Place on top of the tree (6)
9. One caught in the very act of stealing (8)
15. Disgrace at embracing infielders (9)
17. Sailors in the drink (8)
18. Strained foreign exchanges (6, 2)
20. Practicality is dividing kingdom (7)
21. Threatens fellows with top cards (7)
22. Bit of cobwebs removed in place for Dracula (6)
24. The bears pulled up my herb (5)
26. Large animal-sounds like sa cow with energy (5)

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“We’re going to need community cooperation so we can strive for parody. If you use it, you pay for it.” [From an article by Charles Moore, Albuquerque Journal, February 1987. Submitted by James C. Williams, Arlington, Texas.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“An owner of a Greenwich Village barbershop survived being shot in the neck as he slept by a gunman who broke into his house….” [From The New York Times, 10 September 1987. Submitted by John S. Hogg, Hamilton, New York.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“A crowd of only 22,449, including 7,613 no-shows, watched as the Cardinals broke a three-game losing streak.” [Newsday, 9 November 1987. Submitted by Benjamin M. Steiner, Flushing, New York.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Last weekend, the Welcome Society, composed of original Penn colony settlers, held its annual meeting….” [The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 November 1987. Submitted by Judy Tucker, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.]

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. RE(PRO)DUCTIONS (INTRODUCES anag.).
9. SINGE(r).
10. BAR(CAROL)E.
11. INCISOR (hidden).
12. INSOLES (anag.).
13. GA(LAX)Y.
15. PRES(ACE)S.
18. DECADE-N.T.
19. H(O)G-TIE (EIGHT anag.).
22. A(EROB)IC (rev.).
24. E-YEW-ASH.
26. ENTRANCES (2 meanings).
27. REGAL (rev.).
28. DESSERTS-POONS (rev.).

Down

1. RI(SKIN)G.
2. P(AN)IC.
3. O-VERSE-XED.
4. UN-BOR-N (NUN anag.; ROB rev.).
5. T(ERR)IERS.
6. O-PALS.
7. S-POT-LIGHT.
8. F(E)ASTS.
14. LACE-RATED.
16. STONECROP (hidden).
17. UN(ICY)CLE.
18. DIALER (rev.).
20. EXH-ALE’S (HEX anag.).
21. TEA SE-T.
23. B(E)ARS.
25. ANGLO (anag.).

Internet Archive copy of this issue

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1. Cannon, Garland. 1987. Historical Change and English Word-Formation: Recent Vocabulary, 340pp. Peter Lang. ↩︎