VOL XVIII, No 1 [Summer 1991]

Punch on the Bungalow Veranda

Robert Devereux, Falls Church, Virginia

bandanna, bangle, banyan, bungalow, cheetah, chintz, chit, chop, chutney, coolie, copra, cot, cowrie, cummerbund, cushy, deodar, dinghy, dungaree, gong, gunny, guru, jungle, khaki, krait, loot, pajamas, punch, pundit, puttee, seersucker, shampoo, swami, thug, toddy, tom-tom, topee, veranda

Most readers will probably regard the above as a list of unrelated, more or less well-known English words that have been selected at random, but they will be wrong. Appearances are often deceiving and this is a case in point. The words are not unrelated and they have not been selected at random, for they all have one thing very much in common, namely, they are all Hindi loanwords. To be sure, Hindi is not the ultimate source in all cases, but it was at least the final stopping point in the journey of the words into the English lexicon. (In this article, Hindi is used to cover loanwords which etymologists attribute to either Hindi or Urdu. The two are basically the same language, except that Hindi is written in Devanagari characters and Urdu in Persian-Arabic script.) Hindi has, in fact, been a more fruitful source of new words for the English lexicon than most people realize, a not unnatural result of the centuries of British rule in India. All Hindi loanwords in English, of course, are not as well known or as frequently used as those listed above; indeed, many are obscure in the extreme and are probably never used in speech or encountered in print by the overwhelming majority of English speakers. Nonetheless, all are recognized by English lexicographers as being good English words. Thus, all those cited in this article are to be found as separate entries in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language.

Not all the words that English has borrowed from Hindi are pure Hindi; that is, some words passed through Hindi en route to English but their ultimate origins lie elsewhere. For example, out of a sampling of 481 Hindi loanwords (that is, I know, an odd number for a sampling of any kind, but it happens to be the number I had carded as of the moment I began writing this article), 167 were borrowed by Hindi from Sanskrit and another four from Pakrit. Persian was the ultimate source of 67 and Arabic of 55 (the latter figure includes 16 words that entered Hindi via Persian and are combinations of Arabic and Persian elements). Begum ‘high-ranking Muslim lady’ derives ultimately from Eastern Turkic, while cowrie ‘a type of sea shell’ comes from Tamil or Malayalam kavati via Hindi kauri or kaudi. Two Hindi loanwords have their origin in Europe: ayah ‘native maid or nurse,’ the Hindi version of Portuguese aia, and pulton or pultun ‘infantry regiment,’ adapted from paltan, the Hindi version of English battalion.

Most Hindi loanwords entered English directly, but a few first passed through the filter of another language. Baiza ‘small copper coin of Oman,’ for example, is the Arabic version of Hindi paisa. Datura ‘type of plant’ and vanda ‘variety of orchid’ reached English via New Latin; gavial ‘large crocodile,’ from Hindi ghariyal) via French; and mohar ‘silver coin of Nepal’ via Nepalese. Portuguese was the immediate source of four words (the Portuguese, it will be recalled, were also in India for several centuries, losing their colony of Goa only in December 1961): copra, from Hindi khopra via Malayalam koppara; machila or machilla ‘hammock slung from a pole,’ from Hindi manzil (borrowed unchanged from Arabic) via Tamil macil or mancil; tael ‘unit of weight,’ from Hindi tola (adapted from Sanskrit tula) via Malay tahil; and jambolan ‘Java plum,’ the English version of Portuguese jambulao, from Hindi jambul.

Some of the words in my sampling may or may not be Hindi loanwords; that is, etymologists are uncertain whether they are properly attributable to Hindi or some other language of the subcontinent. Dhoni or doni ‘fishing or coastal trading vessel,’ for example, may have entered English from Hindi, Marathi, Kanarese (or Canarese), or Telugu; dinghy ‘small boat’ from Hindi or Bengali; kathiawari ‘breed of horses’ from Hindi or Gujurati; khuskhus ‘aromatic grass, vetiver’ from Hindi or Persian; kirpan ‘Sikh dagger’ from Hindi or Punjabi; and nagkasser or nagkesar ‘tree’. patel ‘village headman’ and pindari ‘18th-century mercenary,’ from Hindi or Marathi.

Several of the loanwords in my sampling are actually hybrids; that is, they include elements both from Hindi and from one or more other languages. Memsahib ‘term of respect for a European lady,’ for example, derives from English ma’am and Hindi sahib ‘sir, master,’ a word borrowed by Hindi from Arabic; boxwallah ‘peddler’ combines English box and Hindi wallah ‘person in charge of a particular thing’; chotapeg ‘half-sized drink’ unites Hindi chota ‘little, small’ and English peg (Anglo-Indian slang since at least 1864 for a drink, especially of brandy and soda water); and shroffage ‘commission charged for shroffing’ combines shroff (an adaptation of Hindi saraf ‘banker, money-lender,’ a word borrowed from Arabic) and the English suffix -age. Combinations of Hindi and Persian elements include:

a) balaghat ‘tableland above a mountain pass,’ from Persian bala ‘above’ and Hindi ghat ‘pass; passage or stairway descending to a river’;

b) bhumidar ‘landowner having full title,’ from Hindi bhumi ‘earth, land’ and Persian dar ‘holder’;

c) chokidar ‘watchman,’ from Hindi cauki ‘police station’ and Persian dar; and

d) kalaazar ‘disease also known as dumdum fever,’ from Hindi kala ‘black’ and Persian azar ‘disease.’

Mussalchee ‘torchbearer’ combines mussal ‘torch, usually of oilsoaked rags,’ adapted from Hindi masal or mashal, the Hindi version of Arabic mash’al, and Turkic -ci (or chi, ji), a suffix denoting an agent.

Many Hindi loanwords are simply transliterations of the Hindi originals. But since different individuals have different ideas about how the Devanagari and Arabic alphabets should be transliterated, in many cases there is no single “correct” way to spell a specific word and, instead, dictionaries offer several—sometimes as many as six—acceptable variant spellings. Burka ‘loose woman’s garment covering entire body,’ for example, can also be spelled bourka, burkha, burga, burqa, or bourkha, while mahua ‘type of tree’ can also be spelled mahwa, mohwa, mowha, mowra, or mowrah. Loanwords with five recognized spellings include: chador, chadar, chuddar, chudder, chaddar ‘woman’s cloth head covering’; mahseer, mahsir, mahsur, mahaseer, mahasir ‘freshwater fish’; mali, mallee, mallie, mally, molly ‘member of a gardening caste’; naik, naig, naique, naigue, nayak ‘leader, corporal’; and tussah, tusseh, tusser, tussor, tussur ‘tan silk; also the silkworm producing it.’ Chukker ‘period of polo play,’ dhoti ‘loincloth,’ dinghy, ganja ‘cannabis used for smoking,’ khidmatgar ‘male waiter,’ khuskhus, kutcha ‘crude, imperfect,’ myna ‘species of bird,’ puggaree ‘blight turban, scarf,’ raggee ‘finger millet,’ ryotwar ‘system of collecting land rents or taxes,’ sambar ‘type of deer,’ and zamindari ‘system of land holding’ each have three other acceptable spellings. My sampling contains about fifty other words that have either two or three variant spellings each.

Although most loanwords differ in form somewhat from their Hindi antecedents, the changes are largely minor orthographic ones, as the substitution of ch, gh, and sh for an original c, g, or s, etc. Thus, English has champac ‘tree’ instead of campak, gharry ‘horse-drawn cab or carriage’ instead of gari, darshan ‘a Hindu blessing’ instead of darsan. A change of vowels or a doubling of a consonant is also not infrequent, thus giving English kunkur ‘variety of limestone’ in lieu of kankar, mulmul ‘muslin’ in lieu of malmal, muggar ‘kind of crocodile’ in lieu of magar. Dozens of similar examples could be cited. On the other hand, some loanwords have undergone radical changes. Few individuals, I hazard, would be likely, upon seeing the Hindi terms bilayati, bajara, bajra, kaawch, pani, and rasaut, to cite only a few, to discern therein the English blighty Anglo-Indian slang for ‘England as home,’ brinjarry ‘traveling grain and salt dealer,’ budgerow ‘large, keelless barge,’ cowage ‘tropical vine,’ pawnee ‘water’ and rusot ‘plant extract.’ Two other good examples are Juggernaut ‘unstoppable destructive force: or object,’ which derives from jagannath, and kedgeree ‘cooked dish of rice, lentils, and spices,’ which derives from khicri or khicari. The familiar cot and dungaree are close to their Hindi predecessors in pronunciation, though not in spelling; they derive, respectively, from khat and dungri.

In the case of some loanwords, there has been a change in both form and meaning. Bandanna, for example, comes from bandhu, which denotes a way of dyeing cloth, while bungalow comes from bangla, an adjective meaning ‘of Bengal.’ Other loanwords which have acquired changed meanings include chitra ‘axis deer,’ from citra ‘spotted’; hathi ‘gray,’ from hathi ‘elephant’; pukka ‘genuine, reliable, good,’ from pakka ‘cooked, ripe, mature’; puttee ‘soldier’s legging,’ from patti ‘bandage’; pyke ‘civilian at whose expense a soldier is treated,’ from payik ‘messenger’; and toddy ‘type of hot drink,’ from tari ‘palmyra palm juice.’ These are only a few of the many examples available.

Some single Hindi words have given rise to two different loanwords. Bandar ‘rhesus monkey’ and bondar ‘palm civet,’ for example, both derive from bada or badar ‘monkey,’ while baniya ‘merchant’ is the Hindi antecedent of both banyan ‘tree’ and bunnia ‘member of a merchant caste.’ Other examples of the same phenomenon include: chokey ‘customs station’ and chowk ‘marketplace,’ from cauki ‘marketplace’; mulmul (see above) and mull ‘soft thin muslin,’ from malmal (see above); pandit ‘scholar; man held in high respect’ and pundit ‘very learned; authoritative commentator,’ from pandit ‘wise, learned’; and numdah ‘thick felt rug’ and numnah ‘felt or sheepskin saddle pad,’ from namda ‘carpet, rug.’ Again, numerous other examples could be cited.

As the examples cited above make clear, Hindi loanwords in English relate to a wide variety of subjects. My sampling also includes the following words in the indicated subject categories (words already cited are not repeated):

Animals: balisaur, barasingh, bhalu, bharal, chikara, chital, gaur, hanuman, jumnapari, kakar, kastura, langur, nilgai, rusa, tangun, tattoo

Birds: baya, chukar, hurgila, jermonal, sarus, shama

Buildings: chawl, gola, gunge, mandir, tope

Caste/religious terms: balahi, bhagat, bhangi, bhat, bhora, chamar, chhatri, chuhra, churel, gadaria, goala, granthi, jajman, kahar, kalwar, khatri, kumbh mala, kumhar, kumkum, kurmi, math, mela, nai, Nanakpanthi, pardhan, Rajput, samadh, samaj, sangh

Clothing: bursati, kambal, sari, sherwani

Coins: anna, pice, rupee

Drugs/chemicals: bikh, chandu, charas, goracco, karaya, khair, kutira gum, lac, munjeet, passewa, reh

Fabrics: jaconet, khaddar, nainsook, pattu, tat

Fish/marine life: ghol, goonch, hilsa, rohu

Foods/beverages: chapati, chotahazri, dahi, ghee, jaggery, khoa, puri

Governmental/legal terms: batta, begar, chaprasi, dakoit, dakoity, dhan, dharna, kotwal, kotwali, panchayat, pottah, sabha

Household items: bidri, chagul, chatta, chowrie, chulha, dhurrie, gaddi, kangri, lota, phulkari, pitarah, punkah, teapoy

Insects: khapra

Measures: bigha, crore, lac, maund, ruttee, ser, tank, tola, yojan

Military/weapons: kukri, kuttar, sangar, thana

Musical instruments: bin, narsinga, pungi, sarinda, sitar

Occupations: bapu, chokra, dhai, dhobi, gharrywallah, madrasi, mahajan, mahout, puggy

Plants: ber, bhabar, bhang, chirata, dhal, gulancha, hursinghar, jarool, jowar, kans, khesari, kusa, maloo, mand, mesta, mudar, munj, pan, rosha, sarson, til, urd

Snakes: baboia

Titles: babu, bhai, burra, maharajah, maharani, rajah, rajpramukh, rani

Transport vehicles/boats: dak, dandy, morpunky, palkee, pulwar, putelee, tonga

Trees/shrubs: bahera, bel, bendy, caraunda, dhak, dhaman, dhauri, dhawa, haldu, jaman, jambo, jambos, jambool, kapur, karela, kathal, kikar, kokan, neem, palas, pipal, sal, salai, sunn, susco, toon

Miscellaneous: abir, amla, bandarlog, banghy, bat, bhadan, bhoosa, bhut, bidi, bock, bukh, chee-chee, chopper, churrus, ghurry, goonda, hartal, Holi, hundi, jheel, jungli, kaithi, kartik, keddah, machan, nautch, nullah, pachisi, piuri, paig, purree

The above do not include those loanwords deriving from words earlier borrowed by Hindi from Persian and Arabic, which are (in addition to those already cited):

From Persian:

Clothing: jama, rumal

Fabrics: kincob

Governmental terms: daroga, dewan, durbar, parganna, peshwa, purwannah, russud, sheristadar, zamindar

Household items: charpoy, chillumchee, rezai

Islamic terms: khaksar, khankah, pir, purdah

Legal terms: benami, dastur

Military: sepoy, subahdar

Occupations: begari, bheesty, bildar, bobachee, chakar, chobdar, darzi, khansamah, mazdoor, phansigar, rahdar, shikari

Titles: akhundzada, bahadur, shahzada, sirdar

Miscellaneous: bas, bazigar, buckshee, bund, charka, chawbuck, cillum, dasturi, gunge, kajawah, koftgari, koomkie, sarod, shikar, shikargah, shikra, tabasheer

From Arabic:

Government terms: abwab, hookum, jumma, malik, mofussil, munshi, munsif, musnud, nabob, nawab, nizam, omrah, tahsil, taluk

Military: maidan, nazim

Occupations: mutsuddy, syce, vakeel

Plants: gingelly

Religious terms: fatwa, khalsa, mazhabi, minah

Miscellaneous: baba, howdah, izzat, khalat, kharif, majoon, nuzzer, rabi, shrab

From Arabic via Persian or Arabic-Persian combinations:

Government terms: burkundaz, daftardar, faujdar, faujdary, malguzar, malikana, nazir, tahsildar

Military: dafadar, havildar, jemandar, risala, risaldar

Religious terms: shahidi

Miscellaneous: halalior

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“The Baths is a dying institution. Last year, we refunded money to 86 people who died.” [From the Daily News Magazine, March 1987. Submitted by John D. Cooke, New York City.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Box 2101 Terminal Annex.” [The address of a life insurance company in Los Angeles. Submitted by George F. Muller, Rockville, Maryland.]

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: snake oil

Frank R. Abate, Old Saybrook, Connecticut

The first oil well in the United States was drilled in 1859, by Edwin L. Drake, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, a town named for Jonathan Titus, who settled it in 1796 (and wanted to call it Edinburgh). Before oil was actively sought, it seeped out of the ground in various parts of the world…

“Here along Oil Creek, Indians skimmed the surface oil off the water for domestic uses, and white settlers bottled it for medicinal purposes and called it Seneca Oil.”

Was Seneca Oil the origin of snake oil?

The World of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Dal Yoo, Washington

I have traveled throughout Europe, the Far East, and North America, but nowhere have I found more abbreviations and acronyms in use than in the U.S., particularly in the medical field. In the small community hospital where I teach and practice hematology and oncology, I frequently struggle to decode the abbreviations and acronyms used by house staff and medical students. While this process is frustrating at times, certain abbreviations and acronyms add humor to the atmosphere of busy and stressful day-to-day medical practice. For example, while we often say that a patient needs lots of TLC “Tender Loving Care,' at times we end up seeing the result of another TLC—‘Total Lack of Concern.’ Many of us, including me, use WNL for ‘Within Normal Limits’ to describe the results of various x-ray and laboratory tests; however, at times we find this may well mean ‘We Never Looked.’ When NMR ‘Nuclear Magnetic Resonance,’ which is now better referred to as MRI ‘Magnetic Resonance Imaging,’ was first introduced to the medical community, many consumer advocates and insurance people, fearing the escalating health-care costs associated with this expensive diagnostic procedure, thought a better translation would be ‘No More Radiologists.’ DRG ‘Diagnosis Related Group,’ the term Uncle Sam uses to describe prospective payment to a hospital, could mean ‘Damned Regulatory Government’ to the medical profession or ‘De [The] Revenues Gone’ to the hospital administration.

For those of us in medicine, we all carry a title M.D. ‘Doctor of Medicine.’ When I was drafted into the U.S. Army as a Medical Officer, my title was “Dal Yoo, M.D., U.S.A. (United States Army)” and I recall my Master Sergeant’s morbid joke that M.D., U.S.A. could stand for ‘Many Die and U Shall Also.’ Speaking of various titles, M.D.s are not the only ones who get the bad names. B.S. ‘Bachelor of Science’ could well mean ‘bullshit’; M.S. ‘More of the Same,’ and Ph.D. ‘Pile Higher and Deeper,’ etc.

In the field of medical laboratory testing, you may remember a test called the SIA for detecting abnormal macroglobulin in the serum. The test is performed by putting a drop of serum into distilled water, producing a grossly visible white precipitate in patients with Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia and other dysproteinemic disorders. Dr. Walden-strom some years ago told me that he had an opportunity to meet Dr. Sia, a Chinese physician who first introduced this simple bedside technique to medicine. However, when I was in West Germany, this SIA test was labeled as ‘Serum In Aqua.’ Another example comes from VIP ‘Vasoactive Intestinal Poly-peptide.’ This assay was quite variable from laboratory to laboratory when first introduced; thus it meant ‘Very Inconsistent Polypeptide’ to some of the gastroenterologists and surgeons who were pondering the possibility of pancreatic surgery in patients with high levels of VIP.

These abbreviations and acronyms are generating laughter in day-to-day life as well as in the medical field. Some time ago, I heard that President Bush’s budget proposal was DOA ‘Dead On Arrival’ on the congressional floor. However, President Bush’s interpretation of DOA was ‘Defining Opportunity for America.’ More recently, during the war in the Gulf we saw both pro- and anti-war demonstrations, thus generating SMASH ‘Students Mobilized Against Saddam Hussein,’ as well as SCUD ‘Sadly Confused Unpatriotic Demonstrators.’ At times abbreviations or acronyms get upside-down as well as backward meanings. In President Carter’s days, when inflation was sky high, Democrats used the slogan WIN ‘Whip Inflation Now’; Republicans turned the WIN button upside down, making it NIM ‘No Immediate Miracle.’ For the backward example, I saw the sign for DAM which is supposed to represent ‘Mothers Against Dyslexia.’

When I first visited Philadelphia to plan my future postgraduate training, a local acquaintance gave me a quick city tour which included the worldfamous Philadelphia Museum of Art. The windows of the museum gave some nice views of downtown Philadelphia. The visit was in early summer when ongoing road pavement work was generating strong smells. From the museum window we could see a neon sign with PSFS in bright letters on one of the high-rise downtown buildings. The letters stood for ‘Philadelphia Savings Fund Society’ but on that day I told my local guide that they stood, more appropriately, for ‘Philadelphia Smells Funny Sometimes.’ However, I later fell in love with this city of brotherly love, not only for its excellent medical training but also for its rich metropolitan atmosphere.

Speaking of smells, we have the organization called NOSE in the Washington suburban area which, as you may have guessed, stands for ‘Neighbors Organization for Stench Elimination.’ NOSE is fighting for the beautification of residential housing districts. Like everything else, the meaning of certain abbreviations or acronyms could vary depending on the observer. The Belgian airline called SABENA could stand for ‘Such A Bad Experience— Never Again’ but also could mean ‘Such a Beautiful Experience—Never Alone.’ Indeed we do not seem to be able to get away from numerous abbreviations and acronyms every day of our lives because newspapers, magazines, and TV newscasts love to come up with new and innovative ones. The latest scandal of the television ministry concerns the organization known as PTL, which is supposed to stand for ‘Praise The Lord’ or ‘People That Love’; others think it means ‘Pass The Loot.’ In this era of the litigationprone society, including the high rate of malpractice suits, I noted an organization called, HALT ‘Help Abolish Legal Tyranny.’ I welcome any means of bringing laughter into bedside medicine, which we all think of as the last place where one could ever find any decent humor. When the medical practice gets tough, particularly for those truly complicated cases where I have no idea what the patient has, I apply my favorite of all the abbreviations, GOK syndrome ‘God Only Knows.’

[Dr. Yoo would like to hear from readers who have heard or seen outrageous abbreviations or acronyms. Address him at: Dal Yoo, M.D., FACP/Director of Education/Hematology/Oncology Section/Providence Hospital/Washington, D.C. 20017-2180.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Free lays to the first 50 people!!” [From an invitation to a “Blue Hawaii” Beach Party in Staff Bulletin No. 31, p. 6, of the Madison Area (Wisconsin) Tech College. Submitted by Mary Louise Gilman, Hanover, Massachusetts.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“No detail is too small to overlook.” [From an advertisement for a lawn product on KCMO-TV, Kansas City, Missouri, 20 April 1988. Submitted by Dorothy Branson, Kansas City.]

EPISTOLA {Dennis Baron}

Once again the myth of German-replacing-English-by-only-one-vote has surfaced, this time in the pages of VERBATIM [XVII, 2:21]. The myth began its life in mid-19th century histories attempting to document the contributions of Germans to American culture and history. But it is no more than a myth.

There was a language-related vote that may be the ultimate source of the myth, but that vote had nothing to do with choosing an official language. It did not take place in 1776, as is often maintained, but on January 13, 1795, when the House of Representatives debated a proposal, not to give German any official status, but merely to print copies of the federal laws in German as well as English. An ad hoc committee reported favorably on the proposal, but during the debate a motion to adjourn failed by one vote. The failure of the motion to adjourn probably represents a vote of no confidence in the committee report. After some further debate, which focused not so much on translation as on the means by which copies of the English versions of the federal statutes were to be furnished to the individual states, a new committee was appointed to study the matter and report to the House. In the final vote, which took place one month later, the proposal for translation was defeated. The ayes and nays of the final vote are not recorded. It is from the close interim vote, not on an actual bill but on adjournment, that the so-called “German vote” legend has been built.

There is a further bit of embroidery to the myth: it is often claimed that F. A. Muhlenberg, Speaker of the House and member of a prominent assimilationist German family, stepped down to cast the deciding vote damning German in the U.S. forever to minority-language status (Muhlenberg’s detractors go so far as to assert that his own German was pretty incompetent). But while Muhlenberg’s voting record in the Third Congress did not seem to annoy his German American constituents, they did react quite strongly when, as Speaker of the Fourth Congress, he stepped down and cast the deciding negative vote against the Jay Treaty. This action caused his brother-in-law to stab him, and it cost him his congressional seat in the 1796 election as well. This significant tie-breaker soon became confused with the earlier adjournment cliffhanger, conveniently fleshing out the myth of the German vote.

[Dennis Baron, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]

---

[A helpful letter from Colyn L. Phillips, of Frederick, Maryland, provides three possibly useful references for those who might wish to document this issue further:

American State Papers, Volume 037, Class 10:

Miscellaneous:

Number 50: “Laws published in German Language” 93rd Congress, 1st Session

Number 59: “Promulgation of laws extended to German language editions”

Number 62: “Promulgation of laws” (latter two from 3rd Congress, 2nd session).

Mr. Phillips adds:

During this same Congress there were also proposals to adopt the metric system of weights and measures as the official American standard. These proposals also failed, as I remember (from long-ago reading), by a close margin.]

EPISTOLA {Andrew Gray}

Americans are frequently guilty of nonsense about the German language, but it is regrettable to see it spilling over into your pages. Thus, in “Redundancy in Natural Languages” [XVII,3], Mr. Steve Bonner cites two German nouns, Autoreparaturwerkstatt and Haupthandelsartikel, as being “simply longer than they strictly need to be.” These two are alleged to mean ‘garage’ and ‘staple.’ But a garage is not necessarily an auto repair workshop, and a principal stock in trade is not necessarily a staple (except in the loosest sense). Actually, the German noun Stapel is used much more precisely than its English counterpart, as in such terms as Gabelstapler ‘forklift truck’ and, more poetically, as in Hochstapler ‘swindler.’ The immense combinative resources of the German language may lead to the creation of ponderous nouns, but seldom to redundancies.

[Andrew Gray, Washington]

EPISTOLA {Thompson Webb}

William H. Dougherty’s article, “French Leave” [XVII, 3], concerning the difficulty of translating satisfactorily the title of the movie Au Revoir les Enfants, reminds me of a conversation that, as an undergraduate at Princeton, I had in the 1930s with Professor Maurice E. Coindreau, who was engaged in translating Hemingway into French. As an example of one kind of difficulty that translators face, Coindreau cited the title of Faulkner’s The Unvanquished and asked, “Is it plural or singular? Masculine or feminine?” He said that the translators, R. N. Raimbault and C.P. Gorce, had put those questions to Faulkner, who only laughed. Knowing that any of the four possibilities would considerably narrow the range of suggestion in the original, but helpless, they settled for L’Invaincu.

[Thompson Webb, Madison, Wisconsin]

EPISTOLA {Barbara Bassett}

It is understandable that Michel Vercambre would find it disconcerting to run into blue jaundice in his English-Welsh dictionary [“Instant Welsh,” XVII, 3]. The term seems to contradict itself, but at least it is to be found in Webster and means ‘cyanosis.’ My own surprising encounter with color occurred when, in a report on the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, one of the experts—an Italian, speaking in English—said that they had used a preparation that contained whole eggs, “including the red.” I was, of course, appalled to think that Michelangelo’s work was in the hands of someone who sees yolks as red. Curiosity led me to consult an Italian dictionary, where I found for egg yolk, ‘rosso d’uovo.’ So as to leave no possible doubt, I checked on rosso and got ‘red,’ as in il mar Rosso. Can you help explain that one, Mr. Vercambre?

[Barbara Bassett, Alexandria, Virginia]

EPISTOLA {John J. Collins}

I recently asked my wife, Maureen, an experienced editor, to review some material I had written for publication. When the review was completed, our conversation led to the following addition to the English language, which we would be pleased to share with VERBATIM’S readers:

lallaperuser ‘a world-class editor.’

[John J. Collins, Rockville, Maryland]

EPISTOLA {Philip Truex}

Upon reading Adrian Room’s “Don’t Get Your Titles in a Twist” [XVI, 3], I was happily surprised to see reference made to the tiny, misspelled, but spellbinding novel by Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters. I have been an ardent admirer of “Miss Daisy” ever since 1928, when I had the good fortune to be cast in a dramatization of her novel, presented at the Strand Theatre, London, in January of that year. It was a special matinee, under the auspices of the Stage Society, with a cast drawn exclusively from children of prominent theatrical families. We were all between the ages of seven and fifteen, which was entirely appropriate, since Miss Ashford had written her novel at the age of nine.

My father, Ernest Truex, had been appearing in London’s West End for several years and was currently starring in Good Morning, Bill!, by P.G. Wodehouse, thereby assuring my brother Jim and me of an invitation to audition for James Whale. Whale was a brilliant man of the theater who wore three hats on this occasion, donating his services as director, producer, and scenic designer. After the auditions it was announced that I had been cast as the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), and Jim was to play an old crony of his, the Earl of Clincham. This was pretty exciting stuff!

The program proclaimed that “Miss Daisy Ashford’s famous story, dramatized by Miss Margaret Mackenzie and Mrs. George Norman, will be acted by the following promising juveniles….” There followed a list of more than thirty names. The leading characters were played by Christopher Casson (son of Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson) as Mr. Salteena and Dorothy Hyson (daughter of Dorothy and Carl Hyson) as Ethel “Monticue.” Christopher’s sister, Ann Casson, read the passages which linked up the various scenes.

I still remember the enthusiastic reception we got from the audience; but, better still, I can quote from the glowing review we got from St. John Irvine, the eminent critic for The London Observer, who observed that Christopher “displayed all the signs that denote an accomplished comedian.” As for Dorothy, Mr. Irvine called her “a very beautiful little girl and, at the risk of turning her head, she has the makings of a very good actress.” And our narrator, Ann Casson, “read the passages with a clearness of utterance that was remarkable.” Towards the end of the review Mr. Irvine added, “Mr. Ernest Truex’s two sons, Philip and James, were extremely diverting in their parts; and I was greatly touched by the spectacle of Philip Truex, in the part of the Prince of Wales, solemnly removing his crown during the singing of the National Anthem.” I decided then and there to go on the stage.

The Young Visiters lent itself readily to dramatization, except that one loses the special sort of charm inherent in Daisy’s quaint spelling. But there are other things to charm one in a stage version. We all had the pleasure of getting to know Daisy a little bit at rehearsals and felt very much at home with her, which wasn’t surprising, since she was only about eighteen herself.

I was totally entranced by Dorothy Hyson and, before we had to return to school, I persuaded our mothers to take us to the circus. There I had the thrill of winning a canary by rolling a penny down a slide into a tiny bull’s-eye. With a flourish, I presented it to Dorothy. Soon after that, my father got a good offer to return to Broadway, and I didn’t see Dorothy again until a number, of years later when she came to New York in a play titled Most of the Game. Well, sure enough, Mr. Irvine was right: she was a beautiful woman—and a good actress! But, alas!, she was married. She did, however, confide to me that “our” canary was still in good voice.

In 1973 Doubleday wisely reissued The Young Visiters, and it got a rave review by Alan Friedman in The New York Times. He called it “a tiny novel that begs comparison with giants: Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and Lawrence’s Women in Love may be bigger, but The Young Visiters too manages to contain and display, more gracefully than the giants, an entire civilization.” He added that Daisy Ashford “is as ambitious as George Eliot and as innovative as Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf.” Well, as Beatrice Lillie used to say, “You could have knocked me over with a fender!” I really had not thought about The Young Visiters in that context. That is to say, in 1928 we budding thespians looked on acting in the play as simply a joyous lark. We loved the story and the characters, but we had never heard of Flaubert or Tolstoy. At this stage in my life I could see that Friedman was on to something: I knew, for instance, that some readers suspected that J.M. Barrie, who had written the Introduction, had written the novel himself, and I had sneered at that theory. But Friedman went further than that. He insisted that “Nothing in Barrie’s fiction can match Ashford’s chefd’oeuvre…. But most of all, even though she shows us a world of buffoons—for no one escapes— she causes us to love them.” And I say “Amen” to that!

[Philip Truex, Carlsbad, California]

EPISTOLA {Meish Goldish}

Though my Chinese is rudimentary, I cannot help commenting, as my eyes fall on the first page of VERBATIM XVII, 3, that Bonner’s statement, “Chinese has no notion of tense,” is erroneous. As in the case of the future tense in English, tense in Chinese is indicated by an auxiliary verb or a particle, not by inflection of the verb. One would translate the Caesarean Veni, video, vincam! into Chinese something like ‘Wo laide, kan, yao desheng.’

[W.H. Dougherty?, Santa Fe]

EPISTOLA {S.A. Dunk}

The Bummel is a German river [“Don’t Get Your Titles in a Twist!” XVI, 3]? If so, neither the Rand McNally nor the Times atlas has noticed it. Nor do the etymologies in Duden and Langenscheidt. If my memory is reliable, Jerome was rhapsodizing about the experiences of three friends on a footloose bicycle tour. Take away the bicycles, and it is as near to the meaning of ein Bummel as one can get. The German usage is worth comparing with the obsolescent American bummer and with bummle in British dialect. Could your contributor, notwithstanding his correct identification of the background to Three Men on the Bummel, be confusing it with the better-known Three Men in a Boat, where the scenery is decidedly fluvial?

Both German and English employ the definite article where the indefinite would be equally appropriate. Might not Jerome, who knew Germany well and spoke German fluently, have simply chosen the slightly more forceful of the two alternative titles?

[S.A. Dunk, Prahran, Victoria, Australia]

[In all fairness, it must be said that Mr. Room wrote as soon as he realized his slip in referring to the Bummel as a river.—Editor.]

EPISTOLA {John A. Fust}

We would really have to be Schleppers (with a capital S: the learned judge will not the distinction) to drag the populace, me among them, from saying “It’s me.” Judge Scott’s Canutian position [EPISTOLAE XVII, 3] reminds me of William Safire several years ago cravenly caving in to some of his readers who lambasted him for having written, “Who are you rooting for?” When I wrote Safire to ask whether he could imagine Hemingway, Faulkner, and O’Hara sitting in the grandstand at Yankee Stadium, hot dogs (with mustard) in hand, asking each other, “Whom are you rooting for?”, he responded with a form postcard answering a question about the locution God Bless, one that Judge Scott and I could certainly get along without.

Context is important. I can imagine myself answering, “It is I, (Lord),” to a voice from a burning bush, but not to the good citizens of Chatauqua County, New York.

[John A. Fust, Chatauqua, New York]

EPISTOLA {Meish Goldish}

Regarding “The Scandalous Yiddish Guide of the Census Bureau,” by Dr. Zellig Bach [XVII, 2], I must say that I wholeheartedly agree with the author’s assessment of the awkward and often amusing government translation. The strange concoction of grammar and syntax served up in the Guide no doubt confused and discouraged many of the people it was meant to benefit. Yiddish deserves better, and based on Dr. Bach’s accurate analysis of this recent gelechter (Yiddish ‘joke’), I propose that the government hire him as its official translator of future Yiddish publications.

[Meish Goldish, Teaneck, New Jersey]

EPISTOLA {Ralph Nielsen}

Stanley Mason, in his “Little Waterloos on Europe’s Language Frontiers” [XVII, 3], cites the case of a Swiss mountain railway ticket which entitled the holder to ‘1 Fahrt Fr. 9,50’ as an indication of the high cost of living in Switzerland.

A few years ago, while my father and I were visiting relatives in Denmark, we had occasion to use an elevator in his hometown of Svendborg. When my father pressed the button it immediately lit up with the words I FART ‘IN MOTION,’ causing him to remark, “I bet people who don’t know Danish think the elevators run awfully fast in this little country.”

[Ralph Nielsen, Moscow, Idaho]

EPISTOLA {Mary Ellen Hester}

In the spirit of Richard Lederer’s “World According to Student Bloopers” [XIII, 3], I enclose a collection of fourth-grade students' replies to test questions, given to me by a public-school teacher when I taught at the University of Texas at Austin.

A virgin forest is a forest in which the hand of man has never set foot.

A city purifies its water supply by filtering the water and then forcing it through an aviator.

The people who followed the Lord were called the twelve opossums.

The spinal column is a long bunch of bones. The head sits on top and you sit on the bottom.

One of the main causes of dust is janitors.

Animal husbandry is having more than one husband.

The four seasons are: salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar.

The climate is hottest next to the Creator.

Syntax is all the money collected at church from sinners.

The difference between a president and a king is that a king has no vice.

Henry VIII by his own efforts increased the population of England by 40,000.

The triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle.

In the middle of the 18th century, all the morons moved to Utah.

We do not raise silkworms in the United States because we get our silk from rayon. It is a larger animal and gives more silk.

A scout obeys all to whom obedience is due and respects all duly constipated authorities.

Most of the houses in France are made of Plaster of Paris.

To prevent head colds, use an agonizer to spray into your nose until it drops into your throat.

Strategy is when you don’t let the enemy know that you are out of ammunition, but keep on firing.

[Mary Ellen Hester, Denver]

EPISTOLA {David L. Gold}

While no author will be unhappy with a review that begins, “The Surname Dictionary, in particular, becomes the best available work on the subject,” several points in Leslie Dunkling’s remarks on A Dictionary of Surnames [XVII, 4:11] require comment.

He writes, “the awkward fact… is that a great many people will consult it in vain for information about their own names.” He is right that the dictionary concentrates on the more frequent names (though it is not limited to these), yet that is inevitable in a first attempt at a pan-European dictionary. Even so, the book contains almost seventy thousand family names, which is nothing to sneeze at in a pioneering effort. (Future editions will, of course, contain more.)

“The authors say that if they came across reliable information about rarer names, they wrote entries. In other words, if someone else had done the research in what appeared to be a scholarly way, they took advantage of it.” One should not think that the book is a scissors-and-paste job. The compilers write, “…the number of reliable reference works [on family names] is remarkably small” (p. xlvii). After mentioning these few, they conclude, “At this point the list of honourable exceptions begins to run out” (p. xlviii). Therefore, to compensate for the scarcity of reliable secondary literature, the compilers turned to many specialists. From the five pages of personal acknowledgments (as opposed to a mere two pages of bibliography), it should be clear that the dictionary rests largely on original research. As “special consultant” for the Jewish names, I can say that all of my explanations are original with me. (How the Jewish names were treated is described in “The Jewish Family Names in the Oxford Dictionary of Surnames,” Jewish Language Review 7, 1987, pp. 139-46.)

Mr. Dunkling has “doubts about how ordinary users of this dictionary will cope with its metalanguage,” citing lines which contain several abbreviations and technical terms. With forty-one pages of Introduction and two pages devoted to the resolution of abbreviations, the task is not as hard as he makes it out to be.

He writes, “genealogical information is occasionally added…, but only when the families concerned are ‘important’ according to a very traditional definition of that word.” Yes, and that is because genealogical information is most abundant for such people: what, for instance, is known about the ancestry of Frankie Vaughan? Also, if anyone infers from later remarks in Mr. Dunkling’s review (about “the ‘noble’ theme”) that only “noble” families are the subject of genealogical notes, that assumption would be wrong: there are genealogical vignettes for George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and many other “commoners.”

What I missed in Mr. Dunkling’s remarks is mention of a major innovation in this dictionary: nesting. The family names are not listed as in a telephone directory, merely in alphabetical order, with no articulation between one entry and the next: rather, if names are etymologically related to one another, they are all listed under the same entry. For example, over 285 names appear under George. Moreover, within each entry the names are broken down according to form and structure—for example, variants, cognates, diminutives, augmentatives, patronymics, and patronymics from diminutives— with further classification (according to language) and comment. A 230-page alphabetical index guides the user to the location of the names. A Dictionary of Surnames is thus more like a thesaurus than an alphabetical dictionary.

[David L. Gold, Director, Jewish Family Name File, Oakland Gardens, New York]

EPISTOLA {Gillian Vardon}

The anecdote of the Polish lady who resented the slur on her country [review of the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, XVII, 3:17] reminded me of an incident related to me by a friend who taught third grade in a church-affiliated school. The story of the Nativity was under discussion, and the least sophisticated member of the class raised her hand to ask, “What is a virgin?”

The teacher explained, in terms that she hoped were appropriate to her audience. When she had finished, the class Brain turned to the questioner and smugly elucidated, “So you see, you’re a virgin.”

“I am NOT!” shrieked the outraged eight-year-old.

[Gillian Vardon, Amherst, New York]

OBITER DICTA

William B. Ober, M.D., Tenafly, New Jersey

Many readers will recall with pleasure Leo Rosten’s THE EDUCATION OF HYMAN KAPLAN*, which appeared in the late 1930s and early 40s and which dealt with the amusing difficulties of a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Pale of Settlement in coping with what we now call “English as a second language.” Rosten’s articles were good-humored, and there was no intimation of negative or hostile feeling toward an ethnic minority. To be sure, as it was fiction, Rosten exaggerated a bit, but the real-life models were then extant, and I can vouch for at least one from my own experience.

In the 1940s my father, a certified public accountant in Boston, acquired a client named Morris Kaplan, an affable, outgoing insurance salesman (pronounced SALE-ess-mahn) whose accent reflected his origins in the Pale of Settlement, specifically in Minske Gebernyeh: Mr. Kaplan was an echt Litvak. Over and above the accent and intonation, Mr. Kaplan had a knack for transmogrifying the Anguish Languish into levels of meaning scarcely intended by its users. I can cite two examples:

One noontime Mr. Kaplan and my father went out to lunch from my father’s office on Devonshire Street. Within a few paces they encountered an acquaintance of Mr. Kaplan’s. “Mr. Pincus,” said Kaplan, “I want you should meet mine accountant, Harry Ober. He’s the finest figurehead in New England.” True enough, my father was a lightning calculator and an expert at solving arithmetical puzzles.

The second incident occurred some years later. In June 1960 my father went down to Houston to have his aortic aneurysm repaired by the distinguished Dr. Michael DeBakey. The operation was a great success, and a couple of days afterward my father received a get-well card from Mr. Kaplan. The picture was suitable enough, but the handwritten message read, “Dear Harry - Hoping this will be your last illness….”

Alas, one rarely hears the echt Litvisch accent these days. Mr. Kaplan’s generation has largely died off, and its progeny have become Americanized. We lose in color what we gain in homogeneity.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Random House Webster’s College Dictionary

Robert B. Costello, Ed. in Chief, (Random House, 1991), xxxiii + 1567pp.

This dictionary might be said to be the grandson of *The Random House Dictionary of the English Language

• College Edition*, 1968, of which I was editor in chief (with the late Stuart B. Flexner as managing editor) and the great-grandson of the *American College Dictionary* [*ACD*], 1947, of which Clarence L. Barnhart was editor in chief. There are, naturally, many resemblances among the three and to the *College Edition, Revised Edition*, 1975, reviewed in Volume II, Number 3 (pp. 172ff. in VERBATIM: *Volumes I & II*). Before discussing the content, I may be allowed a comment on the title.

It is taken as given in the dictionary business in the U.S. that if a dictionary bears the name “Webster” it magically attracts sales far beyond those of a dictionary that tries to rely for its success on quality alone. Compared to the soft-drink business, that is like saying that all cola drinks ought to be called Coca-Cola, though one would be legally enjoined from doing so. Not so with Webster, for, owing to a bit of folly in the 1930s, G. & C. Merriam Company, of Springfield, Massachusetts, successors to the line of dictionaries originated by Noah Webster, published a synonym dictionary and called it a Webster. World Publishing Company, of Cleveland, had the wit to see that Merriam had, in effect, forsworn its birthright, for Noah had never published a synonym dictionary. World called its dictionary Webster’s New World; Merriam sued and lost, confirming that the appellation Webster had fallen into the public domain. That is why virtually every American dictionary of any shape, size, provenance, comprehensiveness, quality, and lexicographic persuasion is likely to be called a Webster these days.

When I was director of the reference department at Random House, during the 1960s, at meetings held with Bennett Cerf, Donald Klopfer, and Lew Miller, sales director, we often touched on the matter of what the new dictionary, successor to the ACD, was to be called. It was pointed out then that including the name Webster in the title would be likely to increase the sales by a measurable amount; but Bennett and Donald, staunchly independent and proud of the successes gained in the name of Random House, would not hear of it. It was I who proposed the original title for the series of dictionaries published from 1966 onwards: The Random House Dictionary of the English Language - Unabridged Edition, College Edition, School Edition, and any other subtitles that might come along. From what I know of Bennett and Donald, the decision to include Webster in the title of this book has probably set them spinning in their graves.

There is another aspect to this change: lamentably, it emphasizes the abiding ignorance and gullibility of the dictionary-buying public. Anyone who compares the multifarious dictionaries bearing the Webster name cannot help observing the differences in quality, quantity, and treatment offered: the name has become meaningless, made inferior by its universal application to virtually any kind of dictionary.

While I am making general observations, I might add, for the record, that my review of the 1975 edition of the Random House College was not favourable because it was based on an examination of the entries mentioned in Jess Stein’s Preface: I had, out of a feeling of sympathetic and loyal association with the book’s 1968 edition, which still constituted more than ninety per cent of the 1975 edition, selected for analysis the words mentioned in the Preface on the premise that they were “showcase” entries which the editors were especially proud of. As it turned out, I was compelled to point out several glaring errors in most of those entries, and Jess Stein never spoke to me again. I must confess to being displeased at Stein’s having removed my name from the title page of a book only slightly changed from its first edition so that he could insert his own as editor in chief; but that was nothing new for him, as he had deleted from later editions of the ACD the name of its editor in chief, Clarence L. Barnhart, to insert his own. So much for De mortuis…

The present work contains 180,000 entries, fully 20,000 more than the 1968 edition and 10,000 more than the 1975 edition. It would be a waste of time to go through the editions noting the differences: in most cases, the editors followed the wise dictum, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” so little has been done to the basic information in the original edition. The 1983 edition of Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate introduced the practice of giving, in the etymologies, “dates of earliest occurrence,” data presumably derived from the Oxford English Dictionary (for, while Merriam and Random House maintained a citation file for the tracking of new words and senses, there was no point in duplicating work done long ago by Murray, et al.). It is questionable to what purpose users of dictionaries are to put this information. Naive users—by far the majority—are bound to misinterpret the dates as meaning “when the word first appeared in the language” rather than as “the date of the earliest recorded evidence found (at press time).” Moreover, the date cannot be associated with any particular definition, so it is a bit misleading, for an entry like log, which has several definitions, to show it as having entered the language “1350-1400.” In which sense? And what is to be made of the following?:

1. All numbers, from one through twelve, are listed as having entered English “before 900” except five, for which “bef. 1000” is given. Are we to conclude that people got along without the number five for a hundred years before someone, perhaps feeling that “something was missing,” awoke one morning to invent it?

2. If one looks up the ordinals, the following information is revealed:

first “bef. 1000”
second “1250-1300”
third “bef. 900”
fourth “bef. 950”
fifth “bef. 1000”
sixth “1520-30”
seventh “1275-1325”
eighth “bef. 1000”
ninth “bef. 900”
tenth “bef. 1150”
eleventh “bef. 1000”
twelfth “bef. 1200”
seventeenth “1300-50”
eighteenth “bef. 900”
twentieth “bef. 900”
fortieth “bef. 1100”
fiftieth “bef. 1000”
eightieth “bef. 850”

To be sure, there is nothing to justify the assumption that the names of the numbers emerged in numerical order from the primeval ooze of language; but one might mistakenly conclude that the very first ordinal to be talked about in English was eightieth, and this at a time when only a small percentage of the population had a life expectancy of half that. And it might be imagined that in giving directions to get to one’s hovel, one would say, “Go to the fifth hovel, and mine is the next one,” for sixth did not come into being till the sixteenth century. One would expect the editors to have signaled the truth of the matter under Using This Dictionary, despite the reluctance of users to refer to such things. But no; here is the only comment:

when and how the word entered our language, including the date that it first appeared and its source or relatives in other languages

The redundancy of when and the date that is confusing enough; but to describe the date as when the word “first appeared” is grossly misleading and inaccurate: it is the date for the earliest written evidence of the form. That might seem a niggling point, but dictionaries dwell (and thrive) on niggling points, and such misstatements are unforgivable. The editors would have been on safer ground had they simply followed the wording in the Random House Unabridged, to wit:

Most dates are expressed as a spread of years, giving the time within which the earliest document containing the main entry was written or published…. In many cases a term may have existed in the spoken language long before it first appeared in texts and, in any event, earlier written evidence may exist that has not yet been discovered or reported. [p. xxxiv]

The publication of college dictionaries in the U.S. provides an outstanding textbook demonstration of the principles of competitive free enterprise at work and of what used to be called supply and demand, but is now dubbed “market forces.” There are five major dictionaries of approximately the same size competing for buyers in the market. It is impossible to get an accurate figure for the total market, which has been estimated at two million sales a year. Publishers steadfastly refuse to reveal their sales figures because of the highly competitive nature of the business, though it is generally acknowledged that Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate outsells its nearest competitor by about two to one. That nearest competitor is probably Webster’s New World, 3rd Edition, with the Random House College (occupying a niche to be filled by the book under review) and the American Heritage, 2nd Edition neck and neck for third place, and Webster’s II New Riverside bringing up the rear in this horserace. These are only guesses.

The fierce competition among the dictionaries results in what must be regarded as the greatest book bargain in the history of publishing: taking the Random House Webster’s as a typical example, it contains 18 million characters (say, 2.5 million words) for which one pays $18, which works out to about 139,000 words per dollar. The average novel of 200,000 words for $25 works out at 8,000 words per dollar. This is all the more astonishing when one considers that the publishers maintain full-time staffs of skilled lexicographers and editors to keep their dictionaries up to date by continuously monitoring both the language and other kinds of data, like population figures for geopolitical entries, death dates for biographical entries, etc. Consider, too, that the quality of the paper, printing, and binding of such dictionaries is far superior to that of most other books available, creating a cost per copy of about $5. Were all these factors taken into consideration in normal pricing procedures in the industry, a college dictionary ought to retail for about $50 a copy. One is given to wonder how manufacturers of other staple consumer products manage to come up with identical packaging (say, 1 pint, 10 fluidounces or 2 pounds 13 ounces) and identical pricing on supermarket shelves without being in collusion; even the most cursory view of college dictionary publishing at once reveals a most extraordinary example of the workings of “market forces”: no publisher wants to be the first to break the $20 barrier; the Indexed edition of the Random House is the first to touch that mystical figure.

Random House dictionaries, from the ACD onward, have always been known for their ease of use and the clarity and understandability of the information presented. The book at hand supports that reputation. Notwithstanding, people who use dictionaries regularly become accustomed to one, which becomes their favorite for any number of reasons: for purposes of utility and for philosophical reasons, I prefer geographical and biographical entries to be interfiled with other entries in one alphabetical listing; others prefer to have them separate. To be sure, if one is going to spend $18 or so, the dictionary selected ought to be the most up to date and have the largest number of entries, a bit of reasoning not lost on the crowd at Random House. Besides, although publishers seldom get into such detail in the publicity about their dictionaries, the more entries a dictionary has, the more definitions it has. That is not the truism it appears to be: as lexicographers add entries, increasing the depth to which the lexicon is being probed, they must add definitions, proportionally increasing the coverage of existing entries (which often accomplishes little or nothing to increase the entry count).

Some dictionaries offer more information than others about the entries they cover. Thus, on average, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate and the Random House Webster’s College contain at least fifteen per cent more information per entry than American Heritage and Webster’s New World. (A copy of Webster’s II Riverside was not available for this comparison, but is unlikely to come up to the last two.)

In all this talk about entries, it must be remembered that the (accepted) practice in counting dictionary entries in the U.S. (and becoming the standard in the U.K. as well) is to count not only headwords, or main entries, but inflected forms, variants, changes in part of speech, run-on words (like cunningly and cunningness under cunning), and list words (like reaccuse and reacquire), which need no definition. A dictionary with, say, 150,000 entries is likely to have no more than 80,000 headwords.

Other desirable (or desired) features might influence the purchase of a dictionary: according to a comparison chart provided by Random House, its dictionary has 800 illustrations; Webster’s Ninth 600+; Webster’s New World 650; and Webster II Riverside 300+. But the American Heritage has 3000. (Most British dictionaries have traditionally had no illustrations at all.)

I must admit that I have not been watching very carefully the admittance of the naughty bits of the language into dictionaries, but I am pleased to see that their omission, so long a sop to the Cerberean self-styled “guardians” of the language, chiefly struthious provincials in the Bible Belt, Texas, and—believe it or not—California, has ended. I do object, however, to the label Vulgar given to such entries. I am sure that the label is the product of endless hours of agonizing discussion, but I think they came up with the wrong solution. Vulgar still carries the strong denotation exemplified in the first (hence the most frequently encountered) sense, “characterized by ignorance of or lack of good breeding or taste: vulgar ostentation.” It has congeners, like vulgarian “a vulgar person”; vulgarism “1. the state or quality of being vulgar. 2. something vulgar, as an act or expression”; vulgarize “1. to make vulgar or coarse; lower; debase. 2. …popularize”; Vulgate “… 4. (l.c.) commonly used or accepted; common.” The problem in reviewing these sets of definitions is that one can never be sure which definition of vulgar ought to be applied to its use in the definitions of the ancillary entries, for the word has a spectrum of meanings. I often think that it would not be untoward for a dictionary to add to its entries for words that also serve as labels (e.g., Colloquial, Informal, Slang, etc.) definitions that begin, “As used for labels in this dictionary,…” In the event, a user might well be confused about seeing the label Vulgar applied to four-letter words, when its definitions seem to indicate that it means (merely) “in bad taste.” My own choice for a label is Taboo, which is incisively denotative. Its main definition in the Random House reads, “proscribed by society as improper or unacceptable: taboo words,” which I believe is a lot closer to what the editors were seeking than Vulgar.

I cannot conclude this review without commenting on an element of dictionary marketing that I think may be infra dig these days, namely, the attempt at hoopla. Dictionaries are generally consistent products of superior scholarship and care; at this stage of the game, trying to change what Madison Avenue calls “brand loyalty” is like getting someone who has been driving a Ford all his life to switch to a Toyota. As Ford and Toyota know, that is far from impossible, but manufacturers find it very costly to effect the change. Publishers grasp at anything they think might catch the fancy of the dictionary buyer. Random House has come up touting its treatment of entries like gal and girl, as in Gal Friday, I’ll get my girl (‘secretary’) to type up this letter right away. The treatment is good and it might be unique among the desk/college dictionaries—I don’t waste my time checking such trivia—but it is a shame to see publishers relying on such undignified approaches. On the other hand, pecunia non olet, and today’s market might need just such an incentive to choose one dictionary over another.

Another ploy has been to get major newspapers and other media to acknowledge their reliance on a particular dictionary to decide spelling (mainly) and, I suppose, other language matters. Unfortunately, that leads to inconsistencies, for dictionaries report what they find and are not intended as sources of prescriptive decisions. Thus, a given dictionary might hyphenate thick-skinned, thick-skulled, and thick-witted but not thickheaded (e.g., the Random House 2nd Unabridged). We know that the language is inconsistent, and there can be nothing wrong in reporting that fact: the dictionary merely reflects the practice of the majority of written citations available to its compilers. But it must be said that space is at a premium in these expensive books, and if, say, a dozen citations are found for each of the spellings thickwitted and thick-witted, one can be sure that no lexicographer, thrifty of space, will display the variant, whichever he perceives that to be. But publishers are not bound by such variety: neatness is a virtue in publishing newspapers, magazines, and books, and no publisher who produced a style book that required all such compounds to be consistently spelled with or without a hyphen could be subjected to criticism for yielding randomness to logic. I would be the last one to stake anything worthwhile on the statistical base used for determining the “preferred” spellings in dictionaries. Thus, when a dictionary is touted as the one used by such-and-such a newspaper, readers should think back to the number of times that paper has been cited in SIC³—seldom for the kinds of things that dictionaries have much bearing on—and discount the claims for “adoption” as so much hype. After all, the use of a hyphen in adverb/adjective compounds is a matter of style, which can be described in a rule: in position before a noun, compounds with well—indeed, any not ending in -ly—like well-heeled, well-known, well-thought-out, are hyphenated, as in well-heeled gambler, well-known man-about-town, a well-thought-out plan; but when they are in predicative position, as in Is she well heeled enough to sit in on our game?, His peccadillos are well known to his wife, The plan was well thought out, or, if they end in -ly in any position, they are two words, as in That is chiefly British usage, this usage is chiefly American. Why, then list thousands of hyphenated well-words? With such a simple rule, would anyone need to look such words up in a dictionary?

To sum up, the Random House Webster’s Dictionary is an excellent dictionary containing up-to-date information about the English lexicon in America and, to a limited extent, elsewhere. Indeed, while I was writing this review an acquaintance phoned to say that he had to replace all the aging dictionaries in his office and asked me to recommend a replacement. I recommended this book without hesitation or reservation. It might be time for you to switch from a Ford to a Cadillac.

Laurence Urdang

Writing the Spoken Word

John F. Heinz, Philadelphia

It suddenly struck me that, in all the years I have read and admired VERBATIM, I cannot recall an article on the language of public speaking—or, if the reader insists, oratory. That being the case and because I am a long-time professional speechwriter, I feel it incumbent on me to remedy the deficiency.

I will concede that there may not be another reader who is the least bit interested in speechwriting per se—indeed, many might well disdain it because, after all, it is one of the most lucrative forms of writing. But my guess is that many will be variously bemused, enchanted, and appalled by some of the rules for good speech writing that run quite counter to the rules for good writing for print.

One widely acknowledged tenet for speechwriting is to use simple and direct sentence structure and to keep sentences as short as feasible. There is nothing remarkable about that; but the fact is that sentence structure that is commonly accepted in writing for print—that, in fact, is not only stylistically impeccable but is virtually indispensable to expert writers—can be taboo to speechwriters.

I refer, for example, to something along the following lines: “Although the economy is in extremely poor shape, my company has been reporting excellent financial results.” That is what we speechwriting gurus call bass-ackward sentence structure.

What is wrong with it? The same thing, essentially, that makes homophones horrendous no-nos in speeches. Whereas a document is read, a speech is heard. Yes, of course everyone knows that; but perhaps thought is seldom given to its implications, of which there are many. Homophones can be pure poison in a speech. A hapless auditor might conceivably spend several minutes thinking the speaker is discussing, say, roles, when he’s actually discussing rolls. By the time the light of comprehension flashes, the listener might have lost the thread completely.

As for convoluted and backside-to sentences, the problem is that the point of a statement should ordinarily come first. If your company is reporting excellent financial results, say so right out, then add the impressive fact that this success has been achieved despite a weak economy. Serve the entrée first, let the other courses follow.

This is even true of the proper treatment of modifiers. Suppose one wants to brag that his company has just completed a new, state-of-the-art, $250-million, completely computerized, 2,000-foot-long reverberating furnace. It should never be put that way! A long string of modifiers in advance of a noun is frustrating and confusing to listeners; they want to know—right off—what the speaker is talking about. Good speech style calls for: “My company just completed a new, state-of-the-art reverberating furnace. It cost $250 million. It’s 2,000 feet long. It’s…etc.”

The speaker should get to the point, and get there with maximum effectiveness, which is why signaling is an indispensable technique in any speech-writer’s bag of tricks. While one would never write “Would you like to guess how much our new reverberating furnace cost my company? No takers? Well, listen carefully and I’ll tell you…,” that is excellent speechwriting style if only because challenging the audience in a sprightly conversational manner tends to awaken snoozers and invigorate the lethargic. On a more positive note, there cannot be any question of the value of alerting audiences that information worth listening to is forthcoming.

While on that particular subject, how about restating something important that has just been said? Good form! “That furnace cost us $250 million. That’s right, I said a cool $250 million!” Consider it a rule that facts and figures that a serious reader would reread in a printed text should be repeated orally in a speech. If he thinks—or looks—back over a few of the points I have made, the reader will realize that speech texts—or at least important passages within such texts—often are longer and wordier than comparable writings for print, and necessarily so. After all, speakers have to rely entirely on audience comprehension through hearing, and a speaker’s words skitter by so swiftly!

Can a speaker reasonably expect his audience to remember anything at all about that big furnace if he has spent only a few seconds describing it? Speakers who want to impress their audiences know they have to telegraph key points and facts, then announce them, then repeat, dramatize, explain, and embellish.

Finally,—and this may come as the most unkindest cut of all to purists—most speeches call for use of conversational, colloquial English. Most speakers, on most speaking occasions, should sound natural, not pedantic. “We’re going to do it” is more natural, and sounds more natural, than “We will do it.” Similarly, “We’ve got to do it” is more natural than “We must do it.” I would hazard a guess that scores of words and phrases in virtually every one of the 750 or so executive speeches I have written through the years would be criticized by most high-school English teachers.

I have not given the whole story; there are many other differences between optimal speechwriting style and standard English usage, but I have already taken up more than enough of your time. And rest easy, Miss Dalrymple, when I reedit speech scripts for print publication, I always revert to good old academically pure English usage.

OBITER DICTA: The (invariably) Right Reverend Walter W. Skeat

F. Chance., Sydenham Hill.

Rev. Walter W. Skeat, surely one of the greatest linguists of all time and an outstanding innovator of his day (late 19th century), was often given to testy replies when a correspondent to Notes and Queries either disagreed with him or speculated on the etymology of a word without having first looked it up in one of Skeat’s works or, if the alphabetic section had appeared, in the Oxford English Dictionary. He was often nasty; but toward the latter part of the 1890s the crust softened, and he mellowed a bit. Some contributors to learned journals of his day frequently submitted their suggestions with a hesitation born of the fear of being flayed alive by the scholar in a contemptuous retort to be published in a later issue. In some cases, Skeat’s irritation stemmed from a reader’s failure either to read correspondence that had been published decades earlier or to be intimately familiar with every last syllable of Skeat’s seven-volume work on Chaucer.

A poor man named John Cordeaux was brazen enough to suggest [May 27, 1893] that stoat is from the Anglo-Saxon steort, a tail.

In the issue of June 10, Skeat pounced:

…A moment’s reflection will show that stoat and start are different words, just as coat and cart or moat and mart. That any one should for a moment deem it possible to derive stoat from A.-S. steort is a clear proof of the inability of the English mind to conceive that etymology obeys fixed laws.

A year later, he was still fuming [June 16, 1894]:

No one seems to refer to the ‘New English Dictionary’ or even to my ‘Concise Dictionary’ (1890). It is of no consequence what the theories are. The fact is, that the word was spelt bane-fire in the (Northern) ‘Catholicon Anglicum’ in 1483, and is correctly explained in the same work as ‘ignis ossium’ [‘fire of bones’].

Notwithstanding this, all the old rubbish is repeated. And we are told that it “probably reaches us from Danish baun, a beacon.” But really the English way of pronouncing baun is beacon; and no living soul can pretend that we left off saying beacon and began saying bone or bon. …

I need hardly add, in the year 1894, that there is not a scrap of evidence in favour of any connexion of bale-fire with Baldr or with Bel or with Baal.

By the time he entered his sixties, in 1895, Skeat gave the impression that he was beginning to take these matters a little less seriously:

…We might as well derive laundress from the Gk. Leander, on the plea that the famous hero was in the habit of swimming about to keep himself clean. This is no unfair parody of the desperate pleas that are constantly being used in “etymology.”

[8th S. IX, March 21, 1896]

Lest one might be deceived into taking the preceding to be a pleasantry, even as late as 1909 (at seventy-four), Skeat’s contempt for those who knew less than he was undiminished:

The word hawser has nothing whatever to do with the verb to hoist; neither does the ‘N.E.D.’ say that it has. It correctly derives hawser from the obsolete verb hawse, which had indeed the sense of “to hoist,” but is really a derivative, as shown, of the Latin altus…

But, as the ‘N.E.D.’ says, there was an early confusion (of course, by popular etymology) with the Scand. hāls, a neck, and its derivative hawsehole; but we ought not to be misled by such a specious bit of guesswork. I speak feelingly, for I was caught once in this particular trap, as shown by the article on hawser in my ‘Etymological Dictionary,’ for which I was promptly rebuked by Mr. Wedgwood in 1882 (twenty-seven years ago); and that is why I so fully recanted my heresy in the ‘Supplement’;… We are now invited to entangle ourselves once more in the old meshes; which I decline to do.

The verb to haul has nothing whatever to do with either hawse or hawser.

Like many intellectual bullies, Skeat behaved like the injured party when caught in an error, making it appear that it was the other—the person who was right—who had done wrong. Like everyone, he was himself occasionally wrong; in 1895, somewhat begrudgingly and without direct reference to the authors of the correspondence that confuted his earlier surmise, he wrote to N. & Q. [July 27] on the subject of the expression the wrong end of the stick:

I have no doubt that the right explanation of this phrase is that given at the latter reference [July 13], and not the one suggested by myself, which I beg leave to withdraw. I remember now “the vulgar variant” of the phrase, which is decisive.

Sometimes Skeat’s tactic when confronted, either with evidence of error—which occurred very rarely indeed—or with a complaint about his overbearing lack of tolerance of those who knew less than he or had committed the unpardonable sin of failing to have both his books and the latest fascicle of the OED at hand, was to go all soft with humility. Yet, he could not resist the barb in the tail:

I am merely a humble collector of facts, always endeavouring to find out authorities and quotations for the instruction of others. But I do not advise any one to ignore my authorities.

[Ibid., July 18, ‘96]

It goes without saying that not all targets of Skeat’s wrath and contumely took his abuse lying down, notwithstanding his correctness in most matters etymological. Still, substantial contributors to N. & Q. took issue with what they perceived as a rather high-handed attitude:

Are we to be shamed into speaking of “phonetic decay” because it pleases Prof. Skeat to say that “whenever a writer uses the word ‘corruption’ we may safely assume him to be guessing. It is the one word that is prized above all others by those who prefer assertion to fact”?

Here is Skeat fuming at a correspondent who had the gall to suggest that the origin of the Ox- in Oxford, long a bone of etymological contention, could be traced through Usk to a connection with Gaelic uisque ‘water,’ as in uisquebaugh literally ‘water of life,’ from which we get whiskey (etymologically speaking):

…Not only fifty years ago, but even at the present time, there are people who are ignorant of the commonest principles of language, and refuse to admit any phonetic laws or to take any trouble to discover the historical sequence of forms. Their only idea is that “etymology” is a question of assumption and assertion, founded on guesswork and proclaimed by reiteration and bluster. They will never cease to repeat that Ox is a “corruption” of Ouse, or Ose, or Usk, or something else that is completely ridiculous. The more “corruption” there is in a guess, the deeper is their conviction of its truth…

[Notes & Queries, 8th S., X, July 18, ‘96]

In an issue of N. & Q. not two weeks later, in commenting on a correspondent’s plea for help in tracing the form irpe, Skeat wrote:

[As to its origin,] there is nothing but to guess.

He might be seen to have got his final comeuppance at the hands of one correspondent, who wrote at length as follows about the etymology of Cambridge:

…[I]n the present instance, I am concerned with Prof. Skeat alone…. I have already had occasion… to allude to an unfortunate habit which Prof. Skeat has of writing important notes without first consulting the full and accurate Indexes of N. & Q.; and I am very sorry to be obliged to renew my accusation. On the former occasion the consequences were annoying to me, but of no great importance. Now the matter is much more serious, for Prof. Skeat has thereby been led to attribute to himself entirely a derivation for the word Cambridge which I propounded, both in N. & Q. and in the Athenæum, so far back as 1869….

One could forgive Prof. Skeat for his note on Cantabrigia (8th S. ii. 329), because twenty-three years had then elapsed since my first note appeared. He had, no doubt, seen and read my note, which was the first in that number of N. & Q. and filled seven columns and a half, for he was, even at that time, a constant reader of N. & Q., as is shown by his having contributed no fewer than fifteen notes to the volume in which my note is to be found; and very likely he had carried off an impression which in after years he came to regard as an idea that had originated in his own brain. Still, as the interval between my first note and his first note was so great, I do not know that any great fault, beyond that of carelessness, can be attributed to him. At the same time I thought it advisable, in my note under the same heading (Cantabrigia), to point out to him that he had, no doubt inadvertently, been poaching on my preserves, and I took advantage of the opportunity and filled up the lacunae in the steps of the derivation which, from want of evidence, had been left in my first note. I then, naturally enough, looked upon the incident as closed. But no; Prof. Skeat, just three years later—again trusting to his memory, which seems to be particularly faulty with regard to the contributions of other correspondents—returned to the charge, and this time, under the heading of Cambridge, wrote a longish note to the same effect as before, and yet did not even once mention my name. And not only did he do this, but he afterwards “much expanded” this note, and this expansion was “printed (with the title ‘Cambridge and the Cam’) in the Cambridge Review, 30 Jan., 1896.” It was not there, however, that I saw it, but in A Student’s Pastime, which has just been published by Prof. Skeat, in which the expanded note is reprinted in full and fills eight pages (pp. 393-401).

Now I defy Prof. Skeat, or any one else who will take the trouble to read the four notes quoted at the beginning of this note, together with the article in the Cambridge Review, and who will compare what I have said with what Prof. Skeat has said—I defy either the one or the other, I say, to find any material difference between us. Prof. Skeat does, indeed, in his last and longest note (I mean the one in the Cambridge Review) go into the question as to how it came to pass that the a in Cambridge is pronounced long as in came—a point which I had not considered—and he also differs from me in attributing, without any apparent evidence, the change of the Gr of Granta into the C of Canta to the Anglo-French scribes of the twelfth century; for I was, and am still, disposed to attribute it, in part at least, to the undoubted confusion between the old forms of Cambridge and of Canterbury which I have pointed out in both my notes. But neither of these points can be regarded as of any great importance.

It is, indeed, just possible that, in this second case of forgetfulness, the substitution of Cantabrigia as a heading, for the original Cambridge, may have had something to do with the matter; but if Prof. Skeat had taken the trouble to consult the Indexes as I have done, his eye would certainly, whilst looking for Cambridge, have been caught, as my own was, by Cantabridga, which stands very near to it.¹ I think, therefore, that this time, as the offence was repeated at the end of three years only, there is hardly any excuse to be found for Prof. Skeat. At all events, he seems to me to have got into a very serious hobble; at least I should consider it so, if I had, as is the case with Prof. Skeat, appropriated a derivation long before made public by another person, even though I had done so in the most utter unconsciousness.

In conclusion, I trust that Prof. Skeat will not in this case ignore this note and repeat the offence at some future time. I hope he will, for once, offer some little explanation, and perhaps even some words of excuse….

[Notes & Queries, 8th S. X. Nov. 28, ‘96.]

---

OBITER DICTA

Walter W. Skeat.

The Rev. Skeat’s reply was suitably abject at the outset, but, as might be expected, notwithstanding a direct apology, he could not resist commenting on the entirely irrelevant matter of the origin of wayz-goose while attempting to turn the tables on his critic by painting himself as the put-upon, absentminded professor, struggling in his tiny cell against overwhelming numbers of books and the obligations that attend them:

I willingly admit that Dr. Chance is perfectly correct in saying that he had explained the etymology of Cambridge both at an earlier time and more completely than myself. His first note made no impression on me, because I had not at that time sufficient experience to take it in; and his second one I most unfortunately overlooked, which accounts for the imperfections in my latest article.

I offer Dr. Chance, for the second time, my sincere apology. I have already printed one apology in the Cambridge Review of 26 November at p. 111. I have “got into a serious hobble,” doubtless; and shall be truly thankful if I can be allowed a way out of it.

It is not at all easy for one who, like myself, not only does a good deal of work on his own account, but a good deal to help others, to remember where all the multitudinous notes on words occur. For example, I often cannot find even my own articles. I certainly wrote one on wayzgoose, which is again inquired about this week (8th S. X. 432); and I have found, after some hunting, that it appeared in the Phil. Soc. Trans. of 1890. The same article says that I wrote about the word to N. & Q.; so that, by putting together the information, I find that my note appeared in N. & Q. about that time; but I cannot tell when till I consult some library. In any case, the writer of the article in the number of N. & Q. for 28 Nov. altogether ignores it—which does not surprise me. I have often answered the same question twice, and sometimes thrice; for all that, they will turn up again.

I have a good many volumes of N. & Q. in my possession; but it often takes a long while to find any particular number, owing to the impossibility of keeping things in their places in a room of limited size, when books are being sent to me from many places all the year round. I submit that these are extenuating circumstances; but I have made a mistake, and must take the consequences.

[Notes & Queries, 8th S. X. Dec. 12, ‘96.]

OBITER DICTA

Laurence Urdang

The foregoing is merely a sampling and by no means constitutes the full documentation of Skeat’s clawing back from the brink of ignominy at having pinched another’s work. To be sure, he was far too good and honorable a scholar to be considered, even remotely, a deliberate plagiarist; but he was careless at times and rather mean, and his apologies, always couched in language that tried to put the onus on others, come through as being very insincere indeed.

OBITER DICTA: Several Types of Ambiguity: Minimalist Language

Laurence Urdang

Ted Bernstein, when he was assistant managing editor of The New York Times, published a house organ, “Winners and Sinners,” that offered kudos for the occasional “bright passage” or deft metaphor and cited questionable and nonstandard grammar and usage that appeared in the newspaper. Among the items that he enjoyed catching were the ambiguous headlines, which he dubbed “two-faced heads.” These are not very hard to find in newspapers (as of the headline writer (who is not, usually, the writer of the article) is to come up with something that is a telegraphically brief inkling of the substance of the article. Headline writers are often given to paronomasia (which they would probably call punning, as paronomasia, which would not fit into most headlines, is not in their vocabulary). Gleaned from the current collection:

1. Cost of food scares mounts. [The Times, 11 October 90:5]

I was not under the impression that horses worried much about the price of fodder.

2. PLO may supply Arabs with arms. [Ibid.: 14]

Arms is always ripe for ambiguity.

3. Children taken on £500 raid. [Ibid., 12 October 90:7]

The children were not captured on the raid: the story was about a father who had his children (and, as I recall, his wife) wait in the family car while he went off to commit a robbery.

4. Students filmed in secret. [Ibid., 13 October 90:7]

Filmed is here intended as a past participle, not the past of an active verb. This grammatical ambiguity is a frequent source of confusion, one cleverly exploited by those who write clues for crosswords.

5. Prices fear as oil shortage puts pressure on refining. [Ibid., 11 October 90, p.31]

Prices is an unusual noun to find in attrubutive position before a word like fear (in contrast to noun/verb ambiguities like drop, rise, increase, decline, etc.). In any event, it is still not clear why an oil shortage should put pressure on refining (one would expect the reverse) and why the prices resulting ought to rise (for fear would scarcely suggest ‘reduction’ except in a petroleum trade journal or oil company annual report).

That is not to say that ambiguity is confined to headlines. In the following quotation, the reader may have difficulty in determining how far from his wife this ideal husband lives, why he isn’t bankrupt from feeding parking meters, and what circumstance might have afflicted him with muteness:

6. “[Odette] lives in Walton-on-Thames with Geoffrey [Hallowes], a tall, courteous gentlemen retired from the wine business who seems content to write her letters, listen while she tells her stories, feed one’s parking meter, and altogether to be as attentive as a wife could wish. [The Sunday Times, 14 October 90:3:3]

OBITER DICTA: Antiprejudice Prejudice

Laurence Urdang

Issues concerning language never seem to calm down or go away. Yet it would appear, from the amount of comment published in the British press, that the subject concerns people in Britain more than people in the U.S.A recent report from Charles Bremner, their New York correspondent, appeared on the front page of The Times. It dealt with what Bremner characterized as the “new plague of euphemisms” that threatens to overcome meaningful communication between Americans. He was reporting on a glossary, issued by the journalism school at the University of Missouri, proscribing certain words as being offensive to special groups of people. Interdicted are burly “too often associated with large black men” (large, yes; black, no), fried chicken “often used to refer to the cuisine of black people” (something that customers of Colonel Sanders might well dispute), gyp “because it insults gypsies” (only for those who are aware of the etymological nuances of the language), go Dutch insults “citizens of the Netherlands” (what utter balderdash !), Ugh! “ ‘highly offensive’ in any context because it denotes the stereotype of the American Indian” (too asinine to merit comment).

It appears that just when we were finally settling down to remember that certain people want to be called black (rather than colored or Negro), they change their minds and now want to be called “African Americans,” while those who are not yellow or red or some other color are to be termed “non-African-American” or “non-American-Indian.” Despite the revival of black (or Black, I can never keep them straight), the media are still enjoined from playin Ol’ Black Joe and the song containing the line, “That’s why Darkies were born”; we should have lost Ol’ Man Ribber were it not for the fact that Darkies and people have the name number of syllables. Though not mentioned in Bremner’s article, it beggars the imagination to contemplate what the Missouri mashers want a Chinese, Japanese, East Indian, etc. to be called. You are not allowed to say man or men any more: only “male adult” will do; fat has given way to “non-slim,” even “fluffy” or “plush,” though “husky” and “heavy” are allowed. Handicapped is taboo, replaced by “challenged” or “special,” and senior citizen is beginning to appear on the linguistic hit list. Personally, I prefer other terms. When I request a discount to which I am entitled owing to my advanced age, I ask for the fogy discount or rate. When in England, I request the rate for wrinklies and delight in watching people squirm.

I might have mentioned that I admit to being a little offended by a road sign on the A-41, near Finchley, CRIPPLES CROSSING. I am not sure it is still there, but I imagine there are other signs in Britain equally as frank. The British have gone so far in this business of telling it like it is that they have all but eliminated the subjunctive that covers contrary to fact conditions.

All this is complete tommyrot, of course. (Tommyrot, as we all know is a term of prejudice against British soldiers. Better not use that word.) It is all a lot of crap. (Uh-oh! I can anticipate a letter from the descendants of the American linguist George Philip Krapp enjoining me from using the word that sounds like his name on pain of a suit for slander.) It is nothing but codswallop. (Look out! Here comes the fisherman’s lobby!) And I almost repeated balderdash, which is sure to lose me the hurried hairless vote.

NOTICE! Subsequent issues of VERBATIM will consist entirely of blank pages, lest we offend somebody.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Malpractice Made Easy.” [Title of a book advertised in Legal Aspects of Medical Practice, November 1981. Submitted by Dr. V.P. Collins, Houston.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Faster swimmers have the right away.” [From a professionally made, plastic laminated, wall-mounted sign at the swimming pool of the Sports Connection health club in Beverly Hills, California. Submitted by Guerin Barry, Hollywood, California.]

OBITER DICTA: Polysemy & Pleolexy

Laurence Urdang

Polysemy is the name given by linguists to the lexical phenomenon exemplified by words like run and set, each of which has a very large of senses, many of which seem unrelated. (This is not the place to enter the discussion between the dictionary splitters ‘definers who write a definition for almost every citation’ and the combiners ‘definers who tend to write “basic” definitions and rely on the ability of users to divine metaphoric extensions for themselves.') Just to clutter up the language a bit more, I suggest pleolexy as the term to describe the ‘manywordedness’ of English, the characteristic of its enormous vocabulary that so many writers comment upon. I thought it might be interesting to look at the sources of some of those words.

As one might expect, much of the pleology of English can be ascribed to its propensity for naming things: many—indeed, most—of the names of organic and inorganic chemicals, numbering in the tens of thousands, are not listed in even the largest general dictionaries; nor are the names of all insects (of which, I seem to recall, there are more than 50,000 species) and plants. Perhaps a bit more interesting is the intelligence that, according to The Slang and Jargon of Drugs and Drink, by Richard A. Spears (Scarecrow Press, 1986), there are 624 terms for marijuana, 151 for P.C.P. (‘angel dust’), and 167 for powdered cocaine; in addition, Spears lists eight pages’ worth—too many to count—equivalents for drunk, though added to the many metaphors and other words and phrases are many similes (drunk as a badger,…as a bastard, …as a bat, etc.). In contrast, the more conservative (?) Scots Thesaurus, by Iseabail McLeod (Aberdeen University Press, 1990), lists only 50 alternatives for drunk, including smeekit, souple, and tosie, though omitting similes and extensive metaphors (which probably abound).

In his “Feather Report” of 27 October 1990, in The Times, Simon Barnes lists the following nicknames for the nightjar: fernowl, fen owl, jar-owl, churn-owl, goat-owl, goatsucker, nighthawk, dorhawk, moth hawk, wheelbird, puck bird, litch fowl, and gabble ratch, the last having its origins in the Norse meaning ‘corpse hound,’ (similar to litch fowl, which means ‘corpse fowl’). This information he derived from The Nightjar Yesterday and Today, by Margaret Grainger and Richard Williamson (West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, Bishop Otter College), a source I have been unable to verify.

So, the next time comment is made about all those words that fill up (and are omitted from) the English dictionaries, remember the nightjar and the drunk, here and abroad.

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: flibbertigibbet

One must be very cautious in proposing etymologies that attribute the origin of a word to playfulness or frivolity: they often turn out to be folk etymologies and totally empty of anything more than hollow speculation. Yet, as we all know, there are many instances of playful language, which we encounter every day, and there is no sound reason to reject playfulness solely on the grounds that it is “unscholarly” to be jocular. Any more pedantic suggestion being absent, I take the bit between the teeth to suggest that the above word, characterized by the OED as an “onomatopoeic representation of unmeaning chatter,” may well be a jocular rendering of Latin Flebiliter gemens, itself an almost facetious lament meaning something like ‘Woe is me!’ It occurs in Horace’s Ode “To Virgil” [Book iv, Ode 12]:

Nidum ponit Ityn flebiliter gemens, Infelix avis…

‘Now nests the bird that sadly calls For Itys…’

[Translated by Lord Dunsany and Michael Oakley, Everyman’s Library, 1961]

Perhaps it was formed originaly as a macaronic phrase by students, because of its meter; its earliest OED citation is in the 16th century, when the study of Horace would undoubtedly have been part of a scholar’s curriculum (including the memorizing of many of the odes). In later years it appears in various guises—Flibbertigibbet (a fiend referred to in King Lear, III, iv), Mrs. Flibber de’ Jibb (1640), Flibbertigibbet or “Dickie Sludge” (a dwarf in Kenilworth). Admittedly tenuous, this suggestion might last till a better one comes along.

Laurence Urdang

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: antimacassar

To those who have been exposed, in the etymology of the above word, to the information that “macassar oil, [was] formerly a pomade for the hair,” the following advertisement may prove of interest:

ROWLANDS’ MACASSAR OIL, known for 100 years as the best and safest preserver of the hair, and is far preferable to ordinary hair restorers, which dry up and wither the hair. It nourishes, preserves, and strengthens the hair, prevents baldness, and is the best brilliantine. Also in a golden colour for fair hair. Sold everywhere. Bottles 3s. 6d., 7s., 10s. 6d.

—Notes & Queries, 8th S. IX, Jan. 25, 1895.

Laurence Urdang

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Learning Disabilities: The Interaction of Learner, Task, and Setting

Corinne Roth Smith, (Second Edition, Allyn and Bacon, 1991), x + 630pp.

One of the linguistic phenomena to have emerged during the last hundred years or so is the acceptance of the notion that an important step in solving problems lies in naming them. Although its philosophy has been taken over by the field of psychiatry (in which I include psychoanalysis), the idea of shriving oneself of fears and other besetting difficulties has its roots—as far as Western culture is concerned—in the confessional, though it seems likely that reflexes of that procedure could be discovered in profound Eastern religions if not in shamanistic practices. In some ways, the fields of psychology and psychiatry can be said to rely on the ability of the practitioner to give a name to a condition, whether it be normality, schizophrenia, paranoia, or some other term. Naming is a reverse form of defining in that the process calls for determining a discrete set of differentia and giving the set a unique title. The next time that set of differentia is encountered, it serves to identify the problem in much the same way that a physician, encountering a combination of chest rash, high fever, Koplik’s spots, diagnoses (for which read ‘names’) an affliction as measles. Once identified, the procedure for treating measles is well established. The difficulty that arises with mental and psychological afflictions is that the procedures are not well established—indeed, might be said to be quite chaotic, ranging from putting patients into straitjackets to having them lie down to “free associate” or otherwise try to relieve themselves of their burdens, or to administer tranquilizers or other drugs that alter the chemistry of the brain. That is not to say that such procedures cannot be helpful in some cases, but their results are not as uniformly predictable as they are in many established medical procedures.

We are all familiar with the naming process, whether it be with the great relief at hearing the doctor say “muscular strain” instead of “rheumatoid arthritis” as he examines the x-rays, with the Sunday supplement newspaper article summing up (for the umpteenth time) the latest new words and acronyms, with nothing with amusement, admiration, or consternation what some people name their children, and with scores of other instances we encounter daily. In the closing years of the 19th century there was much discussion concerning the word telegram:

Why do we turn so hastily to Greek and Latin whenever a new word is wanted, instead of seeking one home-born? The English speech is already overburdened with outlandish words that ought never to have been taken in, and ought even now to be turned out. Ere another stranger is welcomed can we not at least see what we have close at hand? Spelwire and wire-spel for telegraph and telegram have already been suggested by the late Rev. W. Barnes, whose knowledge ought to have given them some weight; it seems, however, that they have been set aside.

Might we not, ere too late, take speechwire, wire-speech, tellwire, wire-telth or -tale, wordwire, wireword, for telephone and telephone message? If none of these is thought good, there are others to choose from. Of the following, one or two may be deemed as good as those already put forward. Might we not use spelwire, wirespel for telegraph, telegram; and sound-spelwire, sound-wirespel for telephone and telephonic message? The two latter would soon be shortened into soundwire, soundspel. We already say “wire it,” so the other is not a very wide step beyond. Or perhaps flashwire, flashspel for the first, and soundwire, soundspel for the two latter might do; otherwise tongue-wire, tongue-wire-spel (which would become tongue-spel) for telephone and telephonic message. If these will not pass, why not farwrit or farmark for telegram, farword or farsound or farspeech for telegraphic message, and farwriter, farspeaker, or farteller for telegraph, telephone? Although, indeed, against these last, notwithstanding the laughter they might excite (of which spark of pleasure the writer will only be too glad to be the cause), farwrittle and farspeakle for telegraph and telephone may have as much, if not more, to recommend them, as they have or any before them.

However, all are simply thrown into the field by way of challenge, no one else having come forward on the English side. They will have done good work if they only bring out two English champions that will hold the ground against them and the foreigners too.

AD LIBRAM.

Telephon is too near telephone, I fear, to be admissible; telephone is exotic; phogram is too abrupt, and is suggestive of program, grogram, and Elijah Pogram. I have had a polite letter from Mr. Francis J. Parker, of Boston, Mass., in which he suggests phonomit as an equivalent for a telephonic message. It is good, but does not fully satisfy my aspirations. Mittophon and phonotel are not uneuphonic. The former I think the better word; indeed, I fancy it to be the best yet proposed.

ROBERT LOUTHEAN

—Notes & Queries, 8th S. III,

Mar. 4, ‘93: 174.

Inventions and discoveries are named after the fact. Bell did not sit down one day and say to himself, “I think I’ll invent something called a telephone today” any more than Columbus (or whoever) decided to sail west from Europe to discover America. Convention plays a major role in all aspects of language, of course: by convention we call a certain fruit a banana and the group of islands west of Morocco the Azores (or the equivalent in other languages); astronomers have no difficulty in agreeing to call a certain configuration in the heavens the Horsehead Nebula every day of the week and not something different on Sundays, and chemists concur in describing the properties of sodium chloride. The world does not function uniformly, however: for cultural reasons there are words in some languages that are unutterable by women, and we certainly have experience with taboo words in English.

Convention can scarcely be said to have had a stabilizing effect in the realms of education and psychology: both are so jargon-ridden that normal conversation with and even among practitioners is often impossible without the continual explanation of terminology and perpetual hedging of definition. Whatever conventions might have been agreed at one time are found destroyed by the appearance of a new article or book or trend. Human beings are accustomed to a certain amount of imprecision in language: not only does each of use give a slightly different interpretation to the concepts represented by words like good, justice, and God, but our speech is peppered with expressions like I mean, Y’ know, and I don’t get you. But in the field of learning disabilities, itself a vague, catch-all term suggestive of many interpretations, the onomasiological problem reached such a state of confusion some years ago— as described in Chapter Two of the subject book— that in 1964 the U.S. government commissioned a task force devoted to the terminology alone. Even a partial list reveals the problems of distinguishing between, say, organic brain damage and cerebral dysfunction, though, as is often the case in such naming, the choice of words reflects the bias. It is curious to note that terms not appearing on the list included slow learner, neurological handicap, brain injury, and educational handicap. In the last analysis, it makes little difference how sterile, clinical, or innocuous the words selected might be, for the terminology attracts adverse connotations owing to many factors, not the least of which is prejudice. Most readers can remember the days when it was flattering to be (or have one’s children) designated “exceptional.” I cannot crawl into the minds of the youngest generation of psychologists to learn whether exceptional still carries what I must regard, personally, to be the unconscionable semantic distortion, both denotative and connotative, introduced a generation ago using “etymological” grounds for justification. For the same reasons, leprosy is now called Hansen’s disease, and mongolism has become Down syndrome; people who were once called crazy, mad, lunatic, demented, etc., are now categorized as sick. All this name changing is mere logomancy which neither changes the fact that there is something wrong with the afflicted nor, in the long run, our attitudes towards them. For some reason, if I have cancer, its virulence is somehow diminished if I call it the big C; a myocardial infarction seems less life-threatening than a heart attack. Work I have done on synonym dictionaries confirms that English has more equivalents, at various levels of usage, for insane than for any other concept or word in the language.

It is easy to be cynical on this subject and, at times, even to try to be funny, as in referring to DAM ‘Mothers Against Dyslexia’ (as does Dal Yoo, in an article elsewhere in this issue). But the fact is that there is a recognizable problem or a collection of problems, and ridiculing them is nothing more than a defensive gesture stemming from our own discomfort at facing them (if I may be allowed a little armchair analysis of my own). The defining of a concept like ‘specific learning disability’ is far more than an intellectual exercise, for the applicability of laws that relate to people with “an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations” (as described in U.S. Federal law P.L. 94-142: Federal Register, Dec. 29, 1977, p65083) rely on delineating such afflictions. Some of us might be inclined to view terms like under-achiever as psychologist’s or educationist’s euphemistic jargon for dope; but such descriptive designations, deliberately nonspecific and presumably neutral (at least for the time being), are in keeping with the view of the human intellect taken in these closing years of the 20th century.

Brain dysfunction is poorly understood. It may be the result of injury, of disease, or of congenital defect. The inability of an individual to master “simple” language tasks that come naturally to many of us, like reading and writing, yet to be able to perform complex mathematical feats at lightning speed is still more of a curiosity than predictable from a CAT-scan or other analysis, intellectual, psychological, or physiological. Little is known about the chemistry of the brain, through its physical mapping is proceeding apace. In a recent letter in Nature, “Lexical organization of nouns and verbs in the brain,” Alfonso Caramazza and Argye E. Hills reported on patients' relative ability to control specific semantic categories, such as abstract vs. concrete words, animate vs. inanimate, etc., based on the dysfunction of a part of the brain. And, while we have been taught to accept that brain cells are incapable of regeneration, some investigators continue to experiment with the stimulation of healthy parts of the brain to perform functions that atrophied or injured parts have abrogated.

All this is heady stuff, indeed, and although Learning Disabilities does not treat all of them in depth, it provides a thorough overview of its subject, extremely useful not only as an introduction to the field but as an important source book for those who wish to probe further: the bibliography alone contains close to a thousand references. I suppose I must describe the book as a text, but it is well organized and interestingly and clearly written, both attributes lacking in so much that we see today.

Laurence Urdang

Paring Pairs No. 41

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). Screens three notes.
(b). Texas street town.
(c). Portuguese blues.
(d). Exhausted and loveless.
(e). Shy? But nothing’s missing.
(f). Passage.
(g). Buried in endless murk.
(h). Mediocre.
(i). Moolah.
(j). Want to see his etchings?
(k). Angry.
(1). Halfback accomplishes things.
(m). Egotistical heroine.
(n). Epitome of extinction.
(o). Verbatim = 50 + reversal.
(p). Overdue improvement on the side.
(q). Cheese gavage in Mendip canyon.
(r). Vessel’s propeller men.
(s). Succeed in exam for bucolic Ph.D.
(t). Railway pugilist unable to corner opponent delivers punch.
(u). Warsaw levy on totems?
(v). Dahl, Poinsett, Fuchs, etc.
(w). Send my wife a dozen roses.
(x). Bricklayer’s graduation gift.
(y). Patriotic gland.
(z). Lady Luck? Can’t be!

(1). Board.
(2). Cheddar.
(3). Do.
(4). Fa.
(5). Flower.
(6). Fortune.
(7). Gorge.
(8). House.
(9). La.
(10). Late.
(11). Male.
(12). Mi.
(13). Miss.
(14). Mortar.
(15). Oral.
(16). Passed.
(17). People.
(18). Pole.
(19). Pro.
(20). Rally.
(21). Re.
(22). Round.
(23). Screw.
(24). Ship.
(25). State.
(26). Tax.
(27). Ti.

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. 40

(a). Jailbird’s position sounds egotistical. (11, 44) Con. Seat.
(b). Spartan homeland for tatting friend? (27, 12) Lace. Demon.
(c). Sounds like place for fabric. (16, 14) Faille. Drawer.
(d). Becomes rowdy if hackles are raised. (41, 34) Rough. Neck.
(e). For many people, what’s left is used. (45, 22) Second. Hand.
(f). Testosterone is the evil-doer. (32, 15) Male. Factor.
(g). Sounds as if airline serves rotten meat. (8,36,2) Carry. On. Bag.
(h). Sheriff’s deputies in musical westerns admit that 9/10 of law is worth having. (38,46) Posses. Sing.
(i). Hindu adder appears during autumnal estivation. (24,49) Indian. Summer.
(j). Renegade roué sounds like real clinker. (28,39) Lapsed. Rake.
(k). Big gun turns out to be suave drag. (47,4) Smooth. Bore.
(l). Mermaid’s hideout on Staffa? (19,20,9) Fin. Gal’s. Cave.
(m). Lascivious cleric going off in all directions. (31,6) Loose. Cannon. (Loose cannon)
(n). Insufficiently specific rule might prove dangerous. (31,6) Loose. Cannon. (Loose canon)
(o). Time’s founder’s standard. (31,6) Loose. Cannon. (Luce canon)
(p). One Celt attends race meeting wearing tie. (1,43) A. Scot.
(q). Detour leaves me cold. (51,35) Turn. Off.
(r). Strong inclination for the swan song. (37,10) Pen. Chant.
(s). Souvenir holder for rice wine. (25,42) Keep. Sake.
(t). Drink somehow resembles Irish jingle. (30,40) Lime. Rickey.
(u). I have one man as my broker. (1,21) A. Gent.
(v). Parentage of godfather. (17,23) Father. Hood.
(w). WC Conservative who supports Magma Charter. (29,50) Lava. Tory.
(x). This demi-john is for parking valet. (7,5) Car. Boy.
(y). Charles’s wife, shorn, emphasized that she was under tension. (13,48) Di. Stressed.
(z). To be familiar with the savate is not an insignificant accomplishment. (26,33,18) Know. Mean. Feet.

The correct answer is (3) Beech. The winner in North America is Walter Staaks, of Scottsdale, Arizona.

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Primates make derisive cries, caught by outlaws (7)
5. Add chips, peanuts, crackers (5,2)
9. Baby bears like brown (5)
10. Not drinking bit of tea in breaking away from school (9)
11. Introduce radical cut-back (9)
12. Dined in British school, we hear (5)
13. Place to pick up a spare dish-in kitchen (7,5)
17. Produced white wine to enthrall one French lass (12)
22. Swindle bread company (5)
23. Wizard to come in holding Oriental sleuth (9)
25. Letters from czar change Leonardo and Raphael, for example (9)
26. Saw parts of E.T. The Alien (5)
27. Father catches celebrity coward (7)
28. Mister Chips' last appeal (7)

Down

1. Live to take beating in loungewear (8)
2. Vandyke to have to strive harder (4,4)
3. Unusual topic relating to the eye (5)
4. Rat traps had coloration (7)
5. A republican drives over magazine (7)
6. Banality interests eccentric (9)
7. Candy assortments captivating the two of us (6)
8. Powerful marijuana fetches sawbuck (6)
14. Mistress raised near a Roman inn originally (9)
15. Flit about, say, like a moth (8)
16. Visionary captures chief detective (8)
18. Came to light head of match in rising amount of temperature (7)
19. County overturned religious group at start of solar eclipses (7)
20. Pig stuck in pitch on a ship (6)
21. Stages in difficult ascent (6)
24. Reportedly change site for sacrifice (5)

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“I fought for my country in World War II and would die for it again….” [From a letter from William H. Koontz of Garden City in The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 27 August 1990. Submitted by Raymond J. Herbert,, Calabash, North Carolina.]

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. F-ELT TIPS (SPITTLE rev.).
5. STUD-1O.
9. TANGELOS (rev.).
10. AMOUNT (anag.).
11. ELEVATE (anag.).
12. CO(UGH) UP.
13. DAIRY (FAR)M (MYRIAD rev.).
15. A-LIAS (SAIL rev.).
16. REED-S (DEER rev.).
18. CO-RN S-YR-UP.
21. A-R-RESTS.
22. WEA(THE)R.
24. ICEMAN (anag.).
25. EMANA-TES (rev.).
26. MU-TINY.
27. AN (CHORE)D.

Down

1. F(A-THE)AD.
2. LANCE (hidden).
3. THE(RAP)Y.
4. PR(OVEN)ANCES.
6. TEMPU-R-A (PUT ME anag.).
7. DOUGHTIER.
8. O-CT-OPUS.
12. CAME-RAW-OMEN.
14. I-N EARNEST.
16. REAL(IS)M.
17. S(US)TAIN.
19. STAUNCH (hidden).
20. PERU’S-ED.
23. H(AT)ER.

Internet Archive copy of this issue

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1. • Prof. Skeat will very likely urge that he has not a complete set of N. & Q. Very likely; but at Cambridge there can surely be no difficulty in obtaining access to a complete set. I myself happen to have one; but if I had not, I should certainly either go to the British Museum before writing any long note, or at least mention in my note that I had been unable to consult back numbers.
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