VOL XVII, No 2 [Autumn 1990]
What’s in a Roman Name?
Paul Pascal, Edmonds, Washington
The toponymy of Rome offers an entertaining supplement to the study of its twenty-seven hundred years of history. The etymology of the name of the city of Rome itself remains a mystery. Legend attributes it to a more or less imaginary eponymous founder Romulus, or, in a less familiar version, to a Trojan woman, Rhome (whose name is a Greek word for ‘strength’). Modern scholars attempt to explain the name more scientifically as being based on a word meaning ‘river,’ or on an Etruscan name. Some investigators, noting evidence for a Latin word ruma meaning ‘breast,’ have concluded that Rome owes its name to the supposed shape of the Palatine Hill as it appeared to the eye of an exceptionally determined observer. The Grand Tetons in the American West illustrate this same phenomenon in French.
Major natural features of the city whose ancient names are still in use include the Tiber River and the seven hills. The etymology of all these names remains as elusive as that of Rome itself. Various legends were invented to account for them; for example, the name of the Capitoline Hill (from which capitol comes) was said to be derived from a human head (caput) found on it when the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was being built. This was taken as a portent of future glory. The adjacent Palatine Hill, which was eventually reserved for imperial structures (whence our words palace and palatial), was derived from the name of Pallas, son of Evander, a Greek who according to epic tradition settled on the site of Rome centuries before its “real” founding. The fate of Pallas constitutes a major motif in Vergil’s Aeneid.
One relatively unfamiliar hill in Rome, Monte Testaccio, is a sizable, artificial eminence near the Tiber south of the city, rising a hundred feet above the surrounding level. This was the commercial dock area in antiquity, and more recently the site of the modern city’s slaughterhouse, not much frequented by tourists, although it is near the cemetery that contains the grave of John Keats. Monte Testaccio (Testaceus in Latin) means ‘hill of potsherds’—an exact description of its makeup. For centuries it was formed by the dumping of debris from the dock area, mostly pieces of broken amphoras, which then became compacted. Walking on its surface is an extraordinary experience.
Colosseum is the popular name for the most famous surviving ancient building of Rome. Its official name was Flavian Amphitheater, after the family name of its builder, the emperor Vespasian. The name Colosseum, now usually taken to refer to its size, originally referred to the fact that the amphitheater was built adjacent to a huge statue (a colossus) of the sun god that had been commissioned by Nero, allegedly in his own likeness.
The name of one of the most favored places of modern Rome, Piazza Navona, is a disguised form of a word for the ancient structure whose site it occupies, a stadium (circus in Latin) built by the emperor Domitian. Piazza Navona still preserves the exact shape of that stadium, of which practically nothing else is left. The stadium itself, and the kind of activity that took place there, were called agon, a Greek word which originally meant simply ‘competition,’ but which has given us our word ‘agony.’ St. Agnes suffered martyrdom at this stadium after her hair grew with miraculous rapidity to cover the nakedness by which her persecutors sought to humiliate her. Consequently, the church that was later built there was called “St. Agnes in Agone.” The phrase in agone came to be corrupted to Navona, by way of intermediate forms such as Nagone and Navone. Until well into the present century, the official, if little used, name of the piazza was Circo Agonale.
Piazza di Spagna, site of the Spanish Steps, is so named because since the 17th century it has been the location of the Spanish embassy to the Holy See. The main street that leads to the Spanish Steps, despite its present concentration of elegant and renowned boutiques, has the most prosaic of names: Via Condotti, after the aged conduits that serve the nearby Trevi Fountain.
Many ecclesiastical buildings of Rome have striking names. San Giovanni in Oleo stands near the spot, just inside the ancient Porta Latina, where St. John the Evangelist is said to have survived immersion in boiling oil. The name of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva recalls that it was built over a temple of the pagan goddess Minerva. Santa Maria in Cosmedin remains an etymological puzzle. This church served Greek refugees in the 8th century, and the designation in Cosmedin is usually assumed to be connected with the Greek word kosmidion, diminutive of kosmos, meaning ‘embellishment.’
The street names of Rome reflect both its long history and the fanciful imagination of its people. Via del Babuino, running north from Piazza di Spagna, is named after an ancient fountain with a statue of Silenus, the grotesque drunken follower of Bacchus, which seemed to resemble a baboon. A similar circumstance accounts for the strange name of Via Santo Stefano del Cacco, which refers to a statue of an animal-headed Egyptian deity discovered in the remains of the nearby Temple of Isis. The animal was identified as the kind of monkey called in English a macaque, Italian macacco, here colloquially truncated. Via di Ripetta ‘Embankment Street’ skirts the Tiber River as it passes the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus. Here until the present century there was a bustling landing place for the boats that plied the Tiber, a popular subject in old photographs and prints. Now a flood control system has recessed the river below the level of the adjacent streets, and the ripetta has disappeared except in name. Via di Ripetta imperceptibly merges into Via della Scrofa ‘Street of the Sow,’ named after another ancient sculpture that is still preserved there. Just off Via della Scrofa is an old tower called Torre della Scimmia. A votive lamp permanently lit on this tower commemorates the miraculous rescue of a baby girl from a scimmia ‘pet monkey’ that had carried her off to its top. Its principal interest for many Americans, however, is that this is Hilda’s Tower, where the ethereal heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Marble Faun lived while she studied painting in Rome.
Many street names in the historic center of Rome recall how medieval artisans used to congregate in specialized quarters: Via dei Giubbonari ‘makers of coats,’ Calderari ‘tinkers,’ Pettinari ‘makers of combs,’ Coronari ‘rosary makers,’ Balestrari ‘crossbow makers,’ and many others. The words in this list are obsolete in contemporary Italian, but the street names survive.
A Roman street that retains a picturesque name is Via delle Botteghe Oscure ‘Street of Dark Shops.’ The widening of this street in the 1930s resulted not only in the brightening (or disappearance) of the shops, but also in the uncovering of important archaeological remains, much to the inconvenience of modern developers—an old story in Rome. The street gave its name to the influential literary journal, Botteghe Oscure, published there in the 1950s by Marguerite Caetani, an American-born member of the aristocratic Italian family whose ancestral palace stands at the beginning of the street.
The single most prolific source of street names in Rome is the Risorgimento, the 19th-century revolutionary movement that unified Italy. Rome grew phenomenally in the decades following the Risorgimento. One result of this growth was an abundance of new streets that needed names; the worthies of the Risorgimento largely filled the bill. Its principal heroes—King Vittorio Emanuele II, Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cavour—are commemorated in the names of the main streets and piazzas of virtually every city and town in Italy, not least in Rome. Via Venti Settembre ‘20th of September Street’ illustrates the Italian propensity for naming streets after historic dates, in this case the date of the breach in the ancient fortification wall of Rome, through which Italian troops stormed the city to bring the Risorgimento to an end. Via del Plebiscito, the street that connects Piazza Venezia with Largo Argentina, now almost totally surrendered to buses and taxis, was named for the ‘plebiscite’ held in 1870, shortly after the events of the 20th of September, when the people of Rome voted to join the rest of Italy, ending the temporal power of the Church.
Via Veneto, site of the American Embassy and of la dolce vita in general, was named for one of the provinces of the newly unified Italy, as were other streets nearby (Via Toscana, Via Lombardia, Via Campania, etc.), when what had been the gardens of the Villa Ludovisi were urbanized almost exactly a hundred years ago. Following World War I, Via Veneto was renamed Via Vittoria Veneto, after a town in Veneto that had been the scene of an Italian battle of that war. (This town itself had been renamed in 1866 in honor of King Vittorio Emanuele II.) To this day, hardly anyone ever calls Via Vittorio Veneto anything but Via Veneto.
Few of the street names that originated in the Fascist era have survived it. The grandiose Via dell’Impero that was rammed through the central archaeological zone in the 1930s was named after the short-lived Fascist “Empire” in Africa. It has been renamed Via dei Fori Imperiali, some what ironically, as the frenzied traffic on it is a serious blight to the enjoyment of the remains of the ancient Imperial Fora themselves. Proposals to demolish this street and restore the unity of the whole archaeological zone from the Capitoline Hill to the Colosseum are often in the news.
Across the Tiber, Via della Conciliazione, which cleared the approach to the Basilica of St. Peter from centuries-old congestion, commemorates the ‘Reconciliation’ effected by the Lateran Treaty of 1929. This regularized the relationship between the Church and the Italian state, which had remained unsettled during the years since the Risorgimento.
Just inside the southern part of the ancient wall there is another street that has escaped renaming, although it commemorates a Fascist victory in the Italian-Ethiopian war. This is the exotic-sounding Via Amba Aradam, named after a plateau in Ethiopia, a battlefield in 1936.
In the southern part of Rome stands the rather forlorn EUR complex of obsolescent modern buildings. The initials, always pronounced as one Italian word “ay-OOR”), stand for Esposizione Universale di Roma, a world’s fair that was to have been held in 1942 but yielded instead to World War II. One of the buildings, visible from the highway that serves Rome’s airport, is a bizarre structure officially called Palazzo della Civiltá del Lavoro. Its principal design feature is the rounded openings that cover all four of its exterior walls. The major Italian guidebook to Rome soberly claims that this building has been nicknamed Il Colosseo Quadrato, ‘The Square Colosseum.’ In fact, what most Romans really call it is Il Palazzo di Groviera ‘The Swiss Cheese Palace.’
A scattering of names referring to more recent Roman history can be found. At the base of the Aventine, a postwar park has been named the Parco della Resistenza dell’Otto Settembre, commemorating the heroic action against the Nazis there on that date in 1943 by the Italian partisans. Nearby, just outside the ancient wall, the area in front of the railroad station has been named Piazzale dei Partigiani. Luigi Einaudi, the patriarch of postwar Italian politics, President of the Republic from 1948 to 1955, when he was an octogenarian, has the unusual honor of a street named for him in the heart of the city, near the central railway station. This had previously been called Viale delle Terme, after the ruins of the adjacent Baths of Diocletian, one corner of which holds the present National Museum of Antiquities.
Finally, Americans who visit Rome should make an excursion to Villa Borghese, a park just outside the ancient wall near Via Veneto, where they will find what used to be Viale dei Leoni ‘Street of the Lions,’ now officially Viale Fiorello Laguardia.
EPISTOLA {Robert J. Powers}
When Max Peterson writes [XVII,1] “…St. Augustine…arrived in England bringing Christianity and Latin…,” he may be correct about the Latin, but Christianity beat Augustine there by a couple of centuries. There were, for example, British bishops at the Council of Arles, in 314. See The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, second edition, 1984 repr., pp. 290ff., “The Church of England.”
[Robert J. Powers, Shreveport]
The Scandalous Yiddish Guide of the Census Bureau
Zellig Bach, Lakehurst, New Jersey
Every language deserves respect and reverence. Every language is the creative expression of the genius of its people, the collective repository of a nation’s legends, traditions, and history, and a mighty potentiator of its national and cultural continuity.
The Census Bureau publishes 32 foreign language Guides, from (alphabetically) Arabic to Yiddish, to assist residents unfamiliar with English in answering the official 1990 U.S. Census Form. I took one look at the Bureau’s Yiddish Guide and my eyes, four-score-and-four years old, glazed over, not because of their age but because what they saw was totally unreadable—a heap of pure gibberish. From the very title of the Guide, to the first word, first sentence, first paragraph—every rule of spelling, grammar, and syntax has been violated beyond recognition. The entire document represents a veritable rain of error—nay, a torrent, a deluge of gross mistakes, outrageous misspellings, and just plain and simple ignorance.
To give the reader an approximate idea of what a Yiddish speaker is confronted with, imagine a question like “How many people live in this house?” being translated as With pensil say on these line how much parssonalitys residue in yuore abodiement. Even this fails to convey in full the nonsense of the Yiddish Guide because with patience and some educated guessing one could decipher the meaning of the above sentence. This, however, would be practically impossible with the so-called Guide. No amount of patient effort and guessing to reconstruct a sentence would be of any avail because the Yiddish in the Guide is garbled to the point of incoherence.
One is reminded of the assembly instructions that used to come with products imported from Japan. The English terms in those instructions were so comically outlandish and the sentence structure so awkward that they became a source of hilarity. There is nothing hilarious or mirthful, however, about the Yiddish Guide. To the very contrary: it brings forth a deep sense of sadness because what was supposed to be a serious attempt at facilitating the Census count, a sort of “first aid” assistance in answering the Census Form, looks like the work of a child who took several pages from a Yiddish book, cut them up with his plastic scissors into tiny pieces of various shapes and sizes and then playfully pasted them together.
How did such irresponsibility come about? Why did the Census Bureau not call up the Library of Congress for a referral to a responsible Yiddish translator? Instead, I imagine, whoever was in charge of foreign language translations asked around casually during a coffee break: “Anyone here know Yiddish?” And a chap piped up: “Well, my mother and father spoke Yiddish when they didn’t want me and my sisters to understand what they were saying, but my grandmother and my mother always spoke Yiddish…”
The saying Traduttore traditore expresses the idea that no matter how gifted a translator is, he can never truly convey the subtle nuances and meanings behind the original language, the many-layered associations and allusions that the words in the original connote. The Yiddish “translator” of the Census Guide doesn’t belong, of course, to the above class of translators. While professional translators are richly and deeply knowledgable in both languages, the original language and the language they translate into, the so-called translator of the Census Guide is totally ignorant of the rudimentary rules of Yiddish, not to mention its spirit. The end result of his work therefore is tantamount to sabotage, albeit unintended, since any native Yiddish speaker starting to answer the questionnaire with the help of this Guide would soon have to discard, in utter confusion, both the Census Form and the Guide as well.
But this denigration alone would not make the Yiddish Guide the travesty it is. What made it a travesty, indeed a tragedy, is that thousands upon thousands of Yiddish speakers, many of them elderly and poor, remained uncounted, and thus have fallen “between the cracks,” so to speak, with grave political, social, and economic consequences.
[Editor’s Note: We shall send a copy of Census publication D-60 (Yiddish) to anyone who requests it and encloses a s.a.s.e.]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Third Barnhart Dictionary of New English
Robert K. Barnhart, Sol Steinmetz, and Clarence L. Barnhart, (H.W. Wilson, 1990), xxi+565pp.
Two generations of the Barnhart family have been intimately involved in dictionary-making, certainly one of the most unusual family businesses one could imagine. The tradition began with the influential work of Clarence L. Barnhart, dean of American lexicography, who at the age of 89 is still active in the profession. C.L.B. had much to do with the application of modern linguistic theory to lexicography; the list of publications he has edited includes such landmarks as the Dictionary of American English (University of Chicago Press), the Thorndike-Barnhart School Dictionaries series (Scott Foresman; the top-selling school dictionaries in the U.S.), the American College Dictionary (Random House), the New Century Cyclopedia of Names (Appleton-Century-Crofts), and the World Book Dictionary (little known, sadly, but one of the best unabridged dictionaries still being kept current). He also founded and, with his son, David, still edits the Barnhart Dictionary Companion [BDC], a periodical report on new words that features the staple of Barnhart lexicography—full, dated citations.
In addition to their work in the Dictionary Companion, well regarded by lexicographers and other serious word people, the family Barnhart and their colleagues have directed much effort over the years to tracking and recording new English, and this latest publication is another in that line. This Third Barnhart Dictionary of New English [TBDNE] follows on two others of similar purpose and style that appeared in 1973 and 1980, respectively, published by Harper & Row. The intent of the series is to record “words and meanings not entered or fully explained in standard dictionaries… a supplement to current dictionaries of the English language” (from the Preface). In this latest addition to the series Robert K. Barnhart is listed first on the title page, taking over his father’s role in the previous books, and, as before, they are joined by Sol Steinmetz. The combined editorial staff for all three books includes the names of no fewer than nine Barnharts.
TBDNE is an amalgamation and continuation, with “many of the entries found in the two earlier books of this series (both now out of print)…included to provide a revised and expanded record of new words and meanings introduced into English during the past three decades” (Preface). Those wishing to supplement their aging Webster’s Third New International (Merriam, 1961) and unwilling to spend about thirty dollars more for the recent editions of the Random House Unabridged or World Book Dictionary would be very well served by the TBDNE. It should be noted, however, that the TBDNE, in including the work of its predecessors, represents a departure from their approach. The Second in 1980 was totally independent of the 1963 book: the second supplemented the first. The TBDNE consolidates the best of the two earlier dictionaries, with revisions, then adds some new entries. It is intended to replace its predecessors, not supplement them.
Each entry contains a definition (occasionally two or more) followed by one or more lengthy, dated citations, plus a date, often different, of the earliest citation on file for each sense. The date is often earlier than that of the citations given since these were selected from the Barnhart files as most illustrative of meaning and usage. Indeed, the definition is often provided in the citation itself. Multiple citations are arranged in an order of the editors' choosing, not necessarily chronological. This approach reflects editorial sifting of the evidence from the citations and a subsequent presentation that best befits clarity and sense development. Strict chronological presentation of dated citations is at best a lexicographic Procrustean bed, at worst very misleading. Citations, being only the lexicographer’s raw data, need to be carefully reviewed, weighed, selected, and presented if a dictionary entry is to record the state of a word properly. Sound citation analysis is, like good definition-writing, a rare gift, and requires, besides diligence, broad experience and a firm sense of the idiom of the language: Sprachgefühl. Fortunately, the editors of TBDNE have this in abundance, and the resulting excellence is manifest on every page.
A careful estimate indicates that the TBDNE contains about 9,000 headwords with an additional 2,000 or so other entry words; of these 11,000 or so entries, some 2,300 (about 21%) are phrasal. The estimate suggests something less than the entry count of the Merriam-Webster 12,000 Words, which is billed as a supplement to the Merriam Third, but there the comparison ends. The TBDNE has well over twice the information of the Merriam book, which lacks citations. Citations are particularly important in dictionaries of new words, not only in establishing a dated record, but to furnish context and thereby more clearly illustrate actual use—essential for words that are by nature unfamiliar.
Other features include special notes on usage, word formation, and cultural or historical background. Pronunciations are given as necessary, using an adaptation of the International Phonetic Alphabet developed by the Barnharts for this series. Etymologies are provided for a small proportion of entries. Otherwise, the dictionary presents itself in fairly standard, familiar fashion, with the sort of labeling and cross-referencing that one expects in a quality product. One feature of the earlier books in the series has unfortunately not been kept in TBDNE—the use of centered dots within headwords to show syllabication points.
An analysis of the entries in two randomly selected spans of the TBDNE suggests that the great bulk of the entries are repeated, often with revision, from the two earlier books, with less evidence of new material than one might have hoped for. A randomly chosen span of 50 full entries in the TBDNE, from pill to platinum, was compared against the same alphabetic span in the 1963 and 1980 dictionaries:
1963
35 entries1980
28 entries1990
50 entries
The 50 entries of the TBDNE include 22 from the 1963 book (13 were dropped) and 26 from the 1980 book (2 were dropped), with only two completely new entries. The new items, pinstriper and Planet X, are, not surprisingly, both drawn from the BDC, which provided the actual citation for pinstriper and the date of earliest occurrence for Planet X. It seems likely that the increasingly common acronym PIN, for personal identification number, issued by banks as a unique identifier for customers who use automatic teller machines (yes, ATM is in), which was in BDC was passed over for TBDNE because it appears as an entry in the Random House Unabridged Second Edition (1987), though ATM is an entry in all three.
To find such a low proportion of new entries (4%), was unexpected, so another random span of 50, from go to grammaticality, was compared, with the following result:
1963
22 entries1980
27 entries1990
50 entries
Of these 50 entries, 18 come from the 1963 book (4 dropped), all 27 were taken from the 1980, and 5 new items were added: goldbug, golden parachute, gold rush (new sense), golf ball (new sense), and gomer. Two of the five are to be found in the BDC, while entries for all appear in the World Book Dictionary (1989 edition), also produced by the Barnhart staff. So there was indeed a greater proportion of new entries (10%) than in the span noted first, but still a disappointingly small minority of the whole.
Of the entries left out of the TBDNE that did appear in the previous books, none was surprising. Technical terms such as pinealectomy, planetology, and planktotrophic are of low frequency or have only specialized use, so were understandably dropped in compiling the TBDNE (indeed, it is more notable that they were ever included at all). Entries for pipe bomb, (in the) pipeline, pita, and placebo effect, plasma jet, and platform tennis, all in the 1963 book, were doubtless dropped because they all are entered in current general-language dictionaries, and so are no longer required in the TBDNE, given its stated intention. The dropping of goulash communism (1968 citation; economic approach in thencommunist Hungary emphasizing greater production of consumer goods) and gramadan (1970 citation; Hindi loanword applied to a Gandhian form of land collectivization in India), both in the 1963 book but not in TBDNE, reflects the fact that, in a living language, citations require different analysis and judgment after the perspective of time is added. It may seem unfortunate to discard entries that, no matter the frequency or currency of the term, are part of the record of English, but such is necessary in any commercial dictionary venture. At least it does appear, based on the spans analyzed, that the discards were judiciously chosen.
A comparison reading of full entries in the TBDNE against the source entries from its predecessors reveals the marks of close editing to incorporate better citations and record earlier attestations. Also, the citational style has been tightened, undoubtedly to create space for additional entries. Where the 1963 and 1980 dictionaries cited author, article, publication, and date (for a periodical), the same citation in the TBDNE gives only publication and date. The space saved allowed for amalgamation and new entries; yet, anyone interested in more background on a particular citation is provided with enough information to track it down, assuming that a good library is at hand.
I hesitate to quibble over a few items not found in the TBDNE, since even these should cause no great concern. A dictionary of neologisms owes nearly everything to the citation files behind it, and citation files are very much a product of accident, constrained by budget. That the Random House Unabridged (Second Edition, 1987) includes pimpmobile and plain-vanilla probably means that the Random House files had citations for these, the Barnharts' not—or not enough. Given the immense quantity of English in use worldwide, it is simply impossible for any single citation-gathering force to see, much less collect, all that should be in the file. Merriam’s 12,000 Words has entries for Pinteresque, pistou, and place value, again a reflection of what the vast Merriam files have yielded up. Still, none of the new-words dictionaries I checked, including the Longman Register of New Words (edited by John Ayto; Longman, 1989) and the Facts on File Dictionary of New Words (edited by LeMay, Lerner and Taylor; Facts on File, 1988) had an entry for pixelization ‘the appearance of pixels (dots that make up a computer-screen image) in a computer graphic, a mark of lower resolution.’ An entry for it must await citations entering the files, assuming the word proves its usefulness to users of English over time.
It is a bit dissatisfying to find fewer new entries in the TBDNE than one might have expected. Commercial constraints are the likely explanation for this, not, I strongly suspect, lack of new words and senses in the ever-burgeoning English lexicon. But we should not judge too harshly on the basis of two narrow spans covering only about 1% of the entries. While it can truly be said that the TBDNE shows more of the solid foundation of its predecessors than it does of newly laid work, this is hardly negative criticism. The 1963 and 1980 books are both fine dictionaries, and a book that combines the best of those, carefully re-edited, with some solid, new lexicography based on the BDC, the World Book Dictionary, and the substantial Barnhart files, must be a high-quality dictionary. It is.
Frank R. Abate
EPISTOLA {Don Webb}
I’d like to add a word to Harry Cohen’s delightful list in “Jingo Lingo” [XVI, 4]. The French words for junkie are toxoman and morphinman, neither of which merits official use.
[Don Webb, Austin, Texas]
EPISTOLA {Scott McCarty}
I must take issue with your quick dismissal of Mr. Saussy’s claim that his father earned his bachelor’s degree “at the behest of the Marine Corps” [XVI, 4]. To the extent that written orders constitute military commands, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps do indeed issue “behests” for academic degrees. In the past, the Marine Corps has had programs similar to the Navy’s College Degree Program (CDP) and Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program (NESEP). Moreover, at any given time there are many Marine Corps officers enrolled in graduate study programs at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), in Monterey, California. They arrive at NPS with orders in hand and usually complete degree requirements within two years—at the behest of the Marine Corps.
[Scott McCarty, Lt. Cdr., U.S. Navy]
To Abbrev. or Not to Abbreviate
Don Sharp, Springfield, Missouri
There is a linguistic process in the evolution of our vocabulary that is not functioning with a high rate of efficiency. Not that the language has ever been highly logical or ever should be, but what set out on a bon voyage is gradually abandoning ship and heading back to shore. What was to have happened simply is not always happening.
In the world of modern communication, it is evident that it is often necessary to speed up the sending of messages. With the written language, this is orthographically facilitated by the various processes of word shortening—acronyms (ZIP for Zone Improvement Plan), contractions (won’t for will not), clipped words (deli for delicatessen) and abbreviations (lb. for pound). However, the time- and space-saving act of abbreviating is not always working with the efficiency that was originally intended. A few examples will vividly illustrate this puzzling discrepancy.
When we find ourselves with a long word or phrase on our hands, we would normally expect to find an abbreviation to come to the rescue. In time, that generally happens and, with few communication difficulties, everything lives happily after. The expression, master of the ceremonies, is earliest found in 1662. It is more than a hundred years later before an efficient abbreviation for it is found. In 1790 M.C. finally arrives in print to reduce the writing wordload by 300 percent. Supposedly, everything is firmly set. For almost one and one half centuries, M.C. does the job it was called upon to do. In 1933, however, some writer mysteriously decides that a new word is needed to represent the pronunciation of the abbreviation. Emcee is thus born, no matter that this represents an increase from two letters to five, a bulging 125% growth. Granted, emcee is still more efficient than master of ceremonies, but the need for spelling out the sound of letters seems redundant, superfluous, and therefore useless.
Nevertheless, the practice of changing from term to abbreviation to phonetic spelling of the abbreviation is an old and continuing oddity in English. In World War II, the need for a general-purpose vehicle was satisfied with the development of a means of transportation referred to by the government with astonishing directness and candor as a general-purpose vehicle. The army, quick to abbreviate everything, began to refer to the vehicle as a g.p., but by 1941 g.p. had given way to the longer jeep.
Vice president (with no capitals is first found in 1574, and Vice President, referring to his USA nibs, is found in 1787. Sometime later VP shortened the term by 250%, but by 1949 veep, although abhorred by many, was applied affectionately to Alben Barclay and became part of the written and spoken vocabulary.
Junior varsity is found in 1949, referring to the secondary team of an American school or university. The date for the first use of J.V. is unsure, but the date for jayvee, 1937, would seem to show a lack of conclusive evidence since junior varsity must obviously have preceded jayvee.
Disc jockey is found in 1941, deejay in 1949, indicating that D.J. might have been in between.
Another inconsistency is to be found in the process of knockout, the boxing term and later the metaphoric term referring to anything that amazes or shocks. Knockout is first recorded in 1887, and logically following is K.O. in 1926, but the first appearance of kayo is cited in 1923.
Not to rehash the OK controversy, but oll korrect is first found in 1839 with OK also listed in that same year. Following reasonable suit, okeh appears in 1919, and okay is charted in 1929.
One segment of the armed forces is the Construction Batallion, which was quickly abbreviated to C.B. In 1942 this group came to be known as the Seabees, sporting uniforms with an appropriate insigne of a seafaring bee.
One of the latest words to enter the Abbreviation Cycle of Redundancy Race is Missouri. The “Show-Me” state gained statehood in 1821. It is not clear when the inept Mo. became the official abbreviation. However it is, the Postal Service saw fit to continue the curse with MO. The final stage is now evident in the state’s motto regarding drugs: “MO SAYS NO TO DRUGS,” where MO is obviously to be rhymed with NO.
What are the reasons for the apparent senselessness in the preceding examples? It must first be remembered that English is not highly reliant on the rules of logic. Prescriptive dictionaries are becoming fewer; descriptive dictionaries are gaining in popularity. Aside from generalizations, however, the abbreviations considered here do present some reason for their madness. Mo rhyming with no certainly makes the slogan easy to remember. Jeep and veep, each containing only one syllable, are easier to pronounce than their ancestral abbreviations. Emcee probably radiates a more euphemistic aura of dignity than M.C. Although there seems to be no reason for jayvee, it must be noted that the date given for the first appearance of a word is actually a record of when it was first found in print, and earlier oral use could not distinguish J. V. from jayvee. The word was no doubt used orally much earlier.
The problem with abbreviations as presented here again illustrates that people demand that language work the way they want to make it work. Overall, the abbreviating process is alive and doing exceptionally well.
EPISTOLA {Jack Kaminkow}
To supplement E. T. Henry’s “Nifty Nomenclature” [XVI,4], my English wife (nee Hume) from Beckenham offers the intelligence that when she was a child, her doctor’s name was Death (pronounced “DEETH”), her dentist’s name was Screech, her schoolteacher’s name was Kenshitt, and the local pastor was Reverend Long who married a Miss Shorter.
[Jack Kaminkow, Randallstown, Maryland]
EPISTOLA {Arthur J. Morgan, J.D.}
In “The Language of the Law” [XVII,1], one phrase ran off the rails:
customs that runneth not to the contrary.
Perhaps the writer was not serious, because he had a plural subject with a singular verb, runneth, in the relative clause. What “runneth not to the contrary” is memory, rather than custom. A better use of the phrase would be:
Droit du seigneur has been the custom for so long that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary.
[Arthur J. Morgan, J.D., New York City]
The Sounds of Inglish
Vishwas R. Gaitonde, Southington, Connecticut
Bernard Shaw’s Professor Henry Higgins liked to vent his ire on his fellow countrymen for “the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” What his views were on foreigners who spoke the language less than perfectly we shall never know. But I imagine those views wouldn’t have been complimentary either, because many of his real-life counterparts, devout worshipers of the Queen’s English, have expressed varying degrees of horror on the subject.
One would have thought that a little gratitude would be in order, gratitude for living in a world that largely speaks their language, however differently. Assume for a moment that this were not the case. How would the predominantly monoglot Britons then cope?
Now imagine for a moment that you are seated on the verandah of a bungalow in India. The impending monsoon has darkened the skies, the breeze is rustling the chintz curtains and the calico tablecloth. Is a typhoon on its way? A motley crowd is hurrying by—workers in dungarees; a yogi with his followers; a noblewoman in purdah in palanquin; a group of nautch girls, attractive in their aniline-dyed dresses and bright bandanas, their bangles jingling and their long, shampooed hair streaming in the breeze; a sepoy all smart in khaki on his horse, his jodhpurs trim and neat; a scholarly pundit; a mahout on his elephant, ambling like a juggernaut. A pariah dog barks at a bandicoot (or is it a mongoose?) in the paddy fields while mynahs twitter in the adjoining jungle. Fishermen secure their catamarans and dinghies to the pier with thick coir ropes. There’s have a dekko at. Everything is so different from good old Blighty…
Thirty-five words in the preceding paragraph are derived from Indian languages and are listed in standard English dictionaries as acceptable English words. Some of them strike us immediately as exotic but others (shampoo, for instance) are in such common use that people are often astonished to learn that they have a foreign origin. The Empire carried the English language to distant climes. These lands were poles apart from England in every possible way. There simply were no words in the English language to describe many local features and the local way of life. New words, phrases, and idioms had to be coined—out of necessity. What better than to borrow words and expressions from local languages and anglicize them?
English, in turn, made its impact on Indian languages in two ways: crossbreeding with Indian words to produce unique amalgamations; and lending words and expressions to Indian languages. As a result, we now have hybrid words like gymkhana and memsahib. Gymkhana, a ‘club for members to socialize and partake in sports and recreation,’ is a mixture of the Hindi gendkhana (meaning ‘ball house’) and the English gymnasium. Memsahib, meaning ‘European or white lady,’ stems from sahib, an Indian title of respect often accorded to white men, and mem, a corruption of Madam.
So too, words like shirt, bus, paper, fan, road, and light have become common in everyday vernacular speech in India. Some pronunciations have been Indianized. Pen is at times pronounced “penai” in South India, and when somebody speaks of krishnoil, he means kerosene oil. Expressions like the Tamil Then-nilavu, which is a literal translation of ‘honey’ and ‘moon’ and means ‘honeymoon,’ have also resulted.
The permutations do not end there. Indians bring nuances from their own languages into English. This has resulted in a variant of English known as Inglish (Indian English). Inglish differs from English in five ways: words, expressions, grammar, pronunciation and rhythm. Inglish sentences are peppered with Indian words. Yaar or Da (meaning ‘chum’ or ‘buddy’), often punctuate Inglish speech. Maha, meaning ‘great,’ is another such word; an irate employer chastises his ‘maha-lazy” workers, an enamoured youth woos his “maha-beautiful” sweetheart. When the police control unruly mobs by wielding wooden batons (lathi in Hindi), they make a “lathi-charge.” When you are introduced to some-body’s “co-brother,” you infer that he is the gentleman’s wife’s sister’s husband.
Indian patterns of grammer are also adopted in Inglish speech. “Will you come?” changes to “You will come?” and “Why has she done this?” to “What for she has done this?” because that’s the right way to structure those sentences grammatically in the original Indian languages. Somebody answering the telephone might be expected to say, “This is Krishnaswami speaking.” Instead, you get a booming,” “I speaking Krishnaswami.”
The lilting rhythms and pronunciations of each regional Indian language are characteristic of the Inglish spoken there. Thus, we have Inglish dialects such as Hinglish, Benglish, Punglish, Tamglish, Malayanglish, and so forth. A person’s Inglish often tells you which region of India he or she hails from. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sung by a North Indian could have the le in twinkle pronounced “lay.” The man from Andhra Pradesh might come up with the Telugu flavored Twinkulu Twinkulu Littlu Staru, while from Kerala come the deeply resonant Malayalam twangs of Dwingle Dwingle Liddle Sdar.”
And Inglish speech is not complete without nodding of the head, some gesticulation, and an expressive face.
This may be more than sufficient, perhaps, to drive the literary purists to suicide. But before they plunge the knife in, let them consider the English spoken in countries around the world—China, the Caribbean, the South American countries, and especially the United States of America. A majority of people speak English today as it should not be spoken according to purists.
Languages that rigidly hold on to their purity soon suffocate themselves. Those that adapt and change (and yes, get “corrupted” once in a while) survive and thrive. It is this quality to adapt that gives English its virility. Its status as the most widely spoken language in the world will take some challenging. Speakers of English, this is reason enough to rejoice. Listen with an attentive ear to the sounds of Inglish and the Englishes of other lands. The experience can be maha-fascinating.
The Naming of Poisons
Jon Buller, Lyme, Connecticut
“It must be tough being a bartender,” customers would sometimes say to me, in the days when I was practising the trade. “How can you ever remember all those different drink recipes?” It is not really all that hard, I would explain to them. Drinks are a lot like popular songs. First, there are the standards, like the Martini and the Screwdriver and the Bloody Mary. These are to bartender what White Christmas and My Way are to a lounge singer. There are only 20 or 30 of them, and they account for 90 percent of all cocktail orders.
Then there are the current hits, things like the Melonball and theKamikaze. These are comparable to this season’s hit songs. If you don’t know how to make one of them, someone can usually tell you— the customer who ordered it, a regular sitting at the end of the bar, or another bartender. After this happens a few times the drink gets pounded into your head, like the latest Bruce Springsteen on the juke box.
Finally, there are the oldies-but-goodies. If you don’t know these, you can look them up in one of the bartending reference books behind the bar.
There is also—with drinks as well as with songs—a phenomenally large number of also-rans. One can look through the promotional booklets given out by the liquor companies and the ads in magazines like Playboy to find countless unlikely sounding recipes concocted by marketing departments in hopes of selling more of their products. One rarely hears a “real” person order one of these drinks.
If one adds to these flops the unpublicized creations of individual bars and bartenders and customers, it is apparent that in our culture there is an immense and continual outpouring of mixologic creativity. Only the tiniest fraction of this output, however, actually achieves the first level of popular acceptance, and becomes a current hit. Having reached that level, it is almost as difficult to achieve the next one and become a standard, a drink that will still be popular by the time the next generation of current hits comes along.
I occasionally wondered why, out of the hundreds of candidates available, a certain few drinks had managed to achieve favor with the popular taste. It was usually not, as one might have supposed, because a newly discovered combination of ingredients had resulted in some completely unique new flavor. An Alabama Slammer, for instance, is made from sweetish liquors and fruit juice. As far as flavor goes, it offers nothing to the palate that could not as easily be provided by, say, a Singapore Sling. But, for young Americans of certain backgrounds, the Alabama Slammer is now chic, and the Singapore Sling is not.
The liquor industry sometimes does come up with new and different flavors. During the period when I was tending bar, for instance, a honeydewmelon-flavored liqueur called Midori, a product of the Japanese distiller Suntory, became very popular. But one might still ask why certain Midori-based drinks, such as the Melonball and the Pearl Harbor, became widely accepted, while others—The Green Goddess, Early Spring in Kyoto—languished in the pages of Suntory’s promotional literature. I have concluded that by far the most important factor in the success of a new drink is its name.
The bar where I used to work was located in the train station in New London, Connecticut. This is a town that has both a large naval base and a private co-educational college, and I waited on great numbers of people in their early to mid twenties. This is the group that, more than any other, serves as the breeding ground for new drinks. Very often I would take an order for a drink that was just coming into popularity, and then, when I served the drink, I would find out that the customer had expected something different. Frequently that was because the customer came from a region of the country where a different set of ingredients went by the same name. What had happened was that the recipe had become garbled as it traveled across the country by oral transmission from customer to bartender, and bartender to bartender. Yet the name had survived.
Unlike most products, which may be slipped across a counter (over or under) in silence, drinks are usually ordered out loud. Young people, when ordering a drink, like to give an indication, to themselves and to others, that they are tough, or sexy, or funny. They also have a strong tendency to imitate their peers and to order what they hear other order. During the time that I was working as a bartender (1977-1984), the new drinks that became popular almost invariably contained references in their names to images from the following categories: 1)* pleasant taste;* 2) destruction or self-destruction; 3) irreverence; 4) sexual innuendo.
1) Pleasant Taste: Many young people do not like the taste of liquor in its raw state. They often order a drink with a name that seems to promise a sweet or non-alcoholic taste. “A Creamsicle!? That sounds good! I think I’ll try one of those!” In all of the cases below, the name actually does reflect, to some extent, the taste of the drink.
MELONBALL
1 ounce Midori
1 ounce vodka
Fill with orange juice.
Glass: Collins, with iceCREAMSICLE
1 ounce vodka
1 ounce Triple Sec
Fill with half milk, half orange juice; shake.
Glass: Collins, with iceLONG ISLAND ICED TEA
½ ounce vodka
½ ounce rum
½ ounce gin
½ ounce Triple Sec
½ ounce tequila
Fill with lemon mix, add squirt of cola.
Glass: Collins, with iceCALIFORNIA ROOT BEER
1 ounce Galliano
1 ounce coffee liqueur
Fill with cola.
Glass: Collins, with ice
(A California Root Beer Float Float is the same drink with the addition of a splash of milk.)HAWAIIAN PUNCH
1 ounce sloe gin
¾ ounce Southern Comfort
¾ ounce Amaretto
Splash of grenadine Fill with half orange juice, half pineapple juice.
Glass: Collins, with ice
2) Destruction or Self-Destruction: It is not always clear which of these is referred to in the name of a drink. When someone orders a Cherry Bomb, for instance, is he saying, symbolically, that he is about to drop a small explosive charge into his nervous system? Or is he saying that he is explosive? Perhaps it is a little of each. There are many drinks in this category, as one might expect, since so many of the euphemisms for drunk (smashed, bombed, etc.) etc.) also refer to destruction:
KAMIKAZE
1 ounce vodka
1 ounce Triple Sec
Few drops Rose’s Lime Juice
Glass: rocks glass, with iceBLEEDING BRAIN
Fill a shot glass with half peppermint schnapps, half Irish cream liqueur, and add a few drops of grenadine. The resulting curdled mess looks like its name.ALABAMA SLAMMER
1 ounce Southern Comfort
1 ounce sloe gin
Fill with orange juice.
Glass: Collins, with iceCHERRY BOMB
1 ½ ounce cherry brandy
Fill with beer
Glass: beer mugB-52 1 part Tia Maria
1 part Irish cream liqueur
1 part Grand Marnier
Float Irish cream on Tia Maria, and Grand Marier on Irish Cream
Glass: cordial pony
3) Irreverence: Sometimes these categories overlap a good deal. The Colorado Motherfucker could also be placed in the next category, but I think the name is intended more for shock than anything else. It is a way of saying, “I am an outlaw, a mountain man!” As one might expect, it tastes like a syrupy milk shake.
COLORADO MOTHERFUCKER
1 ounce tequila
1 ounce coffee liqueur
Fill with milk; shake; add splash of cola.
Glass: Collins, with icePURPLE JESUS
½ ounce vodka
Graps juice to fill
Glass: highball, with iceMUDSLIDE
¾ ounce vodka
¾ ounce coffee liqueur
¾ ounce Irish cream liqueur
Glass: rocks glass, with ice (This drink became popular after a series of catastrophic mudslides hit the california coast.)
4) Sexual Innuendo: Leafing through old bartending manuals, one comes across things like the Between-the-Sheets cocktail, so there is nothing radically new about this category. But in recent times the references are increasingly blunt. Much of the appeal of these drinks lies in ordering them in such a ways as to playfully “gross out” the bartender. It is hard to imagine someone buying the ingredients for an Orgasm at a liquor store and then going home and mixing up a few to drink while reading mysteries in bed. The idea is to go into the local bar and say, “Hey, Marybeth, can you give me an Orgasm? I haven’t had a good Orgasm for a long time! HA!
“It’s no wonder,” deadpans Marybeth, mixing his drink.
ORGASM
¾ ounces vodka
¾ ounce coffee liqueur
¾ ounce amaretto
Fill with milk; shake.
Glass: Collins with iceSOLE COMFORTABLE SCREW
1 ounce sloe gin
1 ounce Southern Comfort
Orange juice to fill
Glass: Collins, with ice
(A Sole Screw with the Orange juice to fill addition of Southern Comfort.)SLIPPERY NIPPLE
¾ ounce amaretto
¾ ounce Irish cream liqueur
¾ ounce ouzo
Glass: Martini
Garnish: skewer a Maraschino cherry with a toothpick, and lay the toothpick across the rim of the glass so that the cherry sits in the center of the drink.SLOE SCREW
1 ½ ounces sloe gine
Orange juice to fill
Glass: highball, with ice
(A Screwdriver made with sole gin instead of vodka.)SOLE COMFORTABLE SCREW AGAINST THE WALL
1 ounce sloe gin
1 ounce Southern Comfort ½ ounce Galliano floated on top
Glass: Collins, with ice
(The logic of this is that a Screwdriver with Galliano floated on top is known as a Harvey Wallbanger. Thus a Comfortable Screw with Galliano floated on top becomes a Sole Comfortable Screw Against the Wall. In bars it is rarely ordered but much discussed.)
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Whereas sexologists have previously asked whether the female gentilia resemble those of men, Eve’s Secret suggests that men’s sexual organs may be derived from those of women.” [From a Paladin/Grafton book advertisement in The Guardian, n.d., 1989. Submitted by M. Gautrey, Geneva.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Each of the four rings were positioned inside each other.” [From an article on laser capability in Job Shop Technology, August 1988. Submitted by Bernard Brenner, Weston, Massachusetts.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“State of Washington charges for certified birth, death, marriage or disillusion….” [From Connecticut Society of Genealogists Newsletter, November-December 1988. Submitted by Dorothy Branson, Kansas City, Missouri]
OBITER DICTA
Laurence Urdang
There is no doubt that family names often provide a source of amusement, and some well-known place names persist in their references to things and activities otherwise rarely broached in polite conversation—you know, those places in Pennsylvania. Dr. Frank R. Abate, who has been conducting research for a comprehensive place-name catalogue, has sent us a listing of some interesting names in the U.S. that raises some questions. For instance, why is there a Why, Arizona, and a Whynot, Mississippi? There is a Due West in Tennessee and an East Due West in both Tennessee and South Carolina. Tennessee also has a Yell, which is presumably connected with Loud Township, Michigan. Not far from Koko and Nankipoo in Tennessee is Yum Yum, which has its own associations with Lick Fork, Virginia, Cheesequake, New Jersey, Shoofly (the pie, not the police informer), North Carolina, Goodfood and Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Nodine, Minnesota, Cucumber, West Virginia, Gnaw Bone, Indiana, Sugartit, Kentucky, Teaticket, Massachusetts, and, possibly, Fruita, Utah. If Shoffly is not a kind of pie, it might go better with Roaches, Illinois, Bugtown, Indiana, Mosquitoville, Vermont, Bugscuffle, Tennessee, or Big Tussle, Texas, where the insects must be truly humongous.
People who live in Dinkytown and Nebish, Minnesota, Embarrass, Minnesota and Wisconsin, or in Wartburg, Tennessee, ought to consider twinning with Braggadocio, Missouri, and O.K., Kentucky. When the inhabitants of certain places are asked where they come from, do they tell the truth (or only if they come from Truth or Consequences)? Will they admit to coming from Ding Dong, Texas, Unthanks, Virginia, Brainy Boro, New Jersey, Mudsock, Ohio, Jackass Flats, Nevada, Wahoo, Nebraska, Funkley, Minnesota, Funkstown, Maryland Jerk Tail, Missouri, Zook Spur, Iowa, or Crapo, Maryland? “Sonny, Ah’m a ding-dong daddy from Ding Dong, Texas, ‘n’, consarn ya, Ah’ll plug any varmint who smiles.” Should we introduce the folks in Tightwad, Missouri, to those in Hard Cash, Mississippi, and Greenbackville, Virginia? Notress, Texas speaks for itself. Do any Republicans live in Democrat, Texas? What can be said about the condition of denizens of Flipping, West Virginia, and Looneyville, Texas?
If you find any Peculiar (Missouri) names or ones that comes as a Surprise (Nebraska), just Jot ‘Em Down (Texas) Safely (Tennessee)—unless, of course, they are Errata (Mississippi).
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Joseph L. Brechner Imminent Scholar of Journalism, University of Florida.” [The title under the signature on a letter to members of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, 7 October 1988. Submitted by Soniya Jaffe Robbins, New York University.]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Book of Literary Lists: A collection of annotated lists, statistics, and anecdotes concerning books
Nicholas Parsons, (Facts On File, 1987), 287pp.
First published in Britain by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1985, this is quite an uneven work, entries running from “Arnold Bennett’s choice of the twelve finest novels in the world” (which includes Torrents of Spring, Virgin Soil, On the Eve, and nine others, all Russian), to a quotation from Gershon Legman, “Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is.”, to “Seventh century The Venerable Bede translated St John’s Gospel into Anglo-Saxon.” There are many interesting and amusing anecdotes and a fairly good index.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Grammar
Frank R. Palmer, (Second Edition, Penguin, 1984), 205pp.
A concise, explanatory guide to the complex set of relations that link the sounds of language, or its written symbols, with the message they have to convey.—From the cover.
The first edition (1971) was evidently successful, prompting this updated version. Starts with Alice/Humpty Dumpty quotation. Well-written but not overly simplified presentation. Good to read, but sparse Index and brevity preclude its use as a reference grammar.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dictionary of Pseudonyms and Their Origins, with Stories of Name Changes
Adrian Room, (McFarland & Co., Inc./Box 611/Jefferson, NC 28640, 1989), vii + 342pp.
Originally published in 1981 by Routledge as Naming Names, Stories of Pseudonyms and Name Changes, with a Who’s Who, the author’s Introduction warrants this new edition to be “more readable, more comprehensive and more orderly” in addition to being updated. After 67 pages of well-written, informative essays about names and pseudonyms, each pseudonym is listed in alphabetical order with the real name following, some biographical data, information about the name change and, where appropriate, about the circumstances under which the change was made. (Clauréne duGran, alas, was omitted.) There follow three short appendices, including one that lists celebrities who did not change their names (e.g., Katharine Hepburn, Lena Horne, Clint Eastwood, and Nelson Eddy). But wasn’t Adolf Hitler’s real name Schicklgruber?; that’s what my RHD has. In any event, anyone interested in language ought to have all of Adrian Room’s books in his library.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Can you Find It?: 25 Library Seavenger Hunts To Sharpen Your Research Skills
Randall McCutcheon, (Free Spirit Publishing/123 North Third Street, Suite 716/Minneapolis, MN 55401, 1989), 195pp.
This might (otherwise) be a fine piece of work, but I happened to open it to the question, “The slang expression ‘knothead’ was first used in what popular work of American literature?”…. “Need more clues? See pages 117-118,” whither my fingers scurried. Page 117 has a cartoon with a caption showing the word nerd. Page 118 contain a quotation from The Comedians, by Graham Greene, “His slang … was always a little out of date as though he had studied a dictionary of popular usage, but not in the latest edition,” the following dialogue, “A. Don’t be a knothead. Words are defined in word dictionaries. Slang words are defined in slang dictionaries. B. Phooey,” and, “Still can’t find the answer? See page 161,” whither we skedaddled to find this execrable piece of misinformation: “The word ‘knothead’ was first used by Max Shulman in his Collection of Campus Stories: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis…, p. 61. To quote: ‘Look at Petey—a knothead…’ ” For those who have not remained awake during class, I must repeat the fact that when a dictionary, whether it be the OED, Dictionary of American Slang (the source of this citation), or any other work uses quotations it simply lists the quotation as the earliest printed evidence found of the use of a word: that does NOT mean that the author of the cited work made up the word. Just think how many words must have been coined by writers whose works are the only ones extant from early periods of the language: people who misuse citation dictionaries must think that Richard Rolle of Hampole, Holinshed, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and a handful of other geniuses sat down one day and invented the English language, making up the words as they went along. This book has a lot of cartoons and very few words. Its cover promises the reader will be able to answer questions like “Why did Whoopi Goldberg once work at a mortuary, and what did she do there?” and “How many paintings did Van Gogh actually sell during his lifetime?” If you regard life as a trivial pursuit, then knowing the answers to those might be important to you. I had best not dwell on the revelation that Mr. McCutcheon was Nebraska’s Teacher of the Year in 1985.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Words & C
John F. Gummere, (privately published 1989, Words & c/Box 411/ Haverford, PA 19041), xiii + 128pp.
Born 1901, John Flagg Gummere received a Ph.D. in Indo-European languages from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933; he died around 1988 —the date is not given in the brief biography provided by John Francis Marion, an old friend. Gummere was headmaster of Penn Charter School for twenty-seven years, later taught classics and humanities at Haverford College. We were—how to put it?—distantly in touch with each other: though we had never met, we knew some of the same people and knew of each other. We corresponded occasionally (in connection with VERBATIM, which he read and, I think, enjoyed), and his warmth came through in his letters. This book is an attractive and friendly collection of his short pieces on language, written with the authority of Gummere’s scholarship and utterly lacking in pedanticism. I do not know how many copies were printed or how much they cost, but I urge you to inquire and get two copies if you can, one to keep and one to give to someone else who loves language.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotable Definitions
Eugene E. Brussell, ed., (Webster’s New World, Second Edition, 1988), iii + 674pp.
A few years ago, we published Definitive Quotations, by the late John Ferguson, a (very) small book that contains entries like, “boy: A noise with dirt on it.” Although Brussell’s book does not consist entirely of definitions (unless the genre be very loosely defined), it comes close enough, so if you like these things by the thousands instead of by the score, then buy it. The boy definition is in it, but I could not find one of my favorites (from DQ), “penicillin: just the thing to give someone who has every thing.”
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: American Given Names: Their Origin and History in the Context of the English Language
George R. Stewart, (Oxford University Press, 1979), viii + 264pp.
As all readers probably know, Laurence or Lawrence sprang in medieval use from the name of the Roman saint who was martyred by being broiled on a gridiron in 258. The ancient Roman town of Laurentium derived its name from the laurel or bay tree, which presumably grew there. As VERBATIM is currently published from Laurel Heights, the snake has swallowed its tail. In any event, this book is well known to all who are familiar with onomastic literature, as, indeed, are other works by George Stewart, American Place-Names and Names on the Globe (reviewed in VERBATIM by W.F.H. Nicolaisen [II,4]). The first 40 or so pages are devoted to an excellent essay, titled “Historical Sketch.” Those who are interested in given names or in onmastics in general would do well to start here, then progress to the other books by Stewart and by Leslie Dunkling. We have a few copies left of House Names which we shall sent to any North Americans who send in a request accompanied by $1 to cover our costs.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Appropriate Word: Finding the Best Way to Say What You Mean
J.N. Hook, (Addison-Wesley, 1990), xvii + 259pp.
It seems unnecessary, when we have available terms like informal, colloquial, formal, nonstandard, literary, poetic, and even conversational (though I have never seen the last used), to come up with still another set of labels, but Jules Hook, the author of a number of responsible and useful works dealing with English, feels that FF and SWE (for ‘family and friends’ and ‘standard written English,’ respectively) tell the user something that he might not already know or feel about usages of borderline words. Certainly, there was enough confusion about colloquial to move lexicographers a few decades ago to drop it in favor of informal; but I used colloquial in a book I recently completed on the grounds that informal seemed to be getting contaminated. These terms fluctuate. It is a comfort to know that if my book still merits reprinting some decades hence, as it is in machine-readable form, the publishers need only write a short program indicating that informal be substituted for all occurrences of colloquial and, like magic, the switch will be effected. Hook goes on at some expressive length on the subject of FF and SWE and makes good sense, particularly when he emphasizes the ways in which language changes, so that the words classed taboo or formal in one generation might very well change places. Of course, the biggest problem with books of this sort is that the most they can expect to accomplish is to help people refine their use of the language: those whom we think of as needing the greatest amount of help are usually unaware of the fact; for them, looking up a doubtful usage in a book like Hook’s (or anyone else’s, or even a dictionary) would be unthinkable. Thus, the greatest service such a book could render is virtually aborted by definition.
Depending on the degree of refinement of which the user is aware, that holds true for professionals as well. The other day, Reid Collins, a news presenter on CNN, used the expression the wheres and the whyfors, which, as far as I know, constitutes a fractured idiom in the category of I could care less. Hook has an entry for A.D./B.C. that comments on the placement of A.D. before a year and of B.C. after a year; there are “professional” editors who are unaware of that, so how will they know to look up the style in The Appropriate Word or any other style or usage book? Hook is more liberal than I: for instance, I cannot bring myself to condone spelling any more as one word in any context. I do not deny the fact that it does not appear as one word, but if it is going to appear that way in anything I have written it will be after I am dead (and if this carping keeps up, there will soon be a contract out on me). For one thing, I have not noted any change in the pronunciation of the compounded “anymore”—it is pronounced as if it were two words (in contrast to anybody, anything, anyhow, anywhere, etc.)—and I see no justification for spelling it as a solid word. In short, I do not agree with Hook in all matters, regardless of the respect I have for his judgment and the quality of his writing. I have not done a careful comparison among the various usage/style manuals to see what Hook might have that others do not, but I get the feeling that his work is very much up to date. If you write and wish to corroborate the style of what you have written, you will probably want as many books of this kind as you can lay your hands on, and it would definitely be a good idea to acquire this one.
Laurence Urdang
Appositional Elegance: A Brief Exposition
Alan C. Purves, SUNY at Albany
It has been a commonplace of language studies to explore signs and use them to elucidate the phenomena of elevation and degradation in the language. One can readily assess the relative status of establishments that refer to themselves as Eats, Diner, or Restaurant. One can also assume that in the United States a pub is at least one step above a bar, although a saloon may be a par with a pub since it connotes by-gone as opposed to a British (and therefore old-world) elegance.
Within the past five or six years, however, I have observed that elegance has come to be a matter of phase rather than diction. The White House Inn, for example, has become The White House a Country Inn. Note there is no punctuation in the phrase nor a capital letter on the second article, and it is the second article that appears to be a key. (I should note that all examples come from establishments in and around the more “elegant” resorts of Vermont and New Hampshire, although I have witnessed the phenomenon in many parts of parts of the country).
The article in the second half of the phrase, both makes the phrase appositional and indicates the upgrading of the referent. One example is Meredith Station a Restaurant a Grill a Niteclub; this location would appear to give the establishment a greater cachet than Meredith Station, Restaurant, Grill and Niteclub and certainly more than Meredith Bar and Grill. The series in this example helps to establish a set of alternative uses of Meredith Station and the rhythm appears to suggest mounting excitement.
The apposition is to be distinguished from the adjectival modifier such as Barney’s Good food in a Country Atmosphere, which serves to describe more precisely the type of establishment the motorist is approaching. Such phrases as Family Restaurant and Country Dining give clues to the eye as to expense and dress as well as to the establishment’s attitude towards children and perhaps charge cards. Normally they are not prefixed by an article.
Appositions abound in some areas of the country and not restricted to restaurants. They seem to be a mainstay of condominium resorts like The Margate at Winnepesaukee a Premier Lakes Region Resort (which suggests ownership); Winterberry a Resort Village; and Moon Ridge a Point of View, which contains a nice whimsy. One can also see appositions applied to barbers and hairdressers who go to great lengths to distinguish themselves. Split Ends a Cosmetology Shop is a nice example of appositional elegance combined with euphemism in the appositive and the low key or off-beat opening. Colanders The Vermont Housewares Outlet uses the definite article in the apposition to suggest both uniqueness and some official status. This use differs from the use of the appositional, The Movie, or The Book, which gives the reader a sense of connection with some previous experience.
The use of the appositive to elevate appears to be a commercial manifestation of titular colonicity, the phenomenon noted first by J.T. Dillon in 1981.1 The phrase refers, of course to the use of colons in titles of scholarly works. Dillon argues that the prestige of a field can be empirically determined through the counting of the percentage of colons in a a corpus. He demonstrates his point through a comparison of three fields: literature, psychology, and education and their increasing use of colons in titles in the 1970s and 1980s. Literature led the way but the other fields have caught up. Dillon’s article is a masterly socio-graphic analysis.
It would seem that the commercial world has seen the power of titular colonicity but has had to devise its own manifestation. A colon makes sense on a title page. But would it work on a billboard? I think not; therefore the appositive. The device is not without its pitfalls however, as witness the following: Henry David’s a Restaurant. The combination of the possessive and the apposition creates a solecism unless we assume that a word was omitted—perhaps Pub or Saloon. I have passed the sign several times in the past few years and recently noted that it had been cleaned and repainted, but the apostrophe remains. What Henry David possesses remains an enigma. But we know that it must be an “upscale” restaurant.
The Gaelic View of Heather
Donald A. MacKay, Pleasantville, New York
I once read that the Eskimo has 30-odd words for snow, not all of them impolite, which is not surprising in view of the Arctic habitat and lifestyle. But the Gael of Western Ireland and the Scottish Highlands endured an equally pervasive presence in the form of hundreds of square miles of heather covering moor and mountain to almost the complete extinction of other forms of vegetation. Moor and mountain use the same word in Gaelic (monadh) but more to the botanical point is the probable relation of moor to das meer, ‘the sea.’ The loneliness and the heather-cloaked undulations of the vast deer forests of northern Scotland (forests distinguished by a complete absence of trees) are indeed evocative of the sea.
Heather grows best in a maritime climate, and it is no coincidence that the homelands of the Celtic fringe in many places correspond to the western fringes of Europe. The Celts, pressed to the sea by the Romans, survived in lands either too rough for effective military operations or too incompatible to agriculture, but not too inhospitable for the Erica plant family. Like the Celts, this botanical family was well adapted for survival in rough places. It can grow in sand; it can grow in bogs; and because of a symbiotic relationship with a wide range of fungi, it can grow in stony or peaty lands that provide no nourishment to ordinary plants.
In some places the names of the plant and the wasteland where it grows are synonyms. In France it is maquis (and also the name of the guerrillas who lived there). In southern England it is heath (also giving heathens, it appears, for those who lived there).
While gardeners today make the distinction between heath and heather plants, these words are said to derive by separate paths from some ancient word for wasteland; heath via the Anglo-Saxon, and heather via Norse hadder. In Scandinavia, the plant itself is called lyng or ling, which is a common name in Yorkshire and northern England generally for what the Scots and Irish call heather. Ling is used as a name in parts of Scotland too, but this includes the rough grasses as well as the heathers that grow on the wasterland.
Heath is another common name used in England for the common heather, but gardeners everywhere reserve heath for the closely related plants that are not heather. Heath has also been used for the other shrubby non-ericaceous plants like gorse (furze, whins) and broom that could survive on the heath. In Cornwall, heather is called by an altogether different name, namely, grig; and in Wales it is called grug (pronounced “GREEG”); both words are Celtic, reflecting their ancient homelands.
In the Gaelic parts of Scotland and Ireland, the word for heather was fraoch, pronounced nearly like German fröch. There are many regional differences in Gaelic, and fraoch can be pronounced “FREWX” or “FRAWX” in some parts of Gaeldom, perhaps explaining some of the spellings that have come into English for health-related words like frawlin or fraughan for blueberry, and freuchan for the “reinforcing toe cap of a brogue” (shoe, not accent) to prevent excessive wear by the heather.
While heath, heather, and ling represent the Germanic input into English, only grig (Cornish) has made it directly from Celtic into English. The Celtic names grug and fraoch apparently come from Old Celtic v-roikos, which is cognate (or so says Klein’s Etymological Dictionary) with Latin brucus, meaning ‘maned or bristled.’ Heaths and heather are indeed finely leaved plants which in a sense are bristly, but their botanical name (Erica for heath, Calluna for heather) reflect the properties of their stems. Erica is ultimately from the Greek for ‘easily broken,’ and Calluna is a Latin and Greek word for ‘sweep or broom,’ heather twigs being superior to those of heath for this purpose, which indeed might leave as much mess as it cleared up. Calluna, although many variant garden forms are known, consists of only the one species, Calluna vulgaris. Erica (the name Linnaeus gave originally to both heath and heather), however, comprises several hundred species, nearly all found in the Cape of South Africa, with fewer than a dozen found in the rest of the world.
In Scotland only two exist; Erica cinerea and Erica tetralix. In spite of Linnaeus’ epithet (‘ashy’), the former is called bell heather by all Scots and fine-leaved heath by many botanists; the latter is often called bell heather, too, by noncritical observers (since the flowers are very bell-like), but is known as the cross-leaved heath by those who pay more attention to the strongly two-ranked arrangement of the tiny needlelike leaves. Ireland has two other heaths as well, namely E.erigena (‘Irish born’) and the rarer E. Mackaiana (‘Mackay’s Heath’), and a closely related plant called St.Daboec’s or Connemara Heath. The Irish heath has gone through two prior botanically mandated name changes, E. mediterranea and E. hibernica, which is why Mediterranean heath is another name for it.
Though there are three other (two very rare) relatives of heath in Scotland and two very local heaths found mainly in Dorset and Cornwall, the overall picture for the common experience in Gaeldom is one heather and two heaths in Scotland, and one heather and four (or possibly five) heaths in Ireland. With so limited a number one might have supposed a simple array of Gaelic terms would suffice for unarguable assignment to the proper plant, but that is not so.
Irish Gaelic has an extensive written literature based on old monastic tradition (and the newer nationalism), but Scots Gaelic by comparison is in poor shape. It was dropped at the court of Gaelic kings in favour of English about 900 years ago, perhaps to please an English queen or perhaps to ensure the retention of the English-speaking half of Northumbria ceded to Scotland. But the effect was the gradual displacement of Gaelic by the development of Scots English parallel with southern English (as the successors to the respective Anglian and Saxon mainstreams). The rare appearance of Scots Gaelic in written documents, at least in surviving written documents, until as late as the 15th or 16th century, is perhaps a consequence. Or perhaps it was the strong Celtic-Druid emphasis on oral transmission that led to the situation at the beginning of this century that while Scotland had over 230,000 who spoke Gaelic (many of whom, however, also spoke English), the majority was technically illiterate in Gaelic, being unable to read or write in their own tongue. At this time (1901) Ireland had 640,000 Gaelic speakers in a population of about 4 million, the same as Scotland. The Isle of Man had 5,000 Gaelic speakers, but, alas, they have almost disappeared today.
Scots Gaelic dictionaries are heavily dependent on Irish sources, especially for the older words, and the dictionaries are full of variant and regional forms. There are two Scots Gaelic dictionaries readily available today. One, by Dwelly, was issued in fascicles from 1901 to 1911, and although the 10th edition was published in 1988, it is only a photocopy of earlier reprints containing the same errors as the first edition of 1912. Dwelly set out to compile the Gaelic from all earlier dictionaries and was very successful in an encyclopedic effort; but the work would have been more useful had it an English-to-Gaelic section and provided some etymological clues as to meaning.
The second dictionary, by MacLennan, is two-way and ventures a modest etymology which is helpful. But the recently issued edition is again only a photocopy of the 1925 original, and is maddening in its failure to separate senses through lumping together of English homonyms without explanation (e.g.,crow: ‘bird,’ ‘boast,’ or ‘pry-bar’?).
Using Dwelly, MacLennan, and a list of plant names in a 1925 book of tartans (published by W.A. K. Johnston) I have compiled the following Gaelic names for heather with their literal translations. Sometimes these are given by the dictionary; sometimes it is the best guess I can come up with in spite of the inconsistencies, the regionalisms, and the often considerable changes in the inflected word stems of Gaelic which create huge pitfalls for the novice translator.
| GAELIC | ENGLISH | LATIN |
|---|---|---|
| fraoch gorm | commom heather ‘blue heather’ | Calluna vulgaris |
| froach dearg | bell heather ‘red heather’ | Erica cinerea |
| fraoch-Frangach | cross-leaved heath ‘French heather’ | Erica tetralix |
| fraoch-Eireannach | Irish heath ‘Irish heather’ | Erica erigena |
| fraoch Dhaboch | Connermara heath ‘St. Daboec’s heather’ | Daboecia cantabrica |
In addition, Dwelly gives other terms for bell heather or smooth-leaved heath, as he calls it:
| GAELIC | ENGLISH |
|---|---|
| fraoch (a)bhadain | ‘tuted heather’ |
| fraoch-an- | ‘heath in which wind makes a buzzing sound’ or ‘which crackles when being burnt’ |
| fraoch-sgriachain | ‘cracklng’ or ‘screeching heather’ |
| fraoch-spreadanach | ‘heather with a loud sound when burstin’ |
while MacLennan gives:
| GAELIC | ENGLISH |
|---|---|
| fraoch-badain | ‘fived [sic] leaved heath’ (for E. cinerea) |
| fraoch-frangach | ‘cat heather’ (for E. tetralix), also rendered as ‘small heather’ and mionfhraoch |
| fraoch meangain | ‘faulty, blemished(?) or twiggy(??) heather’ |
Dwelly also gives fraoch-an-ruinnse for the cross-leaved heath (E. tetralix) which might mean ‘heather with the long tail,’ but more probably means ‘heather for rinsing or scouring.’ In Scots English (and Burns’s songs) reenge (in its variant forms) is a ‘scouring pad made of the twisted stems of heather,’ E. tetralix presumably being best for this purpose.
From W.A.K. Johnston we learn that fraochdearg was the badge of clan MacDougal; fraoch-geal (white heather) the badge of the MacDonnells; and fraoch gorm the badge worn by clans MacDonald, MacNab, MacIntyre, and MacAlister, which practice could have been rather confusing during periods of clan warfare. He also assigns dluth fraoch to the clan Robertson, translated as the ‘fine-leaved heath’ (i.e., E. cinerea) but which is literally ‘near or close to heather’; and fraoch nam Meinnearach is assigned to clan Menzies, though the name probably derives from Archibald Menzies, a well-known 18th-century botanist of North America, rather than from a very rare heather this clan is not likely to have encountered, never mind worn into battle.
Other Gaelic words related to heather are:
| GAELIC | ENGLISH |
|---|---|
| fraoch-mara | seaweed ‘heather of the sea’ |
| fraochan | bilberry, blueberry, or whortleberry |
| fraochag | cranberry, but also bilberry, etc. |
| dearcan-fraoich | blueberry ‘berry of the heather’ |
Dwelly also gives fraoch nam curra bhitheag without translation. Since word order and aspiration give conflicting clues as to noun and adjective, a number of literal meanings, all equally implausible, seem possible. Though a gardener might well suggest ‘heather of the pointy bit,‘a hungry man could come up with ‘anger at an unusually small portion,’ and a dentist ‘a sour expression due to an uneven bite.
Dwelly says, “See fraochan,” But fraochan can be blueberry or, cranberry,’ or a fit of passion,’ or part of a deer,’ or the ‘extra toe-cap of a shoe,’ This suggests the real translation is ‘a tapered little piece of (leather to prevent wear of the shoe by the) heather.’
Fraoch itself has other meanings which must go back to Old Celtic. Dwelly gives a ‘ripple on the surface of water’; and MacLennan says, ‘bristles, anger, a girning expression of countenance.’ To help non-Scots readers, I should add that girning by a bairn is the precursor or consequence of greeting, which, like girning, is very grating to a parent.
So, golfers, the next time you are in Ireland or Scotland, ponder why the Gaels used such combustible terms for heather and eschewed the features like bells and crosses that impressed themselves on Anglo-Saxons. And as you search for your ball in the fraoch, keep that fraoch off your face; and though you feel like eschewing your bootlaces, be careful what kind of fraochan you are eating.
EPISTOLA {G. Margaret Lark}
I was surprised and dismayed at the content of the lead article in VERBATIM, “The Germanization of American English” [XVI,4]. You must be desperate for articles, to have published such a thinly-disguised screed of Teutomophobia. Indeed, Mr. Mason’s call to purify English of Germanic influences reminds one of the French hysteria over “Franglais,” or of the more sinister years in this century when a “Telefon” become a “Fernsprecher,” a “Radio” become a “Rundfunk,” and so ordinary a personage as Mama became a Fricka-like “Mutti.”
If Mr. Mason is so distressed at the state of American English, I invite him to leave Switzerland and take up residence in Boston, Massachusetts. There he can take his pick of universities in which to begin undoing the damage of gerundial clauses that take an accusative (“We appreciate you coming…”); anarchically “creative” spelling (no modern journalist seems capable of distinguishing between “phase” and “faze,” let alone spelling words like “internecine” — “internascene”?!); and worst of all, the epidemic of split infinitives that has plagued this country for the past several years. (True, no less an authority than H.W. Fowler gave short shrift to those who would split hairs over split infinitives; but I feel fairly sure that even he would draw the line at a phrase like, “To be or to not be …”) Incidentally, I refer Mr. Mason to Mr. Fowler’s comments on the German language under the heading “fused participate” in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
Mr. Mason may find a crumb of comfort in realizing that things in America could be “worse”; apparently, back around 1776, German missed being the official American language by one vote. For myself, I have not ceased to lament that one-vote decision. In any event, may I suggest that in future, when considering essays for publication, you ask yourself if you would publish the essay if the foreign language under discussion were, say, Yiddish or Polish or Spanish or French or Russian. If not, then the essay is clearly bigoted, and should not be accepted for publication at all.
[G. Margaret Lark, Gonic, New Hampshire]
EPISTOLA {Bernard Witlieb}
Amy Stoller’s letter [XVII,1] identifies Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as the creators of “Is That All There Is?” She has inadvertently slighted that giant of Tin Pan Allee-Thomas Mann. In Disillusionment (1897), an old man in Venice recalls the past:
“So this,” I thought, “is a fire. This is what it is like to have the house on fire. Is this all there is to it?”
Then, remembering being jilted, he asks, “Is this all?”
Finally, he expects death to be
“that last disappointment…. So this is the great experience—well, what of it? What is it after all?”
And all these years critics have jeered at Thomas’s brother Heinrich as the great popularizer!
[Bernard Witlieb, White Plains, New York]
OBITER DICTA
Laurence Urdang
VERBATIM, as we know, is about language. It is difficult to keep language distinct from writing, though readers of this quarterly might have become aware that the reviews of books appearing in these pages often comment on the execrable turgidity of the writing of most linguists. To be sure, proficiency in linguistics offers no assurance of proficiency in writing; indeed, from the extensive reading I have done in the subject, I could easily be led to believe that the former precludes that latter. It is questionable whether comments on writing made other than in the course of reviews is appropriate in VERBATIM: perhaps they are best left to the periodicals that specialize in such matters, like Writer’s Digest and The Writer. However, since many of VERBATIM’s readers are writers, professionally or not, a few personal remarks might not be considered entirely inapt.
It must be seen that there are many, many different kinds of writing. For the sake of convenience, writing is divided into fiction and nonfiction, with subdivisions of each, too numerous to list here. Because of the nature of my own work, I read little fiction and write virtually none, though a few years ago I did win first prize in England for a short story: the first prize was a dinner for two at a country restaurant I shall not identify; I have a feeling that the second prize was a dinner for four at the same restaurant, but that did nothing to diminish my elation at having won. That elation was followed at once by the ineluctable conviction that the other submissions must have been very bad for my poor effort to have taken the prize, and my feelings about the story have vacillated between those extremes ever since. In short, I am not what is known in the trade as “copy proud”:my feelings about my own writing range from occasional smugness with a job well done to abject frustration and misery at my inability to express myself articulated in writing (given the amount of time and resources available). I fancy that many writers feel the same way.
I often question whether I am a writer. If a writer is, by definition, one who writes a fair amount and does so professionally (for which read “gets paid for it”), I suppose I can call myself a writer. On the other hand, I know people who write a great deal, and who write very well, but whose work has never been published. It is unfair to include being published as a criterion of being a writer—at least a good writer: as we all know, some of the best writers seem to have been published only by the merest chance; we also know that some of the worst writers are published continually and have miniseries and films made from the trash they grind out.
My sentiments about my own writing alter rapidly when I encounter a singularly felicitous piece of writing, and in this connection. I must bring to the reader’s attention a collection of essays by William B. Ober, M.D., called Bottoms Up! The paperback edition I have was published in England in 1990 by W.H. Allen, as an Allison & Busby Book; it was published earlier in North America, but a bookshop or library will have to supply the publisher’s name. The essays were originally published in periodicals like the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, The American Journal of Dermatopathology, and other professional journals, for Dr. Ober is a (now retired) pathologist.
There are fourteen essays in the collection, and if anyone ever had any question about how to distinguish erotica from pornographica, the answer lies in these pages: some of these essays are clearly erotic (“Bottoms Up!The Fine Arts and Flagellation,” “Robert Musil: What Price Homosexual Sadism?,” “Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa: Murder, Madrigals, and Masochism,” and “The Iconography of Fanny Hill: How to Illustrate a Dirty Book”), but they are not pornographic; others are somewhat more clinical (“Johnson and Boswell: ‘Vile Melancholy’ and ‘The Hypochondriack”); all exhibit a quality of writing rarely encountered. I have never discussed writing with ober, and I am tempted to ask him whether he must labour mightily to produce the causal intellectualism that prevades his essays. (He has another collection, Boswell’s Clap & Other Essays, from the same publisher(s), which is as good as this one.) Occasionally, when the opportunity presents itself, he deliberately drops a delicious tidbit:
Following this epicene epiphany of ephebic eroticism, Törless experiences a profound guilt reaction.
One gets the distinct impression that Ober enjoys what he is doing. On the other hand, who can be sure? Some of the best writers complain that their best work is the result of monumental mental effort and many painful rewritings.
This seems an appropriate point to insert a personal confession. Readers who have noted a marked increase in typographical errors in VERBATIM can lay the blame on my doorstep, which supports a very low boredom threshold. All submitted articles are read by me; if they are worthy of consideration, they are read again, carefully, and styled for the compositor; by the time the proofs arrive, I am reading the article for the third time and cannot see all the horrible things the typesetter might have done. It is not that the articles are boring, merely that the tedium of reading them for the third or fourth time interferes with my ability to identify mistakes. Besides, if there were more errors, they would probably be easier to catch. But we have very good compositors, and if they make errors, they are often very subtle. In the future, I shall try to arrange for someone else to read proof on VERBATIM. End of apologia.
As the reader can tell, both from these comments and from my shabby efforts in this periodical, I can rarely support the rewriting of my own material and, in fact, almost never rewrite anything of my own. If the reader wants to read something that is not only informative and entertaining but can be admired for its style, panache, and humor, let him get Dr. Ober’s books.
If I find the space to treat this subject again, I shall discuss the dark side of writing, writing that is unutterably boring the first time it is read.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“The family said they would try to bury him again tomorrow.” [Dan Rather, CBS Evening News, 7 April 1987. Submitted by Dorothy Branson, Kansas City, Missouri.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Attractive, divorced Jewish woman 41. Reubenesque, professional. [From a personal ad in the White Plains Reporter-Dispatch, 29 September 1988. Submitted by Bernard Witlieb of White Plains who suggests, “Maybe she wears dotted Swiss.”]
Paring Pairs No. 38
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). Feline a comfort to the immobilized.
(b). Feline part owed to disaster?
(c). Encountered an idea that is switched around.
(d). He may be a petty officer but he makes out with the girls punting on the Isis.
(e). Sounds as if Alexander’s father concurs in ornamental work. (var).
(f). Mongolian youngsters who believe in mercy Killing?
(g). It looks as if kibitzer’s bottoms up.
(h). Elfin uprising in cloud chamber.
(i). Ruler of precipitation.
(j). Tiny Colonial American soldiers.
(k). Paltry pirate. (quasi stinky pinky)
(l). Egyptian priests rent loft for sacred writing.
(m). Where the scenario is buried.
(n). Where French Ocean turns into Milky Way.
(o). Poisonous Ami de la Terre.
(p). Nervousness makes Italian sentimental.
(q). Hull section a tulip?
(r). Phenolphthalein in a tumbler.
(s). Queue for refreshment at end ofjoke.
(t). Vernal fashions at end of moor.
(u). Pace of dungaree manufacture.
(v). Nationality of Curies’ shining child.
(w). Where exhibitionists yield to burning desire.
(x). Punk skunk from Gdansk.
(y). Sting operation or vice squad roundup?
(z). Familiar with Mudville perfume.
(1). A.
(2). Agrees.
(3). Asia.
(4). Attic.
(5). Boat.
(6). Brownian.
(7). Butt.
(8). Cat.
(9). Crypt.
(10). Flash.
(11). French.
(12). Gallic.
(13). Gene.
(14). Glass.
(15). Green.
(16). Hire.
(17). In.
(18). Joy.
(19). Know.
(20). Line.
(21). Men.
(22). Met.
(23). Minute.
(24). Monarch.
(25). Movement.
(26). Movies.
(27). Net.
(28). Paris.
(29). Phil.
(30). Picaroon.
(31). Picayune.
(32). Point.
(33). Pole.
(34). Polish.
(35). Punch.
(36). Rate.
(37). Reigning.
(38). Roman.
(39). Sea.
(40). Sky.
(41). Spring.
(42). Strophe.
(43). Swain.
(44). Thesis.
(45). Tic.
(46). Tonic.
(47). Water.
(48). Whore.
(49). Wine.
(50). Youth.
Prize: Two drawings will be made, one from the correct answers received in Aylesbury, the other from those received in Old Lyme. Each winner will receive a year’s subscription to VERBATIM, which can be sent as a gift to anyone, anywhere, or may be used to extend the winner’s subscription. Please indicate a choice when submitting an answer, preferably on a postcard. See page 2 for address(es).
Answers to Paring Pairs No. 37
(a). Opposite the middle of one ray. (1,6) A. Beam.
(b). Embarrass at the party. (1,5) A. Bash.
(c). Mollusk resembles one sausage. (1,4) A. Baloney.
(d). Gets turned on by cars. (3,15) Auto. Erotic.
(e). Impervious to monarchy by wets. (38, 35) Rein. Proof.
(f). Gifts of alertness. (34, 32, 36) Presents of mind.
(g). Curb of strengthen the monsoon? (38, 17) Rein. Force.
(h). Prize for precipitate horsemanship goes to—? (37, 11) Raining. Champion.
(i). Shetland pony for Robert E. Lee’s dad? (27, 22) Light. Horse.
(j). President’s supporters from the Kalahari. (9, 29) Bush. Men.
(k). Thievish E.T. (27, 16) Light. Fingered.
(l). Beige artist? (42, 19) Tan. Guy.
(m). The least result from a cunning trial. (40, 43) Sly. Test.
(n). Bury the slothful joggers, they are intruders. (24, 28) Inter. Lopers.
(o). Start of old college song looks like a lively Latin number. (23, 46) Integer. Vitae.
(p). Make reservation to express disapproval of regent. (8, 26) Boo. King.
(q). Intravenous Scandinavian creeper. (41, 25) Swedish. Ivy.
(r). Source of celestial cheese. (30, 49) Milky. Whey.
(s). Dilute what is left before Miss Moffett finishes. (47, 49) Water. Whey.
(t). Change oneself for a friend. (2, 14) Alter. Ego.
(u). Slave galley may cause a tough problem. (20, 39) Hard. Ship.
(v). Claim to have seen two chimeras. (12, 45) Double. Vision.
(w). Far below they burden those who consider feathers. (48, 13) Weigh. Down.
(x). Pan decoration from the waist down. (18, 7) Fur. Below.
(y). Before they need fillings, people come dangerously close to this. (33, 10) Pre. Carious.
(z). What weapon is offered by warmongering son of a piper? (44, 1, 21) Tom. A. Hawk.
The correct answer is (36) Rain. The winner in North America was Gerrie Human, Santa Barbara, CA.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“(The cyclist) hopes to survive the 2,020-mile race through the French countryside and mountains to ride down Paris’ eloquent avenue, Champs Elysées.” [From the Los Angeles Times, 4 July 1988. Submitted by John Paul Arnerich, Los Angeles.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Your thumb or fingerprint will be taken.” [From the California Driver Handbook, Spring 1988. Submitted by D. Wayne Doolen, Sherman Oaks.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Millionaire Magazine, Palm Beach, has filed Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Miami.” [From Freelance Writer’s Report, August 1988. Submitted by Barbara Roth, Orlando.]
Crossword Puzzle
Across
1. Like to run uphill, perhaps (6)
2. Fair or foul to carry spear? (8)
3. Operating include in spasm cure (5).
4. Inherited Lancaster buggy (9)
5. Queen running in parade (7)
6. Dry head of stream through all the days of June (7)
7. Writer’s last story in hit Wiseguy? (5,5)
8. Grew black cherry (4)
9. Run into British official (4)
10. Unlawful action against Sadat in Turkish-Russian conflict (7,3)
11. First person to split in semester break (7)
12. Checked cap worn by little fellow (7)
13. Lucky fish put into cup of tea (9)
14. Theme to movie (5)
15. After reflection, insisted on cakes (8)
16. Pen church music for listeners (6)
Down
1. Come up with aid to making a catch in the Ocean now and then (2,5)
2. Snarl in English stocking fabric (5)
3. Small thieves lifted sheer top (4,4)
5. Tie a highlander (5)
6. Attack, as on yacht (6)
7. Way into port roughly rocks boat’s workers (9)
8. Put off action involving nonrofessional (7)
9.\ Playboy and composer switched position (8)
15. A sculptor finally gets old sculpting frameworks (9)
16. Caravan leader appeared to give wicked looks (8)
18. Friend ran across to tree (8)
19. Acted like an advisor nourished with soft cheese? (7)
21. Revolutionary tire filled with carbon (7)
22. Bird’s squawk (6)
24. Intended to put nitrogen into ham and beef (5)
26. VCR user’s contract (5)
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“After much adieu, the TC by Masarati Sports Coupe has finally arrived.” [a caption in Black Enterprise, November 1988, p. 108. Submitted by John Durant Cooke, New York City.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Asked about social need, Burdette said, ‘Our safety net has a lot of holes in it.”’ [From the Parkersburg (West Virginia) News, 30 October 1986. submitted by Glade Little, Parkersburg.]
Crossword Puzzle Answers
Across
1. RECYCLE (hidden).
5. MA(CAB)RE.
9. NEVER (anag.).
10. P(ARSON) AGE.
11. S-PRAYER.
12. IN DOUBT (anag.).
13. DEGENER-ATIVE (rev.).
17. ORCHESTRATES (anag.).
22. A-T HE-ART.
23. AD-VERSE.
25. STUP-ID EST (puts rev.).
26. THE-FT.
27. M(ISLE)AD.
28. NU(D-IS)TS.
Down
1. RINGSIDE (anag.).
2. C(OVER)AGE.
3. CAR-R-Y.
4. EM-PER-OR (rev.).
5. MAR(XIS)T (six rev.).
6. CL(OUD) OVER duo rev.).
7. B(EAT) UP (pub rev.).
8. EVENTS (hidden).
14. N(A-RR)ATIVE.
15. STAR(LE)TS.
16. AS-BEST-O’S.
18. H(O-THE)AD.
19. SPAR-TAN.
20. BALSA-M.
21. SHO(U)TS.
24. V-O-TED.
Internet Archive copy of this issue
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J.T. Dillon. (1981). The emergence of the colon: An empirical correlate of scholarship. American Psychologist 36, 879-884. See also M. Townsend. (1983). “titular colonicity” and scholarship: New Zealand research and scholarly impact. New Zealand Journal of Psychology 12, 41-43. Townsend demonstrates the superiority of U. S. scholarship to that of New Zealand by the former’s heavy use of colons in titles. ↩︎